Friday, December 30, 2011

A New Leaf

Life is short.  At the end of it, we will look back and regret every single moment we spent wasted in dealing with our own mediocrity, rather than pushing toward our own brilliance.

To blame others is easy - to say it is THEIR mediocrity that holds us back, THEIR inability to see what is so apparent, THEIR fears and limitations - but isn't it really our own responsibility for granting them that kind of power over us?  Isn't it up to us, to push toward the future we want?  To surround ourselves with the kinds of people who will build the world we want to inhabit?

Through my work on Joe the Bloodhound, I recently met a remarkable woman named Rachel Jackson, who runs a group called Patriot Outreach/PPP Recovery Program.  Her program serves all Service related warriors, law enforcement, DOD Military Contractors and their families, and she's just begun working with Joe.  She wants to help train returning military personnel in the art of working with dogs and other animals to locate the missing.

Think about that for a second.  She's helping the returning soldiers, many of whom have PTSD or other challenges in adjusting to civilian life.  She's helping family members with missing loved ones.  And what's more, she's helping animals -- she's using dogs and other animals like horses in the searches, many of whom would basically be wasted otherwise, some of the horses, I kid you not, winding up in a glue factory.

So, while you're bemoaning your fate, ask yourself:

Is that a better way to spend your time than kicking the sidewalk because of the challenges inherent in 21st Century Life?

Rachel's recently started an online petition to help JOE THE BLOODHOUND go to series -

2400 people go missing in this country EVERY DAY - and as Rachel says, if the show becomes a series, Joe can help find some of them, ease their families pain, and shed valuable light on this hidden epidemic.

So please take a moment to sign her petition: http://chn.ge/tPu33T.

Or, by all means, keep kicking the sidewalk.

I for one just came back from the shoe repair store, where the man was nice enough to charge me only $8 for repairing a boot whose front was helplessly scuffed up.  My hope for 2012 is to keep the shoe repair to a minimum.

Happy New Year to all.





Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Joe

There are two things I want to say about Joe Nick, who appears in JOE THE BLOODHOUND, our company's newest project, which airs Wednesday, December 7, on the Bio Channel, at 10 PM EST:

1.  He does good.  By which I mean: the work he does is an absolute good in the world.  He looks for missing people, and who could possibly find anything wrong with that?

The horror of losing someone -- a child wandering off at the mall, a grandfather who forgets to take his meds and heads to the bus station, a teenager who never shows up to meet her friends at the movies -- that's where Joe's job starts, and he does it incredibly well.  He's had over 250 cases, and in only one instance -- an instance that haunts him every day of his life -- has he been unable to find the missing person.  He does good, and he does it great.

2.  He's a TV star.  This one may be a little less subjective, but it's absolutely true.  They say a great actor can entertain you by reading the phone book.  Well, I'd pay to watch Joe search for a jar of mustard.  He's that good.

So, the official info:

For over 25 years Joe was a top K-9 cop with the New Jersey State police, using dogs to help find missing people and fugitives.  Now that he's retired, he's still doing it.

Joe's simple, direct, yet incredible passion for finding missing people will keep viewers coming back for more.

JOE THE BLOODHOUND airs Wednesday, December 7 at 10 PM EST on the Bio Channel. 



Hope you can watch.


Nick


ADDITION TO ORIGINAL POST:
A woman named Rachel Jackson, who runs PPP/Bring Them Home Now, an organization devoted to helping veterans, has started an online petition to help convince the networks to make JOE THE BLOODHOUND a regular series.  Please take a moment to sign: http://chn.ge/tPu33T.  Thanks.

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Mother's Day

I give you, yet again...

May 14, 1972.

A day with an almost magical sound to it.

The second Sunday in a glorious May in a year in which our father would later be in Vietnam, the center of the world for killing and death and war, and something that seemed to be ripping everything in what it meant to be an American all to hell.

Willie Mays is coming to town.  The best ballplayer around.  Charlie Brown's favorite player, to say nothing of ours - the great center fielder for the San Francisco Giants.  And we had tickets for Mother's Day.  A game between us - the Mets - and the San Francisco Giants.  We would get to see Willie Mays!

But then, suddenly, Mays has been traded to the Mets.  And the tickets are for HIS FIRST GAME BACK IN TOWN - to play for the Mets.

Memory tells me that the boxscore the next day indicated that either 34 or 37,000 fans come out to Shea that afternoon.

Rainy.

Staub the grand slam in the first inning.  Mays having drawn a lead-off walk, clapping his hands down the bases, the first to greet Staub when he reached the plate.  (Lead-off?  The man was 41 years old!  And he'd always been, basically, a # 3 hitter.  What was this?) 

4-0 in the first.  Cheering, pandemonium, bedlam.  We were in the Mezzanine at old Shea and saw the ball all the way down the line away from us, just near that old 338 sign in right field.

Somehow - it all ellides - the Giants tie the score.  And it's drizzling, and people are taking out weird thin pieces of orange plastic to put on themselves, crappy horrible ponchos - like thin slices of poncho -

And it's the fifth inning, and Mays is up again.  (Oh my God.  He must have come up one other time.  What in the world did he do then?) 

He lines a pitch to deep left, and it just barely clears the wall, and we are cheering and jumping up and down like crazy.

The rain, I guess, ended things somewhere in there -- though whether the game limped along till the 8th inning like Dad once said (it didn't)*, or the rains came down after 5 and the umps waved the tarp on, and then a long waiting game was played, and the energy seeped out of the stadium, and then finally the game was called - it kinda doesn't really matter, because the game was over, 5 to 4, Mays had hit a home run on Mother's Day to win the game and it all made Mom very happy.

Or wouldn't it be pretty to think so?





* I was wrong.  The rains may have come, but the game was completed.  Perhaps the Davis children were told that the game had ended and whisked out of the ballpark after the fifth inning..?