Some random thoughts about the Oklahoma City Bombing, my wife, Chuck Norris, and a spectacularly ill-timed Top Dog

On April 19, 1995, one day after the closing of The Houston Post, at 9:02 am CST, there was a terrorist bomb attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City. Sixteen Social Security employees were among the 168 people who were killed. My wife was working for Social Security at the time.

I feared this would be the first in a series of terrorist attacks on federal offices across the entire nation. So, the next day, I begged my wife not to go to work. Her reply: “Fuck it. You lost your job. One of us has to be making money.” I couldn’t argue with that, so I stayed home and cooked dinner and washed dishes.

 Less than two weeks later, I covered for Variety “Top Dog,” an unfortunately ill-timed Chuck Norris dramedy about a San Diego cop, his love-hate relationship with a bomb-sniffing K-9 and, as I said in my review, “right-wing extremists who plant bombs in public buildings as part of their campaign of terror.” The movie wasn’t half-bad, and it certainly wasn’t Chuck’s fault that I got creeped out, but…

BTW: Note in the review the reference to April 20 as Hitler’s birthday. I wonder what fresh hell might await us tomorrow?

R.I.P.: David Carradine (1936-2009)

David Carradine worked with everyone from Ingmar Bergman to Quentin Tarantino, Charlton Heston to Chuck Norris, Paul Bartel to Martin Scorsese, Hal Ashby to Walter Hill, in movies and TV series of wildly uneven quality, in just about every conceivable genre, during a screen acting career that spanned five decades. But it’s the role that made him a ‘70s icon – Kwai Chang Caine, the mystical martial artist adrift in the Wild West of Kung Fu – for which he remains, now and likely forever, best known. He seemed to be a good sport about being so closely identified with Caine, even to the point of more or less reprising the character in an updated ‘90s spin-off series (Kung Fu: The Legend Continues) and frequently spoofing it in various movies and TV commercials (most recently – to hilarious effect – in Big Stan, Rob Schneider’s under-rated direct-to-video comedy, which, no kidding, is well worth a spot on your Netflix queue). But he also demonstrated his versatility in an impressive variety of roles while amassing scads of credits as a steadily employed character actor. Of course, remaining “steadily employed” as any sort of actor often requires… well, taking employment where you find it. Much like his famous father, Carradine occasionally picked up easy paychecks while slumming through forgettable clunkers. But never mind: His best work greatly overshadowed his worst projects. And besides: It’s easy to forgive an icon almost anything. Especially one who walked the earth like Caine in Kung Fu.