“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.”
—–Shakespeare, Henry V, Act-III, Scene-I
Click to Enlarge
There are a lot of brick walls in my part of town (inner-ring suburb) dividing the houses and yards from the every-mile streets – dividing the neighborhood from the outside world.
If you look at these walls, especially at places where streets dead-end into the surrounding road – you will see an odd variation in the types of bricks used. People don’t stop. Cars veer out of control. Then it is time to repair the wall – and exact matches of brick are impossible to find.
On a bike ride I came across an intact breaching – waiting for a work crew to come out in the summer heat and mortar new almost-matching bricks back into the breach.
It’s impossible not to look through the hole – sometimes it’s surprising what’s on the other side.
“I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of uncertainty about different things, but I am not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don’t know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we’re here. I don’t have to know an answer. I don’t feel frightened not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell.”
― Richard P. Feynman
A terrible Blackberry photo of my folding Xootr Swift parked next to a Yuba cargo bike (set up to carry a whole family) outside the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema. Two different philosophies on urban bicycling.
Jesus! I almost completely forgot!
It was six forty today and I was puttering around the house doing six-forty PM sorts of things when I remembered that over a week ago I had bought a movie ticket for a seven o’clock movie tonight.
An email had arrived touting a “Secret Screening” at the Alamo Drafthouse Richardson. That is where, for a discount ticket of six bucks, you get to see a movie – probably a genre movie from decades past – but you don’t know what movie you are going to see until it starts. I know that sounds nuts – but it is the sort of thing I can’t resist. When I checked the seating – although it was almost two weeks out – there were only single seats left, the others had already sold out. So I bought a ticket and proceeded to forget about it until six forty tonight.
Luckily, the Alamo isn’t very far away (remember – that theater chain won’t let you in after the movie starts) and I through some pants on and jumped in my car. It has been eleven days since I retired and this is the first time I’ve been in my car (I have ridden with other folks) since I stopped working. All other trips have been by bike – and I would have ridden to the Alamo if I had remembered earlier. Luckily, it started right up and shook the summer dust off and made it to the theater with a few minutes to spare. I need to get over being a boomer and learn a decent, reliable system of reminders for my phone.
I ordered a Temptress and sad back to see what movie we were going to be treated to.
It was a film called Prime Cut from 1972. When the name was announced, I didn’t think I had seen it, but when the guy came out and started to talk about it I realized that I had seen it, when it was released, but had not thought about it for, maybe, forty years. Let’s see, in 1972 I was in Nicaragua, so I would have seen it a year later – so I saw it in 1973 – forty-nine years ago. I remembered little bits about it – it was set in Kansas City, my old stomping grounds – and although KC is actually in Missouri, the film takes place in rural Kansas – though it isn’t a very good representation (there is a scene with a combine – a very good scene – an homage to North by Northwest – but the combine does something that combines can’t do – and believe me, I used to drive one of the damn things).
It’s a mob movie set in the wheat fields, a ton of violence and nudity, completely politically incorrect, a movie that could never be made today. It was of its time – a true genre film but with a strange, dark sense of humor. A lot of black comedy in the film.
One thing unusual for a movie of this type is that all three main characters are played by actors that won academy awards (four in total). The anti-hero is played by Lee Marvin, the bad guy by Gene Hackman, and Sissy Spacek – in her first speaking movie roll (four years before Carrie).
The crowd was into it – it’s the kind of people that will pack a theater to see a movie when they don’t know what it will be. They laughed at the anachronisms and sick humor and cheered the ending and again after the credits.
So I guess I had better check the calendar and buy tickets for next month’s Secret Screening. They teased us and said that since it was the 90th Secret Screening it would be a film from the 90’s – not much of a clue.
I went home with the waitress, the way I always do How was I to know, she was with the Russians, too?
I was gambling in Havana, I took a little risk Send lawyers, guns and money, dad, get me out of this.
—-Warren Zevon, Lawyers, Guns, and Money
Decatur Street, Halloween, 2012
Between
By the time he reached the restaurant Paul had actually forgotten that it was Halloween. The girl at the hotel checkout had green hair – but on the drive this faded from his mind. He waited at the bar and a waitress walked up and leaned into the station right next to him. She was wearing a tight black sweatsuit or something. A white sweatsock was pinned to one shoulder, hanging down over one small breast. A sheet of some translucent paper was tacked to the other side – and a few small cloth items Paul didn’t recognize were stuck here and there. At first Paul was taken aback at the outfit-but then he remembered that it was Halloween.
“What are you?”
