Finally back visiting the old blog.  Sweeping things out.  Freshening things up.  And getting ready to get back in the swing of things on Monday.  

It seems like the entire world is going to pause today so it can run out for the movie event millions of people have waited most of the year, if not most of their lives for: the release of STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS.  Advanced word has been good, unabashed fans have had their tickets for months, and many of them can be found on Facebook and other social media platforms counting down the days, hours, and minutes until they can finally sit in a darkened theater and see it.  Most of them haven’t been this excited since their days of waiting for Santa Claus to come down the chimney.
 
Which is why I am going to a bit of an Ebenezer Scrooge here today as I come clean with a statement that has haunted me for most of my life.  Are you ready?
 
I don’t get what the big deal is about STAR WARS. 
 
There, I said it!  I have been thinking it for most of my adult life.  I just haven’t had the nerve to say it until now.  What is it about this movie series that has made it the biggest thing across all entertainment platforms for the last forty years?
 
I have watched this entertaining but wildly uneven franchise come to dominate pop culture.  I have watched my students (otherwise responsible adults) talk about the opening of STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS with the same awed reverence on their faces usually reserved for people who have seen Jesus.
 
So what gives?  Why is STAR WARS such a big deal????  Because I really don’t understand it.

It’s not like I dislike science fiction.  Growing up, I read dozens of sci-fi novels.  I loved Jules Verne.  I was a dedicated follower of LOST IN SPACE.  I enjoyed watching any kind of sci-fi TV program no matter how cheesy whether it be LAND OF THE GIANTS or VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA or THE FANTASTIC JOURNEY (anybody remember that one?).

I watched every iteration of STAR TREK from the original series (1966-1969) to the cartoon series on Saturday morning (1973-1975) to the movies (STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN is still the best) to STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION and STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE.  I admit I jumped off the bandwagon at VOYAGER.  But I still watch GALAXY QUEST (1999) every time it is on.
 
I loved every installment of PLANET OF THE APES whether it be the five movies, the TV show, the Saturday morning cartoon, or the many book tie-ins. 
 
SILENT RUNNING, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, and APOLLO 13 are still among my favorite films.  You set a movie in space and I will watch it. 

In the 1960s and 1970s, I was obsessed with the USA’s space program and watched every available hour of every mission from Gemini through Apollo and Skylab right up to the early Space Shuttle launches.  I still dream of going into space.
 
It’s also not like I think George Lucas is/was a bad filmmaker.  Without a doubt he is one of the most brilliant and influential filmmakers in movie history.  AMERICAN GRAFFITI (1973), his other 1970s blockbuster, is one of my Top 25 favorite films of all time.

And it is not that I dislike the STAR WARS movies at all.  The original STAR WARS (1977) – sorry, but I refuse to call it by its new franchise name STAR WARS EP. IV: A NEW HOPE – is an exhilarating ride and one of the most entertaining movies ever made.  I first saw it at the Capitol Theater in Charleston, West Virginia at age fifteen when it came out in the summer of 1977.  It was fun and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  But there was nothing about it that made me want to see it again.  Certainly nothing on the order of TIME AFTER TIME (1979) which I managed to see four times in one week at the old Clarkston Cinema in Clarkston, Michigan.  But then again I had a massive crush on Mary Steenburgen at the time.  And, yes, I did fancy myself as the H.G. Wells type (brilliantly played by Malcolm McDowell).  “To be quite candid”, I still use many of Wells’ lines from that movie in my everyday speech  – the true sign of a movie that has changed your life.

In 1980, eighteen year old me saw THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (1980) on a date at the Showcase Cinemas in Pontiac, Michigan.  My date and I did not really hit it off that night but the movie was lots of fun.  It was good seeing the characters back.  In fact, watching a sequel those days was a rather novel experience because most movies then, no matter how big a hit they were, did not automatically generate a sequel.  And the ones that did were usually decidedly worse than the original.  Think SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT II (1980), JAWS 2 (1978), or MORE AMERICAN GRAFFITI (1979).  So it was refreshing to see a sequel that was almost as good as the original.  But, again, no desire to see it again.  In contrast, I saw RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981) five times in theaters when it came out the following summer.
 
