Why We Love The Goonies

A Russian friend of mine — a film-enthusiast — once asked me why Americans are so obsessed with The Goonies. It amused me a little that he couldn’t understand the allure, when to me it seemed so obvious. For anyone who has ever wondered the same thing, here’s what I told him:

The reason we love The Goonies is the same reason we love X-Men, and for that matter, all comic books. It’s the reason we love the idea of America. We want to see an underdog succeeding against all obstacles, a David beating a Goliath, a pack of so-called freaks banding together to save the world, or even simply, to accomplish their mission. Americans are suckers for stories where the usual losers defy all odds and win.

It should be no surprise to anyone then, that The Goonies have stolen our hearts. It’s a classic story about a group of outcasts teaming up to save the Goondocks, their neighborhood and home, which is in danger of being destroyed by the schemes of greedy investors. Heartwarming already, right? Well add a seemingly impossible treasure hunt (complete with a parchment map), as well as cursed pirates and wayward bank robbers, and it’s easy to see that this cult classic film contains every element necessary for success. To make it even more lovable, the group of children discover a disfigured, but gentle giant in the company of the criminals, and not only accept him, but rescue him from his abusive conditions. Together, they use the recovered pirate treasure to save their home. What could possibly be better than that?

The question of whether the film’s genre speaks to you especially, is somewhat beside the point. The important thing is how it makes you feel. A film like The Goonies has the power to recover those parts of ourselves that we’ve forgotten, and to remind us who we should strive to be. It embodies all the closely-held ideals of America, and all the innocence of childhood. It is so much of what we are at our heart, and also so much of what we wish to be.

The fact that my Russian friend could not see the beauty in this film, both surprised me, and also made me a little sad. For all of our faults, I am grateful that we, as Americans, still teach our children that anything is possible, and that sometimes, those with the least amount of power can change everything.

A Room of One's Own, No Longer...

The Pandemic has robbed me of ‘a room of my own’, so to speak. It was a difficult enough thing to carve out in the beginning, so hard-won, as space for women’s art always is. Justifying an entire room for nothing but books, ideas, and writing can be difficult, not to mention hard to afford. I’ve struggled for years to create the space, and then to find the time, to really be able to write. For me, it’s very difficult to pull my creative mind space out of the layers of stress, anxiety, and the preoccupation with paying work, which suffocate my mind. It takes me days to unbury myself from these polluting influences, and to find my spark and my voice.

A year and a half ago, I bought a house with my husband, specifically for the extra, attic room, and I was finally able to create a library for myself, with a desk by the window. It’s truly magnificent, you should see it: two whole walls stuffed with books, a comfy red sofa, and you can see the mountains from the window. Sadly, that was December of 2019. Once quarantine hit, my beautiful new library became my husband’s new home office space. Even more tragically, I was finally gifted the time away from work I have craved so deeply for years, I was stuck at home for two months with no other pressing obligations, and suddenly I again had no space in which to write! Maddening!

I know everyone is struggling with these kinds of adjustments, and I have tried to be patient, but a year and a half has passed, and I’m no closer to reclaiming my space. We don’t have the room for two offices, or the money for a bigger house, we don’t even have a kitchen table. I’m exhausted from trying to make money at the same time as trying to make my writing into a career, and I feel like for every step forward, I take six steps back. Society has deemed the creation of art a hobby, the resulting product of which, they consume more fiercely than oxygen. So why does the creation of art always have to take a back seat to the creation of wealth? And before you tell me to grow up, I’d like to remind you that when everything in the world came to a grinding halt last year, and when you were sad, frustrated, desperate, cooped up, and afraid, you all turned to art. While work sustains us in a monetary way, art sustains us in every other one. We need to find better ways to value and compensate the time and space it takes to create the products of art we so greedily consume.

