*Inside Out* by Nick Mason (Pink Floyd)

I picked up this e-book from Amazon Prime because it was available. I am not a Floyd enthusiast, but I like rock bios. Pink Floyd along with Black Sabbath are among the holes in my listening from the day. Only a few years ago did I start to rectify that some. Sabbath has rewarded me; Floyd less so.

Be that as it may, this is a pretty great memoir. Mason was more than just a drummer, he contributed to Floyd creatively as much as anyone. And he writes well, assuming there is no ghost, with humour and reasonable fairness. There’s always an opportunity to snipe in such books, and I know there were tensions in the group, but I think he keeps that in check.

Floyd’s early years resembled the coterminous San Francisco sound. Syd Barrett was the creative spark then, writing charming psychedelic songs. Spellcheck appropriately changed Syd to Sad, which I will get to.

They played some dates similar to the Acid Tests, with lightshows and general communal experimentation. The band early on showed interest in more than cranking the tunes. Lighting and production, for instance, as well as improvisation were serious aspects of their concerts.

I have a taste for psychedelic music. I never really cottoned to the drugs that went along with the music. That’s perhaps why I didn’t seek out Floyd back then. The drug overlay never bothered me with the Dead and others so I don’t know.

Anyway, Barrett fell apart. Like Skip Spence, another genius, drugs took their toll and both faded away. Spence died in his 50s, Barrett remains alive, somewhere... Gilmore joined the bad and fit in.

Like with The Beatles, Pink Floyd got deep in the new technologies. Not just multi-track recording but reshaping sounds in ways I don’t understand. Their lightshows and productions were grand to grandiose. I am not interested in that. I just want to see the musicians play so there’s that whole realm of Floyd that I paid no attention to. Additionally, I have never had really great equipment to hear music on. They went deep into recording techniques that I couldn’t hear.

I guess it is common knowledge but David Gilmore plays a greater role than I thought in Floyd. He sings many songs that I thought were sung by Waters, he wrote songs. Waters seems like a bit of a load but they all worked well as a unit for quite some time. I have yet to read of the split but I know it sizzles even now, especially between Waters and Gilmore.

This is as good as a rock memoir gets. Mason at least keeps evenhandedness in mind. He doesn’t offer things salaciously. He’s funny. I am glad to be reading Inside Out.

Killer Klowns from Outer Space

The movie exists. Coulrophobia is real. Clowns are creepy. Killer Klowns from Outer Space extends from these salients. It would have to.

Merriam Webster defines coulrophobia as an irrational fear of clowns. I say nothing is irrational about that fear. At their best, clowns are unsettling. Also, the esteemed dictionary cannot cite a satisfying derivation of the word, which first appeared in 1998.

Killer Klowns appeared in the 80s. It exhibits a modest budget, with John Vernon of Animal House the only actor I’d heard of. The movie shows the hallmarks of a teen flick—I will offer the 1980s as the Golden Age of Teen Flicks. Instead of hijinks, however, the movie registers a surprising degree of scary malice.

The story begins with a couple of young people making out in a car (teen flick!). They see something flash thru the sky and go to investigate. An old coot (from central casting) also sees the flash and does likewise. He reaches the object first, a bright, colourful, tent-like thing. As he looks around both he and his dog are disappeared. An air of boding remains.

The young couple come along and gain entrance to the tent thing. They find abundant cotton candy and popcorn inside, and a brightly colourful circus decor. Checking out the cotton candy, they find a person within the cocoon-like mass of the stuff. They then encounter a clown.

Here we reach the key to the movie’s power. This being, clearly an alien, looks like a clown in brightly coloured clown regalia. That’s bad enough but the clown quality isn’t quite right. The skin of the creature is weirdly wrinkled and it’s teeth are disturbingly crammed and jostled within the mouth. Malice seems to emanate from the creature, especially from the eyes.

The clown pursues the young people, throwing popcorn at them as well as shooting a ray gun. It also fashions a dog out of balloons, which then becomes animate and chases after the young people. The young people manage to get in their car, hit the clown, and get away. The clown gets to its feet after the car roars off.

The movie splits here, with the young people trying to get help being one plot line, and the visitation of the Klowns in the town. The young couple go to the police where the woman has a friend. He’s a young college grad who therefore finds himself at odds with John Vernon’s older cop. Vernon is great, overflowing with cranky malice of his own.