By the time RETURN OF THE JEDI came out in 1983, I was seeing it more out of obligation than anything because they were finally wrapping up the story and I was at least mildly interested in how it would end.  But, for 21 year old me whatever magic or novelty the series had had evaporated by then.  And I was more than happy to watch Luke and his friends defeat the Empire and close the book with a happy ending.  And I had absolutely no desire to see the story picked up again and continued.

None of the original movies were my choice for best film of their years.  For 1977, I chose Steven Spielberg’s CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND.  In 1980, it was David Lynch’s THE ELEPHANT MAN followed closely by Richard Rush’s THE STUNT MAN.  The runaway winner for me in 1983 was TERMS OF ENDEARMENT (saw it about five times in the theater) followed closely by Bill Forsyth’s hilariously dry comedy LOCAL HERO.
 
When George Lucas made his prequel trilogy at the turn of the new century, I didn’t even bother seeing them in theaters.  I was married and a working father by then and my much diminished spare time seem better spent elsewhere.  I eventually ended up watching THE PHANTOM MENACE (1999), ATTACK OF THE CLONES (2002), and REVENGE OF THE SITH (2005) on pay cable.  And like most viewers, I was rather underwhelmed by what I saw.  I would rather watch THE LORD OF THE RINGS director’s editions for the zillionth time than sit through those three movies again.
 
So when I see all the different editions and the toys and the books and the costumes and the games and the endless merchandising tie-ins for THE FORCE AWAKENS, I seriously don’t get it.  To quote the late Alfred Hitchcock, “It’s just a movie.” 

So my question for you today is this: What is it about STAR WARS that makes it one of the greatest movies ever made for you?  What makes this film the pinnacle of your movie universe?  What is it that makes George Lucas’s space fantasy the “be all, end all” of movie watching experiences?  What is it about this movie that changed your life?
 
What is it that I am missing?  I seriously want to know.
 
So, please, enlighten me.

And may the force be with you.

The movie JAWS turned 40 years old last week and I find that almost incomprehensible.  Twenty years old maybe or 25 but certainly not 40.  When my parents took us to see GONE WITH THE WIND back in 1969, that movie was 30 years old and even then GWTW, brilliant though it is, felt like something from a bygone era.  But not JAWS.

Like most of us alive in the 1970s, our first exposure to JAWS was through the novel and not the movie.  Peter Benchley’s debut book was everywhere in the summer of 1974 and selling like crazy.  It was the HARRY POTTER and THE DA VINCI CODE of its year.  I suspect it had something to do with that cover.  Not the hard copy cover but the paperback one where the obviously naked woman swims along and the shark closes up from below.  My 12 year old adolescent self was intrigued the moment I saw it. I suspect I was alone.

Despite repeated asking, my mother would not let me buy it.  After all, it had THAT cover.  So I did the next best thing: every time my parents made a shopping trip to Heck’s (the West Virginia K-mart of the 1970s), I went off on my own to the book section and I literally read JAWS a chapter or two each visit over the summer.  Sure, I could have checked it out of the library but 1) I would have had to wait months because of the number of requests, and 2) it would have been the hardcover edition which did not have the same cover as the paperback.  Hmmm, maybe my mother WAS smarter than I thought……

It came as no surprise when Universal announced JAWS was going to become a movie.  What did surprise me was that I recognized the name of the director, Steven Spielberg, when it seemed that nobody else did.  Four years earlier, I had watched the premiere of his first TV movie DUEL starring Dennis Weaver about a man traveling cross country pursued by a trucker bent on killing him.  It had blown me away with its suspense and danger.  It was also the first time I understood how a director was using the camera to accomplish this through shots, camera movement, and editing.  To hear he was making JAWS made me even more eager to see it.

Flash forward to the summer of 1975.  Gerald Ford was in the White House.  My sister Pam was on her way to college in the fall.  And you couldn’t have the radio on for five minutes without hearing one of three songs played over and over in heavy rotation: Van McCoy’s “The Hustle”, Paperlace’s one hit wonder “The Night Chicago Died”, and Paul McCartney and Wings' “Listen To What The Man Said.”  (I was also suffering my first celebrity crush with Annette Funicello but that is a subject for another post).  JAWS was coming into theaters.  There was no way to escape the commercials on TV.  And, no, I could not wait for it to open at the Capitol Theater in Charleston.