“I’m Static Cling,” she said.
“That’s pretty good.”
“Uh huh.”
The place was almost empty, only one elderly couple sitting at a low table in front of a fireplace, the low hubbub of group in a private room. Static Cling was the barmaid and she stood next to Paul shifting from one foot to another, waiting for the bartender. After a minute a stocky man in a Hawaiian shirt appeared wearing an awful long black wig and started in on her order. She took the two white wines over to the elderly couple. Then the waitress showed up and Paul gasped when she bent over the table to lower the food. She was wearing a German dress and her cleavage was practically in his face when she set down the plates.
She stood up and looked at Paul.
“Let me guess,” he said, and noticed the glasses of white wine, “You’re the St. Pauli Girl.”
“Yes!” She said, and then sidled up next to Paul, in the spot where Static Cling had vacated – she seemed to have disappeared.
“You won’t believe what that old geezer just said to me.”
“What?”
“I left his food and he said, ‘The way you’re dressed, that’s not the only thing you’re peddling tonight.’”
“That’s terrible, you’re the St. Paulie Girl, what could be better than that.”
“Yeah, well, you know.”
“Yeah, I know.”
That’s how Paul met St. Paulie Girl and Static Cling.
St. Paulie Girl was so tall, open and outgoing, plus her costume was breathtaking. Those long legs shooting out from that bouffant skirt – the Teutonic cleavage, that bouncing hair. But Static Cling… petite, short hair, had an air of sullen rebellion. Paul found that aggressive attitude of unattainable aloofness sexy and irresistible. Static Cling was so focused – watching her carry drinks – something so simple – was like watching Dimaggio at the plate.
St. Paulie Girl’s most alluring aspect, was, to Paul, the fact that she didn’t light the brightest light – a transparent simple bumbling innocence.
“This blind date,” she told Paul as he ate his salad, “he excused himself, stood up and walked outside. When he didn’t come back I checked and he was passed out – flat on his face.”
Paul couldn’t figure out why she picked this story out of what must have been many breathless and lurid tales out of St. Paulie Girl’s unknown and undoubtedly colorful past. He felt sorry for the blind date – to have to live a life knowing you had a shot at St. Paulie Girl and blew it – couldn’t even maintain sobriety or consciousness in the face of such potential passion. How could the loser look at himself in the mirror every morning? If the guy used a straight razor he’d have to cut his throat… No, a shadow of a man like that would never own steel and a strop. He’d settle for cheap plastic disposables – or maybe one with five blades and a battery – one that quivers piteously when you drag it across your face.
“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” ― Lao Tzu
The family on the balcony at the Alamo in the Cedars, Dallas, Texas
Lee texted us on Friday – he and some friends were going to see the newest MCU film, Thor’s Love and Thunder at the Alamo in Lakewood and had two extra tickets. I’m sort of Marvel Superhero’d out – but it was a family thing so I said I’d go and was looking forward to it.
Candy and I drove down there and waited (not for very long, they were on time) and was reminded why – as a family – we will not see movies anywhere other that the Alamo chain of theaters. Lee had the tickets on his phone, so we were waiting in the lobby. This was an early showing – so the place was deserted. A single man walked up to the lobby guardian and asked him, “My family is in watching Maverick and I couldn’t make it on time – can I go in?” The guardian checked, saw it had been 20 minutes and said, “Sorry, I can’t let you in this late.” The Alamo has two rules that make going to the movies tolerable.
No text, phone use, or talking during the movie (they will throw you out).
No getting into the movie after it starts.
The man looked disappointed as he left. I asked the guardian if this happens a lot. “I’m afraid it does. If the movie in only a couple minutes in, I’ll go ahead and say it’s OK – but the film started more than twenty minutes ago.”
The last time I went to a movie not at an Alamo Drafthouse (so long ago, I don’t remember where, when, or what) a bunch of people came in ten minutes after the movie started, stood around in the aisles, talking loudly about what seats (the place was pretty full) they wanted to take and asking people to move to open up spaces so they could sit together.
Never again.
I hadn’t been to the Lake Highlands Alamo before – it’s really nice. They have powered, reclining seats… so comfy. Also, if you go to an Alamo – get there early – they do a great job of putting together little bits of film to get you in the mood. One thing they showed was a Thor Cartoon from the 60’s – I remember seeing that very one when I was a sprout.
So, all this was cool and all – but how was the movie? Uhh, it was Meh. I actually likes Thor Ragnarok – the humor brought by Taika Waititi was a breath of fresh air in the increasingly predictable MCU. I love his style of injecting humor into dead-serious situations (especially Jojo Rabbit). But here is all felt forced and overdone. Not an unentertaining time – but nothing special.