The rampage, to call it that, of Klowns thru the city supplies a number of creepy, unsettling set pieces amidst the town’s population. In one, a short Klown riding a small, colourful motor bike meets a biker gang. A biker picks on him and destroys his bike. With one punch, the Klown knocks the biker’s head off. In another scene, people are gathered at a pizza joint. A young girl at the table notices a Klown outside. The Klown beckons her. Oh dear! She reaches the door but her mother shepherds her back. All the other encounters end with someone dying, usually encased in that cotton candy stuff. Somewhere along the way we are informed, or the inference made, that the Klown’s will eat their victims.

The young cop comes to believe something is up, to the disgust of the John Vernon character. The two young men decide to go back to the alien ship. They take the young woman home first. She takes a shower. Some of that popcorn stuff tumbled off her clothes. These turn into Gremlin-like creatures from which she luckily escapes.

At the station, the older cop continues to fume about the hoaxsters who have been calling in about killer clowns. One enters the station...

The young cop and young guy find a Klown doing extraordinary shadow figures against a wall, to the delight of a small crowd. His hands have three fingers and a thumb, like in cartoons. A figure of a Tyrannosaurus rex suddenly swallows the crowd. Yikes! Our heroes get away.

The cop returns to the station, where things don’t look right. He finds the Klown sitting at the desk with the older cop on his lap. Malevolence is palpable. The older cop speaks, tho clearly dead, as if a ventriloquist dummy. This was foreshadowed earlier when he says something like, Do they take me for a dummy? The Klown removes its hand from the cop’s back with a creepy squishy sound and pushes the body aside. He comes for the young cop. Bullets have no effect until one hits the klown’s big red nose, at which point it explodes in a dazzling display.

The young guy meanwhile recruits two buffoons to go save the abducted girlfriend. The buffoons are comic relief, if you want to call it that. Their buffoonery hits the half-assed level of teen flicks. The remaining cop joins up with the other four. A gigantic master Klown appears and just about finishes the cop. Luckily he manages a shot to the giant’s nose which destroys the giant and the ship. The end.

One gets the idea that somebody woke from a dream with the idea for this movie. Robert Louis Stevenson claims that “Dr Jeckel and Mr Hyde” developed from a dream. The unwholesomeness of clowns agitate all of us. But whereas clowns are, as characters, bumbling or sad, these Klowns bring malice and malevolence. They murder playfully.

I am bound to appreciate a movie that has an idea, and surges with it. Movies often no longer seem creative. Certainly franchise movies, however they began, become the work of bookkeepers. I appreciate films in which we see evidence that the filmmaker stepped off the path a bit.

Killer Klowns and River Beast

Netflix currently offers Killer Klowns from Outer Space for your delectation. I watched the first minutes this morning, to wet my whistle. The movie shows the value of riding the thunder, going with the wild idea. I have seen the movie before and welcome this opportunity to watch again.

Hollywood A-movies scale for everybody, the hopeful sortilege of blockbuster. B-movies, amongst which Killer Klowns nestles nicely, depend less on scope (of budget mainly) and more on energy, the thrill of throwing scarce ducats at wild ideas. To watch this movie is to revel, I say revel, in the idea: of killer klowns, from outer space. The creative energy becomes a palpable thing.

That’s not to say that Nobody doesn’t star, and Forgetable doesn’t have way too many lines. That doesn’t matter. And just to say, the guy from Animal House as the Sheriff is perfect casting.

I don’t mean to review it now, I haven’t seen the movie in years, but just note how compelling the movie is to me. Hollywood’s algorthims of composed mercantile delight never ceases to unamaze me. Movies outside that commercial imperative can offer a satisfying jolt, as if someone had their own idea.

Which brings me to a further lucky find. Amazon Prime has a gem called Don’t Let the River Beast Get You. I watched this on some now forgotten platform. Not remembering it’s title in Googlish terms, I could not relocate it till now. I even downloaded it onto my phone that I might study it.

Whereas Killer Klowns presents some decidedly creepy mayhem amidst its wackiness, River Beast barely registers for horror despite its title character. It’s a little like Creature from the Black Lagoon but with a wry, skewed humour and relentless homemade feel. Indeed, it was filmed along the Merrimack River in Manchester, NH, and other local environs. This post is just a warning that I will write further on these two movies. Also, I invite you to partake of their delicate mysteries yourself.

Massacres and Pink Floyd, It All Makes Sense

Amazon Prime offers a memoir by Nick Mason, drummer for Pink Floyd. I had to get it. Rock memoirs are generally gold, tho Paul Stanley’s proved boring enough that I stopped reading. I did just finish an account of the Federman Massacre by Dee Brown and want to read something less light-hearted. I assume the contentions between the Floyds will prove salaciously brutal. Having read two pages, I sense that Mason can at least write a proper sentence. That assumed he’s the one who tickled the keyboard. I haven’t seen ghostwriter credit but maybe I missed it.

