Escape into the world of gangsters -- with an "r"

Angels with Dirty Faces is on. This is a terrific old Warner Bros. gangster flick, complete with Cagney AND Bogart and Pat O'Brien as a priest as handy with his fists as he is with his Bible because he was a hoodlum himself once. The camera loved Cagney. I know it's a cliche, but you should see what I'm looking at. Even in luscious black and white, I know his eyes are blue. And he moves with such effortless, yet essentially male, grace. I know he was a dancer, and it shows. He's a very bad man in this movie (when it came out in 1938, it was banned in some countries for glorifying mobsters) but a fabulously charismatic one. I am grateful to On Demand for offering it tonight.

Because I simply cannot watch another show about 9/11.

Five years ago tomorrow I was working in the same building as the Israeli consulate. Chicago is in the CST zone, so the fear was planes were going to hit us at 9:00, too, an hour after the WTC and Pentagon were hit. And the authorities didn't want anyone near the Israeli consulate that day. We were escorted out of the building under yellow police tape. I have never been so scared in my life. All the major trains out of the city travel through the shadow of Sears Tower. I never noticed that before 9/11/01.

My first job was in Sears Tower. On a clear day, I can see it from my front porch. On cloudy days, when it's obscured, it pops into my head, unbidden, that this must be what life is like for New Yorkers who look at their skyline and can no longer see the Towers.

I now work in the third largest building in the city, the AON Tower, formerly the Standard Oil Building. Last month I had to work over the weekend of the Air and Water Show. I very nearly peed the first time one of the Blue Angels came a little close to my office window.

I suspect that the authorities suspect that the trains will be hit next, like in England. Some days there are cops with dogs on el platforms or near the garbage cans in the commuter train stations. Then the next day the cops and dogs are gone. No one discusses it, but we all know why they're there. (An unintentional benefit of the war on terror -- crime is down on the el these days.)

9/11 crosses my mind every day, at least once a day. Maybe it's fleeting, maybe it's more thoughtful. (I often think of those gallant NYPD dogs, working long hours, day after day, cutting their paws as they searched and dug with their noses to the rubble; they didn't do it because of ideology or agenda or because they "love freedom," as W would say. They did it because their humans asked them to. I like dogs better than people.) Political pundits say Mayor Daley may be vulnerable this time, that he may actually find himself in a real race for re-election. For Christ's sake, people, think of New Orleans! If there's a terrorist attack here, we want Mayor Richard M. Daley right where he is, in City Hall. The thought of anyone else at the helm if anything happens fills me with dread.

I most emphatically don't need these documentaries and talk shows to bring those days back. Those days are still with me today. If I let them, they will tug at my heart and my imagination until I can't think of anything else. What purpose would that serve?

So let me enjoy Cagney as Rocky Sullivan instead.