Also, I’m still suffering from withdrawn from Everything Everywhere all at Once (I’m still haunted by my thoughts riding my bike three miles home in the dark after that movie). That was a life-changing film and it isn’t fair to compare any other cinematic experience to that… but it is what it is.
Thor Love and Thunder did put a bit of a bug in my bonnet on the more overblown aspects of the MCU – thinking about the universe and all. Then, later on in the day, I decided, for some reason, to watch Eternals streaming at home.
It was awful.
The movie is about a group of superhuman androids that live, basically forever, protecting humankind from destruction (at least they think they are). There are fascinating concepts – like a superhero that can control minds ending up as a Jim Jones-like cult leader in the Amazon – someone that spends eternity stuck in a pre-pubescent girl’s body, destined never to grow up (her fellow Eternals treat her like a little kid even though she is thousands of years old), – there is a moral quandary between duty and kindness – all these amazing aspects – yet the movie is horribly boring. All the fascinating stuffins are ignored for silly action scenes and interminable stretches of all the Eternals standing around talking about nothing. Why did I bother?
Many of our most influential experiences are shared with and, according to a growing body of cognitive science research, partly shaped by other people.
Virtual money flowing across the surface of the sculpture.
Fountainhead
Charles Long
Northpark Center
Dallas, Texas
A coffee shop in Philadelphia known for its LGBTQ brand identity closed its doors after employees revolted against the owners and demanded that they “redistribute” the company.
The Biden administration sold roughly one million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to a Chinese state-controlled gas giant that continues to purchase Russian oil, a move the Energy Department said would “support American consumers” and combat “Putin’s price hike.”
The focus on one shocking act of violence is understandable but the city of Chicago saw many acts of violence over the July 4th weekend. In fact, more people were shot and killed over the 3-day weekend than died in the mass shooting in Highland Park. Local residents wonder why the violence they see every day doesn’t seem to attract much attention or resources.
America’s Great Awokening produced cottage industries and small fortunes. Consultants and trainers peddled odd academic theories to multinational corporations, earning millions; authors such as Ibram X. Kendi won massive grants and intellectual prizes. On the other side, public intellectuals like Jordan Peterson emerged in part as theorists of what was wrong about woke culture; conservatives like Ben Shapiro and liberals like Dave Rubin grew their audiences with an anti-woke message.
“Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.”
― Werner Heisenberg, Across the Frontiers
Caterpillar – not so much HDR strangeness.
So… I was lounging around the house, as I am wont to do, feeling a strong lack of ambition and a strangely upset digestive system… so I decided to watch a couple of strange movies. The best scratch to an itch like that is to call up my streaming Criterion Channel. I coursed though the selections, looking for something that looked odd… and there were plenty. So I picked.
The first one was directed by Jon Moritsugu and called Terminal USA.
Here’s the description:
Shot in eyeball-scorching Panavision, TERMINAL USA is underground anarcho-punk auteur Jon Moritsugu’s freak-out magnum opus that shocked America—and prompted a conservative outcry against public funding for the arts—when it was broadcast on television in the midnineties. The director himself plays twins (one a drug-dealing badass, the other a closeted math nerd) in a radically dysfunctional family that completely obliterates the myth of the “model minority.”
I’m sorry, but it wasn’t very good. There is a thin line between weird and bad – but this one landed on the bad side. As I always say – the way to judge a weird film is to think if you care about the characters and care about what happens to them. In this one… I didn’t care. There is something to be said about simple and homemade – but this was beyond amateurish – it wasn’t sophomoric – it wasn’t even freshmanoric.
Since this was a couple hours of my life I won’t get back – I decided to try again – and found a film under an hour long.
This one was directed by Joel Potrykus and had the provocative title Thing from the Factory by the Field.
It’s description:
A band of teenage metalheads get more than they bargained for when they accidentally kill a demon during a satanic ritual.
This one I liked. I can’t say it was good – but it was worth an hour of television streaming. I did care about the kids in the movie – though I don’t really like them. It had an imaginative, unique plot that made up for the wooden acting and ultra-low production values.
When I was a kid, my friends all had these fiberglass bows (my father bought me a laminated wooden one – which was better – but I was jealous of the cool plastic bows) and we would shoot arrows straight up until they disappeared into the sky. Then we would stand as upright and thin as we could – to lessen the chances of getting hit by the invisible, unseen arrows, descending at insane speeds. It was as exciting as it was stupid. The Thing from the Factory by the Field reminded me of this… I hadn’t thought about it for decades.