As to the Massacre, Federman himself actually plays a minor character in Brown’s book. He arrives late in the story, after much tension between the Sioux and the folks at Fort Phil Kearny. He presages Custer’s rashness by leading 80 soldiers to obliteration against thousands of hostiles. He had sworn that 80 soldiers could defeat the entire Sioux nation. His estimate fell short.

Brown details the bureaucratic dysfunction of the military as well as the heartlessness of the so-called manifest destiny empowering the westward thrust. To quote The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce regarding ABORIGINIES: ”Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a newly discovered country. They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize.” And do it goes.

Brown’s sense of detail brings to mind Son of the Morning Star by Evan S Connell. Connell’s narrative is dramatic and compelling. He managed to unearth info about a vast amount of people involved in Custer’s plunge into history. I have read the book numerous times because it is so thorough, so sad, and so chilling.

I suspect Mason will have some chills to offer. I don’t, as it happens, care for Pink Floyd. The enormity of their popularity in fact baffles me but I suspect good tales can be told. And thus some peregrinations of my recent reading.

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.

Karen vs the Mask (A Pandemic Tale)

I had my first Pandemic Karen moment yesterday. The few previous negative interactions have been more certified asshole vs my angelic nature. Yesterday was a matter of entitlement.

I saw in a glimpse someone enter briskly as I stood at the counter with a customer. My colleague on the floor noticed her masklessness and spoke up. She said masks make her sick and hustled on. He was with a customer and didn’t go beyond that.

When done with my customer I saw the perp just gabbing with someone. It angried up my blood, I will admit. I went to her and told her she had to leave if she won’t wear a mask. She was outraged. Masks make her ill. I didn’t negotiate, I said you must leave. Can I buy this 12-pack of Sam Summer Ale. No, you have to leave. And blah blah blah. Just go!

The person she was with offered to buy the beer. Karen told my colleague and me that breathing co2 makes her sick, and the moisture... What exactly about the moisture? I don’t know. Neither of us wanted to hear it.

A masked Karen could have been in an out with her Sam Summer in three minutes. She seemed a healthy forty years old and could handle the ravages of co2 and moisture. That’s an assumption, I know, but it is not like she cited emphysema as why she refuses masks. I have had two customers who made me think they should go without. They both were older and breathed with effort. They managed.

A man was at the counter with my colleague. He asked if many people go without mask. It has become a rare occasion, he was told, and often enough they go get their mask without reminder.

The guy turned out to be a friend of Karen, came with the other woman. He said in Kentucky, masks are not required. He went on to say he doesn’t believe in wearing masks. He wears them out of respect, or courtesy. He added that he is in the healthcare industry.

Not specifying in what capacity, as doctor, nurse, or technician, leaves one to wonder to what degree he is in the industry. I shrug. Karen speaks of illness but she means discomfort. The words are not synonymous.

Karen entered the store as if it were her right to go unmasked. The answer to that is: 1) The state has issued a mandate. 2) The store can set its own policy. Showing customers that the store takes this shit seriously is an act of reassurance.

Beth went into the hardware store the other day. A kid sat at the register without a mask. Beth pressed him to put one on, and he ignored her. Finally another employee said, just put the mask on, it is making customers uncomfortable. That’s all, just do it for that. Amidst the world’s problems, mask-wearing does not scale.

The Problem is Pandemic

If you need another clue about the effects of the pandemic around you: a shortage of Budweiser beers currently exists. Now I am too good-looking to make sense, and the shortage is modest, probably just local (I will explain in a bit), but we are talking Budweiser, part of the conglomerate‘s conglomerate, AB-InBev.

Right now, some of the popular package sizes for Bud products are unavailable from the distributor. No twelve packs and eighteen packs to be had going into Fourth of July weekend (which lasts like ten days). That is not how Budweiser works. The spigot to that ocean of beer should always remain open.

Earlier this year, bar versions of Bud and Bud Light were offered at discount to retailers. It’s the same product as the retail version but packaged in a slightly cheaper box. While retail has enjoyed good sales during the pandemic, on premise obviously has been zero. Distributors have yet to bring back all of the sales staff that were furloughed back when restrictions were firmest. This shit ain’t over.