Every person in my life, including myself, wants me to write more. When I say that most days I feel like I have nothing left to give to my writing, they don’t understand. When I say that now, I feel like I have nowhere left for my writing, I’m sure it seems silly, but Virginia Woolf said that a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction. Two years ago, I didn’t think there was any possible way I could feel more robbed of the conditions I need to write, and then the Pandemic stole the room of my own I had finally created. It leaves me wondering how many other women are experiencing the same unsolvable problem? Not only do most of us no longer have any space at home just for ourselves, or for our work, but many of us no longer have any space left for our art.

While I’m certain that many men are also feeling robbed of their freedom, I have to wonder whether they also feel robbed of their space to create, or indeed, their very ability? As Woolf wrote, quite poignantly, “the world does not say to her, as it says to him, Write if you choose; it makes no difference to me. The world says with a guffaw, Write? What's the good of your writing?”.

No society can smash the social contract and be exempt from the consequences.

Everyone seems to want to talk about what’s wrong with this country lately, so let’s talk. What follows will surely not be the common diatribe you are used to hearing, and in truth, it may be difficult to hear. The only way forward is to stop lying to ourselves, and to open our eyes.

The problem exists within each of us, and it seeps into every facet of our society and our government until it’s infected every cell of the social organism we inhabit. The problems are selfishness and greed. This country was supposed to be founded on the idea of a better way, of an equal footing, of an open mind. We, as its citizens, are supposed to be upholding the values of a more enlightened community as a beacon to the oppressed peoples of the world. Instead, we’ve allowed every functional institution to dissolve into near irreparable disfunction, we’ve sat idly by while the government has descended into an abyss of corruption and lame-duck impotence that has fallen, seemingly, beyond all control, and we’ve become so lazy and disillusioned by our own failures that we have fallen for the ultimate campaign of lies that has been attempting to control humanity since long before America was even conceived.

Those who truly run the world (and I’m not talking about Congress) have a vested interest in keeping things the way that they are and have always been. They profit from oppression, destruction, war, politics, and especially ignorance. Propaganda abounds in the interest of keeping people down. We are controlled by ideas, not by guns, armies, or police. An infrastructure of these kinds of ideas has been built into nearly every society for centuries, and at this point, these ideas are so ingrained in our common psyche that we believe they are our own, and we enforce them and reinforce them on our own. Those who have a vested interest in the current system don’t want the people to realize how much collective power they have, don’t want them rising up and pulling down false figureheads, don’t want them waking up to the lies that keep the machine running smoothly. For their system of control to function, there must be a large population of people doing all the work for only a portion of the profit, and supporting those at the top. Because this is an obviously unequal and fucked up system, those at the top must convince those at the bottom that if one works hard enough, one can ultimately ascend. They must create an entire culture of lies which reinforces the need to keep working blindly toward a goal that may never realistically be reached, and to continue supporting a system that is intrinsically broken, a system that is responsible for their oppression.

That being said, there are many vehicles within our current society whose function it is to distract us, and ultimately, to derail change, and thereby, progress. Aside from the biggest propaganda tool of all, the idea of “The American Dream”, we are controlled by the idea of the two party system. We have been sucked into a cycle of pointless politics, whose main purpose is to divide us, and we are so busy at each other’s throats that we can’t see the circles we’re swimming in. Two supposed schools-of-thought have corralled us all into two different sides, hell bent on dislodging one another. We have forgotten that the purpose of government is to solve problems, and that we should be electing a range of representatives who encompass all the diverse perspectives and backgrounds that call our country home. Diplomacy and cooperation should be the things we celebrate in a politician and in our government, and if our representatives cannot seem to get anything done, then we should oust them. If our political parties are broken and no longer represent the will and needs of the people, then they should be dismantled in favor of more functional ones. We must remember that we are all more alike, and share a greater number of common goals and ideals, than we are different. The purpose of our society should be progress, and the betterment of us all. The problem is that we’ve all been convinced that it’s admirable to cry ‘one for one and fuck the all, as long as I have what I need and want’. We’ve learned to disconnect our own successes from any form of social infrastructure, or government, or collective effort, and yet to associate our misfortunes and our unmet needs with an intrinsic lacking in our social systems. We all want to have everything we need and want - we all want to succeed - but none of us wants to contribute to the system that made it all possible. Fuck taxes, fuck civic duty, fuck voting - none of it matters anyway, right? I’m positive you all happily cashed your Covid stipend however, and still thought it wasn’t enough.