Unfortunately, to avoid a possible R rating, Universal Pictures released it as PG with the disclaimer “May Be Too Intense For Younger Children.”  Well, that disclaimer was all my mother needed to decide that I was one of those “younger children” and I was forbidden to see JAWS.  My father did not feel compelled to use one of his few yearly vetoes to override her.  And so while JAWS broke box office records worldwide and went on to become the #1 hit of all time, I was on the outside looking in.  My sisters went to see it.  My cousins went to see it.  But I had to stay home.

How scary and terrifying was JAWS? 

A fellow classmate confessed to me that he and his buddies always went swimming at night when they vacationed at Myrtle Beach.  They stopped doing that after JAWS.

One afternoon, my cousins and I went over to a friend’s house to swim in their pool and my cousin refused to go in the pool.  She was too scared from JAWS.

While on vacation in Indiana, we all went over to the beach at Indiana Dunes.  It was a glorious afternoon but nobody was going in the water.  We were at Indiana Dunes on the shores of Lake Michigan, people!!!  Nobody going in.  All because of a movie.

Four years later, Universal re-released JAWS into theaters for one week only.  We were in Michigan by then and I was regularly driving myself to the movies.  So I announced to Mom that I was going to see JAWS.  She didn’t say a thing.  I went over to the Keego Theater in Keego Harbor, sat in the theater which was about a third full, and enjoyed myself completely.  I was ready to love it but it was even better than I had expected.  I knew then without a doubt that Spielberg was brilliant.  And this shark movie would remain one of my all time favorite films.

Each of us serves many different relations in the lives of the people around us.  I have had the honor of being Dorothy's son.  And as I look around the room today, I see friends and relatives to whom my mother served as sister, wife, mother, teacher and grandmother.

So many different images of my mother are coursing through my mind this morning:

I see a little farm girl shirking her chores and playing in the fields.  A girl who spit in her brother's face, and tossed a cat in Stone Lake to see if it could swim or not.  And then running all the way back home when she feared that the cat was going to get her.

I see a pretty teenage girl, whom I just found out yesterday was a cheerleader, and who once confessed that maybe she flirted "a little too much back then."

I see an 18 year old woman on the threshold of adulthood who went to see "Show Boat" over and over during the summer of 1951 and fantasized of meeting Howard Keel and sailing down the Mississippi River into the sunset.

I see a thirty year old mother in go-go boots & fishnet stockings playing Twister with her friends.

I see a mature woman sitting in a lawn chair - and proudly holding her first grandchild on her lap.

All of these images are facets of the jewel that was Dorothy Rothrock.

Without a doubt, she had her quirks and endearing qualities: just like all of us.  If you don't think you have them, just ask your spouse, or your best friend.  They'll be happy to tell you.

With Mom, there are 3 in particular which come to mind.

When Pat, Pam and I were children, we spent a lot of time with our Hagerty cousins, Scott and Terry and Kim, and we spent a lot of time going to amusement parks together.  And all of us would ride just about anything: roller coasters and tilt-a-whirls and bumper cars.  You name it, we rode it.  But not Mom and not Aunt Donna.  They spent a lot of time sitting on the benches, waiting for us to come back.

And they did this with such regularity that we took to calling them "The Chicken Sisters".  And we even got to the point where, one year at Cedar Point, we even bought them matching plates with a chicken on it.  And they each hung their plate in their kitchen as a proud member of "The Chicken Sisters".

The second one not a lot of people know about.  When I was in high school, Pat and Pam were already grown and out on their own.  We were living in West Virginia at the time but Dad had taken a job up in Michigan as we got ready to move up there.  So during the week, Mom and I would be the only ones at home, and a lot of times, my day would start with the sound of Mom coming down the hall to my room, singing in that voice which you heard earlier, "School day, school day, good old golden rule day!"

