Why I Made That “Boycott United Airlines” Remark

This morning I posted a comment from a friend suggesting people boycott United Airlines. A reader told me that if I’m going to suggest boycotting a business, I should provide all the details so they can make a more informed decision.

It’s a fair request.

Like the person whose post I shared, I’m angry because a friend we have in common was treated badly by United personnel. Some drunk idiot harassed her in a United lounge.

He grabbed her breasts, which should have sent personnel pouncing.

They did pounce. But instead of penalizing the perpetrator, they punished the victim. They let the boob-grabber onto his flight and forbade her from boarding because she was “drunk.” She had two glasses of wine. I’ve seen people get on planes a lot more loaded than that.

My friend chronicled the experience on Twitter, which will give you the full picture.

Having said all that, I already had enough grievances against United Airlines to think a boycott was a good idea.

I’ve done a lot of traveling in my day and have used a variety of airlines.

No one has screwed me over more than United, with late and canceled flights — often caused because flight crews are disorganized and often late themselves, not to mention frequent mechanical problems that suggest United isn’t doing nearly enough to keep their planes in good working order.

They treat paying customers like cattle, consistently overbooking flights and pushing their own mistakes back onto customers.

Many industry colleagues have had similar experiences.

If you use United and have never had these problems, good for you. If you have had experiences like mine, you are entitled to take your business elsewhere.

That’s the point I wanted to make.

November 25, 2014May 5, 2020

Laughing off the Emotionally Scarring Back Stories

When I first opened up about events that scarred me for life, I worried about how it would be perceived. Would I be seen as a whiny, attention-seeking weakling? The reaction was almost entirely the opposite, which has helped me look at my own challenges with better humor.

In all the conversations with people that followed the launch of The OCD Diaries, it’s become plain that most of us have an emotionally scarring back story. Hearing your stories makes me feel a lot more normal. I’ve learned that because everyone has dark episodes in their lives, I’m really not unique. I don’t stick out like a bloody, wart-riddled thumb, after all.

Some of you have been scarred by war, some of you by years of drug and alcohol abuse. Some of you lost one or both parents at a young age, and some of you had stepparents you hated as teenagers. My scars were forged by childhood illness, my parent’s bitter divorce and the premature death of a sibling and two best friends (one by suicide). My addictions and mental illnesses were the byproducts, helped along by chemical imbalances in the brain.

It’s not what I’ve been through that defines me. It’s what I’ve learned from the experiences and how I’ve used the lessons to be a better person. It’s the same for everyone.

Some lose the game, committing suicide or crimes that lead to a life behind bars. Those of us who don’t end up that way aren’t better. We just had a better combination of luck, faith and support systems. And a better sense of humor.

I love when the humor part is done well on TV, in books and online. A favorite example is Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz from Phineas and Ferb, a favorite TV show of my kids.

Doofenshmirtz is an evil genius who can never get his act together. He hates just about everything and wants to take over the “tri-state area” to feel better about himself. He makes sinister devices with –inator as the suffix, and they fail every time. His nemesis is Perry the Platypus, a secret agent whose cover is being the pet of Phineas and Ferb.

Doofenshmirtz is always motivated by emotionally scarring back stories. His was a mentally abusive childhood in Gimmelshtump, Drusselstein. His parents overlook him in favor his brother, Roger, he’s shunned socially, and it’s hilarious. It helps a guy like me laugh off my own back stories — or at least put them in a better perspective.

I leave you with one of my favorite snippets:

November 22, 2014

Lessons Lou Reed Taught Me About Life and Death

Life’s like Sanskrit read to a pony
I see you in my mind’s eye strangling on your tongue
What good is knowing such devotion
I’ve been around, I know what makes things run

What’s good? Life’s good
But not fair at all

–Lou Reed

When my addictive impulses were at their worst and I felt like I’d never regain control, I found comfort in an unlikely album: The Velvet Underground & Nico. Songs like “Heroin” and “The Black Angel’s Death Song” touched the core of my soul, where, it turned out, I had a big, gaping hole.

