Twenty Years

Nine-Eleven

(An earlier version was posted originally in September, 2010)

On November 22, 1963, I was on the playground for 10:00AM recess at my elementary school when teachers called classes back inside prematurely. We were told to sit quietly in our desks. When asked, our teacher told us nervously that President Kennedy had been shot.

After a few minutes, the school's public address system was broadcasting CBS' radio network, announcing the shooting of JFK in Dallas and, ultimately, the audio portion of Walter Cronkite on CBS television announcing the President's death.

Where were you when JFK was shot? was a standard question a large number of Americans (now referred to as 'Useless Boomers') asked each other, due to the magnitude of the event and because it was shared in real-time by the primary media of the early 1960's -- radio and television.

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So, September 11th, 2001: Where were you on 9-11? I had gotten up to go to work around 5:30AM here in California, and turned on KQED-FM's NPR news. After stepping out of the shower, I heard a report that a "plane" appeared to have crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers in New York. I lived briefly in Manhattan in the late 70's and had seen just how huge those buildings were -- and to me, "a plane" meant an aircraft like a Cessna or something similar.

Getting ready to shave, I remembered a 1945 newsreel about a B-25, flying through dense fog over Manhattan and plowing directly into the Empire State Building. A similar incident at the WTC would be tragic, I thought; but it was an accident, and on the other side of the continent, distant. I sighed, and I shaved.

Not long after, NPR updated its report; I heard the words "jet airliner", which moved the entire event from 'Cessna-off-course' to the category of Well-This-Was-No-Boating-Accident; Did-You-Call-The-Coast-Guard-About-This?

Turning on CNN, I sat on the edge of an armchair, watching an image of the WTC towers from the roof of CNN's Manhattan headquarters, roughly two miles away. One tower looked like a chimney, a boiling cloud of black smoke drifting away into an otherwise cloudless sky. 

Aaron Brown was reporting, taking phone calls directed from witnesses in the vicinity -- only one of whom, the doorman at the World Trade Centers Marriott, was close enough to report on anything immediate and consequential. 

A CNN-affiliate local news helicopter, hovering over the Hudson, provided a closer perspective of the damage. One extended telephoto shot was of the façade of the Tower on fire; I was looking at the pattern of the cladding of the building, a huge, black gash angled across it. I saw occasional clouds of small white shapes fluttering in the smoke, like flocks of birds, swirling -- and realized they were sheets of paper, reams of it, drifting out of the building's broken windows. 

Just as that thought registered, at the right-hand edge of the screen, I saw a darker object drop quickly, straight down and out of frame, for just a moment. I didn't know it then, but I had just seen one of roughly two hundred people that morning who fell or jumped from the Towers' upper floors.

The Falling Man: Photograph By Richard Drew / AP

Images Like This Were Broadcast And Published

In Europe, But Not In America (Photo: UK Telegraph, 2001)

A few minutes later, I watched as the second airliner slammed into the other WTC tower. Aside from profane shock, the only thing I recall thinking was, This is what standing at the curb in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, watching the Archduke Franz Ferdinand being shot, was like. This is what living through history is like. 

I've seen large-scale explosions and been in crazy environments, for real, but the scale of what I was watching made it all seem unreal; special effects. I sat in the armchair, watching, as first the South, then the North towers collapsed (Wikipedia's timeline of the events puts that at 6:59 and 7:28 AM PDST, respectively). News of a third plane crashing into the Pentagon was broadcast; I began flipping back and forth between networks for coverage. 

Finally, I left to make my way to work on mass transit. On a BART train, I was amazed at the languid attitudes of the crowd of commuters -- reading books and newspapers, a few tapping on laptops and Blackberries -- as if it were just another Tuesday morning. People were subdued, but not because anyone appeared stunned; there was no conversation about what had just occurred.

Finally, I turned to a woman sitting opposite me, reading a folded copy of the (pre-Little Rupert) Wall Street Journal, and asked if she was aware of what had happened that morning. "Yes," she replied, adding in a deadpan, matter-of-fact voice, "There are supposed to be more of them [i.e., airliners] in the air to hit other targets." Had anyone estimated how many? "No," the woman shrugged, and went back to her WSJ. 

At work, everyone was released to return home after Noon. I went to a friend's house, where we sat watching CNN. Clips of the second Tower being struck, and of each one falling, replayed endlessly, interspersed with hourly updates and commentary by subject matter experts.

I made a few phone calls, primarily to The Last Of The Old Unit ("Fuckin' glad we're not eighteen right now," one observed). My friends and I sat, watching, barely taking a break. We were expecting more information, something to allow everything we had seen to make sense.

We also knew we weren't going to get it -- the dice had been rolled, and we wouldn't find any clarification until they had bounced off the back of the craps table and come to rest. They're still bouncing; they haven't stopped yet. They never really will. That's how history works. 

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That was September 11th -- a red line on the American calendar, the culmination of so many threads in our history going back to 1898 and 1917, the choices successive administrations have made since America decided to follow an Imperial course.

The attack on the Trade Center towers could have been another kind of defining moment for America. Our government and institutions could have taken it as an opportunity to press for a solution of the Israeli-Palestinian tragedy; we could have opened a dialog with others, rather than dictate to them.

