Of Karl’s hinting, that is. I will be checking out this website tomorrow: the Hero’s Journey.
Thanks buddy! But you haven’t told us how much you enjoyed the Phoenix Trap show yet! Of course, neither has Mark. Maybe the show was so good they’re both still spinning?
One could consider S1m0ne as an attempt by writer/director Andrew Niccol to comment on the over-importance of actors in movies today, the amazing advances in technology, and the gullibility of the general public (or sheep, as one of my friends calls us). Indeed, that’s just what I would consider this to be. Plus an extremely funny film and another in an long line of excellent performances by Al Pacino.
I’d also give props to Evan Rachel Wood as Pacino’s daughter and Pruitt Taylor Vince as a tabloid publisher who gets emotionally involved in the target of his story. Though not credited for her efforts in the film, model Rachel Roberts plays the title character quite well, though Niccol obviously used technology to change her appearance and voice to a certain degree. Honestly I’d say that Roberts looks better than the digitally enhanced s1m0ne.
The important thing for me, though, is that this is a really funny movie. Lots of density, as I like to call it, where every frame is used to add a laugh if it isn’t need to advance the story. For example, Pacino sets up a meeting for the co-stars of s1m0ne’s second movie, gets them all seated around a table (his office is beautifully decorated with antiques, by the way), and then tells them that the star will only speak with them by phone. He gets them started introducing themselves, runs off, and just barely gets into place when she needs to speak. Niccols also draws his characters very broadly, playing well on stereotypes and audience expectations–the studio executive, the police detective, the sleazy journalists, the unthinking adulation of audiences.
This makes for an interesting sequence of films for Niccols with which to open his career. The first movie he wrote was The Truman Show, then he wrote and directed Gattaca (recently named number two in Wired’s SF Top 20), and then this one. All three explore questions of identity in a technological world. (Note that although Gattaca was released first, it was written second due to the time needed to put the Truman Show deals in place. Niccols wanted to direct the Jim Carrey picture but couldn’t convince the studio and had to hand it to Peter Weir.)
Definitely recommended
Lara looked up from the phone’s screen to his face. And saw confusion, fear, and distrust. “We’re the good guys,” she said softly. Looking back at the phone she told her contact “We’ll call right back.” Then coughed, roughly, as her hand closed the phone.
“I’m sorry. Just cause you spilled some coffee on me shouldn’t get you shot at.” Jamie stared at her, unable to blink or move in any other way, and didn’t answer. In the midst of the morass inside his mind the comment “No, no it shouldn’t” surfaced for a moment. Followed by a hailstorm of “I was shot at! Why was I shot at? Who was shooting? I was shot at!!! Lara is so hot. Are the gunmen coming back? Why was I shot at?” and the like, though none could penetrate his paralysis. He noticed that blood was still leaking out of her stomach.
“You must be wondering what just happened. I work for…the government, the American government. Those men want something I have in my purse.” She had to stop talking and gasp for breath. She reached into her bag and pulled out a small metal box. “Open it” she asked.
He popped it open to see, what else?, a computer chip. Looking at it closely, turning it, nothing special to quick visual inspection. Maybe two inches on a side, quarter of an inch thick, unmarked black plastic, a few dozen pinouts. But the simple activity jarred him loose.
“Are you okay?” he asked. He realized he was still holding a napkin and reached over to press it against the wound. She gave him a weak smile. “Why didn’t those guys get out of the car and come after us?”
John Judis, in the New Republic, writes about another aspect of the Bush Administration’s corporate welfare programs: broadband duopolies and the man behind them, FCC chairman Michael (I’m Colin’s son) Powell. Judis begins by showing Powell’s hypocrisy. The chairman says that widespread consumer adoption of broadband Internet access is key to the revivial of our telecom industry, and competition is the key to such adoption, but he’s pushing the FCC to make rules that eliminate competition to the Baby Bells and cable companies. Wow, that makes so much sense!
What, you might be wondering, does Bill do with all his free time beside hunt for a job and love the Sweet One? Every weekday morning I go for a hot beverage (has been coffee up until now but will be green tea starting next week) with Evan, who is also a longterm victim of the economic craplaise, lives down the block, and worked with me at Sun. Evan is also a massive techhead, skilled and knowledgeable about many things, not the least of which is software design and development, and he decided to bring his digital camera along yesterday. Among other shots he took a few of me featuring the new cap I bought at the Springsteen concert and I combined them into a montage for your viewing pleasure:
That’s what Juan Figueroa, president and general counsel of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund in New York City, would have you believe in his recent OpEd essay. He argues that because Latinos are underrepresented in the judiciary, the cases involving their interests are often decided against them. “A judge’s race or ethnicity is as critical as her legal experience.” Latinos make up 12.5% of the US population but only 3.8% of the judiciary and this is, Figueroa claims, clearly unfair.