And the movie had a surprise, jump-scare ending – which is always a good thing for a weird short film.
It began as a holiday. Arthur Howitzer Jr., a college freshman, eager to escape a bright future on the Great Plains, convinced his father, proprietor of the Liberty Kansas Evening Sun, to fund his transatlantic passage as an educational opportunity to learn the family business through the production of a series of travelogue columns to be published for local readers in the Sunday Picnic magazine … Over the next ten years, he assembled a team of the best expatriate journalists of his time and transformed Picnic into The French Dispatch, a factual weekly report on … world politics, the arts – high and low – fashion, fancy cuisine, fine drink … He brought the world to Kansas.
—- Narrator, The French Dispatch
The French Dispatch
I had an hour or two free and decided to watch a streaming movie. I have always enjoyed Wes Anderson’s work so I called up The French Dispatch (recently added to HBO max). And it was an enjoyable film.
I didn’t like it as much as Moonrise Kingdom – which I saw in the theaters, but it’s on a par with some of his other more recent work. For me, the judgement of a film like this – one that is obviously very stylized and springs from the unique mind of the director – is if I gave a shit about the characters. I really cared about the folks, especially the young couple, in Moonrise Kingdom. In The French Dispatch… not so much.
Of course, any film I see right now will suffer in comparison to Everything, Everywhere, all at Once – which is still rattling around in my noggin – and I really, really cared about all the characters in that masterpiece.
The movie is a love letter to the New Yorker. A deserving subject, to be sure, but one that is more than a little dry, twee, and removed from the hell of our present lives.
That said, the stories were intriguing, original, surprising, and a lot of fun. It was a fine way to pass the time, but I won’t remember it a year from now. Probably the most enjoyable part is playing “spot the famous actor.” Everybody is in this thing….
“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”
― Albert Einstein
Lee walking in the surf at Crystal Beach. I checked my old blog entries – this was December 29, 2002.
Lee walking in roughly the same spot, fifteen years later. There was no sun and it was very cold and windy. Same ocean, though.
From my old online journal The Daily Epiphany – Friday, August 21, 1998
The seduction of luxury
In the weeks since the timely demise of the Piece-of-Crap Mazda I have been spoiled by the luxury of having two decent, running vehicles in our single family unit (The Mazda, though generally running, really couldn’t be considered decent for the last half a decade).
Usually I’m driving the Taurus and I take great pleasure in the electric windows. I’ve never owned a car with electric windows before, I always considered them simply something else to go wrong. I like them, though. So smooth. So quick. So silent. So effortless……
I was typing these silly thoughts up on the PC in the living room, transcribing from a spiral notebook. Candy was at a party. The kids were playing back in Nick’s room with a friend from next door. They said they were “making a movie” – they didn’t have the CamCorder so it must have been all make believe.
My typing was suddenly interrupted by Nick running down the hall, “Lee hurt himself!” I could hear bloody murder screaming from the room.
Lee had been jumping off the top bunk of the bed and stuck his head into the ceiling fan. Nick’s fan is an imitation fighter plane, frozen in a forever dive stuck through the roof. The triple blades are wide, elliptical and heavy. It had really whacked Lee’s noggin a good one.
By the time I had him settled down, there was a huge lump on the right side of his forehead; it looked the size of a golf ball. I put him onto a bed, gave him his favorite blankets and an ice pack and he calmed down, even to the point of looking sleepy.
I was scared. Not sure of what to do, whether to take him to the emergency room or not, I consulted The Book. Every parent, especially nowadays without extended family around to give bad advice, must have a book on emergency procedures handy. Ours is a tome put out by Consumers Guide, edited by Ira J. Chasnoff, M.D.
The book made me feel a lot better. The basic advice was to look for signs of concussion and if there aren’t any, then simply keep the kid quiet, a doctor isn’t necessary. The book says:
Most children suffer one or more blows to the head at some time during childhood. Typical reactions to head injuries are immediate crying, headache, paleness, vomiting once or twice, a lump or cut at the site of injury, and sleepiness for one or two hours. These are not the signs of a concussion – they are usual reactions to a blow on the head.
So I checked for concussion – the kids said he never lost consciousness, he remembered getting hit, he could walk, he wasn’t confused (no more than usual), no fluid or blood, I shined a light in his eyes to check his pupils. I had to shine the light in my eyes to let him see what I was looking for, “Wow, Dad! Those black spots get Really Small when the light hits ’em!”
