Happiness is a warm . . . pun?

“What kind of gun do you want?” the helpful militia man behind the case asked. I had been enlisted on an outing to a shooting range, and I entered the facility with an eager queasiness in my innards. I deferred to my companion and her superior knowledge of firearms, consisting of one previous visit to a shooting range. She responded, “What’s your smallest gun?”

“A .22.” he said. “What’s the next one up?” she asked.

The clerk pulled out an all-black handgun with the name, Walther P99, on it. It looked like every gun I had ever seen in any FBI vs. terrorists TV drama (other common variants are FBI vs. aliens, FBI vs. drug lords, FBI vs. rogue FBI, etc.).

Despite the saturation of gun images in our media culture, I had never shot a gun nor seen one shot live. In my boyhood, I played with BB guns, firing copper beads, then later lead pellets as my tastes became more sophisticated, at paper targets, aluminum cans, glass bottles (not wise, considering the invariable danger of collapsing into sharp fragments), and even to put the fear of God into the hearts of small birds that crowded my mother’s backyard garden. Air rifles worked better than scarecrows, in my experience.

BB guns embodied my childish fantasy of the outdoors and rugged manhood, but they could not convey any of the seriousness of firing a real gun, which is what I expected and feared to find at the shooting range.

Along with the gun and two bags of 9mm luger rounds, we were issued earmuffs. TV shootouts make for a misleading representation of the skull-shattering noise level of real gunfire. Even with the muffs on, each shot from the chaps on either side of me was loud enough to ripple through my chest and come out through my nostrils, leaving me slightly unsteady each time, as though I were standing during minor temblors.

I was surprised at how hard it was to load the bullets into the magazine, which was essentially a cruel-looking, headless, metal Pez dispenser, with bullets for candy. They had to go in one at a time, from the top down, pushing against an unyielding spring. I’m sure my soft poet’s hands would perform the operation quite dexterously with practice, but my first tries were clumsy affairs, trying to push and slide the bullets into the magazine, frustrated by how they resisted, how they seemed determined to pop back out. In other words, almost as hard as getting those candy tablets into a Pez dispenser.

The basic loading procedure involves pulling back the slide, inserting the magazine into the handle, then snapping the slide shut with the press of a button, whereupon the gun is ready to be fired. The Walther P99 is a semi-automatic, meaning that after each shot, it ejects the spent, still-warm casing and loads up the next round from the magazine. As a funny side note, the spent shells are ejected from the right side of the gun, typically spitting out right and down. However, as I was shooting, the occasional shell would pop out directly backward and glance off my shoulder. I even saw a shell bounce out toward the left somehow when my companion was shooting.

After you’ve taped your paper target to a piece of cardboard attached to the conveyer mechanism, you press a button that sends the conveyer hurtling away from you, as far away as you want the target to be. The target shows a roughly life-size outline of a man’s upper body, with various vital organs identified. (I tagged the cerebrum and cerebellum early on, but never was able to pierce the tiny gall bladder.) I was impressed at some of the more creative paper targets people brought from home, including one that featured a swarthy, vaguely Latin-American-looking illustrated guerilla in a beret, gripping a lily white blond girl as a human shield.

In almost all respects, the actual shooting was unlike what I had expected. First of all, if you ever go shooting with something bigger than a BB gun, hold the damn thing tight. Though I’m sure it’s a cooing baby in the hands of some of these muscle-bound gun nuts, in my hands, the Walther kicked like a mule on Viagra. On my first shot, I felt both arms tossed high above my head, wriggling like giant gummy worms. I learned my lesson, but even with acute concentration throughout the rest of my session, the shots still bucked my arms upward each time.

Second of all, one eye or two? My companion insisted it was “lame” to close one eye when aiming, à la TV faux-cool shooters. But one-eye shooting had never failed me on the cans and bottles circuit. I tried it both ways with the Walther, and met with distressingly inconsistent results. One minute, I was sure that two eyes were better than one; the next minute, it seemed like two eyes made my vision blurry.

Which brings me to a related problem. Maybe I’m just getting old, or maybe the noise and smell of gunpowder and shells were getting to me, but I couldn’t keep my vision focused when looking through the gun’s sights. The smell, in fact, acrid with oily metal, burnt smoke, and unshaven men (and women), is probably what made me dizzy, so much so that I eventually cashiered myself into the viewing gallery, rather than finish my bag of ammo.

