Oh, Crikey!

"I have no fear of losing my life - if I have to save a koala or a crocodile or a kangaroo or a snake, mate, I will save it." - Steve Irwin, the "Crocodile Hunter"

As I do most Sundays through Thursdays, when I got to work this Monday morning, I signed into my computer and opened web browsers to see what had been going on in the world since I’d last looked up the news (in this case, I'd last checked the headlines before I went to bed the night before). I opened Internet Explorer first, which has CNN as the homepage, and was about to open up Mozilla Firefox, with it’s New York Times homepage, when an image on CNN grabbed my attention.

Instantly, seeing it I was overcome with dread. I scrolled down, already suspecting the worst from the headline...and not believing it to be true when I read what I expected to see.

I kid you not…the first word out of my mouth since I’d gotten into work, at 8:20 am in Tel Aviv, was a choked - almost whispered - “Crikey”.

It just wasn’t possible. Not true. It had to be not true. After all, it was breaking news. That can be wrong sometimes, right?

The Crocodile Hunter? Dead? By, of all things, a stingray barb to the heart? Sure, we all knew the guy took risks with deadly animals of all kinds that we’d never dream of taking ourselves…but come on. How many times had he come out on top? Sure, he’d sparked his share of controversy in the past. So what? The guy was a survivor.

Right?

The reality was slow to sink in, as it was barely fathomable. It still is.

We were reminded today that as lucky and great as he was, Steve Irwin was just as human as the rest of us.

WATCH A “SOUTH PARK” PARODY OF “THE CROCODILE HUNTER”

It wasn’t too long after I’d read the news that other Americans I know in Israel started instant messaging me, either asking me if I’d heard about the death of Steve Irwin or asking for details, as they’d just heard about it; all, like me, expressed disbelief and sadness. I think it is because, in part, Steve Irwin was basically my generation’s “Australian caricature”. Sure, those of us who’d seen Crocodile Dundee bunches of times loved Paul Hogan in that movie (but not so much in the third movie), and recognized him when he did Subaru commercials for the “Outback” vehicle.

And yes, there are times when, even just holding a butter knife, I’ll pay an homage to Crocodile Dundee and say “That’s not a knife...that's a knife,” in a faux-Australian accent. It is, after all, one of my favorite movie quotes (it’s right up there with Ben Stiller’s hilarious “But...why male models?” from Zoolander). "Crocodile Dundee" as a movie character didn’t really belong to people my age, though, or even those born in the early-to-mid 1990s. He was a symbol of the late 80s. Very much yesterday. Kind of corny. Static. Old like our parents.

Entertaining, but nonetheless fake.

Steve Irwin, though? He was the original Jackass. He was over-the-top, but at the same time he was for real. He made MTV’s “Idiotic Risk-Taker Extraordinaire”, Johnny Knoxville, look sane by comparison. He had a gift for entertainment, and it is a tribute to his worldwide knack-for-the-lens that I was probably not the only person who, when reading or hearing about the Crocodile Hunter’s death, uttered “Crikey”. It's a global unifier.

"Yeah, for some reason parrots have to bite me. That's their job. I don't know why that is. They've nearly torn my nose off. I've had some really bad parrot bites." - Steve Irwin

I mean, the guy had something like 500 million viewers for his TV shows and specials around the Earth. His death was reported on by al-Jazeera, and it didn’t take much searching to find an obituary in Hebrew for the Crocodile Hunter in Monday afternoon’s issue of Israel Railway’s free newspaper, printed twice daily.

While I’d heard something about Steve Irwin the environmentalist-conservationist in the past (a role he relished more than his celebrity), it was only back in Jerusalem this evening and after visiting my favorite Australian news website – yes, I have a “favourite” Australian news website – The Australian (where I knew I’d be able to find the kind of “authoritative” news and commentary about Steve Irwin’s passing that I really wanted) that I learned about how seriously Steve Irwin cared about protecting Australia’s unique environment, and Oz's diverse wildlife.

As I did more reading, I also learned more about the kind of human being Steve Irwin was, aside from his notoriety as the celebrity "risk-taker's risk-taker".