I can’t explain the unavailability of Bud products—too good-looking, like I said—but I think it is all cannedproducts. Is there an embargo on Chinese tin? The company that collects the deposit bottles and cans from us appears ready to go under.

We know that those states that rushed to open are rethinking that tactic. I detect a more dubious note regarding sports purveyors for 2020. Meanwhile Trump threatens funding if military bases honoring Confederate heroes are renamed. More shit, same fan.

Floating Coast by Bathsheba Demuth

This book. Beth heard of it somehow and ordered it. She is attracted to things Alaskan, having lived there for years. The plight—must use that word—of native people there is also an interest and concern. While Beth studies for the real estate appraisal license, I have free access to the Floating Coast.

I have only read a couple of chapters but can assure that the book seethes with power. It describes the hunting and killing of whales by the native population and by the crazed American commercial fleet. I use the word ‘crazed’ because of the thorough, monomaniacal dedication to suck every last penny from the enterprise. Crazed too for the dangers faced for economic glory. Place that fat fact next to today’s ghastly balance between keeping people alive, or the economy.

Demuth brings in capitalism and socialism, shamanism, and conflicting world views, while delineating the usage of dead whales as energy sources. I remember the heroic wonder when learning about whaling as a child. The hunt of those whalers, emanating largely from Massachusetts, never suggested the native necessity nor the wholesale commercial slaughter of these creatures. The shanties were pretty good, tho.

The Coronavirus is Slightly Inconvenient

A man at the counter turned to two women, mother and daughter, standing nearby and greeted them. I detected a creeped out reaction from the daughter tho both replied politely. After a moment recognition occurred. He runs the gym program at the base or some such. We all forget how masks work. I won’t mention not recognizing Beth when she came in one time.

The man spoke of the gym just opening now. Only active personnel, not yet open to however the women got use of it. Still working out procedures, he said. Aint we all?

A customer who works at a restaurant said his restaurant set up tables outside, to accommodate social distancing. And then a couple evenings ago, a hellacious downpour. Add an investment in umbrellas to the budget.

The return of sports resonates with nervous desperation in these fraught times. Yes, the palliative normalcy of sports would feel good. Talk shows and sports pages have been gassing these past few months. The world would prefer Phi Slamma Jamma to bemoaning how uncomfortable masks are.

Our boy Tom Brady flouts a league-recommended advisory by gathering players on his new team together for private work outs. What would you expect from a monomaniac? He is shameless, and shameful, enough to hawk his TB12 products as questionable defenses against Coronavirus. Don’t stop there, Tom! He quotes Roosevelt’s “You have nothing to fear but fear itself”. Which is prime shit on rye, consistent with a total phlegm-wad. From Golden Boy to snake oil salesman, Tom Tom Tom Tom Tom. But no, the Coronavirus is not afraid of you.

Football players, the thinking goes, can just push on thru illness and injury. Clemson’s vaunted football program has confirmed close to 50 covid cases. Ten percent of the program, and I don’t think they have gotten down to brass tacks yet, football-wise. I don’t see how any of the sports can safely proceed—football particularly is tantamount to mud wrestling— but the murmurs grow louder to have fans gather.

Yesterday a customer came in and asked if masks were necessary. I assured him that they definitely are. He put his on. I said it is a state order, or something like that. He had a knowing smile from which I inferred doubt. He wasn’t the sort to cite the freedom from masks part of the Constitution. I assume he just wonders what all this brouhaha is about. The state order has been in effect close to two months. Every store has signs. This, sir, is the world. “Live it or live with it” as The Firesign Theatre had it.

The Crusades, Yeats, and the Poetry Word

I am reading a book about the Fourth Crusade (The Great Betrayal by Ernie Bradford). That’s the Crusade that saw Christians of the North ignore their papal directive and attack and sack Christian Constantinople. Because where would we be without schism and strife? And then I thought of Yeats’ poem, “Sailing to Byzantium”. Yeats hearkens to the spent glory of that city. I have read Yeats over the years, tho not recently. The fact is, I don’t seem to read poetry much at all these days. Instead, I make my own, or think I do. I guess that’s lax of me. I lean toward reading history. I am no scholar but the agitations that history books invoke involve me in the pertinence of language. The mysteries of political moments engender the mysteries of language and communication. By political moments I mean our interaction with what we see and hear of ‘the world’. Yeats’ mysticism leaves me completely flat but when his gaze goes hard into instants and words, and with his consummate craft, I feel a twitch of the nerve. He was, after all, politically-minded, for all his Celtic Twilightiness. I don’t know what number Crusade the world currently suffers but we are certainly learning the simplest things last.

