Skip to main content

Aloha, Harry

Went to a going away party for my old friend Harry and his wife, Holly, on Saturday. First of all, let me tell you how damn old I am. I was up until almost 2 and I was dead all day Sunday. Someone please explain to me how these old rockers carry on the way they do (I'm talking to YOU Keith Richards).

Anyway, he had several friends over, but the two of us kind of gravitated to each other most of the time I was there. Harry and I used to talk so much and share our thoughts about music and movies when we worked together at Klasky. I hadn't seen him in over a year and I failed to realize how much I really missed him all of this time. And now... he's moving back to New England.

We get so caught up in our lives that some people, those peripheral important folks that provide us with creative outlets often get forgotten. I truly regret not keeping in touch with Harry all of this time. Sad thing is, we'll probably share more emails now that he's moving.

Things Harry turned me on to were most of the 70's punk movement, the Replacements, the Ramones, the art of John Waters and good baseball talk (even though he's a frickin' Red Sox fan). He has supported us on every CF Walk and my marathons and has always offered the advice of his sister, a nutritionalist, in case we had questions about what we can do for Jake. And, of course, he was always a sympathetic ear I could turn to when I needed to vent. The true definition of a good friend.

Aloha my friend. We'll meet again.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Beginning of an Explanation

When I dropped off of the Internet, it wasn't meant to be a years long sabbatical. I thought I just needed a break; that I was getting burned out from writing Basement Songs and movie reviews for Popdose.com. Something cracked, though, and I couldn't consider writing even in a journal for a very long time. Things changed in the winter of 2017. While driving to pick up Jacob at theater rehearsal, I experienced my first panic attack. It started immediately after he got in the car at the theater and it slowly took over my body for the fifteen minute drive home. My skin became clammy and I felt myself removed from my body. My brain was empty and I wanted to curl up in a ball and cry. I gutted it out until we walked through the front door. Without saying a word, I went upstairs, crawled into bed and got in the fetal position. I just wanted to close my eyes and shut out the world. The next morning I awoke exhausted, as if I'd exercised the previous day. That was the first time
MARATHON FOOTNOTES (for those who didn't think I would really footnote a stream of consciousness thought): Footnote #1 Academy Award Winning Best Picture Films from 1969 to the Present: Midnight Cowboy, Patton, The French Connection, The Godfather, The Sting, The Godfather II, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Rocky, Annie Hall, The Deer Hunter, Kramer Vs. Kramer, Ordinary People, Chariots of Fire, Gandhi, Terms of Endearment, Amadeus, Out of Africa, Platoon, The Last Emperor, Rain Man, Driving Miss Daisy, Dances With Wolves, The Silence of the Lambs, Unforgiven, Schindler’s List, Forrest Gump, Braveheart, The English Patient, Titanic, Shakespeare in Love, American Beauty, Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind, Chicago, Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Footnote #2 Members of the band YES, from 1969 to the present: In 1969, Yes is formed with Jon Anderson on vocals Peter Banks on guitar, Bill Bruford on drums, Tony Kaye on keyboards and Chris Squire playing bass. This group records

The End of the Explanation

I don't want to drag this out for a series of extended posts; there's no need to go into the minute details. So I'll wrap up my ongoing mental health journey with this post. After I basically quit writing, I began the work on myself. From 2017 to the middle of 2019, the only things I wrote were 10 minute dramas for our church, and let me tell you, even those were a challenge. But when God gives you a deadline, you don't mess around. There was a real depression that came with the relief of not writing or worrying about writing scripts. Again, if I wasn't writing, what was I doing? I really struggled with this question because we had moved from Ohio to Los Angeles so I could pursue a career in film. Even though I'd written and directed a movie, and sold a script, in my mind that wasn't good enough. I couldn't appreciate all of the great things in my life, and the solid career that I had forged in animation over 18 years. It took some real work: a lot o