Moments When I've Had a Good Cry Since Coronavirus Started
While a guest on Drinking Age Movies with Paul Workman and Jonathan Pierce a couple of months ago, the two hosts and I reflected on all of the moments we've broken down in tears during the Coronavirus shelter-in-place.
I wish I were a better man, and could say that my emotional breakdowns are direct response to the Coronavirus. I wish I could say that my instant response to the respiratory therapist who died a few days before what would have been his retirement, the nurse who was scared to death of the virus every day she went into work, and died about five weeks into the pandemic; or the bus driver in Detroit who admonished a person who didn't cover their cough, and he was deceased within a matter of weeks; I certainly was shaking with frustration and sadness.
But it was at least tangential to the Coronavirus that I had the emotional meltdowns that I have had.
At the time of the podcast recording, I think I was up to three.
There's been more since.
Here is a list of the moments when I've had a good cry since the Coronavirus started.
* Pippin- listening to Pippin the night I wound up running out and helping Mason with his science, Spanish, and history homework. Mason has always reminded me of Theo, the son of Catherine in Pippin. I was a little sad when I watched it on stage at WIU, when Pippin rejected the offer by Catherine for him to become part of their family. After the son finally took to Pippin. He had the opportunity to be a father, and scooted out with cold feet. As for Theo, he had the opportunity to be somebody's son again. I always start to choke up during "I Guess I'll Miss the Man" on the Pippin soundtrack. And I am pretty much wrecked every time I get to the "Finale." Finishing listening to the soundtrack that night in May, tears running down my cheeks, I called Mason to ask if he needed anything. He said he may need help with homework. I scrambled over there. On the spot. We worked on his iPhone. We worked on his laptop. We worked on a paper poster of the circulatory system.
* Little Women- when Beth says goodbye to Jo when they go to the beach together on the cape in Massachusetts. I was in the musical version of this book at Quad City Music Guild in 2008. And that had the sadness of Beth's death set to music. But I was still not prepared. I got to the part where Beth talked about how she hoped Jo could let her go, how she was ready to pass on, how she knew she would not live to be an advanced age, and as such she never really made plans, and that she would be homesick for Jo even in heaven, well... I cried. On the spot. I was working at 12th Street. I had to set down the book, coming up on pg. 300, go into a back room, and sob for about ten minutes.
* Blinded by the Light- When Javed goes to the home of Eliza and sings Thunder Road up to her window, we see a boy who has been literally chased around town by skinheads and ignored at school by classmates finally find his voice. He acknowledges that he likes a girl that he knows from school. Even though he's Pakistani, she's white, and it's for all intents and purposes forbidden by his family. We already know that she liked him. She responded well to the poetry and prose that he had written in his English class. So we could already gather that she liked him. He had her eating out of the palm of his hands. All he had to do was make a move. I've always liked the song Thunder Road. I remember when I visited the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in 2011, they had a big exhibit dedicated to Bruce Springsteen. The lyrics to "Thunder Road" were embroidered on the entryway to the exhibit. I think I heard it with new ears from the voice of a minority middle eastern British boy in 1987 England. And I cried.
* A League of Their Own- I watched this for the first time on Easter Sunday. I rented it for $3.99 on Amazon Prime. I had seen bits and pieces of it on DVD at Arc. But this was the first time I got to watch it end to end. I loved the story of Dottie, her kid sister Kit, and their fierce competition, even when they're playing together on the Rockford Peaches, in 1943, while many of the male major-league baseball players are in the Japanese, Northern African, and European Theater fighting NAZIs and fascists in World War II. This film showed how the love of baseball prevailed in the United States during these trying and difficult times. Tom Hanks' drunken Jimmy Dugan seeks redemption by managing the Peaches. And when we learn that the sisters are going to get pulled apart, oh, does the comedy stop and make way for drama. They have a friendship ending fight in a boarding house. And the fact that they will play each other on opposite teams for the World Series of the Women's Baseball League raises the stakes to high heights. Will their sisterhood survive such a schism? Well, if this is any spoiler, I had tears rolling down my cheeks by the closing credits and the playing of Madonna's song "This Used to Be My Playground."
* Watching A Leauge of Their Own a second time with my dad several weeks later, when I found it streaming for free, with ads, courtesy of IMDb.
* Watching the last fifteen minutes of A league of their own on CMT, getting the full credits and the Madonna song.