Lil' Boots, 2004 Republican Convention: Feared And Bigger Than His Daddy, At Last

I'm not suggesting a Kumbyah moment; it was a crossroads moment, and our choices mattered. But, the government was run by men who had no interest in anything except power (personal, partisan, and financial) and policies that meant the use of force in furthering that power. 

The people "Lil' Boots" surrounded himself with were Project For A New American Century neo-imperialists. After Bush's inauguration on January 20, 2001, they were discussing how to invade Sadaam Hussein's Iraq. What else could we have expected from the likes of Cheney, Rice, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld? From Fat Karl Rove, Little Tommy DeLay, and Lard Boy?

September 11th: Simply An Excuse

And, they believed it would be simple, 'Roses All The Way', 'Greeted As Liberators' ... so no one planned for occupation, or fighting an insurgency for seven years; or for the effect on the U.S. military of multiple redeployments and 'stop-loss' denials of separation. They never conceived of failure; therefore, it wouldn't happen.

What followed from 9/11 shouldn't have been a surprise: An utterly unnecessary, even illegal invasion of Iraq, supported by intelligence about WMD's invented by right-wing operatives to create a causis beli, and pushed by sociopathic egos 'journalists' like Little Judy Miller, and pundits like David Brooks and William Kristol, and Little Tommy Friedman, to name only a few.

Palettes Of $100 Bills, Baghdad, 2003 (Photo: UK Guardian)

And let's not forget the $12 Billion in cash (at least; no one really knows), piles of U.S. currency shrink-wrapped and paletted and airlifted to Iraq. Some $9 Billion in cash cannot be accounted for. And all the cool new powers used by that dry-drunk, Frat-Boy younger son of an American ruling-class family; or all the power available to President Cheney. 

There was plenty of money to put in C530's and airlift it: 363 Tons of it. There was plenty of money being made from the war, and tax breaks to the wealthy, which reduced tax income to the government. It was a good time to be part of the Carlyle Group.

But, Lil' Boots wanted to cut health care, privatize Social Security; cut any social programs continuing the pact between government and citizens that was at the heart of FDR's New Deal... because, he claimed, there was just no money to pay for that. Because of the war, you see.

And there was Guantanamo, CIA 'black airlines' flying suspected terrorists to secret prisons, and the extra-legal, secret program of 'renditions'. Let's not forget Abu Ghirab. Let's not forget people like John Woo, whose written opinions created what he still claims is a "legal" basis for torture as national policy.

Civilian Casualty Of Baghdad Suicide Car Bomb, 2007

And what followed wasn't just prisons and a lack of due process for terrorist suspects, but developing a matrix of information [see Edward Snowden's revelations about the extent of surveillance performed by America's intelligence agencies], based on the unprecedented data-mining of domestic email and cellular telephone traffic, of banking records and public record databases; a government/corporate State surveillance and intelligence apparatus that outstrips the wildest dreams of the Gestapo and the KGB.

Obligatory Cute Small Animal Being Interrogated At

Undisclosed Location By CIA In Middle Of Blog Rant

And, very little seemed to be about defeating Al-Qaeda, capturing or killing Bin Laden and Al-Zwahiri -- otherwise, we would have finished the job in the mountains of Tora Bora in October of 2002. Iraq would never have mattered. We would have kept promises to the Afghans about rebuilding their country, instead of ignoring it -- at least half the reason the Taliban were eventually able to come roaring back.

The 'Go-Go', Lil' Boots Bush years were about a larger Rightist agenda; it was about deregulation, defense contractors, profits; and it was about Fat Karl's dream of rigging elections for permanent Republican rule of the United States. Victory, to these assclowns, had a very different meaning. The portion of it that was military was just a backdrop for Bush and his cronies: Mission Accomplished.

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We've had an economic collapse in 2008; eight years of neoliberal nothing, followed by four years of proto-Fascism; we're still wading through the swamp of a two-year pandemic; an attempted coup; and roughly 37% of America's adult population claiming to believe that bulletin-board posts by an anonymous fraudster are more real than mathematics, science, or common sense. 

This blessed 37%  refuse to accept the vaccines for SARS-CoV2. They refuse to wear masks. They do this to "Own The Libs". They are injecting themselves with special magic pony blessed horse juice, or screeching that the Blood Of The Jezus is all they need.

These are the same unvaccinated persons crowding into ED's, taking ward beds in hospitals; filling the ICUs. As I write this, America is losing roughly the same number of people to Covid-19 as were killed on September 11th. Every - Single - Day.

Frequently, since September 11th, 2001 a quote by Bush (whom we are supposed to think well of now; let the healing begin) comes back to me:

We are not deceived by their pretenses to piety. We have seen their kind before. They are the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions -- by abandoning every value except the will to power -- they follow in the path of fascism, and Nazism, and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way, to where it ends: In history's unmarked grave of discarded lies. (Applause)

-- George W. Bush, Address To Joint Session Of Congress

Is that appropriate as an epitaph for those who wish to do America harm? Or, does it speak to how we have allowed ourselves to be lied to, and led; will it end up being our epitaph, a closing quote for the United States Of America?