Or is it? He also mentions that the number of Hispanic Americans increased by well over 50% in just the 10 years between census surveys. So it’s also possible that there aren’t enough experienced, qualified Latinos to take that many more judgeships yet. And this argument is very typical of one aspect of what (you knew this was coming, right?) Steven Denbeste has been writing about lately as Transnational Progressivism. In this case, that each group, and especially groups that have been victimized, deserve representation in proportion to their numbers. So if Latinos represent 12.5% of the population, they should have 12.5% of the bench seats. Possibly a few extra to make up for the terrible ways in which they’ve been discriminated against in the past. Further, I would question just how much of a coherent group these people consider themselves to be; I’ve read often enough that plenty of the different national groups that make up the Hispanic world have little desire to be merged into this broader coalition.
Let’s step back a minute, though, and consider that huge jump in population. Where did those (approximately) 11 million new Hispanic Americans come from in just one decade? True, this group does tend to have slightly higher than average birth rates but the vast majority must have been through immigration. So these new people were so well treated in the places they used to live that they voluntarily came here to be treated worse. Somehow I don’t think that’s quite the reason. And Figueroa also mentions the magic words: “undocumented immigrants.” Does he think that just because some people (in this case, but not exclusively, Latinos) were able to evade border controls and physically enter America that they are now entitled to all the rights and privileges of residency and even citizenship? Please.
[Note: I’m going to send a copy of this to Mr. Figueroa, since his email is at the bottom of the column, and see if he wishes to respond.]
A cool match that I was looking forward to, as the Reds went on the road to meet the Rovers. Blackburn features one of my favorite players, American national team goalkeeper Brad Friedel, who did so much in propelling the US side in the World Cup, as well as England naitonal team star Andy Cole. The starting LFC lineup was a bit of a surprise: Abel Xavier was still in his right defender spot but John Arne Riise was back at left midfield even after the superb results from teaming Emile Heskey with El Hadji Diouf last Saturday.
The situation was looking dark for Liverpool through the first 29 minutes: Xavier was obviously seen by the Rovers as the weak link he is and in the 16th minute he was beaten by Cole with a strong cross to the top of the box where David Dunn was waiting and put the shot through a screened Jerzy Dudek. So much for the season’s clean sheet. Xavier also blew two very good offensive chances. Also looking bad was Diouf, who could not seem to settle the ball properly or pass it accurately, wasting most of the offensive time for LFC.
Then the clouds cleared: in the 30th, Cole drew the game’s first yellow for a foul on Dieter Hamann (who’s playing superbly, by the way). Starting near midfield from the free kick after Cole’s booking, Murphy took a pass at about 30 yards out and just ever so lightly touched it off his back heel off to the right wing to Xavier. The blonde Portuguese national just put one solid boot on the ball to send it screaming into the middle where Murphy blasted it from his right foot into the back of the net for his second goal of the year.
The remainder of the half played out with much sound but little consequence except for continued poor play from Diouf, whose bad passing continued right to the end when he blew a breakaway chance with Owen seconds before the whistle. Blackburn was certainly the aggressor through this time, though, as intermission came with the score still 1-1.
Not that I’m the great soccer expert, mind you, but I was surprised to see the Reds begin the second half with the same 11 players. I wonder how much rope Mr. Houllier is going to allow Xavier. In the 64th minute, Houllier does finally make a move, and it’s a surprising one at that–he removes both Diouf and Owen for Valdimir Smicer and Heskey. I guess Xavier will be staying in as the last sub will surely be saved against injury for at least 20 minutes. The changes do indicate that Houiller and assistant coach Phil Thompson are staying aggressive and looking for three points from this match!
John Arne Riise made the payoff in the 77th, scoring on a soft looping header that went over Friedel’s head, for his second of the season. The ball came to Riise on a long cross, all the way across the box, though I couldn’t see who sent the pass. The goal was the result of sustained offensive pressure as this was the first time in the second half that the Reds were able to keep the ball in the Rovers’ end for a stretch of several minutes. The lead didn’t hold up long as Blackburn substitute Corrado Grabbi put a header past Dudek, whose few fingers weren’t enough, only a minute and a half after entering the game as an extra attacker in place of their central defender.