* Renting 1917 on Redbox. George MacKay. Dean Charles Chapman. They squabble. They argue. Dean Charles Chapman tries to malke wisecracks and tell anecdotes. They save each other's lives repeatedly. They are as close to brothers as can be, as Lance Corporal Schoefeld assists Lance Corporal Blake in an effort to get a message to a colonel in the trenches so that 1,600 soldiers don't get killed, including Blake's brother. They have such a dispassionate bond...and yet such a rich, emotional bond. Everything worked. They had no purpose except to look out for each other. This was the prescription for a great movie. And I loved it. Best movie of 2019.
* Listening to the Pippin score while working on my nephew Mason's graduation slide show. This would have been about the first week of June. When I saw Pippin at WIU in 2019, and again at ICCT in 2019, and bought the William Katt - Ben Vereen filmed Canadian production from 1981, I always thought of Mason when Theo is being raised by his single mom. He's just a lonely boy in need of a father figure. Mason lost his father when he was eight, similar to Theo. And when Pippin comes into his life, he has a second chance as a dad. But Pippin skips out quickly, only to come face to face with a finale. The only way he's going to have an extraordinary life is by dying in a free-fall base jump. Or setting himself on fire. Depending on the production. It's not so much cowardice so much as a chance to go back and redeem himself, I feel, that Pippin transitions from making an impact on a wide scale to just making a family happy. And that all hits home listening to the finale. I started to weep while watching the pictures of Mason's life add up.
*Listening to the Pippin score on the 2nd day of working on my nephew Mason's graduation slide show. By day 2, I had accumulated his whole life story, basically, in pictures and video. I also added "Corner of the Sky" covered by the Jackson 5 from about 1972. Seeing Mason's life flash before his eyes wrecked me in the best possible way.
*Listening to the Pippin score about a week and a half ago. I got misty eyed all over again.
*Reading The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. The first time I felt myself emotionally breaking down was when Lucy Gray Baird arrives in the Capitol for the 10th Annual Hunger Games. President Snow, strangely having a decent moment, is there to meet her at the train station with a flower, and accompanies her and the other tributes to the zoo. There, we see the ornery, acid-tongued balladeer make a good impression on the Capitol children who come to visit the cage where the tributes are kept, and she shows them kindness and tenderness. If it's one tenth as moving on screen as it was to encounter that moment on the page for the first time, the film will be a masterpiece. Also, the moment when Lucy Gray Baird confides in young Coriolanus Snow that she doesn't want to die. And he's used to bringing her food every night at the zoo. She's become like part of the family that Coriolanus' mom prepares food to deliver to her, they would miss her and regard it as the death of a family member if she were in fact to meet her demise in the arena. Because of the stupid, ridiculous Hunger Games. No thanks to Dean Highbottom or Dr. Gaul, the Head Gamemaker, who are nuts about taking collateral damage from the districts. This book was better than I thought it would be.
* Elton John- Too Low For Zero- I bought this album with a Mississippi Valley Regional Blood Center gift card. I got the album on Amazon. I think it's one of his best albums. It was a major find for me. Sure, I was familiar with the songs "I'm Still Standing" and "I Guess That's Why They Call it the Blues." And that was the draw to buy this one. (Hopefully "I'm Still Standing" goes on Greatest Hits Volume 45.) But I discovered "Cold as Christmas," and that brought a huge lump to my throat. It's 95 degrees out, but a couple is sad. They have lost the spark. It's cold as Christmas in their heart. I thought of everything that's been cancelled as a consequence of Coronavirus. And when Elton John goes for the high note in the song's refrain, I have to pull the car over and find kleenex. My eyes are too watery to see ahead.
* Just Mercy- I rented Just Mercy from a Red Box. Michael B. Jordan. Jamie Foxx. Rob Morgan. Tim Blake Nelson. Rafe Spall. O'Shea Jackson, Jr. Brie Larson. The story of Bryan Stevenson, the brave, thoughtful, earnest, morally driven protagonist, a defense attorney who leaves the safety of Delaware for the dark and dangerous Deep South, Alabama in 1989. Watching the inmates on death row meet with Stevenson, slowly let their guard down, and have hope that he may get them a stay of execution, it drew me in. Rob Morgan was transfixing as the Vietnam War veteran Herbert Richardson, who planted a bomb, while in a post-traumatic stress disorder trance, which killed a woman. This film saw people. It gave them their humanity back. And it was my third favortie film of 2019, behind The Avengers Endgame and 1917.