The Patriot

Starring Mel Gibbous in an American Revolution setting. I happen to be reading a bio of George Washington by James Flexner, so when I saw this nugget on Netflix, it seemed to fulfill a chord. 

Mel, the guy who gets the close ups, plays a widower with a brood of shiny kids, including Heath Ledger as the eldest. While revolution foments around him Mel wants no part. He suffers guilty for actions taken during the French and Indian War. Heath wants to his part and joins the militia, or maybe the Continental Army.

I won’t pretend that I paid close attention. There is a skirmish on Mel’s property and tho his family cares for wounded British soldiers, there are American soldiers there, including Heath.

The British officer takes Heath away. I don’t know who the actor is but I am pretty sure he is a product of dna hijinks. I mean the gimlet eyes and general bearing of evil incarnate, Hollywood needs a steady supply in any number of movies. Shuffle a few chromosomes to ensure a futurity of cinematic villains.

One of Mel’s younger sons attempts to prevent Heath’s removal and is shot. The odious officer orders the house burnt. Just maybe Mel will want revenge.

The children are sent to live with Mel’s sister-in-law and Mel somehow prevents Heath from being hanged, or hung. I honestly can’t remember how this occurred, some low level buckling of swash, but it got done. Now Mel’s angry.

Mel commits to the cause. The cause is revenge, by the way. So let’s see, glinting-eyed psychopath goes after families of insurgents. They track down Mel’s sister-in-law, caring for his brood. We have already seen Mel in bed with her, and the children, but he is staring at her and she at him. Molto creepy. Let the substitution begin!

The Brits arrive at night but a boy stood watch and warned everyone. Sister-in-law guides the children to the cellar while the guard boy hides beneath a table. I believe it is Mr Evil himself who enters the room. He even hears the click when the boy draws the hammer of his musket, but Mr Evil doesn’t open the door, the DOOR, behind which is the trap door to the cellar. Crisis averted. The family trod off to a safe place: a community of happy, free, black people. Well that’s nice. The two thirds citizen men and zero thirds citizen women. I didn’t mench that the SIL’s home was burned down. That will probably call for revenge.

There’s been action and sad face from Mel and his gang of desperados. One militia man kills himself after discovering his wife and child dead in reprisal. That may have been after Mel visited Cornwallis to bargain for the lives of 18 captured militia. He gives the esteemed British lord a spyglass to see in the distance 18 captured redcoats. Cornwallis affirms the trade, only later to discover that it was just uniforms tied to the stakes not soldiers.

The psychotic British officer visits a village where lives Heath’s newly-minted wife and others. He gathers them in the church then fires the it. That would be considered an atrocity, worthy of revenge.

On discovering this, Heath races off ahead of dad and the militia. He even finds, somehow, the very miscreant. A skirmish in which twice the number of redshirts as was in either party succumbs to righteous or evil endeavor. The reverend gets plugged just as Heath is about to get shot. That bad officer is loading his pistol but the reverend has just enough righteous pizzazz to toss his musket into Heath’s hands, and Heath plugs the heinous officer. Rather than check on the reverend, or do anything quickly, Heath stands over the fallen officer, readying to apply a coup de grace with his knife. Surprise! The officer isn’t dead enough, and stabs Heath to almost dramatic death with a sword. The officer ambles away, shaking off the musket ball in the torso. Mel arrives and swears a bit of vengeance. At the same time, he is not sure he wishes to carry on with this shit, tho his militia and nascent country need him.

Now Cornwallis is cornered. Mel offers the strategy of placing the militia in the front line, to soon scramble back drawing the Brits into contest with the Continental Army. And blah blah blah, Mel has to pick up a flag to inspire the payoff. The ever so tiresome final battle between these arch rivals. Mel looks sliced and diced but whoa, surprise, the bad guy dies. Freedom and stuff.

Mel’s performance struck me as overly thought. Evident moving of the gears. The tediousness of revenge here makes me think on this country and its current trials. The righteous anger bubbling so obviously here and there swollen by revenge’s call. Simplistically it is why is something something and I am not? My inalienable right to be free of face mask, my birthright as asshole, my god-given directive to be free of clear topic sentences. Mel can go on to drunken anti-Semitic rants because that’s what’s called birthright. Shitty movie if you kinda look at it. Last scene shows the cozy family together except two sons dead and the dead mother replaced.

Poetry As Learned

When I went to Franconia College, my view of poetry broadened. No surprise to that. In high schooI I had two friends who also wrote poetry. We were the extent of each others' audience. I knew of a handful of poets but hadn’t read much in school or on my own.

