Posts

Posted on

I’ve just seen a face….

I have a friend at work who watches movies like I read books (or how I like to think I read books). This guy has seen everything, and he can discuss at great length why he likes or dislikes particular films. He’s my resident film critic. So when he gave me a strong recommendation for Across the Universe, I heeded his advice. He said it was a good movie. Instead, it blew me away. I don’t recall the last movie that affected me the way this one did, given how little I knew of it going in. Maybe The Shawshank Redemption? I loved Across the Universe from beginning to end. Of all the movies I’ve seen recently, this one seems the most likely to work its way into a high position if I ever revisit my One Hundred Movies list.

Across the Universe is a musical, pure and simple, in the classic sense of the word: it’s a film in which music and dialogue exist side-by-side, in which characters express themselves in song and dance as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. (This is to draw the difference between a film like this and, say, Chicago, in which the musical numbers were stylized versions of the actual events of the story; in Chicago, there’s no reason to suppose the characters are really singing, and the numbers all take on the feel of dream sequence.) What separates Across the Universe are the songs: every one of them is a Beatles song.

This may sound like a goofy idea on first blush, but it really isn’t. The film weaves a story around a whole bunch of the Beatles’ most famous songs, and it’s a story that works surprisingly well. Yes, some songs are telegraphed early on: after all, as soon as you learn that our hero’s name is Jude and his love interest’s name is Lucy, well, you already know at least two songs you’ll be hearing later on. (Ditto the supporting character named Prudence.) There’s precedence for this sort of thing. Recycling of songs used to happen pretty often in the heyday of the movie musical back in the 1940s and 50s, and with just two exceptions (“Make ‘Em Laugh” and “Moses Supposes”), all of the songs in Singin’ in the Rain are recycled songs. And that’s a movie that’s generally hailed as the greatest of all musicals. That one works because the songs are all deeply thought out in terms of how they are employed in service to the film’s story, and that’s certainly true in Across the Universe.

The story isn’t terribly complicated. A young man named Jude, who is a worker in the shipyards of Liverpool, decides to travel to America to meet his birth father, who had been an American soldier in Britain during World War II. Jude knows that his father works at Princeton University, so he’s expecting a professor, but it turns out that his father is a maintenance worker, “just a workin’ stiff like me”. Here Jude also meets Max, a student who is more troublemaker than student. Having no one else to hang with, Jude latches on to Max, even going to Max’s home for Thanksgiving, which is where he meets Max’s younger sister, Lucy (whose high school sweetheart has already been sent to Vietnam, and whose return from that war shortly thereafter is presaged by one of those terribly sad telegrams delivered by hand to his mother). Max decides to drop out of college, and he and Jude go in search of their fortunes to New York City, where they in turn fall in with a singer named Sadie who moves in countercultural circles. The story continues to unfold from there, with Jude and Lucy falling in love with one another as the climate of the 60s becomes more and more toxic. Max is drafted into the Army himself, and the political backdrop of the war brings great tension to Max and Lucy.

The point of a film like this isn’t really plot anyway. The point is in the music, and what really struck me is that not one of the songs stood out in that glaringly obvious way. The filmmakers here (led by director Julie Taymor) expend great effort to make it seem as if each song was actually written to appear in this story, and it works wonderfully, if not quite perfectly. I suppose some people who are more intimately familiar with the Beatles and their songs may object, but it seemed to me perfectly natural for “Let It Be” to turn into a lament for a child killed in the Detroit race riots, for “So You Want a Revolution” to back a lover’s quarrel, and “Come Together” to serve as a musical welcome for another wandering soul coming to New York.

The film’s production design amazed me, from the first act set in the last vestiges of that America that was still trying to hold onto the fifties, to the psychedelic second act, and finally the occasionally bleak and stark final act. In fact, the production values of the movie are very high indeed; a very convincing world is created, in which we constantly focus our attention on a small number of characters but also feel a much larger, and scarier, world encroaching in upon them. There’s not a bad performance to be found in the film, either; it’s a cast of unknowns, with the only actor I’m familiar with being Evan Rachel Ward (who played Jessie Sammler so brilliantly on Once and Again). There is a brief star turn for Bono as a psychedelic author type; he gives a show-stopping performance of “I Am the Walrus”. All of the singing is done very well, by the way. Musicals don’t always boast great singing in the traditional sense of the word, but the best musicals feature singing that isn’t like performance anyway, but instead convey that the songs are arising out of character and story. That’s what happens here.

So yeah, I deeply, deeply, deeply loved Across the Universe. It was, for me, one of those rare things that comes along and fills me with that inspirational awe that comes from watching a truly vibrant piece of creativity. All the possible gripes about the movie — maybe it’s too long, maybe it romanticizes the 60s too readily, maybe its historical accuracy is fudged — fell away for me completely; such criticisms to me seem to be enormous exercises in missing the point.

If you saw Across the Universe and hated it, fine, but please don’t tell me why. If this movie is an illusion, I don’t want to know it.

(I posted the Across the Universe version of “Hey Jude” back in August.)

Share This Post

Posted on

Have you ever….

Seen at Sheila O’Malley‘s place, a simple “bold the things you’ve done” quiz.

Started your own blog
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than you can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland
8. Climbed a mountain (for a less than intuitive definition of “mountain”, that is)
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sang a solo
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown your own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitch hiked
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill
24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a Marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught yourself a new language
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelos David
41. Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had your portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theater
55. Been in a movie
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business (It never went anywhere.)
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching
63. Got flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten Caviar
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London
77. Broken a bone
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had your picture in the newspaper
85. Read the entire Bible
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone’s life
90. Sat on a jury
91. Met someone famous (Football players count, I hope)
92. Joined a book club
93. Lost a loved one
94. Had a baby (It seems this quiz is aimed at the wimmenfolk….)
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a law suit
98. Owned a cell phone
99. Been stung by a bee
100. Read an entire book in one day

I figured I’d look for a few other versions of this kind of thing, so here we go again! I randomly searched on Google’s Blog Search for “Things I’ve Done”, and found this (editing out the ones duplicated)