There is no ‘populist’ version of a world where some few are born booted and spurred, and the many are born saddled, and ready to ride, and that's precisely the world which conservatism is trying to preserve.

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MEHR, MIT DIE WITZEN:  As usual, What Digby Said (or Dennis Hartley, in this case).

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Auf Nicht Wiedersehen

Ende: Slipping Anchor

"First and foremost, I’m a businessman. My first goal is to attract the largest audience possible so I can charge confiscatory ad rates. I happen to have great entertainment skills, but that enables me to sell airtime.” Then he added -- as if he had to after a rare moment of honesty -- "But in my heart and soul, I know I have become the intellectual engine of the conservative movement."

John McManus, "The Flap Over Limbaugh", New American, April 2009

   

Lard Boy, 70, racist homophobic misogynistic junkie and self-described shill "intellectual engine" for America's Rightist movement, is dead. He was famous for publicly stoking political and racial hatred, spreading lies, and behaving like a high school bully for nearly thirty years. 

He was the most successful hate-monger on radio, after the end of the Fairness Doctrine under Reagan in 1984. Limbaugh used his huge soapbox -- not to build positive connections between people in service of a public good, but to pour permeating, corrosive dialogue into the culture.

Beginning in 1988, Limbaugh helped to shape the audience for Rupert Murdoch's Fox, which debuted in 1996. Lil' Rupert could not have been as successful, quickly, without Limbaugh creating a ready-made market for the hatred and lies the Murdochs push daily.

“You know who deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor? James Earl Ray [assassin of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.]. We miss you, James. Godspeed.”

He mocked people, insulted them, belittled them on air.  And from that soapbox, he lied, or passed along lies pushed by others. He used his position to attack public figures whose politics he disliked (even other conservatives who weren't Toeing the Limbaugh line), which would guarantee they received more hate mail and threats to their personal safety. 

He reveled and took pleasure in being able to affect others in a negative way from the safe remove of a broadcast studio, like the bully he was.

To an African American female caller: "Take that bone out of your nose and call me back”.  To an immigrant:  “You’re a foreigner. You shut your mouth or you get out.”

Limbaugh was vain, morally and ethically crippled. He was a coward. His legacy is utterly negative, without a shred of redeeming behavior. And he was no stranger to flirting with sedition, even secession.

   

This government is governing against its own citizens. This president and his party are governing against us. We are at war with our own President, we are at war with our own government. Limbaugh; January 9, 2010

 

Blimp's End: 'Tucked In With A Spade' ; the obituary in Little Rupert's papers

("Giant Of The Age Passes - And The World Mourns").

He's dead. He was who and what he was. He was responsible for what he did.  I am not unhappy he's gone. If that's upsetting to you, so be it.

---

Never Be Rid Of Him

Until The Cletuses 'Own The Streets'

Oh, and [redacted] Steve Bannon to [redacted].  And, the heads of all the fascisti parties in Germany, France, Italy, Austria, Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Coatia, Serbia, Russia, Greece; China, and all the other [redacted] countries where they live and breed.

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How It Ends

Smoke And Ghosts

Fuk Off To The Sea

A king, who had brought suffering and disaster to his people, finally died. His funeral was attended by massive crowds from all corners of the nation, who in almost complete silence walked past the funeral bier of the Great Leader.

Observing the crowds was an ambassador from another country, surprised by what he was witnessing. He said to his secretary, "This bastard treated his people as chattel, lied to them, and when the plague descended he did nothing but lie and steal from them -- and yet they come to grieve!" His secretary replied, "They come, not to grieve, but to make absolutely certain he truly is dead."

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Over 200,000 new cases of SARS-CoV2, and two and three thousand deaths from complications of the disease, are reported in America every day. 

It's easy to forget that it didn't have to come to this. ~ 400,000 People dead; many more will suffer 'Long Covid' effects. The number of deaths, the suffering and anguish, amplified by the incompetence and sociopathology of The Leader -- still screeching that the election was stolen from him; that the nation is "angry"; adding the veiled threat that this is a "dangerous" time.

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Long ago, I interviewed persons who had interacted regularly with Hitler, for an academic writing project. Later, under different circumstances, I located and interviewed members of a particularly vicious cult with a violent end.

My questions varied -- but in essence they were all the same: How did it happen? Why did you assist someone so clearly disturbed, so incapable of real empathy, so capable of bringing about real evil? I never received a common answer; don't think I really expected to find one.

In the past four years, there hasn't been a single day that I haven't asked about The Leader: He's a bully, a liar, a grifter; he's mentally ill. He denied reality, now 400,000 people are dead; the United States is more fragile than it's been since 1860; how can you believe in -- this malignant thing ??

No one has been able to provide an answer to that question about The Leader. He appealed to the some of the worst aspects of human nature. The Leader enabled people to be cruel, violent; to believe obvious lies, and to hate. That's his legacy.

And, I will not speak or write his name. Not any longer. Let him Fuck Off To The Sea.

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Last Acts: The Leader was busy after the election. Loyal satraps like Graham and Giuliani made calls to Republican officials in swing states, nosing around to see how amenable they were to a little election fraud (none were). There were baseless lawsuits; bizarre conspiracy theories. In early December, several meetings were held at the White House to discuss tactics in contesting, even overthrowing, the election which may or may not have included a Proud Boy leader or two.