I didn’t even like poetry. I wrote it because I had no interest in writing fiction. I liked reading stories but making that shit up seemed too formidable. I never thought about writing non-fiction. 

I became aware of e. e. cummings’ inveterate rule-breaking in high school, I suppose. His example served as a safe house for me to scribble and type the serious whatevers that I so earnestly wrote. I made effort to read but I hadn’t a clear trail. I really didn’t get poetry.

At Franconia, then, I read much more of other people's work, the published and the unpublished (other students). I was dutiful about this but I still didn't really enjoy much poetry.

My first year, I took a writing course. Creative writing, as they say. People presented poetry and fiction. The teacher didn't feel qualified to teach poetry, however, tho I found his critiques both thoughtful and credible. He wanted someone to teach poetry. The school instigated a search.

I remember three poets who gave readings (separately) as part of the search process. There may have been more. One was this forthright guy, comfortably named Joe. I liked him. He was hip but friendly. Another was more professorial, less hip than the first guy. He probably hoped for a more 'serious' school. Franconia was a loose place. I still refer to it as a hippie school. Sometime later, I saw an anthology edited by the guy. He must have made it to a more secure school. His wife joined him at the reading. As I recall she had what we would now call a goth presence. I recall a black dress, in contrast to the hippie boutique of the school community. An author photo for the anthology I mentioned shows her in the background in similar dark gothness.

Robin Hood with Kevin Costner

I watched Robin Hood with Kevin Costner. Well, that’s a bit misleading, he never showed up so I watched alone. But Costner was in the movie. I initially saw it when it came out. I recognized that the movie was a bit sunny in its outlook the first time thru. I would now say that it presents a debauched sunniness.

Robin Hood, the character, endures. Costner's mid-Western niceness seemed a stretch in the role but Costner was really Costner at the time. You could shoehorn him into anything. And he had a larger than life aura, even if of an ordinary variety. Not exactly a preening Errol Flynn but Costner could carry the movie.

The tale begins with The Crusades. You know, Good versus Evil on the geo-political plane. Costner is imprisoned by the heathens but manages to escape. In the process he aids Moorish Heathen Morgan Freeman to escape, as well. Freeman thus pledges his life to Costner. This gets another A-Lister into the production, fannies in the seats. Hood returns to England with his Moor.

Robin's father is killed by you know who and Robin loses his inheritance. Robin gets on the wrong side of the law, we know the story. He meets Little John and they fight in a ford rather than on a log bridge. This shows Robin as a regular guy. He laconically takes leadership of the people of the forest, who didn’t seem to need the leadership. All this is prologue to the action.

The Sheriff of Nottingham is played by Alan Rickman. I believe this role put him on the map. His Sheriff is flamboyant, histrionic, and hilarious. Only thing is, he's a monster. The Sheriff's cousin reports to the Sheriff that Robin and his band have stolen the treasure the cousin was supposed to protect. The Sheriff casually, almost jokingly, stabs him to death. At another point, in a rant, the Sheriff declares that there will be no more humane beheadings. Again the jocular manner sounds heinous next to the idea of an inhumane beheading. Folks back then knew how to play inhumane. 

The folks of Sherwood Forest already had a village in the trees, one such as Tarzan might have devised. This village had nothing to do with Robin, yet the credit draws towards him. They already enjoyed communal bliss but Robin gave them leadership.

Lady Marian, cousin to King Richard, quickly shows she has salt of the earth in her veins. Also a spark for Robin. She attempts to send word to Richard concerning dirty business by the Sheriff. False priest ruins that and puts her at risk, plus the good folk of Sherwood.

The movie gets out of hand when the Sheriff sends a force against the no longer secret enclave. First a wild crew of Highlanders attack the good folk. It resembles a battle scene in Braveheart. They cause much slaughter but eventually run away. The Sheriff then unleashes archers with flaming arrows and catapults of burning matter. It looks like devastation, and mostly is. All available red shirts go to their reward except the small cadre of main characters and a few surviving red shirts who can be killed later, as needed. Looks kinda hopeless.

By rights the whole forest should have been burned down but at least the Sheriff had all known survivors to hang publicly. The unknown survivors, all six or so, worked out a plan. It is a convoluted plan dependent on perfect timing and luck. Of course it worked, but not before the scimitar-wielding Moor gives a rousing speech about freedom to the crowd that assembled to watch the hangings. He has spent his few moments onscreen showing the virtues of Arab culture (spyglasses, gun powder). He convinces the crowd to join Robin’s insurrection.