For example, he did a video for the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service’s “Quarantine Matters” campaign, shown on tens of thousands of flights arriving in Australia each year. He was chastised by many in Australia for taking a significant payout - $175,000 - for only a day’s worth of filming for the “Quarantine Matters” project in 2003. However, it was later revealed he had refused payment – the Australian government donated the money to a koala hospital of his instead.

When working with projects in the US to increase tourism to Australia, such as “G’day LA”, he also donated his time free of charge. He dedicated his life to his profession, his state, and his country without a second thought. If he made money from his work, awesome. If Australia, and the animals he cared about, benefited and he didn't make a single cent – even better. Canberra could not have trained a better ambassador for Australia; Mel Gibson is hardly the sort of example the Australian tourism industry needs these days.

"I'm a proud Australian, a very, very proud Australian." - Steve Irwin

I read this evening that another famous Aussie, actor Russell Crowe, said of the Crocodile Hunter that he was “the Australian that we all aspire to be”. I think that that statement rings true not just for Australians, but for everyone who will be acutely aware of, and saddened by, the void Steve Irwin’s departure leaves us with. He was an inspirational risk-taker, taking it to the limit...and while he might have been over-the-top in mannerisms and in what he did at times, we admired him for it even so.

Steve Irwin was really so much more than just the “Crocodile Hunter”; he died filming a documentary (called The Ocean's Deadliest) within the Great Barrier Reef, doing what he knew the best and loved the most, aside from his family...interacting with God's other creatures so that others could have the opportunity to learn about them.

"I believe that education is all about being excited about something. Seeing passion and enthusiasm helps push an educational message." - Steve Irwin


It is rightly lamented that he’s gone now, but then...no one can go around accusing the Crocodile Hunter of not having lived life to the fullest while he was with us. How many of us can say the same? While we mourn the passing of a great entertainer, we should also remember and celebrate the example he set for us as a human being.

Crikey...

WATCH STEVE IRWIN “DYING” FOR FEDEX

What Need Have We to Ponder?

We live in “me me me, my my my, now now now” times. We’re not content to wait for mail; we get instant messages (in either email or chat form) from friends and family almost instantly. The benefits to such communication are obvious – we feel closer than ever to those we love. We no longer need to wait weeks to see how someone is, or what they are up to. However, we are afflicted with the side-effects of this expedient communication, and are ignoring them in such a way as to make us incapable of dealing with the situations which lead to or make up everyday social encounters.

Rather than pick up a phone to hear another’s voice, we’ll settle for a chat where we can see the person through their webcam, but won’t spend the money or time to actually go see them – whether they live in the next town, a different country, or even right around the corner.

We sign onto MySpace, and call as “friends” hundreds of people who we will, likely, never even speak to personally – even once. But as we must have the “friend” count appear high, we send out random requests to people we don’t know and who may very well not be inclined to ever get to know us. These are friends? Can we rely on them in our hour of need? Will these hundreds share a beer with us, or a hug? While MySpace enables people who went to high school or college together to reconnect, will it one day be the case that a high school reunion takes place not in person, but online? God help us if this is so.

And really: Is it correct to call a band that sends me a “Friend Request” a friend when it is likely, were I to see them in concert, that a simple sending of the business card backstage will result in nothing more than time wasted waiting for a one-on-one visit that will not come to pass?

We choose to try and find the ones we love courtesy of eHarmony or JDate, instead of going to a bar, to a party, or making friends who might have someone interesting to introduce to us.

We deride our politicians, but don’t actually vote in any elections. We act as experts on foreign policy, but can’t even point out Iraq or Afghanistan on a map. Instead of trying to unite the country, we work to divide it along the lines of “red states” and “blue states”. All we know about our country we learn about from biased news networks, biased newspapers, or biased personal websites; when was the last time the ordinary citizen picked up a book-sized copy of the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, The Federalist Papers or Common Sense?

We work fifty hours a week, say we do so for our family, but rarely actually see our wives or children. Rather than sit three-year-olds in a corner for five minutes when they misbehave, or set boundaries for them, we have them pop a pill and expect it to chemically keep our kids in line for us. Conversation all but stops during “American Idol”; we’ve relegated family discussion time to the commercial breaks of “24”, “CSI” and “Survivor”. We buy pets, neglect them, and then punish them harshly when they chew up our DVDs – because they’re desperate for our attention.

