The Crocodile Hunter is Dead :(

I wasn't the first on the Steve Irwin bandwagon. I wasn't even the 101st. But I'm gonna miss that guy!

I started tuning out of TV in general back in the early 1990s when cable started airing what now would be considered "Reality TV". I'd flip through the channels and see some guy aggitating huge reptiles for what I assumed was the sake of ratings, and I was disgusted by the lengths people would go to to be famous. I mean, it's one thing for in-bred idiots to hurl themselves off roofs onto concrete and break their OWN bones to get on TV, but for some Aussie asshole to pester animals who had no awareness of or interest in the concept of "fame"... that was just loathesome.

And then I laughed my ass off when SOUTHPARK did a parody of him going "Ahm gonna stick mahee thumb up this alligator's bum..."

And THEN -- back when my brother was married and the only way I could spend time with him was if I visited when his wife was at work -- I came over and saw that Brian had an action figure of the guy! I was disgusted! Some no-name dude trying to get famous harrassing innocent (if deadly) wildlife.

Then Brian schooled me.

Actually, he informed me, he a conservationist. When he's wrestling cocodiles it's because they're somewhere they shouldn't be and he wants to get them to safety before some local kills them as pests, or because they're injured in some way they can't naturally survive, and he wants to take them back to his wildlife park and have a vet fix them.

Really? Hmm...

Then I'd watch an episode or two to see what my brother was talking about.

And I totally fell in love with the "Crocodile Hunter"!!! I mean, this guy fuckin' CARED about these animals! These BEASTS that the rest of us would run screaming from -- or, if we had a firearm handy, destroy before they could eat us -- Steve understood and loved and protected!

He was a big, braver man than I was, that's for DAMN sure! (And I'm a Texan, lol!)

And he was always -- I mean ALWAYS -- so passionate and enthusiastic! You got the impression that this isn't a guy who moaned about the potential futility, and what's our purpose on this planet, and what's the point anyway. This cat was too busy LIVING LIFE, driking it in, to be bothered with such esoteric enue. He KNEW what HIS life was about: Gotta go out today and see how I can help out the animals... you know, the ones that AREN'T cute and cuddly. (Come on, own it: It's EASY to care for those poor, adorable penguins marching to their mating area during the hars Antacrtic winter... but what audience, beside the Goth crowd, is gonna pay to see MARCH OF THE CROCODILES? With a title like that, it would have to be a Horror flick, right?)

And whenever Steve would come on The Tonight Show or Conan O'Brien, he ALWAYS wore the same kahki gear, and was ALWAYS too excited for his own good! The man had no People Skills because he was, I suspect, always that 9-year-old that probably exuberantly wrestled his first coroc for his dad's conservation park. He simply couldn't NOT be himself!

And I adored that about him!

I mean, I'm a lower-middle-class suburban American, and an artist, to boot... I've struggled with my identity and how other perceive me from probably 7 until 30. We're a self-consicous folk. We want to be allowed to be who we want to be, and express ourselves as we choose, but we also have to hold down a job to pay the bills. We have to be TOLD to follow our passion and do what makes us happy... because our societal programming teaches us to try to fit ourselves into these misshappen molds cut out by previous generations. I had to gain hard-won wisdom and maturity before I could realize that I could be myself and still navigate Life.

But I always got the impression that Irwin was to busy being who he was and doing what he was doing to ever have the time to question it. The animals need to be taken care of. No one ELSE is gonna do it.

And then in 2002 he finally came into MY territory! CROCODILE HUNTER: COLLISION COURSE! He starred in a movie! Yayforme!

And, no, it didn't make tons of money and, yes, the critics ate it alive. (But here's a question about film critics to consider: If they know SO MUCH about filmmaking, why are they making what they make -- which isn't that much more than YOU make -- to review films rather than making A LOT OF MONEY making them? Huh?) But I liked it! And I got to watch it with my lil' bro, which made it cooler! (I suspect Brian wasn't as charmed by the sheer enthusiasm and good-humor of the project as I was, tho'.)

I mean, yeah, I probably should turn my nose up at it because of the ridiculous plot contrivances, but (1) I grew up in the '80s where has-been stars and rock-musicians-who-wanted-to-be-actors vilotated The Written Word in FAR more vulgar ways that Irwin even came close to doing, and (2) the I'm really a filmmaker first and foremost and COLLISION COURSE was never trying to be SCHINDLER'S LIST or RAGING BULL. Ever see THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW? Not a great film. But it's NOT TRYING TO BE! It's trying to be FUN! And it SUCCEEDS MASTERFULLY! My generation will tell your that STAR WARS: EPISODE IV: A NEW HOPE is this cenimatic piece of genious, this work of art; but George Lucas will tell you that he was trying to create the fun -- sometimes silly -- Sci-Fi adventures (like FLASH GORDON SAVES THE UNIVERSE) that he enjoyed as a kid.

Irwin's producer thought it would be cool to but him on the Big Screen and see what happened, and what happened was -- surprise, surprise -- FUN. Irwin wasn't an actor, he was Stever Irwin! And he never, for I second I suspect, tried to be anything else!

And THAT impresses me as much as anything else about his life!

The way I see it, we're spiritual beings trapped in this videogame that we percevie to be Physical Reality and we're meant to grow and gain wisdom as me navigate the levels. When we die and return to Spiritual Reality, we have a different perspective than we did before. The HARDEST thing to do is to recognize -- much less embrace and bask in -- who we REALLY are. Stever Irwin seemed to know nothing else. He didn't seem to have to unlearn decades of programming, he just got on with the business of being Stever Irwin. He didn't seem to have an in-front-of-the-cameras Steve and a behind-the-cameras Steve, he was just Steve.

And you know why I think I'm right about him? First of all, he would have come off A LOT less geeky on interview shows if he could turn Steve off. But he couldn't. he couldn't even sit in an interview chair without crossing his legs and bouncing around like a kid.

Second of all, look at his wife! This gorgeous babe road in boats with him, assisted him as he tackled deadly -- DEADLY, not dangerous but DEADLY -- animals, and bore their two gorgeous children! Their honeymoon was a camping holiday, for heaven's sake! THAT woman would not marry a phoney. (Women, when they want to, can be VERY intuitive about what a dude's all about... They smell it before you deal it, if you will.) And she wasn't trying to be a trophy wife, because she married him before he was famous!

Blah.

I'm going on, I know.

I'm just saying, he was one of the beautiful sould this planet had. A joyus soul. A human soul who valued our non-human roommates, and made us rethink some of our sterotypes about them and our relationship to them.

The planet is a darker place without him.