An Appeal for 'P'ing Sweetly
Over a drink at the local watering whole, I made a case for the 'Bold Leap.' To the unfamiliar, my concept of the Bold Leap is that action which one makes, acutely aware of risks and uncertainties, for the purpose of stimulating necessary changes in one's life. It's relevant in that it seems to be a tool and a concept that I share with Mr. John Rivera. He has since taken the leap himself; and, in my opinion, made the change to better his life. And that awareness has given me a not-so-insignificant vigor and resumed confidence in my own decision.

So, instead of rehashing what doesn't need to be said again about my own Big Choice, I'll use this opportunity to delineate my admiration for the man.

All that can be summed up about John ('Johnny Asshole'/P. Sweetly) Rivera is best, and most poignantly illustrate by the movie First Blood with Sylvester Stallone. In some sense, John looks at John Rambo (same first names???!) as an abstraction of himself. It certainly a wildly disparate abstraction, but an abstraction nonetheless. Rambo, like John, is the reluctant hero. His sense of ethics and his drive is borne out of external forces: namely the overbearing and unjust ostracism of the authority. In First Blood, this is typified by the stogy and excitable Sheriff (played by Brian Dennehy) who takes every opportunity to coax Rambo into a confrontation.

Throughout the film, the conflict is escalated again and again as the callous and malicious intent of the Sheriff (and by extension his minions) as he views the 'outside influence' of Rambo's presence and unwanted and harmful. Rambo is constantly pushed even further into antagonism against all reason. This movement is so intense that the inevitable confrontation being stoked is bound to be a distrastrous one (and in True Tinseltown Fashion it is accentuated by large explosions and gunfire). I can see many parallels between John's favorite film and elements of his own life, elements that may be too obvious to extrapolate here.

My final synthesis on this is that this fictional character perfectly mirrors the two sides of my friend and comrade Mr. Rivera. He is both strong (in constitution and character) and vulnerable. His principles are just and his actions are forged out of a dire necessity to negotiate the slackroped-spanned precipice of our lives. Most especially, his affable sincerity compels you to root for his causes and lament his tribulations. But, in the end, he is singularly human, so all of his accomplishments are balanced by humility and self-deprecation.

He is like Rambo, not just in name, but in Quality. But, to diverge from the fantasy, my feeling is that John WON'T be led away in tears to a horde of police cruisers. I believe John will survive for many sequels, the next more irreverent than the last.

God speed sir.  ¶ 3/16/2006 08:48:00 AM