Third, this is a handgun, not a sniper rifle, so I expected there might be some diminished precision, even compared to my BB gun. But I didn’t expect that once the target was about 20 feet out, it was impossible to hit the body part I was aiming at. Hell, it became hard even to hit any part of the target. In this respect, TV has it right (sometimes). Any time you see a guy on Chuck or Prison Break shooting repeatedly at another guy about ten feet away and missing badly, and you wonder, “Why can’t he hit someone that close?” – well, the reason is: it’s freaking hard. And my targets weren’t even moving.

The thing I most expected this activity to be was the one thing it was not: fun. Even though I was nervous about shooting a gun, I thought the experience would be . . . cool. I was surprised to find that firing a gun conveyed none of the thrill that is popularly believed to accompany the activity. It’s often said that shooting ranges are good for relieving stress (akin to punching a bag), or that shooting offers visceral excitement and feelings of power. None of this was true for me. I found the whole experience more stressful than anything, certainly not a way to relax or have a good time, and at no time did I think to myself, “Man, I feel more powerful than ever!”

That’s not to say that this was a wasted experience. Though I didn’t find it fun, I was glad I tried it, because it helped me appreciate the reality of guns, beyond the fictional representations, which really are largely fantasies. I am reminded of what Thoreau wrote about guns and boyhood:

We cannot but pity the boy who has never fired a gun; he is no more humane, while his education has been sadly neglected. This was my answer with respect to those youths who were bent on this pursuit, trusting that they would soon outgrow it. No humane being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly murder any creature, which holds its life by the same tenure that he does.

- Thoreau, Walden

I Almost Ate It

“Ate what?” you ask me. The farm, obviously; cows, chickens, tractors, the whole kit ‘n’ caboodle. I almost bought the farm, took a dirt nap, bit the dust – however you want to say it in agrarian terms.

I was driving home one recent night, sitting at a major intersection, waiting for green. Green came, and I proceeded to start turning left. I was vaguely aware of the car to my right going straight. I soon became very aware of him. I was in the middle of the intersection, halfway through my lefty, when I heard a screech, then saw my neighbor to the right ram into a medium-sized white van, which had come ripping through the intersection perpendicular to us. My neighbor plowed into the van’s hindquarters, hoisting up the van’s left side briefly, and sending it into a tailspin, till it finally came to a halt facing opposite the direction it came. The chaotic impact happened maybe 20 feet to my right, with the van’s epic spinout streaking just in front of my car, and landing with a squeak about 20 feet in front of me. Refer to the following diagram:



It all happened in half a second. I froze, hitting my brakes immediately, then glanced in my rear view to see if the car behind me might hit me due to the sudden stop. Thankfully, his brakes and awareness worked as well as mine. Suddenly, horns went off like fireworks. I thought I heard honking all around me, and I wondered why people were unleashing the beast. To warn others nearby to watch out? To chastise the red-runner and offer solidarity to the poor schlimazel who was just obeying his green? To summon forth the primeval baboon that lay deep within their human hearts? In hindsight, I think perhaps the struck vehicles, one or both, ended up with their horns stuck in active position, and it was only my frazzled nerves that amplified the sound into a cacophony.

I sat in the middle of the intersection, mouth agape, for about five seconds, before realizing that I probably shouldn’t be hanging out there. One of the van’s wheels had flown loose and skipped off to the side, but the path was mostly clear. I could complete my left turn and hightail it out of there if I wished. And I wished.

I realized that had I driven just a bit faster through that intersection, that van would have been on top of me. If I had been distracted, been careless or upset about some unrelated matter, and tried to take it out on the indifferent road, I might have ended up on the blunt end of a runaway van, and the road would have remained indifferent.

About two minutes and several blocks later, I heard a fire engine wail its way toward the scene of the accident. I actually drove back to the scene about ten minutes later, thinking maybe I should tell the police on site that I had witnessed, nay, nearly been swallowed up in, the mess. But when I got there, I saw that no one seemed to be seriously injured, the police were walking about, talking to, presumably, the drivers/passengers of the wrecked cars. I saw the carcasses of the two vehicles lying in state. And it was pretty clear cut to me. The police didn’t need me to explain what had happened. All you had to do was look at the evidence on site. And I don’t need any more rendezvous with the Man.

I face the government twice a year; once, when I pay taxes, and one more time I offer as an acknowledgement of the inevitability of the Man sticking his nose in my life. Sometimes it’s an ineffectual jury duty notice. Sometimes a reminder to renew my driver’s license. But I won’t go looking for reasons to talk to the Man. Let him come find me if he needs me.