I look back nostalgically on that now but when you're 17 years old, that's just about the last thing you want to hear.

And the last one I thought about yesterday because it would always happen at every funeral we attended.  I would be standing there chatting with Tonya or some cousin that I hadn't seen in a long time.  And Mom would come walking up with some elderly person on her arm.  And she'd have that looked on her face.  You know which one.  And she'd say, "Do you remember this person?"

And we'd have to say, "No."

And then Mom would smile triumphantly as she delivered her zinger: "She used to change your diapers."

I really missed that yesterday.  I guess now we'll have to continue those traditions with our kids.

But she had so many gifts and warmth and love that any quirks she may have had are overshadowed. 

One thing for sure, She had a special kind of way with children. 

She never spoke much about her job as a special education teacher at Will Rogers Elementary School in Pontiac MI, but I do know that she had a powerful influence on many of her students.  Several of them came from broken homes and they gravitated toward her.  Some even called her "the Mom they wish they'd had".

She never really understood irony or sarcasm, ever.  Even in her final days, we'd be kidding her and she just wouldn't get it.  She preferred everything simple and straight-forward and genuine. 

She could be stubborn but you knew she was trying to do good.  She could be exasperating but you always knew she was doing it out of love. Most of the time, she was simply looking out for you in the way she knew best because, more than anything else, family was the most important thing to her.

She was never happier than in the time right before someone was coming to visit.  I remember being home and watching her speed around the house in the days before they arrived.  She'd be cleaning and cooking and hurrying around getting everything ready.  As you know, her house was never quite clean enough.  But she'd be excited because family was coming soon.

And when everything was ready, she would literally stand at the window and watch until she saw the car turn in at the driveway, and she'd hurry down to the door so she'd be the first to give you a big hug when you walked in.

She loved being a wife.  She loved being a mother.  She loved being a grandmother.  She reveled in all of these roles.

When my son Ben was born, and she was still living in Michigan, she'd drive down on Sunday afternoons just so she could sit in the rocker for hours and just hold him. 

She loved the summers that her grandchildren, Jennifer and Chris, spent at her house back when they were little. 

A few weeks ago, Jennifer and Chris reminded me about how in those summers, she'd give them an allowance and, to earn it, they'd be responsible for certain chores they had to do around the house, and if they didn't do one, she'd deduct a nickel for each one.  So if she saw dirty dishes on the table, she'd say, "I see a nickel." And Jennifer and Chris would hurry to clean it up.  And, of course, she never got around to deducting any nickels from that allowance.

She taught most of us, both the children and the grandchildren, how to ride a bike. 

She taught us how to swing. 

She taught us how to cook. 

She taught my son Ben how to play hide and seek. 

She taught us too much to summarize here.

The last few years, I've just sat back and smiled watching Ben.  Because when he would hear that Grandma was coming to visit, he would hurry around the house and plan out all the things he wanted to do with Grandma and then watch for that moment when she would come up the driveway, so he could run to the door and wait for her hug.

Just two months ago, as Betsy and Ben and I were getting ready to travel down to spend Easter with her, Ben told me, "I love Grandma." and then he took me aside and said, "She's my girlfriend, you know."

One thing is for sure: she had a special kind of way with children.

And I know that those are the things that will live on as we continue our life's journey without her.

There's a scene late in "Forrest Gump" where Forrest is chatting with his girl Jenny, whom he's loved all his life but circumstances prevent them from getting together until late in the movie.  And she's asking him about all the beautiful things he's seen in his life.

And Forrest talks about the stars in Vietnam, and the beauty of the sunsets over the Gulf of Mexico, and the sight of the dawn coming up in the western desert, and how it is so beautiful that he has a hard time trying to decide where Earth ends and Heaven begins.

And Jenny gets all wistful and sad and says, "I wish I could have been there."

And he looks at her with all this love and wonder on his face, then says simply, "You were."

And that's how I'm thinking about Mom today.  She hasn't really gone away, because she's always going to be here in our minds and in our hearts. 

She'll be there we when we think of home-made cookies and summers by the lake.

She'll be there in how we wake up in the morning.

She'll be there in the way we raise our children and our grandchildren. 