The music didn’t inspire me to stop my spiral into self-destruction, but it did inspire me to start exploring the roots of my unhappiness.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/ffr0opfm6I4

I first discovered that album when I was living in Lynnfield, Mass., and my old band, Skeptic Slang, had carved out rehearsal space in a room under the garage. On nights when we weren’t practicing, I’d sit in an easy chair I had in the room, with the lights off and candles lit, reading Between Thought and Expression: Selected Lyrics of Lou Reed. That same year, when Erin and I first started going out, she introduced me to Lou Reed’s Magic and Loss album, inspired by the illnesses and eventual deaths of two friends.

Here’s the title track from that album:

http://youtu.be/X0jHPRO98lM

To me, Magic and Loss was a lesson in identifying the beauty that accompanies the not-so-good things in life.

It had been years since I listened to his music. But amid his death last year, I found myself re-exploring it. In more recent weeks, I’ve found myself once again drawn to it, as I work my way through a period of depression and uncertainty.

Thanks for your music and wisdom, Lou.

I’ll end with some of the lyrics to the title track of “Magic and Loss,” which may well be the clearest perspective of life’s terrors and triumphs out there:

When you pass through the fire, you pass through humble
You pass through a maze of self-doubt
When you pass through humble, the lights can blind you
Some people never figure that out

You pass through arrogance, you pass through hurt
You pass through an ever-present past
And it’s best not to wait for luck to save you
Pass through the fire to the light

lou reed

November 22, 2014

The Lost Generation of Revere, Mass.

An old friend from the Point of Pines, Revere, sent me a note some time ago. He came across my post on Zane Mead and another on the Bridge Rats gang. For him, they brought up more memories of kids from the neighborhood who died young.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/jX-yuZFVm34

I’ll keep his name and certain details out to protect his privacy, but here’s some of what he wrote to me:

I came across your piece in your OCD Diaries about Zane Mead. It stirred up some old memories of growing up. I was actually friends with Zane until I left for the military in 1985. He was a sweet kid with a good heart most of the time. Occasionally he would be angry and self destructive. This was usually followed by an attempted suicide.

I had many talks with him about it. he never would say what was eating at him. Not sure why but I don’t think it was an issue at home. I feel like it was a personal daemon. As you stated, our life’s experiences at the time didn’t give us the ability to see the problem no less the wisdom to offer any real help. I often wonder if there was something more I could have done.

It seemed that I lost a lot of friends over the five years I was gone.

We lost your brother, Scott James, Mike McDonald. Kenny Page. It’s like we lost a generation. For years I thought I was a under achiever in my life. The more time moves on I think we may be lucky for just getting out of the city. Revere was just eating people up back then. Probably still is.

I also read you piece on bullies where you mention the Bridge Rats. I’m sincerely sorry for any part I may have caused in your distress.

Thanks for the memories. Good, Bad and Ugly. I guess they make us who we are.

Indeed they do, my friend.

I had forgotten about Mike McDonald and Kenny Page. As a teen I was so self-absorbed over my brother’s death that I didn’t realize how much loss our generation was suffering. After reading my friend’s note, I thought hard about his points about Revere eating people up. Was there some kind of curse hanging over the city in the 1980s? Were all my adolescent traumas part of that curse? Was my brother’s death and Sean Marley’s death part of it?

If you asked me that about six years ago, I’d have bought the theory straight away. Today I tend to doubt it.

It was a sad and unfortunate period, but it wasn’t a curse. We all had our share of childhood happiness in Revere in between the bad stuff. And I know now what I didn’t get back then: That we weren’t meant to live soft lives devoid of pain and struggle. These things are tossed in our path to mold us into what we can only hope to be: good people. It doesn’t always work out that way, of course. But let’s face it: Has life ever been fair?

As for the Bridge Rats, my memories are fond ones.

The last post I wrote about this gang suggested they were a band of bullies. But if you read all the way through the post, you’ll see some nostalgic warmth in my memories. As I’ve said many times, I was a punk like everyone else. I got picked on, but I did my share of picking on other people. For the most part, the Bridge Rats were a collection of pretty good kids. Some grew into happy, productive lives. Some didn’t.

That’s life.

I recently wrote about the time the Brenners nearly left Revere. There’s no question that for a time, I hated that city and would have done anything to get out.