1.Bought everyone in the bar a drink
4. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive
5. Been inside the Great Pyramid
6. Held a tarantula
7. Taken a candlelit bath with someone
08. Said “I love you” and meant it
09. Hugged a tree
13. Stayed up all night long and saw the sun rise
14. Seen the Northern Lights
15. Gone to a huge sports game (How huge? A regular-season NFL game? Or a “huge” game as in a game with big ramifications, like a Game Seven in some sport?)
18. Touched an iceberg
20. Changed a baby’s diaper
21. Taken a trip in a hot air balloon
23. Gotten drunk on champagne
25. Looked up at the night sky through a telescope
26. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment
27. Had a food fight
28. Bet on a winning horse
29. Asked out a stranger
30. Had a snowball fight
31. Screamed as loudly as you possibly can
34. Ridden a roller coaster
36. Danced like a fool and didn’t care who was looking
37. Adopted an accent for an entire day
38. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment
39. Had two hard drives for your computer
40. Visited all 50 states
41. Taken care of someone who was drunk
42. Had amazing friends
43. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country
45. Stolen a sign
46. Backpacked in Europe
47. Taken a road-trip
52. Been heartbroken longer than you were actually in love
53. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger’s table and had a meal with them
54. Visited Japan
56. Alphabetized your CDs
57. Pretended to be a superhero
59. Lounged around in bed all day Not all day… but until 12 or 1pm.
60. Played touch football Yep. It sucked.
68. Fallen in love and not had your heart broken
69. Toured ancient sites
71. Played D&D for more than 6 hours straight
72. Gotten married
74. Crashed a party
75. Gotten divorced
76. Gone without food for 5 days
77. Made cookies from scratch
78. Won first prize in a costume contest
80. Gotten a tattoo Lol…
81. Rafted the Snake River (No, but I’ve kayaked the Youghiogheny.)
82. Been on a television news program as an “expert”
84. Performed on stage
85. Been to Las Vegas (When I was a kid.)
86. Recorded music
87. Eaten shark
88. Kissed on the first date
89. Gone to Thailand
90. Bought a house
91. Been in a combat zone
92. Buried one/both of your parents
93. Been on a cruise ship
94. Spoken more than one language fluently
95. Performed in Rocky Horror
96. Raised children It’s not something you can really put in the past tense though, is it?
97. Followed your favorite band/singer on tour
98. Passed out cold (Not one of my finer moments)
99. Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country
100. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over HELLO, Sunshine Coast!
101. Walked the Golden Gate Bridge
102. Sang loudly in the car, and didn’t stop when you knew someone was looking
103. Had plastic surgery
104. Survived an accident that you shouldn’t have survived
105. Wrote articles for a large publication My appearances in the Buffalo News count, yes?
106. Lost over 100 pounds
107. Held someone while they were having a flashback
108. Piloted an airplane
109. Touched a stingray
110. Broken someone’s heart (Wow, I hope not)
111. Helped an animal give birth
112. Won money on a TV game show
114. Gone on a photo safari
115. Had a facial part pierced other than your ears
116. Fired a rifle, shotgun, or pistol (Never. I’m uncomfortable around guns.)
117. Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild
118. Ridden a horse (Those animals are HUGE!)
119. Had major surgery
120. Had a snake as a pet
121. Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
122. Slept for 30 hours in a 48 hour period
123. Visited more foreign countries than U.S. States
124. Visited all 7 continents
125. Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days
126. Eaten kangaroo meat
127. Eaten sushi (Just the other day, as a matter of fact.)
129. Changed someone’s mind about something you care deeply about
130. Gone back to school
131. Parasailed
132. Touched a cockroach
133. Eaten fried green tomatoes (They’re tasty!)
134. Read The Iliad and The Odyssey
135. Selected one “important” author who you missed in school, and read
136. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
137. Skipped all your school reunions (So far, so good.)
138. Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language
139. Been elected to public office
140. Written your own computer language
141. Thought to yourself that you’re living your dream
142. Had to put someone you love into hospice care
143. Built your own PC from parts
144. Sold your own artwork to someone who didn’t know you
145. Had a booth at a street fair
146. Dyed your hair
147. Been a DJ (I had a classical music radio show in college. It was kind of fun…except the day when this girl kept calling me at the station with her request for me to play “The Sun Will Come Out” from Annie, a show which makes me want to draw my own blood in large quantities.)
148. Shaved your head
149. Caused a car accident
150. Saved someone’s life

I can’t tell if I’m very adventurous or not. It takes a while for new versions of the “Have You Ever” quiz to go around, so I’ll keep an eye out….

Share This Post

Posted on

The Operas of SPACE!!!

My leading light, reading-wise, continues to be the wonderful SF subgenre of space opera. I’ve done some more reading along that line the last few months.

Margaret Weis wrote a space opera trilogy called Star of the Guardians back in the early 1990s, of which I recently read Book One, The Lost King. Weis is far better known as half of a writing duo, the other half being Tracy Hickman, that produces in prolific fashion the Dragonlance novels. For this series Weis went it alone, although Hickman provides an introduction wherein she declares that Star of the Guardians is not science fiction but rather “Galactic Fantasy”. What’s the difference? Well, it’s pretty much the same difference that’s always illuminated between space opera and hard science fiction, although Hickman seems to hold hard SF in some disdain, saying that SF is about our love of technology while “Galactic Fantasy” is about our hopes and dreams in the future.

I’m not sure what to make of that, but The Lost King is a pretty fun and breezy read. It’s fairly obviously indebted to Star Wars, using a lot of tropes from that “universe”, which at the time of Weis’s writing consisted of the movies and little else. The story takes place in the aftermath of a Galactic Civil War, in which a benevolent if inept monarchy was replaced by a dictatorial Republic, which is led by a harsh and controlling President who rules through the actions of his military and his Warlords. One of these Warlords, Derek Sagan, is tasked with tracking down the last living heir of the deposed Starfire dynasty, a young man named Dion, who is being protected by the last of the Royal Guardians. Dion flees with a mercenary ship captain named Tusk, and on the way they make the acquaintance of another Guardian named Lady Maigrey. Warlord Sagan, it turns out, does not wish to kill Dion Starfire outright; instead he has plans of his own (which aren’t totally revealed in this first book of the trilogy).

