This week's potpourri

Some random thoughts:

I saw that the mother of Dylan Klebold (one of the Columbine killers) wrote an essay for Oprah Winfrey's O magazine. I haven't read complete piece, just bits of it. Susan Klebold was unaware of the torment her son was experiencing until after the tragedy at Columbine High School. As a parent, I can't help but try and imagine myself in her shoes--and then I tell myself, "Time to STOP imagining this!" The anguish this woman has experienced is unfathomable.

Please don't think that I sympathize with Susan Klebold more than the other parents of the Columbine tragedy, i.e. the parents of the children who were the innocent victims, but she suffered as much as any other parent, and perhaps in a more harrowing way considering her son contributed to the tragedy. She has probably spent considerable time in the last ten years wondering in vain whether she could have seen the warning signs. What a burden to carry,

Boy, have I been Mr. Depressing lately. Now for something more lighthearted:

The expression "It's all good" needs to go away forever. First of all, people tend to use it when "it's all good" is the furthest thing from the truth: "My house burned down and my wife left me, but I found a very warm six pack of Bud under the charred wreckage of my former home, so it's all good." What you mean to say is, "My house burned down and my wife left me, this skunky beer is mocking my sadness, and I want to crawl up into a little ball and die." Okay, perhaps that's a slight exaggeration. How about, "My kid just had an accident, and I discovered we've run out of diapers, but I found a somewhat clean rag in the laundry hamper to use as a makeshift diaper, so it's all good." No, it's not all good, I'm pissed at my stupid-ass self for forgetting to write "diapers" on the Goddamned shopping list--I'm an absent-minded idiot and a lousy parent.

Somehow, I don't think I properly stated my case, but can we at least agree that "it's all good" needs to go away permanently?

Anyone reading this is saying to him or herself, "This guy should stick to writing about football."

A few days ago I was thinking of the one time in my life when i was truly awed by a work of art. It was the summer of 1995 and I was making my first visit to the Art Institute of Chicago. I started off wandering through the Impressionism wing, and entered the gallery featuring Seurat's painting, "Le Grande Jatte." I had no idea which paintings were in this gallery, so when I entered and saw this enormous pointillist painting on the wall, a painting that had fascinated me since I was a child and was not expecting to see, it almost floored me. I slowly entered the gallery as if in a trance, sat down on the cushioned bench in the gallery, and wept. I'm not afraid to admit that...I wept. I didn't ball my eyes out, but tears definitely came. It's difficult for me to adequately explain my feelings here, but I was "overcome by art." That had never happened to me before, and I don't know if I will feel the same sensation again.