SUNDAY GRATITUDE EXTRAVAGANZA: Watching the Detectives (May 14, 2023)
|Five Things…[the very best detective-style movies] | "Watching the Detectives" | "Anyone Anywhere" AA Meeting | "Friday the 13th and Lucky Pennies" | Much, Much More |
Note: This is a “previously enjoyed” Sunday Gratitude Extravaganza! I’m spending the weekend with my kids and you get another chance at this gem. I believe that is referred to as a “win-win.”
Happy Sunday!
This Week:
Five Things…[the very best detective-style movies]
“Watching the Detectives”
“Anyone Anywhere” Meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous
From the TFLMS Archives: Friday the 13th and Lucky Pennies
I’m grateful for a soft, easy Sunday morning. I’m grateful for really excellent coffee. I’m grateful for content and ease. I’m grateful for the ball bouncing the way it needed to. I’m grateful for the penny I found (and retrieved) on the subway. I’m grateful to be sober today.
Welcome to yet another edition of the Sunday Gratitude Extravaganza, like all of the good things in life, it arrives on an appallingly regularly schedule. And, speaking of appalling, here is this week’s Five Things.1
Five Things…[the very best detective-style movies]
** Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai
Technically, not a detective movie, but a super cool remake of one of my favorites along with eerily-apt quotes about samurais and alcoholics (I think):
** The Maltese Falcon
It may take like ten watchings to really get this, but since this is the archetypal detective movie, that’s a good thing.
** The Long Goodbye
If I was going to be a detective, I would want to be Elliot Gould as Philip Marlowe. I’m sorry, I just don’t think I could ever pull off the Humphrey Bogart version in real life. Of course, Philip Marlowe and Raymond Chandler were both alcoholics...2
** Chinatown
Really? I shouldn’t need to tell you why.
** True Detective (Season One)
(a) it has the word “detective” in the title; (b) a pretty gripping, freaky story; and (c) Woody Harrelson AND Matthew McConaughey as alcoholics…
Watching the Detectives
If I were writing on a completely clean slate, and lived in a universe where most of the things that matter in this one were applicable only when convenient,3 I would choose to be either a game show host or a detective. I actually got in trouble for saying that out loud in the 8th Grade during our career day exercises. Joe O., who wore those Osh Kosh b'gosh white painters pants every single day of junior high, proudly announced his career aspiration was writing greeting cards for the Hallmark Corporation ( in Kansas City).4 Since we were sharing big dreams, when Joe finished talking, I just said "game show host."
Mr. Conway, the guidance counselor supervising this exploration of our futures, thought this was an unacceptable response. But, being the good proto-alcoholic, when pressed and given a gracious way out, I doubled down on the original nonsense and gave a brief speech on how I’d be more like Tom Kennedy on Split Second than Jack Barry on the Jokers Wild.5 If we’re going to be super honest here, the dream job would be to revive the Monty Hall version of Let’s Make a Deal, but feel like it might accentuate some of the tendencies that we list out whenever we work the 4th Step. You could call it the “bad” side. Also, they’ve tried to make it “nice.” So sad.6
Game show host may be on the shelf temporarily, but it occurred to me that my recovery has involved some good, old-fashioned detective work. During the decade when I was actively trying to stop drinking, there were lots of suspects. Fickle girlfriends, bosses and colleagues who never seemed to grasp my brilliance, ex-wives, bad car karma were all the focus of the investigation. I was one of those drinkers who knew that drinking wasn’t my problem, you were the problem. If you’d just knock it off, I wouldn’t need to drink.
Every great detective movie has that moment when it seems like the answer is pretty clear, when it seems like things are all figured out and it’s time to lower the boom and get out those bracelets. Great detectives know that when it’s all too good, too open and shut, well, it must not be true. I had that moment in early October of 2016 as I emerged victorious from my first stint at sleep-away rehab. I knew the causes of my alcoholism and fortunately, they all had names that were different than mine. I was prepared to exercise my new found skills and tools to forgive those who had so grievously offended me, to accept the many faults and foibles of the other people in this world and to move purposely into the post-drinking world.
If you’d like to read more about that trip, I think I called it the Sinking of the Vasa.
Anyway, that case fell apart and after a few more Law & Order-style “charge the wrong defendants” attempts at sobriety, I finally decided to start fresh. Cold case style. When I started looking at all of the incidents and accidents that comprised the story of my alcoholism, well, there was one guy at the scene of every single crime.
This particular metaphor falls apart when you try to compare recovery with the process of charging and convicting someone for committing a crime. It’s not the outcome that is important here, it’s the approach. I’ve had therapists tell me to be curious about my feelings and I really no had f***ing clue what that meant, until I had my twin-peaked cap on one day and in between puffs of cherry-scented pipe tobacco, realized that my feelings, those weird things that zipped around my head and produced a lot of unpleasant sensations, might not represent the absolute truth. Meaning, a lot of crazy thoughts are just random, crazy thoughts, weird, slightly missed electrical connections, gibberish produced by a component that didn’t boot properly this morning.
If what I felt and thought didn’t represent objective truth, what was it? I started doing some spade-work around my feelings and thoughts and saw that sometimes they weren’t even mine. I reacted to things in ways that I had been taught to react or had seen others react, but those reactions really didn’t seem like me. I didn’t just investigate the bad parts of myself, I began tailing the persons of interest, seeing where they went and developing a fuller picture of the connections.7 I started to see my prime suspect wasn't alone at the scene of every crime; he was accompanied by the rest of the gang: fear, shame, anger and isolation.
What happened exactly? I’m not sure and the endings are always a bit murky, aren’t they? Remind me again how the Maltese Falcon ends? It’s the approach that matters, isn’t that kind of the message of the Big Book? The game show thing? Fortunately, I’m very comfortable playing the long game these days. Spending my days as a detective seems like a better choice.
“Anyone Anywhere” meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous!
Tuesday nights at 7pm
The “Anyone Anywhere” meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous takes place on Tuesday evenings at 7pm (edt). It is an “Open” meeting, meaning all are welcome and that definitely includes you! If you’re curious about what happens at AA meetings or have been looking to check new meetings out, it’s all good with us. We’d love to have you join us.
Zoom: 873 5565 4347 secret code: 1234
From the TFLMS Archives:
See you on Tuesday!
I’m not sure who had this idea originally, but I now spend about 30% of my waking time trying to come up with clever ideas for these lists, if you had an idea and wanted to pass it along, I’ll give you whatever branding you want. Think I’m not serious? I still don’t know what’s going in there this week…and I’m already on the first footnote.
Alcohol is like love. The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl's clothes off.
Philip Marlowe
Haha, I know I just described the exact state I was I trying to locate when drinking.
Nothing but respect for this, says the guy who writes an inspirational-style gratitude list every day.
Jack Barry puzzled me. He acted as though he had once been someone very important. Two, he seemed very serious about a game where the contestants were encouraged to chant “no whammy, no whammy.”
Snoop hosting the Joker’s Wild is both perfect and dream-killing. At one time, there might have been a very slim path to my accession to the Joker’s Wild throne (think Bernie Sander’s 1% in Michigan). That door closed when Snoop took over, there simply is no universe in which TBD is the successor to Snoop Dogg. Sorry, I wish things were different, too.
Like the way they mapped out the phone connections in The Wire.