And I have no doubt that, several years down the line, when Chris back there is raising his child, Mom's first great-grandchild, that he'll be halfway through saying something to his son, and then he'll realize that they are the same words that his grandma used to say to him when he was a boy.  And which he SWORE he would never say to his child.

There are so many things to celebrate about my mother.  And to thank her for......and so I want to stand up here today and thank you, Mom.......

......Thank you....... for letting Pat and Pam and I have cats when we knew she really couldn't stand the smell.

......Thank you....... for all the slipcovers and sewing and repair work you did on Puppy.  My constant companion when I was Ben's age....and maybe a few years beyond that.    I still remember the day Puppy fell in the toilet and Mom had to hand wash him.  And all the anxious moments I had as he hung out there drying on the clothesline.

......Thank you......for letting me setup my Hot Wheels cars in the middle of the living room and the Major Matt Mason moon base on the stair landing, even though I knew that she preferred her houses to be neat and tidy.

......Thank you......for giving us strict bedtimes, but letting them slide when there was a show or movie on that we just HAD to see.

......Thank you......for family dinners around the table and insisting that we eat what you cooked, but always fixing me a separate meal when you realized just how much I hated ham pot pie.

......Thank you......for the warm cookies and the cold milk which would be waiting for us when we got home from school.

......Thank you......for Christmases where I didn't always get everything I wanted, but I always got the thing I most wanted that year.

......Thank you......for a terrific childhood.  Sure I regret a couple things.  The fights Pat and I used to get into each week when the new TV Guide arrived come to mind.  And if it was the Fall Preview issue, man, fists flew.            Mom's solution, by the way, was to have us get two subscriptions to TV Guide, one for each of us.  But over all, our childhood was great.

......Thank you......for letting us be children as long as possible.  When we became teenagers and we started asking if we could take summer jobs, she'd say, "You'll spend the rest of your life working.  Enjoy yourself."  And she was right.  And those lazy summers when I was young keep looking better and better, the older that I get.

......Thank you......for the surprise party on my 17th birthday where you managed to get all my high school friends over shortly before we had to move away.

......Thank you......for that last 1986 vacation you and I took on Mackinac Island, where we biked and ate ice cream cones and sat out and watched the sunsets until it was dark.

......Thank you......for always having an open front door to your house so that when we were grown, no matter what had been the setback, whether it was financial or maybe we were just lonely at holiday-time, we could always come home again.

......Thank you......for my two sisters.  Its true that we don't always see eye to eye, but today, right here, I do want to stand up and say that, whatever our disagreements in both the past and the future, that I do and always will love each of you.

........and lastly I thank Mom for my strong and vibrant faith in God and Jesus Christ, and the recognition of his continuing hand in our lives both here on Earth, and in the hereafter.  Because it is the only thing that gets us through times like this.

And leaves me with no doubt that Mom may be gone from our lives right now but it is not a departure.  It is just a vacation. 

And wherever she is right now, I know Mom is cleaning and cooking and excited and hurrying around getting everything ready because family will be coming soon. 

And I have no doubt that, when everything is ready, she will be watching at the window so she can hurry down to the door, ready to give us a big hug,

And welcome us home again.

I have been attending the Indianapolis 500 almost every year since 1977.  It is THE sporting event in the world for me.  The Super Bowl, World Series, and Olympics all rolled into one.  It is the largest single day sporting event in the world.  More people attend this event than anything else on planet Earth.  How many?  For the duration of the race, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway becomes the 24th largest city in the USA.  It is the ultimate expression of humans testing their limits with the ultimate price of risk and reward on the table.  To quote Ernest Hemingway: "There are only two sports in the world: auto racing and bullfighting.  The rest are just games."

This weekend, the Indy 500 will run for the 99th time.  Below are the five best finishes I have personally witnessed:

5. 1989
Emerson Fittipaldi led almost all day but got held up by lapped cars in the final ten laps.  Al Unser Jr. managed to pass him with 5 laps to go.  They then engaged in one of the tightest dogfights in Speedway history.  It ended with wheel to wheel contact right in front of us in Turn 3 with a little over a lap to go.  Unser went into the wall and Fittipaldi took the checkered flag.