The story of The Lost King is nothing that anybody who’s read this sort of tale. As Weis notes, her story is far more reliant on the tropes of epic fantasy than SF, and what SF tropes are present are straight out of space operas like Star Wars, which many SF fans don’t even admit as SF in the first place. It’s not the most notable book I’ve read by a long shot, but it’s got some things to recommend it; most notable are the character interactions between Warlord Sagan and Lady Maigrey (who have a long history that wasn’t always antagonistic), and between the mercenary Turk and young Dion Starfire. Weis does a good job creating a cast of characters who have history behind them that explains their actions and motivations.

The Lost King is a promising beginning to a potentially nice space opera trilogy. It’s not a great book, by any means, but it’s worth seeking out for a breezy, entertaining “beach novel” kind of space opera.

Share This Post

Posted on

Does Vishnu get to wear a glove on each of his four hands?

I was going to write a post making fun of the Pittsburgh Pirates for having signed two guys from India as pitching prospects after they won a baseball-related reality TV show over there, but then I figured that the usual process of scouting pitching talent, drafting pitching talent, and developing pitching talent hasn’t really worked so well for the Pirates lately (meaning, the last 16 years), so why not grab two fellows from an Indian teevee show? More power to them!

I do think it would be funny if, were one of these guys (or both) to reach the majors and become strikeout guys for the Pirates, after each strikeout they record, the loudspeakers at PNC Park play a clip of Apu from The Simpsons saying “Thank you, come again.” Like this.

(WAV link via)

Share This Post

Posted on

In Which Kelly Pokes Gentle Fun At Alan

Alan traveled across the country to see something he could have seen in Toronto. That’s me, folks: ahead of the curve! In front of the cutting edge!!!

(I’m sure this wasn’t an epiphany on Alan’s part.)

(UPDATE: And now I see that it’s Alan’s birthday. May his day be free of Libertarians and weirdos from Niagara Falls filling his comment threads with goofy prattle! Of course, never was a more futile birthday wish offered….)

Share This Post

Posted on

The Balance in the Blood (part four)

Continuing a serialization of a horror novelette. Part One, Part Two, and Part Three, published previously.

Willem took a lukewarm shower, put on clean clothes, and then went back to the laboratory where he found Doktor Muething standing beside the staff car, the black satchel in his hand.

“You look better than you did an hour ago,” the Doktor said. “Come.” He climbed into the back of the staff car, and Willem followed. Inside there was a plate of pastries and a pot of coffee. The Doktor picked up the plate and offered it to Willem. “Are you hungry?”

Willem was indeed hungry, and he immediately grabbed one of the pastries and devoured it before the car even began moving. The Doktor lifted an eyebrow.

“Seeing you eat like that, I might take you for a prisoner.” He poured himself a cup of coffee and tapped the dividing window with his truncheon. “We will go now, driver!” he shouted. To Willem he added, “You may go to sleep, young Schliemann. We will drive a while.” The Doktor finished his coffee in one gulp and then pulled a book from his black satchel.

Willem tried to stay awake, but he dozed off anyway before they reached the main gates. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been this tired. Sleep was welcome….but the dreams he had were not. He dreamed of the dead Jew, reaching for him with long, bony fingers….

“Wake up!” Doktor Muething prodded Willem awake.

Willem groaned as he rubbed residue from his eyes. Looking out the window he saw that they were at the Hamerstadt Kirche, a great stone church with moss-covered walls that was at least five hundred years old. Willem followed Doktor Muething out of the car and down a wooded path, around the hulking building of dark stone to the church graveyard.

“Something doesn’t smell right,” Willem said.

“We’re away from the camp,” the Doktor replied. “You are smelling the normal air, absent of death.”

Strange words, given that they were entering a graveyard, but they were true nonetheless. The air smelled of wet earth, not ash; bodies here were interred and not stacked like cordwood, so there was no stench of rot. The two men traced a weaving path through the very old graves.

“I’ve been here before,” Willem said. “Some of Uncle Gunther’s patients were buried here. Not many, though.” Uncle Gunther had not treated many people who were rich enough to have been buried here. “Why have you brought me here, Herr Doktor?”

“A history lesson that you may find illuminating,” the Doktor said. They walked into an area dominated hy huge mausoleums. “Ah, here we are.” He led Willem to a very old mausoleum whose gray marble was worn very smooth by two centuries of wind and rain. There was a phrase in Latin carved above the door.

“What does that say?” Willem asked.

The Doktor shrugged. “Something about God, I suppose,” he replied as he produced a tarnished brass key, opened the lock, and pushed the heavy metal door open. “Latin was far from my best subject. Your Uncle couldn’t even tutor me to proficiency.”

Willem almost laughed at that, remembering many mornings when he had found Uncle Gunther still in his chair, asleep with a copy of Virgil or Ovid on his lap. Then Willem remembered where he was just then, and he shuddered. “Is this….legal?”

“This is my family tomb,” the Doktor said, “and therefore my property. Someday I may be laid here as well, though somehow I doubt it if the war goes as I expect it will.”

The only light in the mausoleum came from the sun shining through a dingy stained-glass window which depicted Christ on the Cross. The walls were lined with graves. “More than two hundred years’ worth of my ancestors are entombed here,” Doktor Muething said. “Here and in four other tombs in this very yard. I suppose that this is the final benefit of wealth: burial above the ground.”

Willem thought of Uncle Gunther’s grave in a tiny church graveyard fifty miles away. Uncle Gunther had died poor.

They arrived at the back of the tomb where an immense urn, made of stone with brass trim, sat on the floor. The side of the urn was engraved with a list of ten names followed by dates: 1694-1748, 1699-1740, 1742-1748, and so on. Beside the urn was a single wooden coffin that showed no sign at all of decay.

“Here we are,” the Doktor said. “In this urn are the ashes of ten of my ancestors. Of course, putting all their ashes in a single urn is unorthodox; such measures were necessary, though. And here, in this coffin, is my great-great-great-great grandfather, Waldemar. His body was burned as well, but his bones remained as did a peculiar artefact of his final death.”

“Final” death? Willem thought as the Doktor lifted the lid and gestured for Willem to look. Inside was a complete skeleton, the bones mostly smooth and white although tinged with charring. There was no hair at all, no remaining flesh of any kind – just the bones. There was also the “peculiar artifact”: a single wooden stake impaled through the skeleton’s chest cavity. The stake was also barely singed, and the wood was shiny as if purified by the flames. Willem let out a long breath.