True Believers

Concerning my post about the New Kids on the Block concert, I recently received the following comments from a true believer whose faith has flagged:

“Sounds like it was awesome. . . . Sometimes I dream of attending an MC Hammer concert, but I think you're right that, even though it would probably be fun, it would also be kind of sad just trying to relive the past. And, unlike the New Kids, I don't think Hammer has any comeback in him.”

The last New Kids album before they faded away, Face the Music, with tracks such as "Dirty Dawg," was an attempt to go hard in a musical landscape that had outgrown boy pop and embraced gangsta rap and Seattle grunge. Predictably, the attempt was in vain, as was Hammer's lamentable name truncation (considering his vocal chops, or lack thereof, some thought it appropriate that he dropped the “MC”) and ill-fated final turn toward the hard, The Funky Headhunter. That he released music after that leaves me bewildered.

Gentle reader, don't give up hope! What were the chances of a fourth Indiana Jones movie coming out nigh 20 years after The Last Crusade? For a more germane example, who ever thought the New Kids would return? Their whole appeal was based on their youth, and their old hits, huge as they were, now don’t even get any play on “Friday Flashback” or “Nineties at Noon” segments on the radio. Yet here they are.

Finally, think of this: Michael Jackson is supposedly making a new album, with hot-as-cinders, can-do-no-wrong, craps-out-gold artist Akon on board as producer/collaborator (among other hip-hop and R&B luminaries). If something this obscene is to happen, then I see no reason why MC Hammer can't be revived, in the same way he himself revived (or recycled, or stole, as some would have it) many a 70s funk staple for use as his own songs.

Please Hammer, don't hurt us! We know you have a comeback in you! True believer, I promise you that if the man in the parachute pants returns, you and I will be at that concert.

Adventures in Gaga-land (Englishwomen go home)

As an addendum to my post about the New Kids on the Block concert, I should mention the two opening acts: Lady Gaga and Natasha Bedingfield. To my delighted surprise, Lady Gaga, (not to be confused with the Japanese Goth troupe, Gagaling), the first performer, rocked the house with her blend of pop melodies and dance rhythms. Her kinetic dance moves were just oddball enough to be mesmerizing, and her throaty delivery stamped her anthemic lyrics onto my brain.

The whole visual and aural presentation embodied a New York or London club vibe. Gaga has apparently made her name as a performer, and I could see why. Her bleached blond orgy of hair, bouffant skirt (which pared down to a pair of granny undies halfway through the set), and her jewel-topped glow-scepter (or “disco stick”) completed the image of the dancehall’s upstart dauphine. Working on essentially a quarter-stage with a video backdrop, she presided over four backup dancers who formed a heated phalanx that interpreted the music in high-energy fashion. The music itself was probably the best of the night, New Kids included. It owed much to the live arrangement and Lady Gaga’s over-the-top showmanship, for sure, but the quality of the material stands on its own, a hair higher than what the New Kids dished out.

After the concert, I sought out Gaga’s album, the presumptuously-named, The Fame. Listening to it, I realized that live performance was the conduit between Gaga’s talent and the audience’s emotions. The songs were the same, but the album sounded incredibly muted compared to the show. What it missed was the noise, the pumping, grinding, arm-swinging, crazy-loud music that forced Gaga to sing over it. You don’t hear that effort on the album; the music is as polite as a lace window valance, and I felt that a certain Gaga-ness was lost.

Sandwiched between the high-octane Gaga and the juggernaut of the New Kids was the awkward-as-a-kiwi-bird performance of Natasha Bedingfield. She ambled out on stage and gamely delivered a smattering of limp “hits,” but it left me wondering what went wrong. On paper, this was smart. Bring in some newer fans with her radio-friendly and on-message music (John McCain should pay attention), as well as her innocuous personality (McCain strikes out again!). But the purpose of an opening act is to pump up the audience in preparation for the headliner (read: Gaga), and Bedingfield and her crew played more like a wedding band trying to pump up a toast from the best man. (Speech! Speech!)

I can’t blame her entirely, because the girl does try so hard, singing with three lungs’ worth of oxygen. But her songs are relatively weak and generic, especially those off her latest album. She did sing my favorite of her songs, “These Words,” but it was a lethargic, almost bossa nova perversion of the studio track, such that I felt embarrassed for telling my seatmates that this was Bedingfield’s best song. They’ll never trust my taste in music again.

She was the flip side of Gaga. The iridescent studio production that provides Bedingfield her easy sound could not be reproduced on stage, so she was left with only the mediocre song products that her major label has foisted on her. “Where’s Donnie?” I cried out to the void, hoping that the clown prince of the New Kids would appear and kick someone’s ass, if only to keep my eyelids from drooping.