Some more sloppy passing from Liverpool gave the Rovers another extended stay in front of the box through the 86th but an offside ended that. Shockingly, goalscorer Grabbi and then frustrated teammate Dwight Yorke both protested way too much and were both rewarded with yellows. This set off Blackburn manager Graeme Souness, who was himself next dismissed by the referee! Over an offsides!
Houllier followed with his final substitution, still looking for the win, by removing Riise and sending on Senegalese national Saif Diao to see his first Premiership action. Both teams are not playing up to level, though, as passes and clearances are going well off target and back to the opposition. A minute and a half into stoppage time and Danny Murphy takes a yellow card just to the side of the box but Grabbi ends that threat by putting the direct kick over the top of the net. Dudek puts the goal kick into Blackburn’s end and the final whistle sounds.
Very disheartening result as Liverpool should have taken the win and had to settle for one point after the late equalizer though they do keep their spot of the top of the table– a win would have put them there alone but seven points ties them with Arsenal and Tottenham (Manchester United and Fullham could pull even at the weekend with a victory). My hope remains that we will see Xavier sitting on the bench as the next match (Monday against Newcastle United) and, goal or not, another start for Heskey over Riise.
Tomorrow will bring European news for the team: the Champions League draw will be held and the Anfield bunch will find out the road that will lead them out of the first round. Unfortunately, based on a complicated formula, they did not rank in the top eight seeds and will therefore have at least one very tough opponent in the group. The other English teams to qualify for CL play are Arsenal, Manchester United, and Newcastle United; Arsenal and LFC qualified by virtue of finishing one-two last season while Man U and Newcastle just won home and away sets for their berths.
My friend Pam was also at Compaq Center last night and had this to say:
Not only did Springsteen walk a perfectly balanced line of old and new, cry of tough times and heartfelt hopes, frustrations and furious flaming love, but the energy level demonstrated by someone who has done this as long as he has was amazing. Patti Scialfa is the luckiest chick in the whole entire *world.* He also refrained from the maudlin overuse of red, white and blue on the hats and t-shirts, as opposed to the Born in the USA tour, which I sort of appreciated. It was brave to do 41 Shots on this tour; again, a strikingly balanced posture. The asymmetric harmonies on Empty Sky were haunting — the gritty, searing blend of Bruce and Patti’s voices was inspiring of memories built to last. What was really neat was seeing the teenagers mouth all the words to all the songs in the setlist, alongside their parents. It’s that kind of reach that must hold the most appeal for the band.
Let’s start by getting the negatives out of the way. He didn’t play Growin’ Up or any other songs from his first two records nor did he play Atlantic City, which he had played a couple of nights ago. The new arrangement of Thunder Road was really disappointing; he slowed the tempo down, which drained all the energy from the song, and basically took out the little riffs (like the one after “I got this guitar and I learned how to make it sing!”) that gave it an edginess. The show was nearly an hour shorter than in previous years, which probably explains why there was so little material from some records (only Ramrod from The River, nothing from Nebraska, Tunnel of Love, Human Touch/Lucky Town, Ghost of Tom Joad, Tracks). Except for introducing the band, Bruce didn’t talk to the audience at all during the show, no cute or funny little stories at all. One problem is more to do with Compaq Center than Bruce: the bass sound was really muddy and seemed to be right at the resonance level, so Gary Tallent’s playing was sort of overwhelmed. Finally, most of the crowd sat down for the whole show, until the encores, although they did clap and sing along pretty good, though this is not counting those in the Floor section who had no seats to sit in.
Summing the last paragraph up: When you’ve held someone up as an idol for 27 years, and you’re seeing him in concert for the first time in 17, he has a hard time living up to the expectations.
We had a great time though! Bruce and the band rocked the joint! After they’d been playing for awhile, I asked the Sweet One what time it was and she said nearly 10:30. Which meant the show had been going for two hours and it seemed like maybe 20 minutes to me. A cool guy, another Bruce fan from way back, was sitting next to me and made the show better by getting into it as much as me. He sang along with me and pump his arms in the air too. We had really good seats, in the upper section but straight across the arena (section 209, row 9). At the end of the main set the band walked offstage and we expected maybe a ten minute break but they must have just towelled off, had a quick sip of water, and walked right back on in less than a minute. And the band played over two hours of great music!