But I stayed, and good things happened in the years that followed. A lot of good things. Precious, joyful things. I look at my kid sister Shira and the amazing, beautiful woman she is today. Would she have been that way if not for the Revere in her? Perhaps. But living there certainly didn’t damage her.

I’ve said before that Revere is where I survived and my current city of Haverhill is where I healed. That was and still is the truth.

But make no mistake about it: Revere helped make me who I am today.

And I’ll admit it: I like who I am today.

November 20, 2014

5 Years Later: Magic and Loss

This week marks a sad anniversary: the tragic death of a beautiful young woman named Penney Richards. Penney was killed in a motorcycle accident on a sunny day in 2009.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/X0jHPRO98lM

To be honest, I didn’t really know her. But I had once worked with her mother, who has the same name but spells it Penny.

I usually slip into depression in November, but I sunk much deeper into it that year because I couldn’t stop thinking about a vibrant young life cut short and the parents left to find a way forward.

That was the obsessive side of my OCD at work — the part that couldn’t help but latch on to other people’s grief. I’m lucky because I don’t do that often, but I know people who do it all the time. I call them professional mourners and agents of doom, folks who only call you when there’s a terminal illness or death to report.

Though I don’t go there often, I sure as hell did that November. I felt terrible for Penney and her family. I also felt like an asshole for inserting myself into a situation where I didn’t have much business. I worked with Penny, but we weren’t close friends. I felt like a grief parasite.

Penny blogged about her terrible experience. Her ability to face the grief and share it with the world inspired me. And in my depressed state, I decided to try writing about my feelings.

And so, on Pearl Harbor Day, Dec. 7, 2009, The OCD Diaries was born.

Penny continues to write about her life experiences.

Though Penny and I weren’t exactly friends back then, we certainly are now. I’d like to think we appreciate each other for sharing the deep shit. For my part, I’ve been inspired by her along the way.

This is someone who beat breast cancer and, though a parent never truly recovers from their child’s death, she has found a way to keep living and has shared it with all of us.

She became a justice of the peace, and many of her posts on Facebook these days are about that.

Hers is a journey of love, with all the grace, beauty, joy and sadness that goes with it.

My thoughts and prayers are with her on the fifth anniversary of her daughter’s death.

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Penny’s daughter, Penney Richards.

November 19, 2014

Manson’s Getting Married

When traffic on older posts starts shooting through the roof, it’s usually a sign that something new is happening with the people and events I’ve written about. The latest example: Charles Manson.

Mood music:

It appears that Charlie has obtained a marriage license and plans to wed 26-year-old Afton Elaine Burton, who goes by the name Star. The young lady says she loves Manson because of his environmental activism. She’s apparently willing to look beyond the fact that he masterminded the brutal slaughter of at least seven people.

The Associated Press quoted her as saying, “Y’all can know that it’s true. It’s going to happen. I love him. I’m with him. There’s all kinds of things.”

The AP says Manson won’t be allowed conjugal visits, but Star doesn’t seem bothered by that. She wants to fight for his freedom and says marrying him would allow her to get information not available to non-relatives. “There’s certain things next of kin can do,” she told the AP.

My Facebook feed is full of all kinds of colorful reaction. Some note the insanity of Manson being allowed to marry while same-sex couples can’t tie the knot in some states. One friend jokes that it’s good to see Manson at least respects the sanctity of marriage.

Others express shock that anyone with half a brain would marry the monster.

I’m not shocked. During the bloody summer of 1969, Manson got young adults to murder for him. He brainwashed and twisted them. Star is just the latest Manson girl. The summer of ’69 may be 45 years in the rearview mirror, but kids are just as susceptible to brainwashing now as they were then. There will always be kids like that.

The big news here is that Manson still has the power to manipulate. He’s 80 and in prison, but he’s still got it.

I’ve written a ridiculous number of posts about Charles Manson. What can I say? I’m a guy given to obsessions, and the Manson case is a big one. If you’ve missed any, here they are again.

The Beatles’ White Album and Charles Manson: A post about the album Charlie made such a big deal about.