We go on diets to get healthy, but still smoke a pack of cigarettes a day. Rather than look people in the eyes, we avoid them by looking down at our MP3 player’s info screen. We rely on caffeine as a substitute for a good night’s sleep. Rather than go to an actual movie theater, with its tantalizing smell of popcorn, its over-priced soda, its big screens and, oh yeah, other people, we download movies to our home computers to watch them – generally – alone.

Will we one day wake up, and instead of going out to enjoy the sights, smells and sounds of a rainy day, bask in the light of a pixelated sun in a virtual sky of blue? Will the actual pleasure of making love on a beach give way to the technologically-stimulated, albeit virtual, pleasure of cyber-sex? Is seeing a girl’s naked picture on the net really more preferable to seeing it in the flesh?

Will we one day care so little about our government that we allow it to devolve into something it was never meant to be? Will we one day, by surrendering parenting skills for pharmacology, find that not only are we disconnected from our children, but that we haven’t prepared them to be effective parents either? Will we become so alienated and lonely that one day, when we need an actual hug, there will be no one for us to get such a thing from?

Where, exactly, are we going? Who are we going there with (or not going there without)?

What are we doing with our lives? What are we choosing to not do with them?

Why?

On Odds: The Wisdom of Han Solo

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C-3PO: “Sir, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to 1!”

Han Solo: “Never tell me the odds!”

- from Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back

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Israel is a country where you are not merely reminded of your mortality – it’s where the potentiality for you to meet your mortality head-on every day is so much stronger than many other civilized places on the face of the planet. Sure, bad things can happen to anyone anywhere, but in Israel it seems the odds are really against you.

It’s like roulette: You can choose the European (the “classic” version), where there is only one “zero” pocket, or the American version, with it’s “double-zero” pocket. Those who prefer to play the game with the odds increased against them choose the American version, the riskier version – that extra, “double-zero” wreaks havoc with the odds for you. Those who know the odds are against them but don’t want to make them any worse stick with the European roulette wheel…better safe than über-sorry.

Those who are suicidal, well...they tend to choose a wholly different kind of roulette: Russian.

Me? After college, young and naïve, I sought out adventure. When I moved to Israel, I basically went for American roulette. Nowadays, I’m reminded of this all the time, whether it’s by just reading the news, or hearing the blast of a suicide bomber as I did in April, or...

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Han Solo: “You said you wanted to be around when I made a mistake, well, this could be it, sweetheart.”

Princess Leia: “I take it back.”

- The Empire Strikes Back

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Imagine this scenario:

A man is running to catch a bus in Jerusalem on Sunday morning, having picked up two Yoplait strawberry yogurt cups for breakfast. He had originally planned to walk to the train station to catch the 8:09 to Tel Aviv, but then he saw the number four bus that could get him to the train station much faster, and so he decided to try for it.

This man crosses one crosswalk and, as the bus pulls on ahead of him and he is about to cross another crosswalk to sprint for the bus stop, he hesitates (even though he’s slightly reassured that he’ll catch the bus thanks to the “green man = walk” signal). Suddenly, there’s a roar and a gray vehicular blur (later revealed to be a Mercedes running a red light), the screeching crunch of bus-metal-slamming-into-luxury-car-metal, and the sight of newly shattered glass flying all over the place.

That man who was about to cross the street was me, and thank God I hesitated. Had I been two seconds faster...had I really wanted that bus…

Picture me shivering.

What happened next? Well, I did – slowly – traverse the still supposedly “safe” crosswalk after being momentarily stunned into a shocked stillness, as the Egged bus driver with signature dark-blue shirt and a kippa opened the door and ran around the front of the bus, returning seconds later with an unmistakably grim look on his face as passengers came to the front of the bus to see what had happened.

Pedestrians from all around came running to the scene of the crash, while I slowly stood to the side, trying not to stare at the still form of the driver of the Mercedes, who was slumped over on his side...

Then came the car horns. Honk-honk-honnnnnnnk was the sound I heard from dozens of cars, from the vehicles of who knows how many people who could not have missed the reason for their morning commute being suddenly, unfortunately, delayed.