Details:
The show finished with My City in Ruins, Born in the U.S.A., and Land of Hope and Dreams but we had to leave as Ruins was beginning.
Need I say it? Highly recommended
Bruce was great, the band was magnificent, the Sweet One and I had a terrific time and now we need to sleep. More tomorrow.
The show is finally here! Want some idea of what he’ll be playing? Check out Backstreets Magazine’s Setlists page. I am finding it difficult to concentrate on anything else. Entirely possible that there will be no entries on the site today except more excitedness about this event until I get home again. Though I may write something. That what’s great about a personal site, I can write or not write as I choose, and no one will dock my pay if I don’t. I am rambling now, goodbye.
Update, 7:00: We’re just about to leave for the show, the band takes the stage in about an hour and my insides are in an uproar, excitement, anticipation, it’s BBBRRRUUUCCCEEE!!!
A car came roaring through the parking lot, screeched to a stop, a door slammed, and the car took off again. Everything sounded preternaturally loud. Jamie opened his eyes. Lara was looking at him and her eyes were wide open, and so was her mouth. She was stuttering and trying to talk. He looked down and saw blood on her sweater.
“I’m sorry,” she finally got out, “but I didn’t think anyone would come after me in a such a public place.” He was dumbfounded. Whatthefuck?
“I stole something, for a good cause.” She stopped and gasped as a shudder ran through her. “And those guys want it back. I need to get it to my bosses right away.”
“Let me call 911,” Jamie said as he reached for his cell. More blood stained her sweater. She reached out and put her hand on his phone.
“No, wait. Call my bosses. You have to use my phone, get it out of my purse, and speed-dial #2.” He wondered who she worked for as he reached over her to get into the purse. Must be some special people because he saw it was a videophone. He punched the buttons and gave her the phone.
“I’m shot” were the only words she said. Jamie couldn’t see the video but he heard a man reply: “What about the material?”
“I have it but I’m out of play. You need to get here damn fast or it’s gonna be terminal.” He couldn’t believe her tone of voice, as if she barely cared about dying, because as far as he was concerned the only way he was going out was of extreme old age, in his sleep. She shuddered again and he wondered what such pain felt like.
“We can be there in 20 minutes, maybe 15.” There was a pause, Jamie peaked over to see a dark-haired man turn away and type into a laptop. He turned back to the screen and Jamie ducked away. “Who was that I just saw?”
Lara told him that they had just met inside the coffee shop and that Jamie’ed just missed getting a couple of new holes himself. And that he didn’t run away after the gunfire, he’d stayed to see if she was alright. She handed the phone to Jamie.
The man stared at him for a few beats, eyes twitching over Jamie’s face.
“Will you help us?”
“Sorry about knocking your coffee all over you,” Jamie said, “just thinking too much about the clods at my office. Can we sit and drink our coffees together?”
She looked him over and then smiled. “Sure, why not. I’m Lara. I work with clods too. Don’t suppose you’re at the same place?”
“No, I work at a pretty small place and we’d know each other already if we did. I’m Jamie.” Now that he was looking at her, rather than focusing on his co-workers, he realized she was, well, gorgeous. Better looking than any woman who’d ever gave him the time of day before. Maybe he should ‘accidentally’ knock over more coffee cups.
“Oh, I see, so what is it you do, Jamie?”
“I write software. How about you?” He looked and didn’t see any ring on the appropriate finger.
“I’m in the marketing department. I know everyone around here is so high tech but I work for a boring old place. The men who run it are really old-fashioned but they like money and they know how to make it. My mom worked for them before she stayed home to take care of me and my brother. Do you live near here?”
“Yeah, just up the road a piece. I only stopped in so I’d get to the office later. One of the doofi on my team sent a really aggravating email just before I left the house.”
“You read work email at home?” She seemed pretty surprised.
“Sure. But that’s just because I work at home mostly and only go into the office one day a week. And I try and make that one day as short as possible. So you live nearby?” Jamie tried a little smile as he asked that. She seemed to notice and he wondered why he was ever nervous about talking to such beautiful women. Lara wasn’t too tall, maybe 5’5″, totally slim, wavy blonde hair past her shoulders, deep green eyes, great, angular cheekbones, and lips he was already dreaming about kissing.
