When it's Your Neighborhood

I was just reading details about the 72-year-old shopkeeper in Harlem who killed two robbers while defending his shop. 

I'm shocked by how violent this whole situation is, even for New York City, even for Harlem—which you know if you've lived in New York, can be pretty good or can be pretty bad, depending on which block you're on. And I never knew Harlem well enough to know how this particular block is. 

But even if it were a rough neighborhood, for four men to enter a shop in the middle of the afternoon, announce their intent to rob the place, and pistol whip one employee, and then for that to be followed by the elderly shop owner opening fire with a shotgun on all four robbers, killing two and injuring the others. Man! That's graphic. 

I feel bad for the neighborhood. Something like that would be tough to shake off. It would be difficult to go back to the illusion of safety and invincibility—something we all need to some extent to go through everyday life. 

Once, when I lived in Seattle, there was a fatal police shooting on my street. Just that left me feeling like an exposed nerve for a couple of weeks. I don't know how you would reclaim your sense of home and community after having this down the street. 

Violent Death Onscreen

Christian Sinclair sent me this great article about Mike Doyle, an actor who has died violently on television (or acted out dying violently on television) seven times.

Several things we learn from the article: it's easier to fake die with your eyes open; find a comfortable position to lie in because you might be there for a while; when thinking back on past roles, sometimes it's hard to remember whether you were the murderer or the murdered; and moms don't like this type of work. 

Every time Doyle dies onscreen, his mother phones: “She’ll call me and say, ‘I know it’s not real, but I just want to make sure you’re O.K.,’ ” he said. “Not that many mothers have seen their son die over and over.”

Sweet and surreal at the same time.