I wish I were a better man, and could say that my emotional breakdowns are direct response to the Coronavirus. I wish I could say that my instant response to the respiratory therapist who died a few days before what would have been his retirement, the nurse who was scared to death of the virus every day she went into work, and died about five weeks into the pandemic; or the bus driver in Detroit who admonished a person who didn't cover their cough, and he was deceased within a matter of weeks; I certainly was shaking with frustration and sadness.
But it was at least tangential to the Coronavirus that I had the emotional meltdowns that I have had.
At the time of the podcast recording, I think I was up to three.
There's been more since.
Here is a list of the moments when I've had a good cry since the Coronavirus started.
* Pippin- listening to Pippin the night I wound up running out and helping Mason with his science, Spanish, and history homework. Mason has always reminded me of Theo, the son of Catherine in Pippin. I was a little sad when I watched it on stage at WIU, when Pippin rejected the offer by Catherine for him to become part of their family. After the son finally took to Pippin. He had the opportunity to be a father, and scooted out with cold feet. As for Theo, he had the opportunity to be somebody's son again. I always start to choke up during "I Guess I'll Miss the Man" on the Pippin soundtrack. And I am pretty much wrecked every time I get to the "Finale." Finishing listening to the soundtrack that night in May, tears running down my cheeks, I called Mason to ask if he needed anything. He said he may need help with homework. I scrambled over there. On the spot. We worked on his iPhone. We worked on his laptop. We worked on a paper poster of the circulatory system.
* Little Women- when Beth says goodbye to Jo when they go to the beach together on the cape in Massachusetts. I was in the musical version of this book at Quad City Music Guild in 2008. And that had the sadness of Beth's death set to music. But I was still not prepared. I got to the part where Beth talked about how she hoped Jo could let her go, how she was ready to pass on, how she knew she would not live to be an advanced age, and as such she never really made plans, and that she would be homesick for Jo even in heaven, well... I cried. On the spot. I was working at 12th Street. I had to set down the book, coming up on pg. 300, go into a back room, and sob for about ten minutes.
* Blinded by the Light- When Javed goes to the home of Eliza and sings Thunder Road up to her window, we see a boy who has been literally chased around town by skinheads and ignored at school by classmates finally find his voice. He acknowledges that he likes a girl that he knows from school. Even though he's Pakistani, she's white, and it's for all intents and purposes forbidden by his family. We already know that she liked him. She responded well to the poetry and prose that he had written in his English class. So we could already gather that she liked him. He had her eating out of the palm of his hands. All he had to do was make a move. I've always liked the song Thunder Road. I remember when I visited the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in 2011, they had a big exhibit dedicated to Bruce Springsteen. The lyrics to "Thunder Road" were embroidered on the entryway to the exhibit. I think I heard it with new ears from the voice of a minority middle eastern British boy in 1987 England. And I cried.
* A League of Their Own- I watched this for the first time on Easter Sunday. I rented it for $3.99 on Amazon Prime. I had seen bits and pieces of it on DVD at Arc. But this was the first time I got to watch it end to end. I loved the story of Dottie, her kid sister Kit, and their fierce competition, even when they're playing together on the Rockford Peaches, in 1943, while many of the male major-league baseball players are in the Japanese, Northern African, and European Theater fighting NAZIs and fascists in World War II. This film showed how the love of baseball prevailed in the United States during these trying and difficult times. Tom Hanks' drunken Jimmy Dugan seeks redemption by managing the Peaches. And when we learn that the sisters are going to get pulled apart, oh, does the comedy stop and make way for drama. They have a friendship ending fight in a boarding house. And the fact that they will play each other on opposite teams for the World Series of the Women's Baseball League raises the stakes to high heights. Will their sisterhood survive such a schism? Well, if this is any spoiler, I had tears rolling down my cheeks by the closing credits and the playing of Madonna's song "This Used to Be My Playground."
* Watching A Leauge of Their Own a second time with my dad several weeks later, when I found it streaming for free, with ads, courtesy of IMDb.
* Watching the last fifteen minutes of A league of their own on CMT, getting the full credits and the Madonna song.
