On Bert and Bernie...

On Bert and Bernie...

by Adam Littlefield on Sunday, February 20, 2011 at 8:17am

    So I just watched Soul Men. Aside from a small role in Old Dogs, it was Bernie Mac's last movie... I think I tried to watch it drunk the other night, or maybe I was just nodding off to sleep, I don't really recall. Either way, it was exactly the perfect movie at exactly the perfect time. I had just watched Life as We Know It, and it was good, but I was kind of having that heebie-jeebie restless feeling tonight, and it failed to squelch it. So I hit up OnDemand to look for just the right movie to watch or re-watch, as I often do when I have that funky feeling and am not feeding it booze, and after scrolling through a hundred or so, I found Soul Men.

     I will forever associate Bernie Mac with my Old Man. They didn't look or talk or dress the same, but they were both oldschool, they both had Class, they were near the same age and they died fourteen days apart. I don't remember specifics, but I remember there being talk around the house about his death. Here is another part where I could try to replicate something Bert said about 'ol Bernie, lord knows he had a spiel on it, and I could probably spew some shit that would be remotely Bert-esque, but I'm not ready to do that.

     If you've been reading, it goes back to the whole cheapening/over-aggrandizing thing. For the most part, my memory works in tones, I am fairly fucking worthless when it comes to specifics, but I'm also very anal about detail and explaining myself properly and such. I dunno how the fuck that works, but it creates a shitstorm in my head on a regular basis. So my portrayal of other peoples' words will either come to me in time, or they won't. Digression... The point is, I don't remember what was said, but I know Bert, in a sense, felt kinda like he lost another buddy, a peer, an acquaintance; like the dozens that had gone too early before him, on the screen and in the flesh.

     They both had Class. Charisma. Soul... Granted, Bernie's was flashier and infinitely more lucrative, he'd have given Bert mad shit about his more-often-than-not bedraggled appearance, but had they met, they'd have seen eachother. They'd have sat and talked like players do about gettin' old, swappin' stories; and realized that either one of them, given a different fart of the Universe, could have been in the place of the other. They both had a way with words, sometimes misused, but always poignant, and people always wanted to listen. People wanted to be around them...

     So yeah, when I started to watch that movie the other night, drunk or tired, I realized that it's kind of odd that I never watched it before. It has two of my favorite actors sharing the screen the whole way and I never watched it? It's probably a pattymelt thing. I think I might have heard it was kinda shitty, but maybe I was just waiting til today to watch it, right at the very perfect time.

     The movie is fucking great. An instant favorite. I laughed, I got misty-eyed, and it brought to mind so many times, good and bad, happy and sad, and all points in between. It brought to mind my roadtrip home from Costa Rica via Florida with my oldest friend in the world the day that Michael Jackson died. It brought to mind the Dark Tower series because a woman named Odetta was the woman they had fought over in the movie, and I had just seen a show earlier with a woman named Odetta, and how fucking often do you hear the name Odetta on TV, let alone twice in a couple hours. Odetta Holmes is the woman gunslinger in the Dark Tower series, where everything's 19, and there'll be water if god wills it, and the gunslingers Remember the Faces of their Fathers, and the Universe is always at work. And it brought to mind Bert and Bernie, two amazing souls whose work here was done, and are on to other adventures...

      It was like any of my favorite movies, books, albums, a spiritual experience. Something that spawns real thoughts, memories, emotions. It was my daily reminder that the Universe is  at work. It was good fucking spackle...

Good day to you, people...
~Boombalias