“Not too far, over in Burlingame. I was just over here running an errand.” She licked her lips that sent a shiver up Jamie’s spine.
Then, all too soon, both their cups were empty and she got up to leave. Jamie kicked the little nervous man inside his chest to the side and offered to walk her out. He held the door open for her and couldn’t help notice how nicely her legs slid up right into her short red skirt. She pointed out her Miata, shielding her eyes form the sunlight, as they walked towards it.
Jamie heard a popping sound, then another, just as they reached the car. Lara screamed and jumped down between it and the Honda parked next to it. Jamie wondered why and then noticed the hole in the side of the Miata. He scrambled down next to Lara.
Will be spent together. The Sweet One moved in for good as of last night. Am I excited? Yes. Am I happy? Immensely. Do I love her? Forever? You bet! She is caring, intelligent, considerate, beautiful, sexy, loving, and the rest of you guys just lost out. Woohoo!
The surprise at opening was seeing Emile Heskey in the starting lineup at left midfielder in place of last week’s goalscorer John Arne Riise and El Hadji Diouf once again paired with Michael Owen upfront. The reason became clear later in the match as the announcer explained that LFC manager Gerard Houllier was upset with the Norwegian national team coach, who’d played Riise the entire 90 during a midweek friendly against Holland. The configuration change paid off immediately though as Diouf scored in the third and 50th minutes off assists from Heskey each time. Southampton’s Williams took a foolish yellow early on for protesting too much on a foul call against him and otherwise the remainder of the first half was quiet and mainly dominated by the Reds’ midfield play.
Liverpool avoided a troubling pattern of collapsing into defense after taking 1-0 leads last year and remained aggressive through the second half. In the 70th minute Houllier made his first change, sending Riise on in place of Michael Owen. Owen had a good match, with a goal disallowed for offsides on a rebound on a Danny Murphy blast off the top wood, but otherwise several nice runs. Heskey moved to the front with the substitution but in 10 minutes playing together he and Diouf could not team up for a third score, and Vladimir Smicer made his season debut by taking Diouf’s place. Bruno Cheyrou the came on in 85th minute for Stephen Gerrard. Just a few minutes later Danny Murphy made it 3-0 by putting a penalty kick into the top left shelf after defender Bridge took Cheyrou down just off the goal line.
Strong games were played by Murphy and Jerzy Dudek, although the keeper was really never challenged by the Southampton strikers in recording a second straight shutout. Hyypia and Henchoz were very strong in central defense to make that happen, and Traore kept his backline commitment while often involving himself on the attacking end. One question for Houllier has to be whether Abel Xavier will keep his place for Wednesday’s meeting with Blackburn or if Jamie Carragher or Markus Babble will be given playing time. My vote is to sit Xavier and see if one of the others can improve the right back space.
180 minutes and the sheet is still clean! Houllier has said he wants the Premiership title this year and six points in the first two matches is a great start on that path. Wednesday’s match, on the road at Blackburn, should be good as the Rovers have four points so far after slipping past Birmingham 1-0 today. I’m really starting to love Fox Sports World–they’ve shown both matches so far and will have Wednesday’s as well. Plus weekly doses of Australian Rules Football.
Go Reds!
Jamie usually drove straight to the office but on the spur of the moment stopped at Starbucks for a triple Macchiato. The thought of dealing with those clowns decided it for him. The email he’d gotten that morning was typical, from another programmer who had an amazingly high opinion of himself, in that it showed a total lack of understanding of programming quality: “It does not make much sense to throw an exception just for the reason that you don’t want to change code.” How someone could be hired into a major computer company without understanding that throwing exceptions was the language designer’s way of passing errors from one place to another was mystifying.
“Excuse me!” was what came in his ears just as he realized there was a really cute blonde woman in contact with his elbow. This was after his elbow had been in contact with her coffee cup and fairly concurrent with the coffee splashing out onto her sweater. Apparently the coffee was still really hot. “Owww” was the next sound. He cringed.
“I’m sorry, just lost in thought,” Jamie said, “but can I buy you a replacement?” She signalled her agreement before stomping off to the ladies room to try and repair the damage to her outfit.
Jamie woke up to the sound of soft music that sounded much louder, took a deep breath, and opened his eyes anyway. Another day wondering when his job would disappear. Another day fixing problems created by the wonderful fellows he worked with. He watched a tiny spider scurry across the ceiling.