In late December, The Leader himself repeatedly called the Georgia Secretary of State, who ducked all but the eighteenth attempt. He pressured the man to commit election fraud. The Secretary recorded the call, and released it to the media. It was clear The Leader, a week from the Congress' accepting the votes of the Electors and certifying Biden's victory, was still in utter denial about losing the election.

On January 6, Congress was in session to certify the Elector's votes. At the same time, The Leader spoke to an extremely large crowd -- many brought to Washington on chartered busses paid for by Koch groups, donations from individuals (like Ginny Thomas, wife of a Supreme Court Justice). Standing behind a podium bearing the Presidential seal, The Leader primped and pranced; he savored the energy of a crowd of tens of thousands. 

He essentially told them to march to the Capitol. Whatever happened, would happen. After his speech, he didn't do what he'd promised, and walk to the Capitol with them. He returned to the White House and watched televised images of the mob he had created in action, as it unfolded. He was 'delighted', 'pleased'. 

The Leader Makes A White Power Hand Gesture To Adoring Masses

When some in his inner circle suggested the riot was "bad optics", The Leader became angry and sullen. When Congressional Republicans made panicked calls from lockdown inside the Capitol, some approached The Leader to suggest he make a statement. Defuse the situation, end the violence.

 

A request was made from the Congressional leaders at the Capitol: bring Washington, D.C.'s National Guard units in (as D.C. is not a state, only the President can release them). The Leader's swinish eyes narrowed, his mouth slumped into a busted, downturned scrawl in the ochre pudding of his face. He refused. 

Then, when it was clear the riot had already resulted in 'bad optics', aides convinced him to make a video statement, delivered in a wooden voice after the riot ended -- and even then, he still said the election was stolen, describing his supporters were "special... we love you", but that they should go home now.

Long After The Riot Ended, A Call For Healing, Sort Of

The next day, after the roll of dead had risen to two police officers (one dead of injuries received at the Capitol; the other a suicide) and four of the rioters, The Leader released another video, speaking from a podium in an even more detached, emotionless voice, he urged peace and condemned the violence. It was just for show, and everyone knew it.

He spoke of "handing over power to a new administration", and ended by saying to his True Followers, "I want you to know that the movement we started is only just beginning; there's never been anything like it... will only grow stronger by the day." 

... Trump taped a short video calling on Americans to act peacefully following pressure to do so from Vice President Pence, daughter Ivanka Trump, son-in-law Jared Kushner and other advisers. Trump later told aides that he regretted doing it and that his supporters did not like the video, two officials said. (Washington Post)

At the same time, the White House's flag was not lowered to half-staff in honor of the Capitol PD officers, though nearly every other U.S. flag in Washington had been.

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Aside from the shock of the violence -- that a rightist mob would break into the Capitol, pushed by The Leader, enabled and coddled (even assisted) by Republicans in Congress, is important. Using a threat of violence to compel a deliberative body to overturn national election results is crossing a significant red line. 

One week later, The Leader was Impeached on a single Article: incitement to insurrection. The far right chitters with threats and continued radicalization, feeling they have nothing to lose, hoping for their fabled Boo Galoo.

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Watching the White Riot unfold via streaming video from outside the Capitol building, I sensed the same spontaneous Shit-Happens energy that I remember from long-ago mass antiwar actions. The energy of the crowd as it rushed up to the Capitol seemed like video of the 2004 tsunami in Sumatra: the ocean surge, initially laps on shore, just a few inches of water. Then it became a foot of water, pulsing more urgently; and suddenly, the ocean is flooding in without stopping, now four or five feet and rising. 

This is what revolutions feel like; we're soaking in it.

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It's likely there was a smaller organized group, or groups, inside the Capitol with a specific agenda, hidden by the cover of a mass disturbance. The march had been organized a month before; plenty of time to research and plan; that should surprise no one. 

This is The Leader's legacy, too. I don't feel I am living in a country where, no matter what, we're all Americans. I think -- just as the MAGAs do -- that The Other Side will stop at nothing to destroy the country. The White Riot was just a sample, "only the start... getting stronger by the day".

But, together with the Covid pandemic -- the White Riot and feelings that we can no longer trust each other may be the impetus for an expansion of the American security state: Patriot Act 2.0. As with 9-11, it's too good an opportunity to lose.

Meanwhile, our Oligarchs running social media, the Oligarchs that own news and entertainment networks, pay no penalty for hooking suckers on lies and dopamine. They become richer and richer, and claim innocence; 'free expression' 'free speech'.  And every day, angry Cletuses are radicalized to hate, and envy, and to dream of revenge.

If I have to see Mark Zuckerberg's smooth, Aspergerish face one more time, sputtering about how his poorly-led corporation is unfairly blamed for assisting societal dissolution, I'll throw up.