As I crossed yet another street, the street the bus I was on my way to catch normally passes down, drivers were already jockeying for position around the scene of the wreck, horns a-sounding even as they, like me, couldn’t take their eyes away from the accident.

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C-3PO: “Excuse me sir, but might I inquire as to what's going on?”

Han Solo: “Why not?”

C-3PO: “Impossible man.”

- The Empire Strikes Back

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The Mercedes had been violently pushed against a taxi cab waiting at the stoplight, but only the bumper of the taxi (from what I could see) was damaged. The Mercedes, on the other hand, was flattened on one side...it looked like a half-cooked pancake.

The taxi driver was resting his elbow on the doorframe of his vehicle, clutching his forehead with a hand. He didn’t seemed injured, but more struck with disbelief, shock, and probably not a little relief too – it could have been worse. There were a few people on both sides of the Mercedes by now, calling the emergency services and trying to coax a reaction from the unmoving driver.

As I approached the driver’s side door of the Mercedes and looked in at the driver up close for the first time, I saw droplets of blood on his hand.

I then moved back and to the side, the ongoing sound of car horns mixing with approaching ambulance sirens, and peering in at another angle spent a moment just looking at the guy’s chest to, perhaps quite naively, see if it was moving up and down.

It wasn’t, at least not by my reckoning.

I took heart, though, when a second later his chin seemed to move.

I walked around to the other side of the smashed-up car and, looking again, saw that the driver’s head had now been moved from one side to the other. Whether he had done it himself, or someone had stupidly moved it for him, I’m not sure of. In any case, he still wasn't moving and I was more than a little convinced that walking to the train station was what I should do.

And so, I moved on down the road that the Mercedes would have reached eventually had its driver not blazed through the intersection like a bat out of hell...and been kissed by a bus.

The car horns, and the sirens, continued.

Of course, I was hardly numb to what I’d just seen, but I was unable to really process it then.

Later, the sound of a screaming toddler sitting two seats in front of me as my train wound its way through the Judean Hills (forcing me to turn up the volume on my iRiver player) didn’t help with the “thinking about it” at all either.

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C-3PO: “Sir, it's quite possible this asteroid is not entirely stable.”

Han Solo: “Not entirely stable…I'm glad you're here to tell us these things. Chewie! Take the ‘Professor’ in back and plug him into the hyper-drive!”

- The Empire Strikes Back

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With a few hours behind me, I can tell you that my opinion of pushy, impatient, reckless Israeli drivers (who have almost – but not quite – run me down in the past as they spontaneously created a parking spot for themselves on a sidewalk) has not improved as a result of this. It might not be a factoid you’re familiar with, but car accidents happen more often in Israel than terror attacks.

If the worldwide media broadcast news of Israeli traffic accidents in addition to the many terror attacks which have occurred here, the perception of Israel as a “much-too-much” dangerous place to live would likely deter more tourists than any Hizballah-Lebanon-Israel war or Sbarro pizzeria bombing put together.

And while car accidents happen more often than terror attacks here, that doesn’t make them normal. Car crashes occur all over the world, but that doesn’t make them normal, and just because they do happen doesn’t mean we should just accept them. So, then, what is the normal reaction after one witnesses a really bad crash, one that he could have been so much more negatively affected by? I dunno. I wonder what happened to the driver...

Maybe I was wrong before. Life here isn’t like American roulette or European roulette. Crazy drivers, plus Islamist terror bombings, along with rockets raining down on cities, terror-run government entities next door, and Iran around the block...hell, that’s Russian roulette, sure as shit it is – only it’s a game of Russian roulette masquerading as American roulette.

Yes, the odds are still against us, the players, anywhere. So what of it? While we all know how the game of life ends, Russian roulette is bound to end it a whole lot sooner...unless you pull out of this game and choose a different one, with slightly better odds that might (no guarantees) allow you to play a little longer.

At this moment, I don’t regret one single bit buying that Tel Aviv-to-Newark ticket on Continental Airlines ten days ago...because all I know is that while flying – while life – is always a gamble, the odds right now at this casino suck.

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Han Solo: “Afraid I was gonna leave without giving you a goodbye kiss?”

Princess Leia: “I'd just as soon kiss a Wookiee.”

Han Solo: “I can arrange that. You could use a good kiss!”

- The Empire Strikes Back

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