But wait! The Sheriff has to rape Lady Marian so that his blood mixes with royal, and thereby... Rickman plays this scene almost for laughs, which is very an off note. But Robin battles with the Sheriff. Here Rickman shows some physical grace. I mean not on the level of Flynn vs Rathbone but he moves really well. Costner does not so the filmmakers must accept a lucky win for Robin. And Friar Tuck gets to push the evil priest out a window with due righteousness. Freeman scores a late round victory over the outre crone who influenced the Sheriff, and we’re about done.

The final scene offers the marriage of Robin and Marian as the King and Queen of May, which is consistent with some of the ballads in the cycle. To this festivity arrives Sean Connery as King Richard. History says he returned by way of ransom money, he having been captured during his merrie jaunt to Jerusalem, but okay. Connery maintains a consistent smile, knowing he just made easy cash for dressing up like a Crusader and looking like Sean Connery.

So how does all this socialism of Sherwood Forest not get booed? Everyone should pull themselves up by the bootstraps. The big Red Cross on the backs of the king and his men proclaims a righteousness and victory, tho of course further Crusades piled up in the history books. Let’s pretend they all meant something good. We are left to wonder where all this communal unity and virtue went in years to come. Um, Brexit...

Oceans 11 and the Stiff Old Days

I am in the midst of watching the original Oceans 11, featuring Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack.It proves itself a rather smothering revelation of cultural detritus. It also exists as a thriller heist movie, I suppose. It has a plot, to be sure. Oh and it’s a vehicle for the aforesaid Sinatra and his Mighty Rat Minions.

Somehow, I managed to read the book years ago. It was handy and I knew it existed as a movie too. I couldn’t keep up with the back stories in the book, for lack of interest. Also, I was busy trying to guess which character in the book was played by which Pack Rat. The book struck me with its grim nihilism, and not much else. It is much darker than Sinatra’s plaything.

I don’t care at all about the movie’s plot. I mean, ex-WWII comrades join forces to rob five Vegas casinos, sure. It is, as I said, a vehicle for the stars. Also, of course, a two hour ad for the enticements of Las Vegas.

The real interest sits with the cultural norms performed in every frame. My goodness, cigarettes are constantly dragged upon. And it is not just the smoking, it is the flair of lighting up, the pensive inhalation, the appropriate grip on the cigarette. The smoking ritual repeats in almost every scene. It is like there was no choice but to smoke.

In tandem with the smoking, the equally constant application of Jack Daniels to the manly spirit. Again the ceremony: ice tongs to drop ice cubes into rock glasses, followed by three ounces of Tennessee  whiskey and an avid gulp. This occurred either when entering a room or mid-sentence in a convo. Sentences end with a healthy sip. I’m just noting the cultural norm.

The boys hang together as a singular mass with minor incursions of dames. Men are from Mars, Women are from Neiman-Marcus: It is as simple as that. The separation is nearly complete. A couple of femmes annoyingly plead inclusion. Angie Dickinson is the only famous one, but that’s it. The heist is no pipe dream, it represents Purpose. Women thus are obstructions.

Dean Martin sings three songs, Sammy Davis jr. one so far. They do so for entertainment purposes, if you weren’t sure. Sammy plays a trash truck driver. We first see him in a group of similarly employed men. They’re all singing and playing harmonica. Sammy sings a showbizzy song that seems unlikely in the circs, tho just right for the inferred audience of the movie. He does all his stage motions too, which also looks unlikely but this aint real life.

So the movie shows a piece of history and the way we were, it promulgates the Sinatra mystique, and it dazzles with the entrancement of Las Vegas. It all seems old and foreign, as if people were never believable. People never really are, so it has that right. I may not need to finish the movie because I got the message.

Topsfield Fair

Beth and I attended the Topsfield Fair Sunday. It has allegedly been held these past two hundred years but it was my first time, as well as Beth’s.  We have both been to smaller fairs, me in NH, Beth in Alaska.

It was trafficky on the highway,  leaf-peeping time. Once off the highway, we slogged in line to the fair. We were directed to a field a couple miles from the fair. Parking on the fairgrounds had filled up an hour or more before the fair even opened. The field had an army of people directing cars to.parking places with a directive of economically using the available space. Shuttle buses brought us to the fair itself.

It was crowded, hey what. A nice, factory-issue autumn day. We were there for the livestock but it is not the most agrarian of fairs. Beth pointed out a cow with bloat. You could tell it was uncomfortable, it switched its tail, and nudged its expanded belly. I felt sad for the creature, and callous for looking at it.