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Peter Wehner, Republican New York Times contributor who wrote on November 5, 2016 about what The Leader's presidency would be like, appeared on PBS News Hour last night to observe

We're in an epistemic crisis... there has been an assault on truth and on reality, that [The Leader] has led, and his party was a part of, and his Base was a part of. We now live in a world where we don't just have policy differences -- we're living in different moral universes, different epistemological universes; we don't have a common set of facts, even a common reality. And when you lose that, it's very difficult to put it back together again... 

But if you don't... a free country can't continue. Ultimately, your politics breaks down and your society breaks down... there's no ability to have dialogue. [The Leader] did this... it wasn't just the lies; it was this intentional assault on reality, which ...spreads a kind of disorientation in the public that has tremendously damaging and long-term effects.

Wehner's opinions ignore the development of the American Right since 1974 towards authoritarianism, 'christian' Dominionism and (with the Leader) proto-fascism. It also ignores the devolution of both Republican and Democratic parties into extensions of a neoliberal, globalist perspective, which benefits a limited number of people with wealth. 

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Being in America, now, is like walking into a crime scene. The victim is still here; blood and numbered cards for the photographers still dot the floor. There are witnesses to interview, security camera video to review, leads to pursue. If you have to throw up, do it outside.

And, there's a weird calm hanging over everything that only seems to appear in the wake of incredible violence. You go about your business, live your life, with the knowledge of what has happened hovering just behind everything, like smoke; like ghosts.

It's a great relief to see The Leader deposed, no longer with any legitimate authority.  I do not wish him well, or his Issue, or his Base.

Where the Biden administration will take us, no one knows. May all of us be well, and safe.

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Random Barking: End Of The Beginning

 The Year Of Living Dangerously

2020 (MMXX) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar, the 2,020th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 20th year of the 3nd millennium, the 20th year of the 21st century, and the 1st year of its second decade. 

Initially trained as an historian, my reflex is to see 2020 as a mega-event -- where one year is dominated by  a few serious, unique and overwhelming occurrences affecting hundreds of millions of individuals. It's felt like wartime, with battles, victories, losses; new technology; politics affecting the war; and, deaths.

So in finding a year to compare with 2020, some obvious choices were the Great Plague of Athens in 380 BC, which took three years to burn out and killed ~25% of the Greek population. Or, 1347 and the Great Plague of Europe, the Black Death, which lasted four years and killed ~200 million; 1664-65, the Great Plague Year in London; or the 1918-19 Spanish Influenza epidemic.

2020 seemed to be a year of emotion more than actual conflict. As a nation, or as individuals, we were about 'waging war' with a viral organism, and with some of the most vicious, ugly aspects of human nature -- sometimes, in ourselves.

But I found myself looking for periods that felt more like a match than were correct in some one-for-one historical comparison. The Second World War felt obvious; maybe, too much so. It isn't part of my experience, but I was born not long after it ended. I absorbed its experience by my parents' generation, the Depression that preceded it, and the early Cold War / Red Scare America that followed.

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Then I gave up. I realized that comparing 2020, globally and in America, with a year in WW2 is what we've always done -- dramatize events as one more chapter in the heroic, upward progression of America's story. It's normal to frame traumatic events in ways that help us absorb them, find a context and understanding. But we need to see what has happened, just over the past 365 days, with real clarity.

The true meaning of events we're living through are both profoundly personal and epochal at once. But by turning 2020 into a Ken Burns special in our heads, it becomes a Year already in the Past -- safely in memory, something manageable, unable to hurt us further.

That would remove the fear and disruption and claustrophobia -- but it will also rob us of our own individual experience of this moment, this time. It prevents us from seeing the reality of 2020's real impact.

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We're still in the middle of a bad spike in a long-term pandemic. It isn't a dramatization to say: We're in the most fragile and desperate of moments in our nation's history, since 1776 or 1861. Believe it. Trump (please God) leaves office as of January -- but he tried, incompetently, to stage a Coup. He's still trying to subvert the election, still trying to burn down as much of America as he can before the 20th.

And, he's just the worst symptom of a deep infection at America's core; the worm at the heart of the rose. Trump will go; but Trumpism -- fascism, authoritarianism, Bannonism; what you like -- is now a precedent in American politics. Two months ago, seventy million adult Americans voted in favor of it.

As a nation, if we're wise, we'll take this Plague Year ending as a wake-up call to address a very long list, spanning generations, of cultural Chickens Coming Home To Roost -- starting with The Pandemic. How we prioritize the rest will determine where we go as a nation. And that's just the beginning

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MEHR, MIT MUSIK, MIT MUSIK, MIT MUSIK: The Girl Who Refused To Be Mrs. Mongo put in her oar: "The phrase, 'Letting your freak flag fly' popped into my head, for some reason."  Fair enough.

Reprint Heaven Forever: "Works For Me," Said The Whale

Hoo Boy Yet Again, The Birthday of Big Marine Mammal Avatar Creators

Moving through life, we find ourselves on occasion in the midst of experience or the presence of a thing which resonates and reminds that something, more than what we think we know or can perceive (if we would just stop and shut up and pay enough attention to see), exists.

Principally, this happens when we're 'out in nature', but it also happens when we encounter some art -- in particular, when it's been created by someone who made deep and illuminating connections and Brought Them Back To Tell Thee. From August 1st in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and today.