“A vampire,” the Doktor said. “Yes, they exist, and there used to be many – although they now number very few.” He lowered the lid on the coffin. “Waldemar von Muething, by all accounts, was a horrid man and never moreso than in death. His passing was cause for actual celebration by the rest of the family and the entire town. Some, however, doubted that death itself could stop a man who had practiced certain forbidden arts.” He noted the expression on Willem’s face and shrugged. “Yes, the man was a dabbler of sorts. Some of his journals escaped being burned by the townsfolk, and those I have in my collection.”

Willem remembered the book in the Doktor’s satchel.

“He died eventually of a mysterious wasting disease, and the town was only too happy that he was gone. But then others began to suffer the same disease – first Waldemar’s family members, and others later on. All reported dreams of being visited in the night by a ghostly figure that stank of earth and drank their blood. Seven townspeople died, including Waldemar’s brother, sister, and two nephews. His niece, though, recognized him when he came for her and the next day she told the town Priest, who opened this very tomb and found Waldemar not dead and not alive. A stake – that stake – was put through his heart. The same was done to all the others who had died of the wasting, though it is not clear that any of those would have become what Waldemar became. All were burned in a great pyre and the ashes placed in that urn – except for Waldemar’s bones, which somehow the flames would not consume. So it ended – only to be remembered as a curious episode in the town’s history.” His voice became soft and finally trailed away. Willem resisted a sneeze from the dust in the crypt. “I see you don’t believe me,” the Doktor said suddenly.

“Vampires don’t exist,” Willem said. “They’re made up, for nighttime stories to scare children.”

“You’re not much more than a child yourself, young Schliemann. And you seem a bit unnerved. Are you realizing just what we are doing in the laboratory?”

Willem blinked. No, Doktor Muething couldn’t be trying to…. “The experiment?” Willem stammered. “I don’t understand.”

“Yes you do,” the Doktor said, sounding slightly exasperated. “You are smarter than this. Say it.”

Willem still said nothing.

“Say it,” the Doktor commanded.

Willem swallowed deeply. “You’re trying to create on of them,” he finally said. “You’re trying to create a vampire.” Willem nearly choked on the sheer absurdity of those words. Vampires didn’t exist. They didn’t exist, damn it!

“Perhaps we should go now,” the Doktor said.

Willem didn’t say a word as they walked back to the staff car, and Doktor Muething repsected that silence at least until they were in the car and driving back to the camp.

“You are disturbed,” Doktor Muething said. “Is it so difficult to believe?”

Willem glared at the Doktor. “I thought I was working for the good of Germany. Instead you give me ghosts.”

“Oh, they aren’t ghosts. They are very far from ghosts. As a scientist, you should use proper nomenclature. And as for the good of Germany, I suggest you put aside such notions. Again, you are too smart to believe in such nonsense.”

“You are a traitor, to speak this way.”

“Nonsense. Germany will survive. The Reich will not, and for that I am thankful. It has been a frightful business, perverting the minds of the people – the children, worst of all. I hear it in your words as you say things that I know you do not believe. But I know something of you, now. And I knew Gunther, perhaps even better than you ever did. Everything we’ve been told for the last twenty years is false, and you know it.”

Willem looked down at his hands. The Doktor laid a hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t be upset, young Schliemann. All I have done here is to unfetter you from a belief you never truly held. You’ve known it all along. Those poor devils we’re experimenting on? Innocents. They are no one’s enemy.”

“Then how can you kill them?”

“Kill them?” Doktor Muething shook his head, and a look of great sadness came over him. “I am trying to save them.”

Willem looked up, met the Doktor’s gaze. “How?”

The Doktor sighed heavily. “Ah, there are more things in Heaven and on Earth than your philsophy dreams of. Something like that, anyway. Tell me, young Schliemann: what is medicine?”

The answer came automatically. “Medicine is treating the malfunctions of the human body by learning about the body’s limitations,” Willem said.

“Gunther’s words, and mine. Well, not ours, exactly; they were told to us by our teachers just as they have been told to you. ‘We study the limits of the human body and the effects of the world upon it.’ And the ultimate limits are the boundaries of life and death. We constantly probe those boundaries, and seek to move them. But the vampires? Ah, the vampires – they straddle the boundary, existing between it. So often we describe life and death as the faces of a coin. But does a coin not also have an edge, between the two faces? And does that edge not define the faces of the coin?” His voice trailed off as they arrived back at the camp. The car moved through the gates, stopping once to allow an arriving train to cross the road. Minutes later they were back at the laboratory, and Willem stifled a yawn. The Doktor checked his pocket watch. “Nearly noon,” he said. “A long time to be awake, and a short time to see the things that you have seen today. Take the remainder to rest, and we will begin tomorrow at the same time.”

Willem looked up at the Doktor. “I don’t believe in vampires, Herr Doktor.”

“Gunther did.”

Willem felt as though his blood had gone to ice. Doktor Muething nodded.

“Gunther and I worked together in school. He was as interested in vampires as I, perhaps even moreso – although I am unaware of anything in your family history that is similar to mine. But Gunther was the genius. He made the first breakthroughs; I have merely been carrying on his work, and noble work it is. He set the work aside, though, after the first War.”

Willem’s head spun. Uncle Gunther? Working on vampires? How could kindly old Uncle Gunther have done anything remotely like what Willem and Doktor Muething had done that morning?

“I don’t believe you,” Willem said weakly.

“Believe Gunther, then.” And with that the Doktor reached into his satchel and pulled out the black book, the book Willem had seen the night before whose title he hadn’t been able to make out, and handed it to Willem. “He wrote this book, you see. It is the collection of the work he did – that he and I did.”

Willem glanced down at the book cover. A single letter ‘S’ was enscribed there, and the lettering on the spine read Der Vampyr. He opened the book to the title page. There was no indication of publisher or date; only the title Der Vampyr and the name: Gunther Schliemann.

“Are you getting out?”

Willem looked up at the Doktor, and only then did he notice that the driver had climbed out of the car and opened the rear door. He moved for the door.

“Tomorrow, five o’clock,” said the Doktor.

As Willem climbed out of the car a fresh breeze stirred, chilling him. He scrambled to button his coat, but it did no good. He was suddenly very, very cold.