4. 2006 
Sam Hornish stalled his car on his final pit stop.  His chances of winning seemed over but he still managed to run down rookie Marco Andretti in the closing laps.  It seemed impossible but Hornish managed to draw even with Andretti coming down for the checkered flag.  No matter how long the odds, never give up!

3. 2011
Nobody remembers that Danica Patrick almost won that day (for the 2nd time) but she had to make a pit stop while leading with ten laps to go.  That gave the lead to rookie J.R. Hildebrand who just had to bring it home.  Instead, he hit the wall on the last turn of the last lap and Dan Wheldon came through to claim his second 500 win driving for a team that had never won a race before.  It was a fairy tale finish for everyone but Hildebrand.

2. 2014
Ryan Hunter-Reay and Helio Castroneves went wheel to wheel over the final 6 laps, trading the lead back and forth and back and forth.  Hunter-Reay just managed to hold him off at the finish line.  It is now the second closest finish in history.

1. 1992
Michael Andretti dominated the day only to have his car break with 11 laps to go.  That set up a dogfight between Al Unser Jr. and Scott Goodyear (Goodyear had started 33th and last in the field).   For 10 laps Goodyear tried everything he could to get around.  He almost did it at the line but came up just short in a near photo finish.  It remains the closest finish to date.  FYI, that day was also the coldest 500 in history: only 38 degrees.  We weren’t feeling the cold over those final ten laps!

Can't wait for Sunday!

My father was a workaholic.  Most school days he was out the door before I came down for breakfast.  He would return home in the late afternoon right before dinner then often go right back to work while we cleared the dishes.  Saturday mornings, he would go back to the office.  He claimed he got more done on Saturdays because “nobody was there to bug him.”  So, in short, I learned early that if I wanted to spend time with my dad, I had to go to work with him.  It quickly became our most common father son activity in my childhood years.  

My earliest memory of doing this was when I was 2 or 3 and living in West Lafayette, Indiana.  Dad worked at the time as the business manager for Bill DeFouw Chevrolet while earning his Master’s degree at Purdue University.  

After dinner, he and I would get into his two door purple 1965 Chevrolet Impala provided by the dealer.  It had bucket seats in the front.  Even though it was the “dangerous” 1960s, my father refused to let me ride in the front seat.  Instead, I stood on the hump in the back seat with my arms resting on the two front seats.  I loved it!  It allowed me to peer over the dashboard and see the world coming at us.  This lasted until the day the entire family was out for a ride.  Dad slammed on the brakes and I went flying forward between the seats.  Only my mother’s adroit arms saved me from flying into the gearshift.  I wasn’t allowed to stand on the hump after that.

Once Dad and I arrived at DeFouw”s, he would disappear into his office in the back.  And three year old me would have the run of the place.  Specifically, I could run around the showroom floor, crawl into any car I liked, and sit there pretending to drive.  I remember enjoying the imaginary handling of the Chevy Corvair and feeling pretty darn special behind the wheel of the Chevy Chevelle.

But, by far, my favorite car of choice was the red 1965 Corvette Sting Ray.  Even sitting still it looked fast.  No keys in the ignition (this was prior to the introduction of the steering column lock) but I could still operate the gearshift and put it into gear.  Don’t worry, it didn’t go anywhere.  Even though it was an automatic, I liked to pretend it was a stick.  With my hands on the wheel I would saw my arms back and forth and imagine tearing down a fast highway out west like Elvis Presley in VIVA LAS VEGAS (1964).  I did not pretend that ultra-sexy Ann-Margret was sitting on the bucket seat beside me.  For now, my three year old self was content to just be behind the wheel of a fast car.  The fast women would come MUCH later.

Amazingly in that pre-video game, pre-cell phone, pre-computer era, hours would pass in blissful imagination.  When Dad was done, he walked out of his office and yelled, “Rich, let’s go home.”  And I would crawl out of whatever car I was in and home we would go.

Dad said he would chuckle the next day at work when the maintenance workers would be washing down the car seats in the showroom and wondering how all those child-sized footprints got onto the seats.