Originally posted March 25th, 2012
By Michael Konik
Outrageous. Horrifying. Disgusting.
These were some of the adjectives hurled in the press when news broke that the former world champions of football, the New Orleans Saints, for years had instituted a bounty system that rewarded their players for knocking opponents out the game. Players contributed to an in-house pool and collected $1,000-$1,500 when they scored a knockout. Hitting someone so hard that they required a stretcher or motorized cart to be removed from the field earned a special commendation.
The National Football League, presenters of America’s favorite gladiatorial spectacle, handed down sentences to the malefactors. The General Manager and an assistant coach were suspended without pay for about half the upcoming season. The head coach, Sean Payton, was banned for the entire year. And in a maneuver eerily reminiscent of the Soviet Gulag, the former defensive coordinator and alleged mastermind of the bounty program, Greg Williams, . . . → Read More: Violence Voyeurism
Originally posted December 4th, 2011
By Michael Konik
Last week I experienced my first ride inside the back of an ambulance rushing to a hospital emergency room. The sirens wailed while paramedics monitored my vital signs and called out important-sounding numbers. I looked up from the gurney I was attached to, noting the oxygen valve on the ceiling, the lights, the latched compartments containing the tools of triage, and since I get motion sickness when traveling backwards I concentrated on breathing steadily and not vomiting. I heard the beeping of an EKG monitor and the crackling of a two-way radio and felt the pressure of a plastic mask over my mouth and on the bridge of my nose.
This is what many people see before they die, I realized: the inside of a speeding ambulance filled with mustachioed firemen-paramedics.
Although I felt terrible, I was almost certain I wasn’t dying. I had passed out – . . . → Read More: Near Death on Two Wheels
Originally posted September 25th, 2011
By Michael Konik
Every time we get into our car, we die a little.
Every time we return safely home, someone else hasn’t. That driving an automobile is a dangerous activity is not open to dispute. We all understand the frequency of accidents, and what happens when cars crash: terrible collisions that ruin (or end) lives. This specter of harm hovers over all our machines, including motorcycles and airplanes, each of which has a long-term expectation to return a predictable amount of mayhem and misery. Cars, though, are America’s default choice for getting from here to there. Our nation is built around them. So, aside from their environmental impact and all the other unpleasantness they cause, cars are also the most frequently used method for injecting danger into seemingly safe lives.
The inevitable injuries and deaths associated with driving a car must then be considered one of the “costs” of operating the . . . → Read More: Acceptable Collateral Damage
Originally posted March 13th, 2011
By Michael Konik
Do you think it’s possible that when we’re gone, when we’re just another mildly successful extinct species that came and went like millions of other species before and after, do you think those that remain will remember us? Millions of years from now, when the mass we call Earth is still spinning in the sky but the two-legged creatures who onced ruled it are a distant footnote in the eternal continuum of history, will whatever is here in our place marvel at our achievements or scoff at our folly.
We have the self-congratulatory habit of considering homo sapiens the highest form of life. Ever. When the cockroaches and beetles rule the planet (again), will they or whomever is running the show concur? These insects, or God, or Whatever is overseeing eternity, may or may not experience this thing we understand as “consciousness.” Unlike us they may not . . . → Read More: When We’re Gone
Originally posted October 24th, 2009
By Michael Konik
After the excessive optimisim of youth, the impressive energy of young adulthood, and the confidence of being all grown up, those of us who are fortunate enough to make it to our Forties generally look forward to an incremental and inexorable decline in just about every meaningful area of life — and not just health, romance, and adventure. Your work, your career, if you’re lucky enough to still have one, changes. For some, it ends. If you are, say, a professional athlete, your days of glory will either be in steep decline or finished. If you’re a model, you had better start looking for judging jobs on third-rate televsion programs.
These are extreme examples, of course. Few of us rely solely on the magnificence of our body (or the feats we can do with it) to earn a living and leave a legacy. But all of us, . . . → Read More: Art After 40
Let’s resolve to treat this annual national holiday as something more than a convenient excuse to extend the weekend to three days. Let’s remember, in memorium, as the name suggests. Let’s not, however, confuse victims with heroes, or job-seekers with patriots. Let us simply say that millions of our brothers and sisters have come and gone, and that we don’t forget them, if only for one day a year.
Originally posted March 22nd, 2009
By Michael Konik
His nickname among musicians was “Prince of Darkness.” According to many who claim to have known him well, and according to an accrued reputation bordering on myth, Miles Davis was a jerk.
Based on evidence available for review on YouTube, as well as eyewitness accounts shared anecdotally and personally, Keith Jarrett can be insufferably obnoxious.
Richard Wagner was an anti-Semite.
Some folks can separate the art from the artist; some can’t. No matter the philosophy of your aesthetics, though, eccentricity in our artists is generally acceptable, perhaps even expected. Misanthropy is not. But how do we assess the art of those whose hatred of life is bigger than their love of living? Is it possible for an artist to create transcendent, life-affirming art if, at the height of his powers, he commits suicide?