Share This Post

Posted on

Quanta

THE SCENE: A passenger compartment on the Orient Express. Five men enter the compartment, one at a time. Three are elderly but still with a certain twinkle in their eyes, while two are younger, in their fifties. All are impeccably dressed, in dark suits with perfect silk ties; their wristwatches are very expensive indeed. They take their seats in the compartment and wait for someone to speak. Finally one does.

JAMES BOND ONE: Well, as the first, I suppose I should call this meeting of Former James Bonds to order?

JAMES BOND THREE: That sounds fine, but shouldn’t we all authenticate ourselves?

JAMES BOND ONE: Quite right. Have any of you got a match?

JAMES BOND THREE: The snow this year is better at Innsbruck.

JAMES BOND FIVE: In London, April is a Spring month.

JAMES BOND TWO: I didn’t have any code phrases on my mission. But I do have this.

He holds up his left hand; on it is a wedding ring, which none of the other Bonds have.

BONDS ONE, THREE, FOUR and FIVE: Oh. Yeah. OK, you’re in.

BOND ONE: (eyeing Bond Four) What about you?

BOND FOUR: I’ve got this cool key ring that Q made for me. Just don’t whistle “Rule Britannia”, OK?

BOND ONE: (to the others) Good enough?

BONDS TWO, THREE and FIVE: Sure. Fine.

BOND ONE: All right, then. We’re all here, so I suppose we can get started—what?!

The compartment door slides open, and a guy dressed in full pirate regalia steps in. He’s got the big hat, the beard, the cutlass, the eye patch, everything.

PIRATE: I’m in the wrong compartment, aren’t I?

BOND FIVE: I’m not sure why you might think that.

BOND TWO: We’re former James Bonds.

PIRATE: Oh! I misread my ticket, I’m in compartment 696, not 969. I’m looking for the meeting of former Dread Pirate Robertses. Sorry, gentlemen.

Dread Pirate Roberts exits, and the train lurches into motion.

BOND ONE: So, how are we all enjoying retirement?

BOND THREE: Meh. Not all it’s cracked up to be.

BOND TWO: I retired too early.

BOND ONE: Yeah, that wasn’t a smart move on your part. You would have got a lot better at it with practice.

BOND TWO: Some people don’t think I was that bad to begin with!

BOND ONE: Sure, but I had to come back for one more after you left.

BOND THREE: And then it was my turn.

BOND TWO: I saw the film briefings on your missions. You certainly faced some strange people out there. That guy with the metal teeth….

BOND THREE: Yeah, it was questionable there for a while. Lots of people think I smirked too much. Pissed me off. I had to act like a dwarf was something to be scared of! I was in space! Were any of you guys in space?

BOND ONE: I almost went to space.

BOND FOUR: Yeah, way to go there. Even I know you don’t carry that air unit onto the capsule with you.

BOND ONE: It didn’t come with an instruction book, you know.

BOND FOUR: Uh huh.

BOND ONE: Say, weren’t you a Prince of Mongo before you joined the James Bonds?

BOND FOUR: Say, didn’t you get your head chopped off by a swordsman?

BOND ONE: That was a guy who looks like me. If my head had been chopped off, would I be here?

Bond Two is chuckling. Bond One turns to glare at him.

BOND ONE: What are you laughing at? You totally disappeared after your one mission!

BOND TWO: There was a TV show once, but that was–

BOND FIVE: Could we get back onto the subject, please?

BOND THREE: (whispering to Bond Four) He doesn’t want to talk about his all-singing routine.

BOND FOUR: Heh.

BOND ONE: All right, let’s get on with it. I assume we’ve all seen the latest film briefing on the second mission of Bond Six? Code-named “Quantum of Solace“?

BOND THREE: Wait, shouldn’t we order drinks first?

Almost as if on cue, the compartment door opens and a waiter sticks his head in.

WAITER: May I bring you gentlemen some drinks?

BONDS ONE, TWO, THREE, and FOUR: Vodka martini, shaken–

BOND FIVE: Whoa! Since we’re here to discuss Number Six, we should order what he orders, yes?

BOND ONE: Oh, Lord.

BOND FOUR: Yes! Three measures of Gordon’s Gin, one measure of vodka, one half measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it until it’s ice cold and serve with a twisted peel of lemon.

BOND THREE: I thought it was two measures of Gordon’s?

BOND FOUR: No, three.

BOND TWO: Do they even make Kina Lillet anymore?

WAITER: I’ll see if we have it, sir.

BOND THREE: But the Gordon’s – was it two or three measures?

BOND ONE: Just bring us some damn martinis, would you?

WAITER: Yes, sir.

(The waiter exits.)

BOND ONE: That’s the problem with Bond Six. He takes too long to order a drink.

BOND FIVE: That’s true. He reminds me of this woman I saw in another filmed document, one which traced the relationship of a man and a woman through eleven years of friendship before they got married. They stop at a restaurant and the woman goes to order apple pie but she’ll only have the ice cream if the pie is heated, or the whipped cream if it’s real and not out of a can but then the pie shouldn’t be heated, or if–

He notices that the other Bonds are staring at him.

BOND TWO: What are you talking about?

BOND FIVE: I have no idea.

BOND TWO: That doesn’t sound like any MI6 mission film I’ve ever seen.

BOND FIVE: It wasn’t. It was for fun. I saw it with some other people at one of those places where you pay to see films.

The Bonds all exchange quizzical looks, nobody having any idea what to say to this.

BOND FIVE: People like to see these films for fun.

BOND THREE: (to Bond One) Why’d they hire him, again?

BOND FIVE: Can we get back to Quantum of Solace, please?

BOND ONE: Please.

BOND TWO: I saw it last night. Who is filming these missions now, anyway? Did the MI6 budget for filming Double-O missions get cut or something? Whenever our man was called on to perform dome derring-do, it was impossible to see what he was doing.

BOND FOUR: Oh, I agree. That car chase at the beginning of the mission was terrible! Doesn’t MI6 assign a camera crew to get establishing shots anymore? I couldn’t tell how many cars were following him or what was going on there, until it was over. I suppose Bond Six is a good driver, but you couldn’t tell, really. It might have been luck.

BOND FIVE: I kept wondering why he didn’t just, I don’t know, launch his missiles at the attackers or use the water jets out of the tail lights or something.

BOND ONE: I don’t think he had that kind of car.

BOND FIVE: Well, that’s just crazy. I had an invisible car!