So here we are, faced with a major national crisis, and all of the problems we have been unable to agree upon, and therefore unable to fix, are collapsing simultaneously onto our collective heads under the pressure. As a nation, we are being crushed by the deficiencies of our system, and because we’ve neglected these deficiencies for so long, we have few resources to call on at this point to fix them. We stand at a crossroads, perhaps finally able to see the reality of our predicament. For the first time in decades, we are reminded of what is at stake, what we stand to lose if all of society collapses. It can be easy to think that we do not need each other, that we do not benefit from and are not harmed by the successes and failures of others. In reality, each of us is only as strong or as free as the systems we’ve created within our society allow us to be. Whether we like it or not, we depend upon the actions and work of others and we live our lives in relation to them as well. Success, failure, money, ethics, existence, all are meaningless without other people. Even the most self-sufficient citizen has need of other people, of laws, of access to land and privacy and rights. As a whole, we are only as strong or as free as the weakest and most oppressed citizen among us. Until we realize this, we are simply treading the same waters that have always threatened to drown us. As Dr. King said, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We all exist within a codependent system that we designed for ourselves and can control. Why shouldn’t we do a better job of fashioning it and refashioning it to suit our needs as citizens?

Unfortunately, selfishness and greed have somehow become synonymous with individual liberty and patriotism in this country, and that just makes it easier to turn everyone against one another, and to undermine our own interests in favor of the “personal liberty” of the billionaires who are robbing us blind. We are in this together. Contrary to the propaganda being stuffed down all of our throats, we can afford to invest in ourselves as citizens (especially if we stop funneling our collective tax money into the pockets of the wealthy and powerful, and instead toward our own support systems and interests), we can solve our problems, and we can affect change. The only way to lift ourselves up, is together. We cannot continue to ignore the mistakes of our ancestors, and especially not those we’ve made ourselves. The residual mantra ‘it ain’t broke, so don’t fix it‘ has long since failed to apply, and we certainly have our mending work cut out for us.

Like so many before me, I have a dream of an America not imprisoned by its own ideas, not at war within itself, but truly free to evolve, as one, toward the greater dream upon which it was founded. I hope that we continue knocking down walls instead of building them up, and that we can collectively aspire to create a truly free, open, and diverse society that fosters a new level of enlightenment. For the sake of Humanity itself, I hope we are up to the task.

Ode To The Bear and To Your Local Bar

I have spent the better part of the last 10 years working in bars. They feel like home to me, and none more so than my current home, The Thirsty Bear in Lakewood. It is truly a special place, and I know many of you out there share my fond perspective of the community that exists within its walls. I realize that many people in the world cannot understand the kind of camaraderie that is fostered in the atmosphere of a bar. To some of you, it must seem like a pit of debauchery, and we bartenders, peddlers of poisons and opiates of all forms. I assure you, in many ways, it is, but who among us can honestly say that we do not seek some form of distraction from our lives, some place where we feel welcome? Who doesn’t want to go where everybody knows your name?