Tuesdays were bad days. Long days. Days he had to drag his ass 48 miles each way to the office to sit in meaningless meetings. Where he didn’t have the right set up to get any work done. Jamie much preferred the other four days, working in his den, when he only needed the occasional telephone call or email to communicate with the clods in his group. At least he didn’t have to be in Santa Clara until noon and could miss the deadly morning traffic. He got out of bed, walked down to the kitchen where a fresh pot of coffee was waiting, and poured sweetner, Half and Half, and coffee into his mug. That first whiff of hot coffee in the morning, what an amazing aroma.
Mug emptied and refilled, he refreshed his email screen. Spam! As if he wanted a breast reduction/enlargement, a new mortgage, free passwords to pornography, or the rest of it. Delete. Links of interest from his personal websurfing slave/pal, save for later. Personal mail, answer. Work–arggh–reading through the crap these people send is worse than Nigerian dictator son spam! You’d think one of them would have heard of this thing called grammar. No different than the code they wrote, anyway. He went in the shower.
The phone rang, twice. Then it stopped. Strange, unless it was a hang up, since the answering machine only picks up after two rings once there’s already a message in the queue. He finished toweling off and looked at the machine. A digital 2 flashed back at him but before hitting the play button he checked the caller ID display; both calls were from ‘Unavailable’ and came during his shower. The messages were no help either, the only sounds a sigh and a click. Tuesday was starting out on the strange side.
We have many ways to memorialize people who gave their lives for America. (And other reasons, but this entry is not about them.) We build monuments: the Vietnam Memorial is an excellent example and many people are working towards the construction of a similar (in reason, not design) memorial to honor members of the American armed services who gave their lives in World War II. We often name portions of highways to remember police officers who died in the line of duty there; a portion of Highway 101 in San Mateo County has been designated to honor Millbrae policeman Dave Chetcuti after Chetcuti was killed while responding to a fellow officer’s call for help.
Yesterday, in what I feel is a terrific choice, the governors of New Jersey and New York (James McGreevey and George Pataki) proposed renaming Newark International Airport to Liberty International Airport. “The events of September 11th shattered our domestic tranquility and threatened us all,” said McGreevey. “Governor Pataki and I agree that it would be appropriate to commemorate the memory of the heroes of that day by this proposed name-change for Newark International Airport.” I have a special connection to that airport, I suppose, having grown up less than ten miles from it and having watched it transformed in the 1970s from a sleepy (dingy) little one (passenger) terminal to a busy, dynamic modern air facility. This is one of the few times it’s easy to say some politicians have done the right thing.
capspace and spacehunny sittin’ in a tree,
k-i-s-s-i-n-g,
first comes love, then comes living together,
then comes happiness and wonderment for ever!
The fear oozed out of him, all thick and gooey. Like the 200 ounce orange plastic jug of Tide with Color Safe Bleach, about ten feet away from where he crouched, that must have sat out in this sun too long and was now leaking a vaguely sea green line of laundry detergent on the cracked and faded concrete that covered maybe half of the garbage-strewn yard.
How, he wondered, had he ended up crouching in the narrow space between an old storage shed and a back fence. Hiding from some thugs sent to prevent him from testifying against some bad, bad man. He hoped that his hidey hole was good enough but from the way his body shook he had his doubts. The thugs were across the street searching in an abandoned warehouse and he could hear them yelling to each other as each checked the little places he might have been.
The sweat beaded down his forehead and his stomach got tighter each time he heard another voice. Flies and worse were out in the noonday July sun but those he barely noticed, or the rumble of trucks and cars on the next block. None of that mattered, would make a difference in his survival, and so he was bit or not bit by the flies but never lifted his arm to flick them away. He was far more concerned that the motion might somehow reveal his location. One of the thugs had sent a few stray bullets his way when they first approached him and he had no interest in hearing that sound again.
A helicopter flew by overhead, so low he wondered if it was part of the search for him, and he looked up but it wasn’t that close after all and simply continued on and the sound faded. The motion led some of the sweat down to his eyes, so that he finally noticed it and wiped his sleeve across his face. He sighed, took a deep breath, tried to calm down. But then he heard another yell from across the way and risked a look around the side of the shed. One thug was standing out in front of the warehouse; they were done searching and he wanted the other two to come out and move on. A stabbing pain shot through his gut as he realized they weren’t giving up.
BillSaysThis 
