Something or Other Interruptus (But Not That)

Have you ever had a case of interruptus? I mean, do you have problems finishing what you start? For some reason, I've been battling it more than usual lately.

I most notice it in my reading habits. I pick up a new book -- fiction or nonfiction, it matters not -- and begin with excited anticipation, turning pages like an accountant on April 14. But then, by the time I'm halfway through the book, my interest flags. Sometimes I trudge on anyway, thinking, "This is a good book. It's even considered a classic. I should read this and finish what I started." This logic, quite frankly, is what got me all the way through the unabridged versions of both Les Miserables and Moby Dick, books which are great at the beginning and end, but drag terribly by page 726 or so.

But sometimes, I don't even finish. I just give up. I quit. My list of books each year that I start and then don't finish is most assuredly longer than the list of ones I do finish. Maybe this is why I try to read Goodnight Moon at least once a year, to get that feeling of literary completion without a lot of effort.

(I've just re-read this about 10 hours after I wrote it, and on second glance I realize I sound like a bit of a lazy dilettante, starting in on a book and just dropping it on a whim because maybe there aren't any more pretty pictures or because I want to go to sleep and drool on the couch all day. In reality, what occurs is a teaming of two fatal forces: the book becoming a little boring, and my discovering a new book that seems even more exciting and worthy of my limited free time. I'm like an insatiable playboy philanderer who starts dating his new girlfriend before he even gets around to dumping his old one. I know this only in theory, by the way.)

My latest "stuck on the tar baby, caught in the brier patch" book is Little Women. I enjoyed the first quarter a lot, and I appreciate how it paints such a pleasant picture of life. But now I'm smack dab in the middle of the thing, after I've learned the father recovers from his war injuries and little what's-her-name doesn't die of fever, and I'm trying to decide, "Do I want 250 more pages of this?" I haven't touched it in a week or so. The thought of sneaking off to a new book -- maybe a juicy modern mystery or a Wodehouse comedy -- is seducing me like a sultry painted lady of the night. But then I think, what about Jo and the girls? What will I say now if someone ever asks if I've read Little Women? I'll have to answer, "Duh, I've read half of it," as if the prose was just too complicated for me to understand or something.

I do the same thing with movies. It's very rarely that I watch a DVD or even a movie on TV in one, uninterrupted sitting. I'll watch a third or a half, get called away or find something else I want to do instead, and the movie never gets finished. Can you tell me if Rhett and Scarlett live happily ever after? Did they ever figure out what "Rosebud" was? Was Norman Bates' mother the killer in "Psycho?"

Another thing that happens is that I will finish the movie, but I'll do it by watching in 20- or 30-minute segments as I'm running on the treadmill or doing another task. These viewings don't all take place right after each other, so I'm many times popping in a movie and asking myself, "OK, what was going on when I left this a week ago? And who are the characters again?"

I know that this is no way to read books or watch movies. I like to think I have more of an attention span than this would indicate, but maybe I don't.

I'm curious, readers. Do you also have problems with literary or video interruptus? When you get well into a book or movie and it loses its zing, do you drop it and move on, or do you stick with it?

Today's Quote:

"We Christians must simplify our lives or lose untold treasures on earth and in eternity. Modern civilization is so complex as to make the devotional life all but impossible, The need for solitude and quietness was never greater than it is today."

--A.W. Tozer

Oscar Thoughts

Mrs. Muley and I pointedly didn't watch the Oscars last night because, frankly, there weren't any movies in contention for the big awards that we were interested in. Also, it was readily apparent that this year's nominations were a big poke in the eye to conservative, family values Middle America, with just about every movie filled with appeals for the approval of homosexuality, and views of America as a racially bigoted place run by evil corporations and filled with bloodthirsty, misguided anti-Communists.

I mean, I figured "Brokeback Mountain" would win Best Picture, but did it matter to me if a movie which portrayed us all as foaming homophobes lost to a movie potraying us all as foaming racial bigots? Not really.

Let's face it, a movie I thought was undoubtedly one of the best of the past year -- "Chronicles of Narnia" -- won exactly one Oscar. One. For best makeup. Whoo-hoo!

On the plus side, I see there were some bright spots. I'm glad Reese Witherspoon won Best Actress for her part in "Walk the Line" -- a role and a movie I enjoyed. I'm also glad that two of my favorite movies of 2005 won in lesser categories: "March of the Penguins" for Best Documentary, and "Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit" for Best Animated Feature.

But what made me most proud, as a consumer of pop culture, as a parent, and as an American, was the winner of the Best Song. I didn't see the show, and I've never heard the song that won, but this description from an AP news story just melted the cockles of my heart:

The raucous hip-hop tune "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" from "Hustle & Flow," whose expletive-laden lyrics had to be toned down for performance at the Oscars, won the prize for best song. The song was written by the rap group Three 6 Mafia, aka Jordan Houston, Cedric Coleman and Paul Beauregard.

Featuring dancers dressed as hookers and pimps gyrating on stage, the song's performance stood in sharp contrast to the other nominated tunes and the general stateliness of the Oscars.

"You know what? I think it just got a little easier out here for a pimp," joked Oscar host Jon Stewart.

