Dude, you're being very un-dude
I can think of no place worse to be during a pandemic than a bowling alley...
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We’re starting to crack. In the past couple of days, a coffee cup has been deposited in the closet, sliced turkey was put into the refrigerator sin bag, we made a routine veterinary appointment for the dog at the wrong vet, and just today I managed to crash into the dresser while doing my Zoom workout in the apartment. And it’s not like there’s anywhere to go to just chill out. I’ve recently been fantasizing about going to the driving range or the track at Saratoga. Or just going and sitting in a beach chair and staring at the water. But the reality is, even if you could take a vacation, you can’t go anywhere. The only option is to sit in the apartment.
The funny thing about it is that after eight weeks in quarantine, it feels like it’s been like this forever. I was in Mexico City right before this whole thing happened, but it may as well have been last decade. People everywhere are becoming unstuck in time. Case in point, the entire Fox8 TV newsroom in Cleveland that momentarily forgot what day it was. Fox8 news anchor Todd Meany finally came to the rescue and succinctly told the Minneapolis StarTribune that:
“In this free-form, kind of weird world that we’re in right now, everybody’s internal clock is thrown off. There’s just no reference point anymore.”
Google search frequency for the phrase “what day is it” has doubled since March 15. Mary McNaughton-Cassill, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at San Antonio, says the quarantine has created a set of circumstances that uniquely effects people’s sense of time. “What makes COVID so weird is that the physical environment looks very normal, she says. “But we have lost every single social anchor that we would normally use.”
All of this brings to mind Billy Pilgrim, the protagonist of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, who finds himself living life out of order. Vonnegut explains what this means at the beginning of chapter two:
Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. Billy has gone to sleep a senile widower and awakened on his wedding day. He has walked through a door in 1955 and come out another one in 1941. He has gone back through that door to find himself in 1963. He has seen his birth and death many times, he says, and pays random visits to all the events in between.
He says.
Billy is spastic in time, has no control over where he is going next, and the trips aren't necessarily fun. He is in a constant state of stage fright, he says, because he never knows what part of his life he is going to have to act in next.
The longer this goes on, the more unstuck from time we all are. At first Billy Pilgrim tries to fight it, then he embraces it. It’s better that way. Vonnegut’s lesson—drawn from his days as a prisoner of war during the Dresden firebombing in 1941—is deal with the present in the present. If you can’t control your circumstances, you best get used to it, sit back, and enjoy the ride the best you can.
Some personal news: One of my features, Kane the Gunslinger, made the cut from a pool of almost 1,600 submissions to go on as a quarter-finalist in the Screencraft Sci-Fi and Fantasy screenplay competition.
Earlier this year, Kane the Gunslinger won the Big Apple Film Festival's competition, so fingers crossed!
Today’s Film: The Big Lebowski (1998)
Joel and Ethan Coen’s 1998 film The Big Lebowski is the perfect chill we’ve all been looking for the past eight weeks. It follows the journey of The Dude, played with aplomb by Jeff Bridges, as he seeks to recover damages for a rug that was destroyed by some goons when they roughed him up. It turns out the attack was a case of mistaken identity, and although The Dude just wants his rug back, he finds himself dragged through the seedy underbelly of Los Angeles when the goons’ employer commands him to help him find his missing wife.
The real problem, of course, is that The Dude just wants to smoke weed, win his bowling league, and drink white Russians in his bathrobe, but the whole kidnapping / money-heist / porn industry backstabbing thing keeps getting in the way. The Dude is assisted in his quest to not be bothered by his teammates from the bowling league. There’s Walter Sobchak, played by John Goodman, who has a lot of ideas about justice and pretends he fought in Vietnam. Then there’s Steve Buscemi’s wispy character, Donny, who is always a half step from keeling over dead. Their bowling nemesis, Jesus Quintana, played by John Turturro, keeps them on their toes. Philip Seymour Hoffman, Sam Elliott, Julianne Moore and David Huddleston round out the cast.
The movie is wonderfully written, and holds up to repeat viewing. On one level, The Dude himself is a deeply intriguing character. He has a philosophy and way of being that’s so Zen as to be almost non-existent, yet it nevertheless guides him guilelessly through all the challenges life dishes up. It’s unclear whether he ever actually makes a decision, or is simply a savant at responding to life’s slings and arrows. The Dude just lets it ride like a drunken boxer taking his time to win a fight. The Dude… abides.
Yet The Big Lebowski isn’t some stoner character study—though it has elements of that. It’s a finely crafted film from two masters of the craft, and the Coen brothers deftly knit together subtly beautiful cinematography, hallucinatory narrative turns and memorable performances to create an entire universe. Somehow the movie succeeds in being both a mood piece and a detective story. So mix yourself a white Russian, kick back in your comfy clothes, and see if you can learn any lessons from The Dude.
The Big Lebowski is streaming on Hulu.
Reading List:
We’ve been making a lot of turkey sandwiches lately, and the other day I got to wondering about the “American Institute” medal on the Gulden’s Mustard label. Turns out it’s a relic from a fascinating chapter in New York’s industrial revolution. The New York Historical Society serves up the story here.
Scientists are uncovering the secrets of the Amazon’s “ghost dogs,” a mysterious species of tiny dog that live deep in the jungles of the Amazon river basin. They’re kind of cute.
Benjamin Reeves is an award-winning screenwriter, journalist and media consultant based in Brooklyn, New York. Follow him on Twitter @bpreeves or write to him at breeves.writer@gmail.com.