And he was fine. I sat beside him, holding some ice cubes folded in a washrag against his lump, for a couple hours watching Cartoon Network. ( Space Ghost Coast to Coast is really funny, by the way). By the time Candy came home he was out in the living room, drawing pictures of Scooby Doo.
If you have a glass full of liquid you can discourse forever on its qualities, discuss whether it is cold, warm, whether it is really and truly composed of H2O, or mineral water, or saki. Zazen is drinking it.
—-Taisen Deshimaru
Trinity River Bottoms
Dallas, Texas
Pissing in a Cup
Craig would start his new job in ten days – today was the day for that new traditional pre-work-related task, the drug test. It was all set up by the Talent Aquisition Department with an appointment at a specialized drug testing clinic in a strip mall in a slightly shady industrial area. Craig drove by a day ahead of time to be sure he could find it. He could leave nothing to chance – he needed this job.
He was worried that he wouldn’t be able to pee on demand, that there wouldn’t be enough to fill the plastic cup. So he avoided the toilet when he woke up and before Craig drove to the clinic he chugged two generous tumblers of ice water – so he could be sure to perform on cue.
Of course they only needed forty-five milliliters, which he easily provided. The drug-test bathroom was a little bizarre, no trash can, only a wooden box and chain-of-custody tape on the toilet. Craig decided not to use that weird toilet because he was planning on going to a big warehouse electronics store afterward to pick up a switch for his new scanner and a couple programming books – a slight celebration for his impending gainful employment. He knew that place had a big bathroom – he had been there many times. It even had a changing table in the men’s room – a rarity. He had changed each of his son’s diapers more than once. That was nice – Craig hated most men’s rooms where he had to lay his infant son – one or the other – down on the floor in a stall. He was no germaphobe… but still.
Unfortunately, when he arrived, the men’s room was being cleaned. A well-mustachioed cleaning lady was dutifully mopping and had a sign propping the door open that said, “Bathroom closed for cleaning, sorry, five minutes.”
Craig started walking around the store. He tried to stop and look at the kiosk of books on sale to pick out the ones he wanted but he couldn’t concentrate. He had to pee so bad by then he had to keep walking.
His only recourse was to continually circle the huge store, going from music CD’s into the washers and driers, cruising through the high definition and projection televisions (they were all showing A Bug’s Life) through the laptop computers, passing down the mouse and video card aisle into the electronic gadgets, finally walking through software and past the bathroom to see if she was still mopping.
It took her a lot longer than the advertised five minutes. Craig couldn’t stand still and had to keep moving. He considered walking out to my car and driving to a nearby fast food place to use their bathroom, but decided it would be probably quicker to simply wait her out.
Finally, on his fifth circuit of the store he saw her putting the mops and buckets back into the janitor’s closet. A herd of men at that point converged and rushed the bathroom; Craig must not have been alone.
“I love the smell of book ink in the morning.” ― Umberto Eco
Stuff on a picnic table in Huffhines Park, Richardson Texas.
Day two of the rest of my life. I didn’t get up as early as I liked – but I did pack up my bike and hit the road by 8 AM. Today I decided simply to loop around through the square mile of the Duck Creek Neighborhood – and get my five miles in that way.
I stopped five miles in and grabbed a table under the trees in Huffhines Park (not far at all from where I live). After my ride yesterday I added a pair of Bluetooth earbuds, a notebook, reading glasses, and a Kaweco Sport fountain pen – so I could sit, listen to music, drink my thermos of coffee, and write a bit.
It was so nice. A large group was playing cricket in the outfield of the softball diamond. I remembered when I was at a meeting with the Richardson Park Department at the Huffhines Recreational Center (right across the little pond from where I sat today) I recommended the city put in a proper cricket pitch on some vacant parkland across Plano road. They looked at me like I had lost my mind – but I stand by my idea.
I watched a large bug climbing the tree next to me. Huge, black, full of odd angles and jagged bits (I guess to make him look unappealing to predators) he used his surprisingly delicate legs to find his way up the rough park towards the distant leaves.
The squirrels chattered by, one hauling a half of an Osage Orange fruit up a tree.
There is a constant parade of walkers – most with dogs – going by on the jogging trail. A mother with her young daughter strolled by – the daughter was blind, feeling ahead with her white-tipped cane, but with confident strides holding her mother’s hand.
And I finished my coffee – I let the song come to an end and packed it all up. I put in another five miles – I need to drink my coffee sooner – it gave me a burst of energy, I felt faster and the pavement rolled by easier.
Bill Chance 