Search Query Answers: Because You Asked! (And I Don’t Have a Talk Show)

~ Chris Cocca ~ 1 Comment

Quite a few questions rolled into the site today via my insistence that search query terms that bring people to my blog are just like emails to Craig Ferguson.  To the issues at hand:

“Who Wrote ‘Don’t Cry’ Axl or Izzy?”

And also Jimmy Dugan.

Cocca says?  Both.  Also give some credit to writer and GNR friend Del James.  As you should know from your collection of Guns N’ Roses videos on VHS, James wrote the short story “Without You,” from which the Don’t Cry-Estranged-November Rain trilogy drew inspiration.  And now, a question for you: Does Shannon Hoon sing on the “Don’t Cry” track(s)?  Yes, yes he does.

“New Hess diner patio Allentown PA”

Not that I’m aware of.  And I’d like to think this is something I’d be aware of.

“Names of shuttles in the space race.”

My blog is known for commentary on GNR, Hess’s, and the Space Race. Win.  As usual, Wikipedia has the answers, but I’m going to name some from the top of my head:

Enterprise (prototype, I think)
Endeavour
Columbia
Atlantis
Challenger
Discovery

Got ’em all? Wiki says: yep.

“Yuri Gagarin Shuttle Name?”

He didn’t use a shuttle (the US pioneered that in the late 70s/early 80s).  I want to say his craft was called Volstok (but that would make me wrong: the craft, and the the rocket system he launched with, and the whole human-space-flight program itself, was called Vostok, which translates to East. Ominous, right?)

“2011 Baseball Beard”

You can have the beard on waivers.

I got this. Remember the other day when the owner of the Mets publicly ran down his best players?  As a Phillies fan, I loved this.  As a person, I felt kind of bad, especially for David “He’s A Good Kid” Wright.  Wright’s response was pretty classy.  And never again will you hear me say nice things about David Wright.  But I do have a solution to the whole ownership-talent divide.  The Mets should sign me.  I’m good for morale, I have a great baseball beard, and I look good in blue.  Also, I couldn’t possibly make that team any worse. On the business side, I’ll do all the PR.  I can do live tweets from the bench, expertly manage talent-owner relations because of my professional disinterest in both parties, and introduce a plethora of mid-inning shenanigans to delight the Queens faithful at Citi Field. I’ll also ban the selling of any Mets player merch not related to Richie Ashburn or Tug McGraw.  Player ego issues solved.  Just let me take BP and sit with Cliff Lee when the Phils come to town. Listen, Mets office.  I’m ready when you are.

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Pomp, Circumstance, and The Macho King

~ Chris Cocca ~ 4 Comments
"Macho Man" Randy Savage in the summ...
You are missed, Macho King.

On Friday, I participated in a recognition ceremony for graduates of the programs in The New School for General Studies.  When they played “Pomp and Circumstance,”  I said to one of my buddies, “Macho Man’s theme song!”  I hadn’t yet heard that Randy Poffo, known to all of us as The Macho Man Randy Savage, had passed away at the untimely age of 58.  I got that news via text a while later.

The Macho Man was larger than life.  His persona, his attire, his talent…everything about him epitomized the public face of professional wresting in the 80s and early 90s.  My favorite era of the Macho Madness was when he began styling himself as the Macho King: so over the top, so outsized and grand and awesome. Godpseed, Randy Savage, son of Angelo Poffo, brother of Lanny “The Genius” Poffo.  I’m deeply saddened by your departure.  You were one of the greats, an icon in the hearts of so many fans, myself included.

It would be wrong of me to celebrate the life of this larger than life athlete and entertainer without saying what, by now, must always be said at the early passing of a professional wrestler:  something needs to be done to protect these performers.  I don’t know the medical details of the Macho Man’s passing, but, so often, these incidents are the result of the constant physical strain of their profession.  Often these health issues have to do with performance enhancers: steroids to bulk up, amphetamines to stay awake on the road, sleeping pills to come back down, pain killers to keep going.  If that’s true now, imagine how true it ways 20, 30, 40 years ago.  Consider the things professional wrestlers felt compelled to do just to stay on the card.  Consider the things they may have been forced to do by promoters. So many wrestlers have died prematurely because of the net toll these things have taken on their bodies. Sure, the WWE has health and wellness rules now, but everyone remembers the steroid and safety scandals of the not too-distant past.

