Bowling for Columbine


I can see why we (Brian, Scott and I) are referring to him as the autistic child but I can also see some points, but then he goes and blows them by exaggerating the conditions.

Well I decided since I've never really watched the Autistic Child at work I would catch Bowling with Columbine on Showtime this evening to see what he has done prior to the F911 stuff.

So far I'm about 30 min into it. I can see why we (Brian, Scott and I) are referring to him as the autistic child but I can also see some points, but then he goes and blows them by exaggerating the conditions.

Bowling with Columbine (not sure what's up with the title so far, not catching the reference) starts with what is borderline amusing and disturbing. He opens a bank account and they give him a rifle. While on one hand I'm amused by the situation. Because this is Michigan, rural Michigan. Hunting is a culture up there, so I can see why weapons would be readily available. What was weird to me was that a bank would give out a gun as a promotion. He didn't show it but do they frisk em for bullets before they come in? I guess I didn't see that part because if they did do it I'm sure he wouldn't have shown it. But it was funny to me to see someone hand out a rifle, admit they have 500 or so in the vault in the back all for a Certificate of Deposit of a certain amount.

I had to turn the show off 30 min into it because Becca and Calvin were just making too much noise for me to concentrate. But he goes and talks to the brother of Terry Nichols (can't remember his name, was too sidetracked) and some of the members of the Michigan Militia that both Nichols and McVeigh were a part of. They sometimes seemed sane, normal humans other a bit on the edge of extremism. But it was nothing too bad/too anti-gun.

But then he goes to Littleton, CO. He starts out showing a promotional video from the city of Littleton that they probably use to attract companies to the area, which I thought was a little but autistic. All cities try and attract businesses and will make videos like that. He then talks to a guy who seems to have gone security nuts overboard with security, special wire doors, panic rooms, etc. Guy was a bit upset over Columbine.

Then he goes to lockheed martin. At this point it was getting hard to hear things so I'll probably back it up a bit. But he interrogates the PR guy at Lockheed Martin which I found really good example of something an autistic child would do. He tries and draw a parallel that the two young men at columbine would see L-M dragging a missile down the highway (at night in the video) twice a month somehow influenced their rampage.

This is where I really got me irritated a bit. This is what makes some folks call him an autistic child. I was not a popular kid in school. I was the 'weird kid' along with my group of 'weird friends' We even had what we called 'The Overcoat Society' or OCS. (Talk about scary parallels considering that the two young men at Columbine always wore overcoats and had a similar name for themselves). I never participated myself but for a video project three of my friends took a bunch of guns out to a field, put a TV on a tree stump and shot the crap out of it. I almost wish I had that video today still, it was funny to us at the time.

I personally don't think it ever crossed my mind to want to blow up the school or go and shoot everyone. I can't say that for everyone that I hung out with because to be honest I didn't have guns in my home, my friends did.

One of my friends made a 'golf ball cannon' with a tube. They fired it a few times even. Basically a big metal tube on a mount that was quite aim-able in response to some type of incident at the local golf course. They were going to return the golf ball to the place with some force. It never happened but the golf ball cannon was fired successfully several times. It was a rather involved method. Big can of black shotgun powder dumped in (no measurements that I know of) and then the shell was ripped out of a .22 caliber bullet and put in a hole drilled at the far end. PVC pipe was put around the golf ball to keep it together as a shroud to channel the force of the gun.

A long wire to a spring loaded hinge and it'd smack the bullet casing & ignite the black powder. I always wanted to see it fired, but never did.

But again, we didn't shoot it at anyone, or use it as a weapon against everyone. All of us were tormented by the 'in' crowd in one way or another, so it's not like our lives were easy. I'd bet if we polled each of us we'd find one person that was the most frustrating of nemesis at one point or another during our high school career.

Now one of our buddies got in some serious crap our sophomore year, in a twisted innocent sort of way. Bear (as we called him, to explain he used to wear pajamas with a bear on them all the time as a kid, got the nickname) apparently had a favorite .38 handgun. So favorite, he carried in his backpack everywhere with him. It was never meant as a weapon to protect himself, he just liked it. If I remember right, he dropped the bag and the gun popped out for a second, he put it back in and went on his way.

Needless to say someone noticed and reported it, he got suspended for a week or so. Today I'm sure you'd get expelled & prosecuted and all that but at the time (1986 - 1987) that was how they handled it.

So I've rambled on a bit, but that's what I've thought about after the first 20 - 25 min. The kids are in bed now and when Angi gets back from the store we'll begin watching it again so I can see if it gets better or worse. If it gets better Brian might mock me for the rest of my life though ;)

Posted: Fri - July 9, 2004 at 09:14 PM           |

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