Dennis Wilson and the Manson Family: The sad tale of Dennis Wilson, drummer of The Beach Boys and one-time friend of Charles Manson.

I Regret Wearing That Charles Manson T-Shirt: In the early 1990s, Patti Tate, sister of Sharon Tate, was on a public tirade against Guns ‘N’ Roses frontman Axl Rose for going on stage every night wearing a Charles Manson T-shirt. Around the same time, I had my own Manson shirt, worn regularly to freak people out.

Slaying Old Fears in the Hollywood Hills: On a business trip to Los Angeles, I killed some old demons.

Telling the Tate-LaBianca Story: Truth and Embellishment: How accurate is Restless Souls: The Sharon Tate Family’s Account of Stardom, the Manson Murders, and a Crusade for Justice?

Tate-LaBianca, 43 Years Later: A Strange Society of Manson Watchers: I’ve met some interesting people as a result of this Manson obsession.

The Most Important Book Ever Written About Sharon Tate and the Manson Murders: Restless Souls: The Sharon Tate Family’s Account of Stardom, the Manson Murders, and a Crusade for Justice may well be the most important book written on the Manson case.

Helter Skelter: Wherein the author first admits his OCD behavior includes an obsession with the Manson Case.

Charles Manson, age 0, November 14, 2014

November 18, 2014

Depressed Minds, Not Beaten Souls

In 2011, I was sobered by a report in USA Today that said 1 in 100 adults had planned their suicide in the year leading up to the article — a statistic that didn’t surprise me, knowing what I do about depression.

Mood music:

I’ve suffered a lot of depression in my day. I’m experiencing it right now. While I’ve never seriously considered ending it, I can easily see how someone in that state of mind could head in that direction.

From that 2011 report:

There’s a suicide every 15 minutes in the United States, and for every person who takes his or her own life there are many more who think about, plan or attempt suicide, according to a federal report released Thursday.

The analysis of 2008-09 data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health found that … more than 2.2 million adults (1.0 percent) reported making suicide plans in the past year, and more than 1 million (0.5 percent) said they attempted suicide in the past year, according to the researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

I think I just got lucky. Or, more likely, my religious beliefs made suicide a line I wouldn’t cross. Instead, I dove head-first into a self-destructive existence, where I lived for my addictions.

Perhaps subconsciously, as I binged my way to 280 pounds and ate painkillers for breakfast (I was prescribed them for chronic back pain), I was slowly trying to kill myself. A troubled mind can easily rationalize that it’s not suicide if you’re not jumping off a building, pointing a gun at your head or wrapping a noose around your neck. Fortunately, I came to my senses before I could finish the job.

But I’ve seen relatives get hospitalized for suicidal talk and my best friend became one of the tragic statistics on November 15, 1996. When depression takes hold of the vulnerable mind, you stop thinking clearly and, at some point, you lose full control of sane actions and thought. Some people think suicides were simply cowards who couldn’t cope with life’s everyday challenges. But they have no idea what they’re talking about.

Depression lurks like a vulture, waiting for you to get just tired enough to submit to the torture.

I’ve learned to see my own depression as just another chronic illness that comes and goes. I’ve learned, in a strange way, to still be happy when I’m depressed most of the time. That sounds fucked up, but it’s the best way I can describe it.

Being lucky enough to have reached that point, I’ve made it my mission to help break the stigma.

Sadness and suicidal thoughts need not be the end. For a lot of people I know, it turned out to be just the beginning of a life full of wisdom and beauty.

The report understates an important point:

1 in 100 adults plotted suicide; 99 did not.

That doesn’t mean the 99 weren’t troubled, depressed and going through difficult times. But whatever the difficulties, they soldiered on. Just as I do today.

Because a depressed mind rarely equals a beaten soul.

Left hand with writing: I am stronger than Depression

November 17, 2014March 18, 2015

18 Years After the Suicide

I’m doing the “Walk All Night Against Suicide Walk” in June to raise funds for suicide prevention programs. If you wish to donate, go here.

Eighteen years ago my best friend killed himself.

I knew he was badly depressed. I even had a feeling he harbored suicidal thoughts. I just never thought he’d do it.