I don’t know or need to know the cause of Mach’s car crash to know that he’s gone too soon, that he was one of the greats, that his passing is sad in and of it itself, or that it shouldn’t be noted without renewed pleas to the the wrestling industry to take care of its talent while it can.

Godspeed, Macho Man.   Thanks for the memories, Your Highness.

Still Talking About Hawking

~ Chris Cocca ~ 1 Comment

The best way to sum up what irks me about Stephen Hawking’s statement that heaven is for “people who are afraid of the dark” is that it stingily generalizes thousands of years of diverse cultural and spiritual inquires in our shared human experience.  Progressive folks wouldn’t tolerate this kind of talk from self-styled “religious” people, nor should we embrace it from Hawking.  Embrace his belief that there’s nothing to the spiritual all day long.  That’s fine.  But let’s not confuse an irresponsible soundbite for some kind of meaningful blow against the forces of reactionary religion.  It’s not. Neither are all the people who hope or believe they’re engaged in some kind of spiritual life a bunch Bible-beating, Koran-beating, whatever-beating fundamentalists who can’t cope with some scientifically provable rejection of their schema.  But we all know that, don’t we?

Stephen Hawking Says He Don’t Believe in Heaven

~ Chris Cocca ~ 8 Comments

“go and tell it to the man who lives in hell.” (Noel Gallagher).

Now, friends, listen.  When I was a youth group leader, we used to talk about “hell monkeys,” by which we meant people who tried to prop up Christianity with appeals to the fear of Hell with a capital H.  So when I say “hey, Stephen, I love your righteous mind, but as far as there being no heaven, friend, go and tell it to the man who lives in hell,”  I don’t mean “go and tell it to the man who’s on fire for eternity.”  Rob Bell alert: I don’t actually believe there’s a place of eternal, conscious torment.  I just don’t. Do you?  Do you really?  Even if you do, I bet you wish you didn’t, and I don’t say that with any particular relish.

When I heard that Dr. Hawking thinks there ain’t no heaven, my first thought was: in other news, it’s been confirmed that the Pope, is, indeed, Catholic.  My second thought? Oasis quote!  “Go and tell it to the man who lives in hell, good sir.”  Go and tell it to the woman who’s been to hell and back, friend, go and tell it to the gent who knows there’s a heaven like he knows he’s in hell now.  Maybe I do mean that heaven is a place like I’m saying hell isn’t, or maybe I mean heaven is Reality as such, in other words, that God is Reality, the grounding of our being,  and that there’s a surprising narrative arc to the story of history, and to our personal stories.

I can’t say I’d be upset to find out I’m wrong about all of this. I’d never know, of course.  But it strikes me that heaven is the opposite of not knowing,  a state of spirit, union, reality, what have you, where we may know fully, even as we are fully known.   That’s my hunch, anyway.

Hawking said heaven’s a fairy tale for people afraid of the dark, and that passes the muster of “Everything I’ve Been Told About Reality is Totally Wrong 101,” but I expect something a little less glib from a mind like his.  And anyway, I hope for heaven, but not because I’m scared of the dark.  That’s just silly.  When kids are scared of the dark, it’s because of what they imagine is creeping around in it, not because they sense the impending dread of annihilation.  In fact, kids don’t get scared of the dark until someone tells them they should be, long after they’ve established skills like object permanence by which they understand that  things don’t disappear when the lights go off.

The good professor’s recent “there’s no heaven” moment of “Imagine”-esque aplomb is what it is.  It’s not really news, any more than it was news when the USSR said Yuri Gagarin didn’t find God in low orbit.  We’re talking about physical apples and spiritual oranges. A entirely materialistic cosmology amazes and enthralls me.  The vast expanse of the universe does things to my soul I can’t explain.  Maybe that’s akin to some innate fear of heights, maybe there’s an evolutionary edge to feeling things like awe, epiphany, transcendence.  And maybe heaven is in these details even as I don’t expect the Hubble to send back any pictures of the Holy City coming down. Even as I don’t expect pristine, cogent metaphysics from the leading scientific minds of history.

I’m one of those saps who’s always been interested in the theory of The Thing In Itself.  My impulse to sit and appreciate a moment, a painting, a puddle, to find some unifying string in all of it or even to appreciate it for what it is, well, this borders, at times, on obsessive compulsion.  Maybe so, maybe so.  Maybe we’re only talking about chemicals.  In my silly, time-bound mind, I have to wonder, though, who the hell put them there.  And why.