With mixed feelings, I submitted my last Herald column until the end of time. On one hand, there will be no more Sundays spent hammering away at my laptop while missing screenings of all the bad movies I need to catch up on, left only to half-watch bad movies on TNT in the background instead. On the other hand, there will be no more expensing those bad movies on the Herald’s account.
In the end, it’s all rather anticlimactic, like graduating high school or even college. There’s no prize, no instant gratification (aside from the possible graduation gift money which is quickly wasted on cheap liquor and gas — not quite what grandma had in mind), only the knowledge that you might use this intangible badge of honor — a degree or three years at the Herald — to move onto something better somewhere down the line?or maybe you already have.
Too many years spent watching TV and film taught me how things are supposed to end. There’s supposed to be a slow motion stretch, an explosive kiss, an endorphinous climax, and tears are supposed to roll. Villains are supposed to perish, wrongs are to be righted, and hard work pays off. Or so I hear. And so, I offer this look back at 10 things that ended the way they were supposed to. A sort of Top 10 Endings Ever, in place of my one predictably lackluster goodbye.
In Utero: Is it their best album? Arguably not. But Nirvana’s last album provides insight into the tormented mind of Kurt Cobain that might have been too oblique to notice beforehand. Tracks like “Scentless Apprentice” and “Rape Me” accentuate the group’s range and “All Apologies” serves as the single-greatest and most seemingly premeditated goodbye ever.
Monday Night Football, September 23, 1991: Bears-Jets. Soldier Field. Bears trailed by seven with less than a minute left and the Jets had only to squat on the ball. Blair Thomas coughed it up, Neal Anderson scored, Pat Leahy missed a FG in overtime, and Cap Boso hauled in the supposed winning touchdown with a mask of sod hanging from his face. Even then, the score was overturned and a shirtless William Perry trotted from the locker room so that Jim Harbaugh could sneak in a one-yard game-winner.
“The Empire Strikes Back:” The weight-bearing fulcrum of the trilogy and quite possibly the most daring exit ever. Han in carbonite, Luke handless, Leia manless and the rebellion on the ropes?ohmygoodness.
Super Mario Brothers for NES: Not because it was the greatest video game ending ever, but it’s the first I remember to be anything more than a “You Win” screen. Everything afterwards was a MB rip-off.
Game 7 of the 1992 NLCS: Braves-Pirates. The perfection of this ending was in its defiance of the very definition of the word. This game did not want to end, rather to go on forever and ever. But in extra-innings, Francisco Cabrera put a stop to the madness and slapped a ball to the limp-wristed Barry Bonds, whose throw came up inches short of stopping the home-plate-bound Sid Bream.
“Cinema Paradiso:” The entire movie is a manipulation of emotions that, in retrospect, may not even be all that good?until the payoff. I still carry tissues in my pockets lest I recall a brief second of this movie’s ending and break back into full-fledged weeping.
High School: It ended, thus making its ending great.
Johnny Carson: Michael Jordan take note — this is how retirement is supposed to work. He went out on the top of his game, made sure to be replaced by a guy who, as funny as he is, will always leave us longing for his predecessor, and he hasn’t made a peep since.
NBA Eastern Conference Finals, 1993: Bulls-Knicks. New York had won 27 in a row in the Garden, and despite Michael Jordan’s triple double, they had a chance to make it 28 — until Charles Smith consecutively missed four shots (lay-ups at that) in the closing seconds as I came as close as I’ve ever come to crapping my pants in my adult life.
“Seinfeld:” No other series short of “Roc” and “My So Called Life” (and those two were cancelled) has had the grace that Jerry Seinfeld and crew exhibited in stepping down before things went sour. And only when we’re clamoring for more will they undo their “end.”
Disproving my pessimist’s theory that happy endings only occur in the movies and professional sports, I’ve found life after the Herald. Read me online and in print at Entertainment Weekly.
Thanks for reading.