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There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville / Moby-Dick, or, The Whale

Over at the Soul Of America, it's a celebration of Herman Melville's 201st birthday (!), and things of the Sea, and a Whale, and other notables which Herman brought back, To Tell Thee.

I keep considering writing a post from the viewpoint of the Whale just for the potential Yucks (because, god knows, We Need The Yucks Wherever We Can Get Them), but gave it up and settled for the Humorous Image. I voice The Whale elsewhere on social media; he's not a bad sort, thoughtful, and is amazed at the delusional stalking being done to him by That Crazy Old Fart, Ahab.

The best thing about Blckdgrd's annual post, and the reason I mention it here, is -- Herman tends to be overlooked in a culture whose highest expression is a Rhianna / Pitbull remix; it's good to be reminded that he is still there -- as he reminds us that we are chased by our mortality; and that sometimes the Form Of The Destructor is large, albino, and aquatic.  

I was introduced to Melville when I was fourteen -- not through the novel he's most often identified with, but in the short work, "Bartelby The Scrivener" (1853), a classic in its own right. Ishmael's tale was next, and I was, uh, hooked. Later, I wasn't able to read anything by James or Conrad that didn't refer back to the narrative style I encountered first with Melville.

"Moby Dick: Or, A Whale" is ubiquitous. There is No Whale before He who populates a portion of that book (Yeah, okay; 'Shamu'  and 'Willy' are not the same thing). The Whale at least lurks, an unseen presence, in the background of all the on-ship action -- like Death, or Fate, or reruns of Three's Company. As if the Whale might chuckle and snicker in the dark during certain scenes:

" 'What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not so much as dare? Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is as an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I. By heaven, man, we are turned round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the handspike.'   

" 'Heh heh heh heh,' " came a deep basso rumble out of the darkness which hid the waters. Ahab started, but did not otherwise acknowledge the presence of that upon which he had focused for so long."

That Big Marine Mammal is archetypal, now. And, aber natürlich, the moment something makes an appearance on "Family Guy", it's an absolute certainty that, whatever it is, it's now hard-coded into our DNA.

 Herman Left Out The Part Where Whales Prefer Raisin Bran

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[From 2016] MEHR, MIT KEINE POLITIK: My Very Own Hillaryite Colleague asks, "So you hate music, too?" (This, because of the Rhianna / Pitbull quip.) And I would agree, it's absurdist reductionism to claim that the essence of culture in Eusa is rap music and movies like Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising. I'm convinced that people (or, Whales; or very intelligent Honey Badgers) in the not very distant future will look back on this period as one of the most varied and vibrant in the history of our humanoid species -- until, you know, that thing happens.

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UND NOCH IMMER MEHR:  Once I saw this, I could not un-see it. It is an actual book. Swear to god.

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UND: WAS IST AUCH SCHON WIEDER LOS? MEHR:  At one point, if you had $39.9K, Jim Morrison's Moby could have been yours.

At that price, you'd think the seller would have provided free shipping -- but, remember: this is Aremica, Land Of The Free and Home Of The Hip.

Reprint Heaven: End Of The World As We Know It

(This, from 2012, when I actually spent more time and energy writing and posting.)

Over the long weekend that everyone took, I went to see 2012. It didn't help that I began coming down with a cold right there in the theater, but it wasn't a bad film, really -- and as a friend warned me over Thanksgiving dinner, "You'll only go to see the special effects": They were spectacular, true; but Woody Harrelson's fuzzy-wacky Pabst-Drinking conspiracy radio host, broadcasting from the edge of the Yellowstone caldera as it erupted, almost eclipsed the digital magic...

Will Smith as The Man, and Abby (Or Kona), as Sam The Pooch

Back at home, lying around with The Cold, I flipped through some of my 200 DVDs and found the 2008 release of I Am Legend with Will Smith -- which was a fairly good film, but only in it's alternate release version. I glanced at the Criterion edition of Fritz Lang's M; I ran a finger across the cover of Beetlejuice; I considered Pixar's The Incredibles (Dudes!! Where's the SEQUEL???). But it was "I Am Legend" that gave me pause.

Ahnold's (Supposedly) 'Final Film', Canceled By Voters

Smith had been offered the starring role as Dr. Robert Neville, because the first Star cast, Arnold Schwarzenegger, had become the Governator. I strongly considered watching Smith (a more than decent actor), but finally passed on it to check out the simple, unexpected wonders of the Teevee, and I was glad I did.

Here in San Francisco, a local cable public access channel occasionally runs films when they need filler for a spare ninety minutes or so (occasionally, they don't even run the full feature). The prints are always bad, and the sound worse, but it's interesting to see what the kids down in the studio will pick. A few weeks ago, they put up Romero's original Night Of The Living Dead; this weekend, it was The Last Man On Earth -- which is, aber natürlich, the earliest version of 'I Am Legend'.

There have been any number of End-Of-The World-As-We-Know-It stories and films based on the elements of I Am Legend: 28 Days Later; The Stand; the late-70's BBC series, Survivors (certainly, "Shaun Of The Dead"); in an odd kind of way, even The Puppet Masters and Invasion Of The Body Snatchers.