The right kind of bar can be a home, complete with a family of sorts. I know that The Bear has been that for me so many times in the past two years, and for well over a decade for many of its staff and patrons. The customer base is roughly eighty percent regulars, which makes it a place full of familiar faces. The people who patronize it are caring, hard-working, and extremely generous, and I have seen so many of them go to great lengths to help the staff, as well as their fellow bar mates, on a regular basis. I have been brought to tears by the generosity my regulars show me, and how quickly they are there to offer me help or a shoulder to cry on. These people have helped me move, have lent me money, have brought me home-cooked meals and homemade gifts, have given me the coat off their backs (literally one time), have cried with me, and have laughed with me more times than I can count. This place, where we all come to meet up with each other and socialize, is like our clubhouse, and we all know how integral the clubhouse was to the bonds we held in childhood. Now, as adults, we thrive off of the connections we make at our local watering hole. We need to be able to meet, to talk, to vent, to laugh, to dance, and yes, to drink.

In these uncertain times, and times of strange solitude and separation, I am reminded of this place, and of these people, and I realize how painfully I feel their absences from my life. I miss the bar, and I know how that sounds, but after reading this, hopefully we can reconsider the importance of our local bar, and the seemingly surface encounters and experiences we have there.

To all my patrons: I miss you, I love you, and I hope you and your families are all safe. I can never truly put into words what your support and interactions mean to me each day I spend in the Bear. You are all a huge part of my life, and you are essential. I simply cannot wait until I can walk down the bar hugging each of you in turn again, and I look forward to turning up the jukebox and dancing around like crazy! If you are part of my bar family, then you know the mantra: Let’s get weird!!

Until then, I’ll be thinking of all our good times fondly, and toasting each of you, somewhere out there…

Sometimes, selling out is giving up...

People talk of their twenties like it was some magical decade of freedom and carefree celebration, and I’m certain that for some people, it actually felt this way. Still, they seem to glaze over the struggle that is learning to grow up, to become an individual, to become someone new, and simultaneously, to retain the parts of yourself that are integral to who you are, to attempt to preserve your joy, your kindness, your softness, and your innocence, all in the face of the terrible force and reality of the world. Much of what we are, what we believe, what we see in ourselves, is sacrificed during these formative years. Our childhood facades are crushed beneath the wheel of time, irretrievably, and seldom mourned in the moment. Later we realize that these were truly egregious concessions, which traded away pieces of who we were in the depths of our hearts. Later, we realize what we’ve lost. 

Contrary to the ambitions of most people around me, to be the versions of themselves which least resemble the person they’ve tried to outgrow, I strive every day to be more like who I was when I was 8 years old. This is not to say that I aspire to be a selfish, myopic child, but rather, that I aspire to cultivate the bottomless hope, creativity, kindness, and idealism which I held as entirely intrinsic to my very being as a child. To regain a forgotten mentality, which could not conceive of impossibility, or apathy, or bear for one second the thought of giving up. I am resolved not to give up on the values of that version of myself.

If we all attempted to remember, and to honor, the standards that we’ve slowly conceded to the massive pressures of the world before us, perhaps we could create a world, and a community, with better standards of living. We have come to accept defeat in so many forms as adults, and even to normalize it. The pursuit of our dreams is replaced by the pursuit of dollar signs, and we sell ourselves every day. Everything pure and passionate is traded away, or dismissed, for a spike in profitability. Tiny concessions give way to a creeping avalanche, and before we know it, the eight-year-old version of ourselves is lost within us, if not entirely erased. We wake up to a world that seems to be irreparably off-course from the world we dreamed of as children. Everything is broken, and corrupted, and we feel there is nothing to be done about it. How far we have fallen by the time we reach adulthood. How pitiful we would seem to our younger selves.

Now, more than ever, we must stop giving up on our dreams. We must stop giving up on ourselves, on each other. A new world is built every day, by the thoughts, words, and actions of all of us together. If we want to create something better, we can. Nothing is impossible, especially if we can finally start learning to work together. We cannot continue to be defined by the mistakes of our past, but instead, should rise above the small thinking that led us there in the first place. We can fix things, we can make them better. Let’s all stop trying to grow up and forget who we used to be when we had hope and imagination. Let’s all strive to be more like the person we were in our childhood, to expect more from ourselves, and from the world.