I was wrapped up in my own world as he deteriorated. I was binge eating and working 80 hours a week, too worried about my career to see much else around me. Had I not been, I might have been able to make a difference. That’s what I believed for years after, at least.

Mood music:

On November 15, 1996, Sean Marley decided he’d had enough.

It was a sparkling, autumn Friday and I was having a great morning at work. But early that afternoon, I got a call at work from my mother. She had driven by Sean’s house and saw police cars and ambulances and all kinds of commotion on the front lawn. I called his sister and she put his wife on the phone. She told me he was dead.

I hated him for years after that, failing to comprehend why he would leave us that way, especially since he knew suicide meant a damned soul. That’s what we were taught. I thought he was a selfish fuck who took the easy way out.

I was especially angry because after my older brother died in 1984, Sean had become another older brother.

It took more than a decade before I was able to make peace with my friend and what he did.

I suffered through my own bouts of depression and started getting therapy. During therapy, I began to understand some important things about myself and about my friend.

Depression robbed me of the ability to see straight. Bad thoughts felt like reality, even though I knew better. Even now, 18 years later, that still happens. I’m going through a bout of depression right now, and I feel alone, unappreciated, and worthless. The reality is precisely the opposite. I have many blessings and a lot of people love me and need me around. And still, when the depression is at it’s worst, I feel like a zero.

That’s something people who don’t suffer from mental illness fail to understand. A cold blanket covers the mind and starts to suffocate it. In the process, you lose the ability to see the real around you and start to see the fake as truth.

That’s what my friend experienced. I get it now.

Why am I still here and he’s not?

Because he never got the chance to put depression into the right perspective and learn the tools to get beyond it. I did.

He also lived in a time when depression was stigmatized, misunderstood and not really talked about. Today, the fight is much more in the open.

I wish he could have lived to see that and benefit from it. But I’m mostly grateful that I’ve been able to benefit from it. I’ve learned a lot about depression and suicide, and I have the tools to get through it.

In a sick way, I think I was required to lose someone to suicide to help push me to where I am right now.

Halloween 1990: Sean Marley and Bill Brenner Sean Marley and me, Halloween 1990.

November 13, 2014

Why Can’t They Just Snap Out Of It?

For those who don’t experience or understand depression, it can be hard to understand the duration of someone’s melancholy and why, after a while, they can’t just snap out of it.

I’ve spent a lot of time learning to keep my moods out of the way, carrying on in public like all is normal. But when I’m home, it’s exceptionally difficult to keep up appearances.

No matter how hard I try to “snap out of it,” the fog remains. My family has learned to see it for what it is — an illness that comes and goes and has to be managed. But I know that if I stay in the fog for too long, the whole house suffers.

Mood music:

My ongoing challenge is to minimize the suffering for those around me. I’m better at it than I used to be, but there are still days where I fail. I’m coming out of a particularly severe episode of depression now. I’m playing my guitar again and eating more carefully. But I still feel some numbness of the mind and want to sleep a lot. I’ve probably spent more time dozing on the couch than I have in a long while. That too will pass.

The thing loved ones have to realize is that there’s no such thing as snapping out of it. When melancholy takes hold, it doesn’t like to let go. The sufferer can fight it with therapy appointments, medication and meditation, and they can and usually will come out of it. But it’s a gradual thing. It’s like a storm. You wish it would just end and that the sun would come out, and eventually it does. But sometimes it takes days.

With the depressed mind, it sometimes takes weeks.

I’m not going to tell you to get over it and be patient. That would be as ridiculous as expecting someone to snap out of a depression. It’s frustrating to be around someone who’s miserable. And the depressed person does have a responsibility to do what they can to get healthy.

Sometimes the therapy and medication are enough. Sometimes, getting better requires a hospital stay. Fortunately, I’ve never required hospitalization for my depression, though family members and close friends have. That’s hard on loved ones, too. But at least there’s round-the-clock treatment for the sufferer and a respite for the people at home.

All I can tell you to do is keep the faith.

Godspeed to you and the depressed person in your life.

Observing Despair by EddieTheYeti

“Observing Despair” by EddieTheYeti

November 12, 2014

40 Years Ago in Amityville

Some of you have seen the “Amityville Horror” and instantly think of it as the story of a haunted house. I never believed it, but I’ve always been drawn to the murders that started the whole thing off.