These stories involve a nuclear war/alien incursion/mysterious plague (sometimes man-made) which kills and/or radically alters its victims; somehow, they turn into Zombies/Vampires/Unemotional Communists Alien Replicants; and, there is a single person/small band of plucky survivors, trying to find others who survived as well and get on with living in the Brave New World.

(Photo: The Incorruptable We Worship: Canada's dvdbeaver.com)

Last Man was released in the U.S. in 1965. It began as a property owned by Hammer Films in England, with Richard Matheson writing a script after his classic 1954 novella, "I Am Legend".

A Bantam Paperback: Forty Cents.

(Matheson later wrote another novella, "Bid Time Return", which became the 1980 cult film, Somewhere In Time; later, another novel, "What Dreams May Come" was turned into a fairly good movie about life in the Afterlife, with Robin Williams, Cuba Gooding Jr., Annabella Sciorra and Max von Sydow.)

(Photo: You Will Sing 'O Canada': dvdbeaver.com)

Hammer Films passed on turning the acquisition into a film, but sold production rights to the 'concept' (without Matheson's script) to a cut-rate American producer who filmed it quickly in Europe to save costs. It was directed by Ubaldo Ragona, whose only other films were Fiesta In The Caribbean and The Virgin and The Bastard -- fortunately for Ol' Ubaldo, "Last Man' is a cult classic, the only work he'll be remembered for.

"By night they leave their graves, crawling, shambling, through empty streets, whimpering, pleading, begging for his blood!" Said the film posters. How they signed Vincent Price to play the title role and add the voice narration, no way to know -- except, he did get a European vacation!

Nope; It's Not The L.A. Coliseum... Price, Hunting Vampires In The Amphitheater At 'Eur',

The Rome Suburb, Home To Mussolini's 'Architecture Of Fascism'

As a kid, I'd read Matheson's novella, set in a post-apocalypse Los Angeles. As a sort-of Southern Californian, it was easy for me to visualize L.A. after a Zombiesque, vampire plague. However, Last Man wasn't shot in SoCal; it was filmed in and around Rome, the Eternal City: The architecture, the landscape, the foliage was supposed to be American -- but in college, as I sat getting loaded and watching this thing on teevee, it looked... well, Jeez; it was Italy, for cryin' out loud. Even after several bottles of Chateau Du Safeway, the bunch of us watching the film could spot most of its really obvious 'goofs'.

Wandering West Covina In Search Of The Undead? Nope; Still Eur.

(Photo: The Sublime: dvdbeaver.com)

My favorite "production errors" were seeing vehicles driving in the far background in a number of shots of 'deserted America'; or, Vincent Price (who has been out hunting vampires for two or three years), needing to stock up on garlic to keep vampires away -- and stopping to pick up a few garlands in an abandoned grocery store. Garlic won't last in my kitchen for two weeks, let alone three years.

My favorite bits were the cars Price drove -- which, between cuts in the same sequence, would change from Chevrolets to Fords and back again. I hadn't seen goofs that obvious in a film since spotting a dead slave wearing a wristwatch in the slow-pan-over-the-battlefield shot in the last reel of Spartacus.

"Not tonight, Bobby; I have a headache... be a dear and get me

one of our daughter's pet rats, a razor blade, and a straw?"

(Photo: The Inscrutable: Canada's dvdbeaver.com)

Following the line of Matheson's novella, Price played Robert Morgan, an ordinary man, uninfected (apparently due to a natural immunity) by a plague which arrived from Europe. In a series of flashbacks (also from Matheson's novella), Morgan's daughter becomes ill with the plague, but he and his wife try and nurse her to health. The daughter goes blind; his wife becomes ill with the plague; but he believes they can get through this... until first his daughter, then his wife, dies.

Vincent Price As Morgan, One Step Away From Cracking Up

(Photo: Your Best Friend: dvdbeaver.com)

Now he has a problem; he knows they'll become vampires. Morgan can't bear to stake-and-garlic his own wife and child, so he buries them a long distance from their house. As he knew they would, they return to their old home, every night, standing on the overgrown front lawn and calling out to him. In a grisly way which he can't even admit to himself (They'll come back, man -- and you want them to), Morgan can't bear to be completely separated from the ones he loves, his now Zombized Vampire family, calling to him out of the night.

"We Got 'Glow In The Dark' Play-Doh, Baby... It's So Koooool..."

(Photo: The Scrumptious dvdbeaver.com)

Even his best friend (also seen through pre-plague flashbacks) appears with them to taunt Morgan, crooning for him to come out and join them... strangely, his Sta-Press hairdo remains the same after he goes over to join the Legion Of The Undead... and occasionally, he tries the ol' White House State Dinner Gate Crash through the front door...

"We Want To Meet The Obamas And Suck their Blooooooood!!

(Photo: Canada's dvdbeaver.com, who shall not be named.)

But, he does more than fight the vampire-survivors just to stay alive; he actively hunts them, day in and day out. He broadcasts on radio, looking for other survivors, without an answer. Suddenly, he comes across an apparently uninfected girl, after not having seen another 'normal' human for years -- and slowly, Price discovers that she's one of them ... part of a developing new society -- of vampires.