The Lion Story

Alright, it's time for the lion story. You asked for it.

This tale takes place back in the late 1980s, when I was a young reporter with one of Waco's three television stations. I was a general assignments reporter, meaning that I could be covering City Hall or a car accident one day, and doing a feature story on a woman's collection of dolls made from corncobs the next day.

One blustery winter day, I was assigned to take my photographer and do a story about the Waco Zoo. Apparently, there were some new additions that were being contemplated. I must set this story by saying that while Waco now has a beautiful, natural habitat zoo along the Brazos River, the zoo at the time I was a reporter was a pretty shabby affair. It was located on a flat, tiny piece of land near the airport, and was far from a "natural habitat." The animals were crowded in small cages which were lined up next to each other.

I felt good going out to the zoo that day. It was cold but sunny, and I was nice and warm inside my new leather jacket, which I had been saving for out of my measly reporter's salary for quite some time. I must say, I looked good in it, and I knew I would look good on air as well.

We went through the basics of getting the story by interviewing the zoo director and a few visitors, then shooting "B-roll," pretty shots of the zoo and its animals which we'd slap over my narration of the piece before it aired. So far, so good.

There was one final thing we had to do before leaving -- shooting the "stand up." This is the part of a TV news story where you actually see the reporter on camera, holding his or her microphone and making some serious and hopefully intelligent-sounding observation.

After looking the place over, my photographer decided that the most photogenic place to shoot the standup would be in front of the lion cage. There were two lions in there -- a male and a female -- and we would position the shot so that you'd see me backed up near the cage on one side of the TV screen, while over my shoulder you'd see the lions on the other side.

From what I remember, the lions that day were taking a nap when we arrived. Like many animals in zoo cages, they looked as though they spent a lot of their time each day snoozing.

We set up the shot, and there I stood in my new leather jacket, my script improvised on the spot. We did a few run-throughs to let me practice first, and then we were ready to tape.

I did a few takes, but for some reason I can't remember I wasn't happy with them. Maybe I flubbed a word, maybe the wind was blowing hair in my eyes. Anyway, I started the third take with confidence that this would be the one that nailed it.

Soon into my speech, I felt what I thought might have been a light mist blowing against my neck -- sort of like when there's a sprinkler turned on next door, and the wind wafts over some of the spray. It didn't bother me, though, and I kept on talking.

A few seconds later, I felt the mist become a strong stream of liquid hitting me square on the neck and back, as if some kid had one of those Super Soaker water cannons pointed at me, unloading at full power. Not a little angered at my perfect take being disrupted, I jumped back and turned around to see where the offending stream was coming from.

Imagine my shock (and disgust) when I looked at the lion cage, and noticed that Mr. Lion was no longer napping. He had gotten up and backed himself up against the bars, butt first. His tail was lifted high, and a stream of urine was still flying in a high arc toward me. I had no idea a lion could pee like that! If I had been judging for form and distance, I would have held up the card reading "9.8."

Of course, I quickly realized what had happened. I had interrupted Mr. Lion's snooze, so he had decided to give a new definition to the term "mainstream media" and shut me down. When he finally finished his task, he gave me what I swear was a sleepy grin, turned around and then laid back down to sleep.

It was so bizarre that I had to laugh. And even though the photographer was laughing as well, he didn't stop rolling tape the whole time. I soon stopped laughing to turn toward the lion and give him a piece of my mind into the microphone. I'm not happy to confess that I used a few words that would get bleeped if they ever showed up on television.

We eventually calmed down and I ended up completing the standup, albeit a little farther away from the cage. We couldn't wait to get the tape back to the office and see the whole thing again.

When we popped the tape in the machine, we were instantly disappointed. The ancient TV cameras we used back then had tubes in them instead of computer chips -- a blue tube, a red tube and a green tube. If they were correctly aligned, you got natural color. If the tubes were misaligned -- which could be caused by as little as a slight bump to the camera -- then any tape that was recorded ended up looking like a series of red and blue shadows, something like how a 3-D cartoon looks if you don't wear the 3-D glasses. We could still make out me and the lion, and hear every word I said, but the picture was un-airable. Our hopes of submitting it to "America's Funniest Videos" were dashed.

I got some more bad news. Remember my brand-new leather jacket? Well, it was covered in lion pee. Have any of you ever had something urinated on by a little house cat? Remember how acrid (and how hard to deodorize) that stuff is? Well, multiply house cat urine by about 50 and you have lion urine. I could have taken that jacket, dumped it in benzene and then dangled it over Niagra Falls for an hour or so, and the smell still wouldn't have come out. Sadly, I threw my reeking jacket in the trash. My station being the cheap place it was, the management refused to buy me a new one, even though I had been hosed in the line of duty. It was awhile before I could afford another.

So, there's my lion story. I still have the tape of that event, and every now and then I get it out and play it. I'm not sure if I will ever play it for my kids, since it will show them what colorful, descriptive language Daddy used back in his TV days. But Mrs. Muley and I get a kick out of it.

And the lion? Oh, he's probably enjoying strolling through his new, natural habitat home in the Central Texas Zoo. And laughing when he remembers me.

I hope he has fleas and mange.