This week marks the 40th anniversary of the murders, in which Ronald “Butch” DeFeo was convicted of killing his parents, two brothers and two sisters. I’ve always had an interest in it because at its bare core, this is the story of a family so dysfunctional it couldn’t survive.

Filmmaker Ryan Katzenbach is about to release the final installment of his film series about the murders, with a huge focus being on the DeFeo family itself: Who each of them were, what they aspired to and what tore them apart.

Ryan released a video earlier in his project, paying respect to the family that bears sharing here:

Coming from a family with more than a little dysfunction, I always find myself grateful after thinking about this story. Family members will yell at each other, hit each other and stop talking to each other, but in most cases nobody gets shot over it. That’s something to be thankful for.

As for the DeFeo family, below is something I wrote about the case in 2010.

The Amityville Obsession

Posted on September 28, 2010

Part of my obsessive-compulsive behavior includes a study of the more morbid pieces of history. The Manson murders is one example. The Amityville murders is another. Lately, I’ve been obsessed with the latter.

The match for the fire is a book I just read called “The Night The DeFeos Died” by Ric Osuna. The book goes a long way in crushing the bullshit hoax about the house being haunted. I watched “The Amityville Horror” as a kid and it scared the hell out of me. I’ve had an interest ever since. This book gets into the train wreck that was the DeFeo family. They were outwardly religious and close-knit. But the father was a rage-a-holic who apparently yelled a lot and beat his wife and kids, especially his oldest son Butch, who is now rotting in jail for the murders.

The book also reveals that the DeFeo family had mob connections. The toxic mix of dysfunction reached its climax Nov. 13, 1974. After a night of chaos in the house, Butch and his sister Dawn plotted to kill the abusive father and a mother they felt was an enabler.

Somewhere in the chaos, the story goes, Dawn killed their younger siblings. This apparently outraged Butch, who then blew her head off in anger. Investigators later found powder burns on Dawn’s nightgown, suggesting that she had indeed fired a rifle.

The only one who knows the real truth is Butch. But he has proven himself to be a serial liar, so the truth will remain in his head. My impression is that he got an unfair trial and that investigators covered up a lot of things in order to have a slam-dunk case. That’s certainly an argument Osuna makes in the book.

So why the obsession with this story? There are a few things worth noting:

–I don’t romanticize this stuff. The interest isn’t because of the brutal nature of the murders. I’ve seen the crime scene forensic photos for the DeFeo and Manson murders, and they made me sick to my stomach.

–It’s really part of my fascination with history.

Like it or not, this stuff is part of American history. The Manson story is a snapshot of everything that went wrong in the 1960s, where a counterculture born of good intentions — a craving for peace in Vietnam and at home — lost it’s way because there were no rules, no discipline and there was no sobriety. I agree with those who believe the promise of the 1960s died abruptly in the summer of 1969. I’m also fascinated because it shows how easily seemingly stable people can be brainwashed and controlled to the point where they would willingly heed orders to commit the worst of sins.

–The Amityville story is a case study of what happens when the head of a household abuses the rest of the family. Slap a kid around often enough and you just might turn him into the type of man who shoots heroin and plots the murder of some or all of his family.

It’s the whole cause-and-effect thing that keeps my obsession going.

My own experiences have given me an obsession with the key moments in a person’s life that determine if that person will turn to evil or come out of the adversity stronger and better.

I’m lucky because I’m a case study in the latter category. But I can’t help but feel bad for those who go the wrong way.

Some of the twists and turns are so random.

In the case of the Amityville murders, I don’t believe for a second that the house is haunted. Several families have lived there happily over the last 30 years. Sure, a couple of the future residents had bad things happen to them. But bad things happen to everyone.

You don’t need a haunted house to give your life ups and downs.

Sometimes, all it takes are the ghosts in your head.

Addendum, Nov. 14, 2011:

I recently came across photos of what the house looks like now. It really is a beautiful place. More recent owners have put a lot of work into the house, and it’s bright and cheerful decor almost make you forget what happened there.