MUHAMMAD ALI, BEN AFFLECK BATMAN, GATSBY PTSD GUIDED BOOMERPDX IN 2015

via bookmarketingbestsellers.com

What would the Gatsby PTSD, Ben Affleck Batman, and Muhammad Ali do?

2015 has been a rough year. How rough? Lemme tell ya, (loosens tie, stretches neck.)

When BoomerPDX began I reviewed a feature length documentary.

Suddenly I’m an expert on something I don’t know much about, apart from one doc.

I was pulling traffic off searches on something I don’t care about.

Talk about a downward spiral. And every visitor was disappointed they couldn’t find a definitive answer.

My take: it’s a blog. If you need definitive answers to anything you can start by reading blogs, but don’t stop there.

That’s one search term that’s not showing up. What did show up was Muhammad Ali, Ben Affleck Batman, and Gatsby PTSD, the top one, two, three.

Why? Because I have such affection for all three. I do. Really.

Muhammad Ali

Today he looks in the condition of my father in law late in his life with Parkinson’s.

It’s a disease most don’t consider in the big wasting disease conversation, but it’s big.

I knew my father in law from my late twenties until now; I’ve seen Muhammad Ali from the early 60’s until my early sixties.

The fighter shrunk the boxing ring in his prime, before his suspension. So much energy, so much guile, so much anger.

He was special from the first fight. Even my dad liked him. Not so much as a CO in the draft, but later as an underdog. Especially after Frazier dropped him and Norton broke his jaw.

“Muhammad Ali is fighting the long fight,” he said.

And he still is.

Ben Affleck Batman

When this guy got married I felt like he joined the club.

Ben Affleck didn’t seem to carry the weird relationship gene, the one that explains abnormal in a normal way.

Then he took a Batman role. Ben Affleck Batman? Perfect. Now he’s slated to direct a Batman movie? Even better.

Argo made me a Ben Affleck, Director fan. He was so good and so true. If he could play a convincing Puerto Rican evacuating hostages out of revolutionary Iran, why not Batman?

How many of us take our movie stars out of the movies and judge them according to real life rules, if not Entertainment Tonight rules.

My Ben Affleck man-crush started when he looked like the right director for one of my scripts. So I did a little social media stalking, blogger style. It wasn’t important enough to leave the basement, but it still felt odd.

Now I’m over it all. If Ben and his wife have problems, then I have problems with Ben. It’s just not the same anymore.

Gatsby PTSD

So much of the sports news, at least football news, deals with head injuries. Concussions are big enough news that a movie about concussions is playing.

Will Smith in Concussion.

Not so big in the news is TBI, Traumatic Brain Injury.

Reading The Great Gatsby again before seeing the Leo version on the big screen highlighted the Gatsby PTSD.

From his WWI days to Great Gatsby days there’s a trend from TBI, concussion, to PTSD.

No one called it PTSD in WWI. More like ‘shell shock.’

You only get blown apart once, but you live with the effects of being blown up.

Gatsby PTSD felt like the end result of a man who could have everything, but only wanted what he couldn’t have.

Baby boomers, Portland baby boomers and their following, know what it’s like to have everything, or what feels like everything, only to lose it all.

Maybe it’s an age thing, but the more I read about boomers ruining things for everyone else, the more I feel younger generations are letting that feeling of having everything slip away.

It’s a feeling worth embracing at least once. Try wrapping your arm around Muhammad Ali, Ben Affleck Batman, Gatsby PTSD and see what you come up with.

I see a story told from a distance about a striving soul searching for a meaningful outlet, one who fights for others on the same search.