Life Without White Claw

For whatever reason, certain core products at the store where I work have been unavailable. Just temporarily but still. We received no White Claw this week. That stuff, and all hard seltzers, constitute a huge part of what we sell. Fun Fact: 27% of Earth’s water is trapped in cans of hard seltzer. And 73% of that is trapped in White Claw cans. Talk about popular.

I am not sure how these shortages owe to the pandemic but surely effects of the virus can be seen there and everywhere. And the people, us, you and me, just want normalcy. We want to go without masks, watch sports in a crowd, shuffle kids off to school, and sip chilled White Claw. There is nothing inherently wrong with such wishes, at least not until the pandemic started rewriting the rules.

A day may come when no White Claw can be had. Sports teams are trying to fire up but players keep scoring positive in Covid-19 testing. We are living life during war time and not showing a lot of grace about it. It may be human nature to argue with the implacable but the Coronavirus ain’t listening.

A customer said, in reference to those refusing to wear masks, ‘Just be a good citizen’. We are social animals. The pandemic inconveniences mean nothing. Our run-it-like-a-business Administration has continually tried to side with normalcy no matter how contraindicated. Normal to watch sports, normal to gather in crowds, normal to go without masks, normal to turn the ready profit. That normal no longer works. It can’t work. The Coronavirus just isn’t equipped to hear our hopeful bravado. White Claw may not save us.

Twister, the Movie, Not the Game

I have watched and enjoyed this movie numerous times. I didn’t see it in a theatre, where it could really zonk you with special effects. On the other hand, the requisite noise would likely have been obnoxious.

The movie offers a lot of homely virtues along with the effects. The plot —I forgot that Michael Crichton co-wrote the movie—follows a standard Hollywood map of romantic tension, virtueless bad guy, and final success. All occurs crisply. 

Helen Hunt leads the cast. She’s comfortably quirky. She keeps the drama subdued. Her team of storm hunters all look familiar from tv and film, tho you may not know their names. Each one bears a very definite stamp, an abundance of nerds. They were made to interact humourously without too much pressure. Philip Seymour Hoffman occupies his own continent of quirk. He wasn’t famous when the movie came out, and I haven’t seen any of his starring roles, but he sure puts energy into a small role of largely comic relief.

A surprising point of engagement with Twister resides in the sense of landscape displayed. The cornfields and wide spaces look so grand and inviting. It is Oklahoma in the summer, so hot and humid likely apply as apt descriptors of the climate but I want to be there. Granted, none of the characters appear to sweat. Still, one feels the enchantment—I will use that word—of sun and breeze and the living land.

When twisters finally show up, electricity passes thru the nerves. The fx looks real enough for me. Of course I would love to see a tornado, tho not in a risky way, and I don’t wish to see the destruction.

The movie rushes to its denouement. The blur of stunts as the F5 closes in is impressive if unlikely (the lucky near misses, the pickup driving completely thru a house). At one point the two twister experts decide to escape the tornado by entering a barn. Really? That at least affords a joke because the barn is full of cutting instruments, suggesting that some corn fed Jason Voorhees lives there. But all is well, science lives, and romance returns. Cue Van Hagar and the credits.

Note: I looked up director Jan de Bont's filmography. He was first a cinematographer. Twister shows a good visual eye. His directorial debut was Speed, a commercial and critical success. I never saw it, peccavi.

Twister did boffo at the box office but earned a Golden Razzie for poor direction. The movie looks good, Helen Hunt is strong, the rest of the cast is competent: I don't see the issue. De Bont got several more Razzies for movies I never saw. He kept working but his career seems to have fizzled.

The Great Betrayal by Ernie Bradshaw: The Crusades Suck

As a subject, The Crusades have long tickled my interest. As presented in school, The Crusades were more like an adventure story. Righteous Europeans heading off on a noble mission. Not being overly Christian—my family attended a godless Unitarian church—I didn’t thrill so much to the Manichaean battle. I accepted the Christians as the home team but wasn’t invested beyond that.

Saladin gave the Saracens a noble Robert E Lee hero to post against our Grant-like Richard the Lionhearted. And Richard brought in Robin Hood (or vice versa), so it all became fanciful backdrop to nifty stories rather than the overweening imperialism and schismatic crap that sat at the core of The Crusades. And don’t forget that Richard cost the home team a literal kingly ransom because he got captured.

Even as a child, I saw how addle-pated these enterprises were. The powers that be kept sending out mobs of almost organized mayhem, often under the leadership of visionary klutzes. The idea of a Children’s Crusade, for one, hardly seemed real.

These ramblings of mine came after reading The Great Betrayal by Ernie Bradford. It concerns the Fourth Crusade. That one was meant to free Jerusalem from Muslim control by kicking the butt of the sultanate in Egypt and Syria. The Pope said this was okay. To accomplish this fine deed of geopolitical machinations, you needed first of all ambitious nobles. Several were found, ready for glory.

Around these elite humans were gathered all those second, third, and fourth scions born of rich degree who lacked inheritance because first son got it all. Spoiling for spoils, you could say. An army of nobodies and battlefield fodder walked along amidst the stately horses, supple pawns of the game.

To reach Syria required ships. Who were the shipbuilders in the early 13th century? The Venetians, vested in commerce and trade. Who powered this merchant machine. The doge. Specifically one yclept Dandolo. To squeeze it to its simplest, Dandolo made a deal. The Crusaders got transportation and Venetian military might. Venice got the expectation of a huge payment and, oh by the way, a diversion from the Western front. This served Venice in two ways. The Eastern market remained open for Venice. To the West, a crucial trade impediment was removed. The Crusaders brought with them a thin excuse for a pretender to the BIzantine crown. The puppet would help make the Western trade sluice ever the more slick.

Constantinople had reached the effete stage of empire at this time, ripe for the Crusaders to pluck. In the space of about two years the city was burned twice and thoroughly sacked. Land grabs in the region ensured centuries of unrest, to put it mildly. Schism of the best.

I remember how mention of further Crusades had an and so forth air and were not offered in detail. I don’t know how many official Crusades erupted thru history. Some never got the moniker but you can surely place WWI on the list. And on it goes.

Having read this book makes me no scholar on the subject. You see the familiar patterns, tho. We are living them. The well-paid puppet in the White House constitutes just one more repetition of the greedy mantra. The power of making schism... The Crusades suck.