BOND FOUR: I heard Q-branch got its budget severely axed after that fiasco. Nobody took that seriously.

BOND FIVE: Hey, it worked.

BOND THREE: Sure it did.

BOND FIVE: I never saw you guys escape a crumbling glacier on a parasail!

BOND ONE: Come on now. We all know that MI6 had to rescue you, and to save face, they used their special effects division to make it look like you did that yourself.

BOND FIVE: Well I never!

BOND THREE: Judging by the fact that Bond Six doesn’t get any nifty toys for his missions, I assume that Q-branch was redirected after Bond Five to spend its time designing really neat computer displays for MI6? Have you ever seen cooler stuff?

BOND TWO: Well, I’ve got a phone that–

The compartment slides open again, and a woman with long, brown hair enters, stops, and looks at her ticket.

WOMAN: Oh, sorry. Wrong compartment. (stares at Bond Four) Mr. Steele?

BOND FIVE: No, sorry.

WOMAN: OK.

She exits.

BOND TWO: And the boat chase was the same thing, wasn’t it? Can anybody tell me how Bond Six managed to get that second boat to flip up into the air?

BOND ONE: He did something with a grappling hook, didn’t he?

BOND TWO: Sure, but what?

BOND THREE: Does it matter?

BOND FOUR: Probably not. But really, this guy’s got it hard, doesn’t he? At least the rest of us never actually fell in love on our missions.

Nobody says anything for a minute, and Bond Four glances around, wondering at the awkward silence, until he looks at Bond Two.

BOND FOUR: Oh yeah. Sorry.

BOND TWO: We had all the time in the world….

BOND ONE: We know. But I killed him for you, if that helps.

BOND THREE: Actually, I did.

BOND ONE: You did not! That wasn’t him!

BOND THREE: Sure it was! We just couldn’t refer to him by name, that’s all. But I dropped him down a smokestack.

BOND FOUR: I can’t believe you did that. I had to beg my father for enough money to buy a delicatessen in stainless steel, and he was gonna give you one just for not killing him.

BOND THREE: What the hell am I going to do with a delicatessen in stainless steel? I don’t even eat cold cuts.

BOND ONE: OK, enough of that. Anyway, we’re sorry about Tracy, Bond Two.

BOND TWO: Thanks. (blows his nose very loudly)

BOND ONE: But that’s a good point. Bond Six is awfully emotional, isn’t he? Is that really a good thing?

BOND FIVE: I think it is. Face it, we were all pretty glib. Well, except you, Bond Four. You were closer to him than the rest of us.

BOND THREE: I wasn’t glib all the time. Especially when I was in Greece. Did you see me kill that assassin?

BOND ONE: Yes. That was a good moment for you. We were all very proud.

BOND TWO: It impresses me how intense Bond Six is. He is so focused, isn’t he? And those eyes of his. He’s almost a hypnotist, isn’t he.

BOND FOUR: He is. And you can see him thinking when he’s fighting or chasing, can’t you? You can see him planning, considering his next move, taking in his surroundings and figuring out how to best gain the advantage. He’s really very impressive.

BOND FIVE: He has some wit, too. Actual wit, and not stupid double-entendres. I’m so glad that MI6 has dropped that particular requirement on the Bonds.

BOND THREE: Yeah, those kind of lost their cachet when you were going on about Christmas coming once a year, huh.

BOND FIVE: I’m still annoyed by that. Like any of you guys would have been caught dead with a woman named Christmas.

BOND THREE: No, I just had to get it on with a woman named Octopussy.

BOND ONE: Pussy Galore. Plenty O’Toole.

BOND FOUR: Wow, I’m glad I dodged those bullets.

BOND TWO: Me too. But at least I seduced three mental patients in one night! Did any of you do that?

BOND THREE: Yup, you sure cornered us in the “Scoring with Girls Who Are Phobic About Chickens” department.

BOND FOUR: Heh! I made it with one of the world’s great cellists.

BOND FIVE: Who broke up with you after you refused to pay for the repair of the bullet hole that you put in her cello.

BOND FOUR: Hey, maybe MI6 paid more when you came aboard, but there was no way I could have paid to restore a Stradivarius cello on what I was making back then.

BOND FIVE: You know, Bond Six looks really good without a shirt on. Seriously, he’s got an amazing physique. Those deltoids of his, and he’s got what the Americans call “a six pack”. Amazing. None of us was ever that – (notices all the other Bonds staring at him) – what?

BOND THREE: We’re men here, aren’t we?

BOND FIVE: I’m just pointing out the obvious here. It’s not like I’m–

BOND ONE: This from the Bond who spends his free time watching “romantic movies” with the commoners.

BOND FIVE: I don’t know why I talk to you fellows.

The compartment door slides open again, this time admitting an old guy who looks a lot like Richard Harris. The old man peers at his ticket and scowls.

RICHARD HARRIS: Oh, I am sorry. They make these damned tickets so hard to read…peers at Bond One…King Arthur?

BOND ONE: No, but I get that a lot.

RICHARD HARRIS: So do I.

Richard Harris exits.

BOND TWO: I thought he was dead.

BOND THREE: We’re complaining about realism, now?

BOND FIVE: But about Bond Six again. I think this guy may be Bond for a good, long time. He’s really good at it.

BOND THREE: But how does he not make love to the girl at the end? How can that be?

BOND ONE: I had to make love to Tiffany Case at the end of my last one. And that was after your wife had died.

BOND TWO: That’s OK, because you weren’t married to her. Oh, my poor Tracy.

BOND THREE: Oh, I’ve been putting flowers on her grave, just so you know. Solidarity and all that.

BOND TWO: But he was still getting over that Vesper woman. It makes sense that he wouldn’t fall for that Bolivian girl.

BOND ONE: Yeah, that’s OK with me. At least he scored with that Mrs. Fields.

BOND TWO: Mrs. Fields? The cookie lady?

BOND ONE: No, but the roster at the end of the mission film named her as “Strawberry Fields”. Was that a joke?

BOND FOUR: Of course it was – oh yeah, you’re the Bond who doesn’t like the Beatles.

BOND ONE: Absolutely not! I’m a Stones man, all the way. (singing) “I can’t get no’–“

BOND TWO: Please stop.

BOND ONE: What’s wrong with my singing?