Price Staking His Claim As King Of The Vampire Hunters

They've developed a serum which keeps the weird, bacteria-like contagion that results in vampirism at low levels in the blood, which prevents them from lusting for it to survive, and to venture out in daylight. It allows the girl to pass for 'normal', and to get close to Price so that he can be neutralized. Because they see themselves as victims of Price's relentless vampire hunting.

"Don't Talk Trash To Me About The Dodgers -- Ever!!"

This is the masterstroke role-reversal Matheson slowly introduces into his story: We initially see The Man as lonely hero, lost in a decaying, shabby world and surrounded by infected, homicidal monsters. But from the perspective of the New Vampires, trying to create order and structure in a world changed by a disease without a cure, they've adapted to survive -- and to them, Price is no hero: He's the Outsider, his daytime staking and killing the threat to their existence.

"But -- But I Can't Be The Monster -- You Are !!!"

(It's The End Of The World... And You're Wearing A Tie?)

Their serum liberates them from most of the aspects of Vampyrism -- enough to build a New Order. Price is their monster, the thing New Vampire parents use to frighten their children before going to sleep, a boogeyman who comes in the daylight with garlic and a stake. And, he has to die, so that they can live without fear.

Irony: A Bus In Rome (Where The First Version Of Matheson's Story Was Filmed), Advertising the Latest Version, "I Am Legend" (2008)

The next take on Matheson's story, The Omega Man, was released in 1971 with Charlton Heston -- who made Planet Of The Apes in 1968, and would go on to star in an honest classic, Soylent Green, in 1973. Oddly, in a bit of deja vu, 'Omega' was made after purchasing the rights from Hammer Films -- which still had been considering making a film from Matheson's script.

In Hammer's vision, the property had a new working title -- "Night Creatures" -- but British censors considered the concept of an empty world with decayed corpses and vampires too graphic for 1970, and again sold the production rights to Americans... but the plot wasn't entirely okay with censors here, either (there was plenty of real gore on the nightly news, courtesy of the war in Vietnam), so some changes had to be made.

Omega Man was set in L.A., and Heston's character was named Robert Neville -- both points identical to Matheson's story. But the plague survivors in Neville's Los Angeles were not nocturnal vampires -- just albino, deranged paranoids, wearing black monk's cowls and Ray-Bans, suffering from a terrible sensitivity to sunlight. They were Luddites, to boot, organized around an anti-technological dream in a group called "The Family".

ZERBE: These wigs itch. How long does it take to set up a camera?

KIRKPATRICK: Got that right. It's fucked up, man.

ZERBE: Hey, Lincoln; we wear these shades all the time. Right?

What the hell -- let's get high! Who's gonna know?

KIRKPATRICK: I'm down with that, man. You holding?

ZERBE: I think those two chicks who say, "More! Burn it more!" have

some pretty decent shit. Let's go ask. Not like we don't have time.

Heston's nemesis was the leader of the Family, a former L.A. Teevee news commentator named Matthias ("You -- you creature of the wheel!"), played by Canadian actor Anthony Zerbe (a strong supporter of Werner Erhard's 'est' training, back in the day). Before this, Anthony had a small, supporting role opposite Heston in 1968, as a ranch hand in the western, Will Penny. And, Matthias' right-hand 'Family' member, Zachary ("Just let me put some explosive to him, brother -- just a little nitro!"), was played by Lincoln Kirkpatrick -- who in 1973 would appear opposite Heston in Soylent Green as a Catholic priest tortured by the secret of Soylent after it was revealed to him in confession by Joseph Cotton.

Anthony Zerbe, Character Actor Par Excellance --

A Softer version of Anthony Hopkins, in the 1990's

I wonder if Zerbe, Kirkpatrick and Heston ever talked on set about prior shoots working together, or if that wasn't considered appropriate when you worked with someone whose credits included playing Judah Ben-Hur and Moses and Andrew Jackson and Michelangelo.

When The World Ends, You Get To Use Automatic Weapons.

It wasn't a terrible movie; it was Heston's second science fiction film, after Apes and before Soylent. It had a typical look-and-feel of back-lot production values possessed by many Columbia, 20th Century Fox and Warner Brothers films from the late 60's and early 70's. Watching Heston's acting (he seemed to be playing Robert Neville as if it was his Michelangelo from Agony and the Ecstasy) made me feel his career had to be headed for the toilet. The end of the film has Heston's Robert Neville dying in a posture that is too obviously like that of Christ on the cross, and no one watching could fail to feel the weight of the Ham we were being asked to bear.

Chuck; Ah, It's About The Symbolism, Man. Painful; Ya Know?

I felt excruciatingly embarrassed for him -- Heston, who had played so many great roles in film, was doing burned cheese sci-fi?. But, I took all of that back retroactively when he became the public face of the NRA -- and I've been an NRA member.

( I'm a fan of end-of-the-world films -- and, hey; you really want to be frightened? See the 1984 BBC production, Threads, which was the UK's version of 'The Day After'. I guarantee you won't sleep for a week. No shit: I Guarantee It.)

(In fact, if you look carefully at the film's poster, down at the bottom, below the credits in very small type is the simple statement, "This Film Will Not Just Frighten You; It'll Fuck You Up For Life". )

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