* Renting 1917 on Redbox. George MacKay. Dean Charles Chapman. They squabble. They argue. Dean Charles Chapman tries to malke wisecracks and tell anecdotes. They save each other's lives repeatedly. They are as close to brothers as can be, as Lance Corporal Schoefeld assists Lance Corporal Blake in an effort to get a message to a colonel in the trenches so that 1,600 soldiers don't get killed, including Blake's brother. They have such a dispassionate bond...and yet such a rich, emotional bond. Everything worked. They had no purpose except to look out for each other. This was the prescription for a great movie. And I loved it. Best movie of 2019.
* Listening to the Pippin score while working on my nephew Mason's graduation slide show. This would have been about the first week of June. When I saw Pippin at WIU in 2019, and again at ICCT in 2019, and bought the William Katt - Ben Vereen filmed Canadian production from 1981, I always thought of Mason when Theo is being raised by his single mom. He's just a lonely boy in need of a father figure. Mason lost his father when he was eight, similar to Theo. And when Pippin comes into his life, he has a second chance as a dad. But Pippin skips out quickly, only to come face to face with a finale. The only way he's going to have an extraordinary life is by dying in a free-fall base jump. Or setting himself on fire. Depending on the production. It's not so much cowardice so much as a chance to go back and redeem himself, I feel, that Pippin transitions from making an impact on a wide scale to just making a family happy. And that all hits home listening to the finale. I started to weep while watching the pictures of Mason's life add up.
*Listening to the Pippin score on the 2nd day of working on my nephew Mason's graduation slide show. By day 2, I had accumulated his whole life story, basically, in pictures and video. I also added "Corner of the Sky" covered by the Jackson 5 from about 1972. Seeing Mason's life flash before his eyes wrecked me in the best possible way.
*Listening to the Pippin score about a week and a half ago. I got misty eyed all over again.
*Reading The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. The first time I felt myself emotionally breaking down was when Lucy Gray Baird arrives in the Capitol for the 10th Annual Hunger Games. President Snow, strangely having a decent moment, is there to meet her at the train station with a flower, and accompanies her and the other tributes to the zoo. There, we see the ornery, acid-tongued balladeer make a good impression on the Capitol children who come to visit the cage where the tributes are kept, and she shows them kindness and tenderness. If it's one tenth as moving on screen as it was to encounter that moment on the page for the first time, the film will be a masterpiece. Also, the moment when Lucy Gray Baird confides in young Coriolanus Snow that she doesn't want to die. And he's used to bringing her food every night at the zoo. She's become like part of the family that Coriolanus' mom prepares food to deliver to her, they would miss her and regard it as the death of a family member if she were in fact to meet her demise in the arena. Because of the stupid, ridiculous Hunger Games. No thanks to Dean Highbottom or Dr. Gaul, the Head Gamemaker, who are nuts about taking collateral damage from the districts. This book was better than I thought it would be.
* Elton John- Too Low For Zero- I bought this album with a Mississippi Valley Regional Blood Center gift card. I got the album on Amazon. I think it's one of his best albums. It was a major find for me. Sure, I was familiar with the songs "I'm Still Standing" and "I Guess That's Why They Call it the Blues." And that was the draw to buy this one. (Hopefully "I'm Still Standing" goes on Greatest Hits Volume 45.) But I discovered "Cold as Christmas," and that brought a huge lump to my throat. It's 95 degrees out, but a couple is sad. They have lost the spark. It's cold as Christmas in their heart. I thought of everything that's been cancelled as a consequence of Coronavirus. And when Elton John goes for the high note in the song's refrain, I have to pull the car over and find kleenex. My eyes are too watery to see ahead.
* Just Mercy- I rented Just Mercy from a Red Box. Michael B. Jordan. Jamie Foxx. Rob Morgan. Tim Blake Nelson. Rafe Spall. O'Shea Jackson, Jr. Brie Larson. The story of Bryan Stevenson, the brave, thoughtful, earnest, morally driven protagonist, a defense attorney who leaves the safety of Delaware for the dark and dangerous Deep South, Alabama in 1989. Watching the inmates on death row meet with Stevenson, slowly let their guard down, and have hope that he may get them a stay of execution, it drew me in. Rob Morgan was transfixing as the Vietnam War veteran Herbert Richardson, who planted a bomb, while in a post-traumatic stress disorder trance, which killed a woman. This film saw people. It gave them their humanity back. And it was my third favortie film of 2019, behind The Avengers Endgame and 1917.