BOND TWO: (singing) “Underneath the mango tree, my honey and me–“

BOND ONE: That wasn’t my fault. I didn’t write that song.

BOND THREE: Thank God for that.

BOND ONE: Oh, like you’re one to talk. (singing)“Love is required, whenever he’s hired! He comes just before the kill!”

BOND THREE: So, have you struck like Thunderball lately?

BOND ONE: That’s the only way to strike, baby.

BOND FOUR: (to Bond Five) Do you know what they’re on about?

BOND FIVE: I promise you, I have no idea.

Now Bonds One and Three are trying to out-do each other, singing at the same time:

BOND ONE: (singing) Goldfinger! He’s the man, the man with the Midas touch!

BOND THREE: (singing) Nobody does it better! Makes me feel sad for the rest!

BOND FIVE: (breaking in, louder than these two) Max Power! He’s the man, whose name you’d love to touch! But you mustn’t touch….

Silence falls, and Bond Five sits back, satisfied.

BOND FIVE: Good.

BONDS ONE, TWO, THREE and FOUR: Huh?

BOND FIVE: Once I lent my voice to another bit of…well, you don’t want to hear about that. Back to Bond Six: how come he isn’t getting a new Felix Leiter every time he goes out in the field? Anybody wonder about that?

BOND ONE: Damn, that got confusing. Every time I went out, a new Felix. One time I got a strong, handsome Felix. The next time I got Felix the accountant. And then they tried handsome Felix again.

BOND THREE: I only had one Felix. He was okay.

BOND TWO: No Felixes here.

BOND FIVE: Or here.

BOND FOUR: I had two. First one was like a bottle of Paul Masson.

BONDS ONE, TWO, THREE and FIVE: Ewwwwww!

BOND FOUR: Yeah, not very interesting at all. But then, next time, I got your Felix, Bond Three.

BOND THREE: And look what happened to the guy! Jeez, that was never supposed to happen to Felix!

BOND FOUR: I felt terrible about it.

BOND THREE: I hope so.

BOND ONE: It’s interesting how Bond Six’s Felix is working on his own thing, isn’t it? My Felix was always there to do whatever I told him to do. The new Felix actually gives Bond Six some lip. I wonder how he is in a scrape.

BOND FIVE: It’s too bad he had to work with such a ponce this time, isn’t it? That other CIA guy Felix was with? What a git.

BOND FOUR: Hey, he reminded me of another CIA guy I saw recently, in a historical documentation of a 1980s CIA clandestine operation in Afghanistan. Felix’s CIA buddy looked just like the guy in that other film.

BOND FIVE: Yeah, now that you mention it. The same porn-star mustache.

BOND ONE: Show of hands, though – who ever thought Bolivia would be a major location of a James Bond mission?

BOND TWO: Not me, that’s for sure. Is it really all desert down there?

BOND THREE: I guess so.

BOND FOUR: So, did those people get water when Bond Six got the bad guys?

BOND FIVE: I don’t think the mission film said whether they did or not.

BOND ONE: These new mission films certainly leave behind lots of loose ends, don’t they.

BOND THREE: They really do.

BOND TWO: If the bad guy drank the motor oil, why was he shot? And who shot him?

BOND FOUR: Obviously, Quantum is the new SPECTRE.

BOND ONE: You guys never had to deal with SPECTRE.

BOND TWO: I did!

BOND ONE: Oh yeah.

The compartment slides open again. It’s another beautiful woman.

WOMAN: Oh, sorry. (peers at Bond Four) Rhett?

BOND FOUR: (waving her off) SHHHHH!

WOMAN: Sorry.

She exits.

BONDS ONE, TWO, THREE, and FIVE: Rhett?

BOND FOUR: How the hell do I know?

BOND ONE: You know what? It amazes me that for these briefing films, MI6 spends money to have singers do songs for them. Especially when the song is such shite.

BOND TWO: Yes. Total shite.

BOND THREE: Shite indeed.

BOND FOUR: I liked it.

BOND ONE: Really?

BOND FOUR: No. ‘Twas shite.

BOND FIVE: It sounded good at first, but then it never went anywhere. Shite. But the animations were cool. I’m glad we’re beyond the silhouettes of naked girls flying about empty air or whatever.

BOND FOUR: I’d sure love to see some of the base footage of those old title sequences, though. It had to involve naked girls and trampolines.

BOND THREE: Ahh, trampolines. I’m so glad I got to do the mission with the circus in it.

BOND ONE: Yeah, that was quite the breakthrough there, Clownie.

BOND THREE: Well at least I defused the ticking nuclear bomb myself. I didn’t just stand there waiting for one of Felix’s buddies to do it.

BOND ONE: That bomb was very complex!

BOND THREE: He reached in and flipped a switch!

BOND ONE: That switch was hard to find, and I was still winded after killing the fat guy with the bowler hat.

BOND THREE: I was always able to turn the strong henchmen to my side.

BOND FIVE: Bond Six hasn’t had to deal with henchmen yet, has he? My last one had a face studded with diamonds.

BOND FOUR: My girl killed my last henchman.

BOND THREE: You know, I thought she was a pretty underrated girl. She was plucky.

BOND FOUR: Thanks. You really got screwed on the girl on your last one, didn’t you?

BOND THREE: Seriously, if she screamed my name one more freaking time, I was gonna toss her from that bridge myself.

BOND TWO: Interesting that the new guy hasn’t had to contend with a ticking bomb yet.

BOND FOUR: In all fairness, there’s a new guy on the scene in America who seems to have the market cornered on ticking bombs.

BOND FIVE: You mean that guy on TV who has our initials?

BOND FOUR: Yeah. “Chloe, hack the database! We’re running out of time!”

The Bonds laugh.

BOND ONE: So, are we all in agreement that Bond Six is doing a fine job? And that MI6 just needs to devote more energy to making the derring-do easier to follow?

BONDS TWO, THREE, FOUR and FIVE: We are.

BOND ONE: Good. So, let’s talk about something really important, then. Which of our girls was the hottest, eh?

The other Bonds begin talking heatedly at once, when the compartment door opens again, this time admitting an American man with brown hair and a little scar on his chin.

MAN: What’s this?

BOND TWO: We’re Bonds.

BOND THREE: James Bonds.

MAN: Oh, sorry. I’m looking for Jack Ryans. (peers at Bond One) Dad?

