“I hope to arrive at my death, late, in love, and a little drunk.”
- Atticus
Remember back in the day when music, TV and movies were shared cultural experiences? Because there were so few options, Top-40 radio, three channels on TV and one movie theatre with one screen, we bonded as a society over our limited choices. Cultural touchstones, they're called.
Here's an example of one, and also how you can tell if a man of a certain age is an honest guy.
Back in 1971, there was a made for TV movie called Brian's Song. No one had Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, Peacock, Paramount, Disney +, AppleTV, or HBO Max, so they just flipped it over to Channel 3. It was a true account of two football players on the Chicago Bears, Gayle Sayers, played by Billy D. Williams and Brian Piccolo played by James Cann. Sayers was black, Piccolo was white and their personalities and backgrounds were much different, but a deep friendship developed over time when they were made roommates in training camp. Four years later, Piccolo is stricken with cancer (unspecified in the movie, you couldn't say “testicular” on network television) and spends his last days in the hospital undergoing unsuccessful surgeries to try to save his life. During that time, Sayers is awarded the “George S. Halas Most Courages Player” award at a banquet. He accepts the award but tells the hushed audience that they've given the award to the wrong person, “I love Brian Piccolo, and I'd like all of you to love him, too. And tonight, when you hit your knees, please ask God to love him.”
They used to be called water cooler topics. Things that everybody knew about and shared. You would have had to look hard around the U.S. back then to find a human being that wasn't talking about the movie the day after it was shown. I was 13 at the time and I know that the whole of Ophelia Parish Junior High was abuzz over it. Do we have anything today even remotely close to such a shared event?
Oh, and here's how you tell if a fellow's honest. Find a man between the ages of 60 and 75. Ask him if he cried or at least teared up when he saw Brian's Song. If he says “No”, well, I'm not going to come right out and say he's a liar, but…