The brilliant writer David Foster Wallace killed himself last year. (His cheerleaders, including several . . . → Read More: The Artist as Saint
Originally posted October 11th, 2008
By Michael Konik
The remains of my dear friend Ella the dog arrived from the crematorium in a nice fabric-covered box. The ashes themselves were in a plastic freezer bag, which was probably a good thing, since in addition to a fine grey powder there were many pinky-nail-size bone fragments and flakes from the few teeth Ella retained at age 109. (I hypothesized that her acute arthritis might have had something to do with the surfeit of calcite clusters.) How strange and puzzling to be confronted with a couple of double-handfuls of carbon dust and realize it is a version of your great pal, reduced to her essentials. Or inessentials.
We spread Ella’s ashes in Runyon Canyon, the nature preserve and dog park where I found Ella as a 3-month old, and where she spent many happy hours bounding and hiking and sniffing interesting aromas. I don’t know if she’ll . . . → Read More: Brooding on Death
Originally posted September 9th, 2008
By Michael Konik
Ella Guinevere Konik died peacefully last night at home in her bed, surrounded by family. She was close to 15 1/2.
Frank Sinatra once told an interviewer, “They say you only live once. But if you have a life like mine, once is enough.” Ella’s time on Earth was like that. A white-lab and greyhound mutt, she was adopted at 3 months and spent much of her adult years spreading joy. Ella was a licensed therapy dog and the subject of my book “Ella in Europe” and the Animal Planet TV show “Ella & Me.”
She was friends with everyone, a beautiful soul encased in white fur.
Originally posted April 27th, 2008
By Michael Konik
Ella Guinevere Konik, the lab-greyhound mutt who inspired the best-selling book “Ella in Europe” and the subsequent Animal Planet TV show “Ella & Me” is getting old. Not just “older,” but old. Depending on which set of medical records you believe, she’s either 14 or 15. Iin human years that’s around 100. She’s dealing with many of the normal maladies associated with geriatrics: Ella is losing her sight and hearing, and she’s got an acute case of arthritis. Despite the food supplements and drugs she’s given (hidden in peantut butter, as “cookie” treats), she needs help negotiating stairs and, in her worst moments, rising from her bed.
She’s on a steep decline.
Although Ella is cancer free and still eats like a wolf that’s just taken down a caribou, she’s losing muscle tone and sometimes her balance. Her radiant spirit, the joyful canine energy that has touched . . . → Read More: The Ella Update
We're really sorry about our most recent trading loss. People will say we require more oversight, and, in this case, maybe they're right. It shouldn't have happened, and we'll take steps to make sure it doesn't happen for a third time.
The $4,000 or so ($4,882) of your money that we failed to bring back from our annual company trip to Hollywood Park Racetrack and Casino will in... Read More-->
If you’re reading this essay on MichaelKonik.com, you know that this is a reliable place to find “me,” the me who shares his ideas with the world, whether or not any part of the world is interested. This is where I unilaterally invade my privacy, allowing strangers...
North Korea is launching rockets, Syria is slaughtering its citizens, and the Filipino community is organizing a massive get-out-the-vote campaign for a crucial election (not for something boring and unimportant like a public office but a cause that’s got folks passionately engaged: the American Idol finals). So...
Sometimes our chaotic, unknowable, seemingly random Universe arranges itself with perfect symmetry. In these moments of bracing clarity, authored by a Creator (in whatever guise or nomenclature you prefer) whose sense of irony is matched only by her/his/its sense of wicked humor, our innate foolishness and learned...
Poet Robert Pinsky. Pianist Laurence Hobgood. Text, music, and the moment -- what we hear on the new POEMJAZZ recording is two giant artists making something greater than the sum of its parts. While Pinsky recites his lovely words with his unlovely (but weirdly attractive) voice, Hobgood, the longtime arranger and accompanist [...]
Violence Voyeurism
By Michael Konik
Outrageous. Horrifying. Disgusting.
These were some of the adjectives hurled in the press when news broke that the former world champions of football, the New Orleans Saints, for years had instituted a bounty system that rewarded their players for knocking opponents out the game. Players contributed to an in-house pool and collected $1,000-$1,500 when they scored a knockout. Hitting someone so hard that they required a stretcher or motorized cart to be removed from the field earned a special commendation.
The National Football League, presenters of America’s favorite gladiatorial spectacle, handed down sentences to the malefactors. The General Manager and an assistant coach were suspended without pay for about half the upcoming season. The head coach, Sean Payton, was banned for the entire year. And in a maneuver eerily reminiscent of the Soviet Gulag, the former defensive coordinator and alleged mastermind of the bounty program, Greg Williams, . . . → Read More: Violence Voyeurism