BOND ONE: No.

MAN: Sorry.

The man exits.

BOND TWO: I wish I’d get mistaken for someone….

BOND ONE: Maybe someday, Bond Two. Maybe someday.

BOND THREE: Speaking of someday, where are our drinks?

BOND TWO: Maybe we should order some food, too.

BOND ONE: Oh here we go….

And the train chugs away into the night.

Slightly edited to correct a joke.

Share This Post

Posted on

Sentential Links #150

This is the sesquicentennial edition of Sentential Links. Huzzah!! Let there be dancing in the streets! Let there be clicking of links!!!

:: This has been a test of the blogger ranting system. If this were a genuine rant, I would go through the trailer frame-by-frame and explain in exhausting detail why, how and precisely which details make the film look so mind-liquifyingly stupid. But to do that, I’d have to see the damn trailer again, and I’d rather watch Jar Jar Binks’s reenactment of Birth of a Nation with a polka soundtrack. (Wow! And he’s not ranting about the Star Trek trailer. What is he ranting about? If only there were a link you could click to find out….)

:: So. Happy birthday to a film that has done so much to shape how we think about ourselves. It has meant different things to different generations – and that’s the definition of a good piece of art. If you watch a lot of the other WWII movies made at that time – they seem dated, overblown, propagandistic, and overly simplistic. Not this one. Not this one. (I have a post in the hopper about Casablanca myself. I love it so!)

:: I spent a long time lingering over the cereal selection in the cafeteria at work this morning. It reminded me of my childhood breakfasts where, in the little upper cabinets above the stove, there was always a wide selection of cereals to choose from. (I love me some cereal! Most days it’s a whole grain cereal, usually sweetened – I need some sweetness, and will add a bit of sugar if I need to – with some blueberries on top. Once or twice a year I also succumb to my greatest cereal weakness: Golden Grahams. I can eat a box of those in two days. A big box. I love me some Golden Grahams. And one major reason why my weight went up in my freshman year of college was probably my standard breakfast that year: Froot Loops and Mountain Dew. Sometimes I wonder by what luck it is that I even have a pancreas anymore.)

:: It’s a good time to declare victory anyway. Victory can be at least as much frame of mind as fact on the ground.

:: It is no coincidence that many musical audition processes choose to hear a bit of Mozart and another bit of Bach. I could claim that after hearing a few minutes of each I pretty well know how a person plays, or at least how musical the individual is.

:: To be white and living on one of the vast dry high-altitude reservations of the plains West was to step into almost a different dimension. It wasn’t that people were different in the way that another country might be different, but that one’s most basic assumptions about everything were challenged. Ordinary tribal society was a tissue of dreams, half-memories, secrets, superstition, and outright lies meant to baffle and deflect.

:: Avocado Green and Harvest Gold – the defining home décor colors of the decade. Anyone who lived in the ’70s will remember these colors well.

:: I guess the vacation is finally over when you’ve used the last of the little soaps and shampoos you nicked from the hotel. (Wow, by that reasoning, I’m still at Disneyworld in 1998!)

:: Lets go build another 20 yrs. (Many happy returns!)

More next week, as always.

Share This Post

Posted on

BUY BUY BUY BUY STUFF STUFF STUFF STUFF

I read with some horror of the poor guy who got trampled to death by the stampeding shoppers at a Wal-Mart, and my feelings really weren’t all that mixed. Wal-Mart continues to anger me with this sort of thing. No, it’s not like somebody’s getting trampled to death every year on Black Friday, but crowd control isn’t that hard, especially when you’re dealing with an event like this where you know exactly when the movement of people is going to happen. Other retailers manage to figure this out: you set up stanchions and steel fence lines, you hire security people to direct the crowds into lines outside the door, and so on. There is absolutely no reason for Wal-Mart’s approach to simply boil down to “Unlock the doors, and then get the hell out of the way!”, no reason that I can see, except for one:

Wal-Mart likes it this way.

You’d better believe they do. What better publicity can there be for Wal-Mart’s unbelievable bargains than the annual news footage, which runs like clockwork on all the news stations every year on Black Friday starting with the very earliest local newscasts and then propagating out to the TODAY Show, of all those lunatic shoppers leaping forward from their three-point stances as they race into the damn store? Wal-Mart loves this publicity, and the news stations love giving it to them – otherwise, they wouldn’t have camera crews on site to capture this footage. Sure, having lines set up and personnel outside the store to help things move along in an orderly fashion might be safer and prevent the trampling death that everybody knew was gonna happen sooner or later, but that’s not fun to watch on teevee, is it?

And of course, that news footage every year helps guarantee that the same crowds will be there every year, probably even larger and they’ll be gathering even earlier, because every year somebody’s going to see that footage and think, “Hey, gotta remember that for next year!” And why does the news media think that a bunch of stampeding weirdos looking to buy stuff is important to show? Who knows why the news media thinks that most of the stuff it shows is news?

I have no problem at all with the 4:00 a.m. shopping stuff, even if I think it’s total lunacy. But I do think that the stores should make it safe. This was not a freak occurrence. Anybody who has half a brain and has seen the news footage of the Wal-Mart Shoppers of Pamplona in years past must know that sooner or later somebody was going to get killed on account of those $300 laptops, and just because it’s been a rarity doesn’t cancel out the fact that this was preventable. That guy did not have to die under the feet of shoppers who didn’t care enough to stop and notice him beneath the soles of their boots. Those people didn’t have to be running at all.

So, yeah: f*** Wal-Mart.

Share This Post

Posted on

Sunday Burst of Weirdness

Not a whole lot, since I wasn’t doing much websurfing, but:

:: Oh, come on. Here’s a simple test to see if the person you’re dealing with is an idiot: if they use the words “Muslim” or “Socialist” to describe Barack Obama, they’re an idiot.

:: Heckuva job, Bushie. God, these people need to go.

:: In a truly weird item: Matthew Yglesias, whom I believe to have grown up in NYC, is a native New Yorker who actually admits that NYC pizza isn’t the only kind of acceptable pizza in the world. But then, Matt is a pretty sensible fellow and not given to rabid lunacy.

OK, that’s all.

Share This Post

ForgottenStars.net

The official site of Kelly Sedinger: Reader, writer, photographer, and dreamer

Skip to content ↓