Actually, I think our first act was buying fried dough. We had a few food vouchers and some cash for our gorging needs. I hate the captive audience food search common to such events, smug effing capitalism. Six bucks for a lump of dough fried in oil. Well, it was done well. Taken neat, no sugar or cinnamon, it was crisp on the outside, chewy inside, and not grease-soaked.

Eventually I needed actual food. I am one of regular feedings. A chicken fajita proved satisfying for me, Beth waited. I mean I could have fallen for deep-fried Oreos or some other scuzzy luxury. Elvis’ true vision.

The best part was going in where the draft horse were. Some turned their backs to us assholes, some preened. I didn’t see which but one started kicking loudly at its stall, the sound was alarming. The King Kong moment: I could imagine it busting free, wreaking vengeance on human perps.  Circs sort of amplified this feeling. Without calling people to evacuate the premises, people started removing the horses from their stalls. Handlers shooed us away while leading the massive horses away.

We moved to the arena, where three horse teams pulled wagons briskly. The horses moved in a high-stepped trot, with synchronized step. It was lovely to behold. I understand the lead horse sets the pace while the back two do the main pulling.

Rocks and fossils drew Beth’s attention. I consumed my fajita outside the tent before going in. You just have to give it up, get some on your shirt, standing around eating at a fair cannot be done neatly (Allen’s #1 Certitude). I saw a guy chomping on a turkey leg as he passed thru the crowd. Various fried foods on sticks, curious piles of enticing whatnot on paper plates. How about a sliced glazed donut with burger and bacon between? I  tried not to consume the foil wrap to my fajita. My second feeding was a pot roast sundae: meat, mashed potatoes, and corn in a cup with a cherry tomato on top. 

We saw bees, some wild-looking scarecrows, a massive pumpkin. A woman lead a pair of handsome horses around the arena sans any rope, just gestures.

We sat in the bleachers for the Dock Dogs competition. Dogs leap off a platform into a pool, the challenge being to go the furthest. The record, we were told, is more than 30’. One dog got out there more than 20’. Could have gone further. The dog’s handler threw the toy too high and the dog twisted to try to catch it. Lily could probably do well what with the booster rockets she has for hind legs.

Our visit ended as it began, with fried dough. Looked at some of the most beautiful Christmas trees ever. I don’t know why anyone would buy one now tho I suspect they would last a long time.

A bus ride back to the lot, and our car where we left it. A lovely New England day.

Pulp Fiction

Pulp Fiction came out some twenty five years ago and only now do I see it. I have never been comprehensive in my movie watching. To me at least, few movies of such age hold up well. Pulp Fiction feels fresh, albeit imperfect.

Like Glorious Basterds, episodes twine loosely in Pulp Fiction. In fact, by the end of the movie the twining seems looser. The narratives become more discrete and relate less to each other. 

Having the vivid visual images of Jackson and Travolta burned into my brain as about all I knew of the movie, the opening scene had me somewhat at a loss. Amanda Plummer and Tim Roth at a restaurant talking petty crime. Where’s this going? Then they decide in an eruption to rob the place. Plummer’s sudden change from Honey Bunny to hellfire marks the first note of Tarantino’s bumptious hilarity. The scene *stops* in media res.

The next scene introduces Travolta and Jackson. We can start making sense. Tarantino’s strength, of course, is dialogue. His characters riff on whatever, often in the manner of Platonic dialogues. The dialogues don’t seem derived from the characters, however. Tarantino uses the characters as dummies for ventriloquism.

Before I go further, I should clear the air about John Travolta. I have avoided watching this movie and others because of Travolta’s presence. Something about him... He’s someone graced, and braced, by his look. Early on, even back to that atrocious sitcom, he discovered that his smile works. It is his confidence. Tho he has talent and skill, he trusts his smile more. His acting then becomes a strain. He can’t always use that smile so you see him thinking, scheming, to reach a place where he can use that smile. I see this in Tom Cruise as well. I won’t attach this to Scientology tho hmmm. So what I see is someone sweating too much, too self aware within the package of his character.

Anyway, the scene in which they visit the young guys, we see elooquent intimidation, a Hollywood staple, viz The Joker, most gangsters, masterminds, etc. Jackson starts as good cop then blithely kills one guy. He speechifies then he and Travolta shoot too many bullets into the second guy. All in a day’s work. Third guy huddles in a corner. End of Scene.

The episode with Uma Thurman shows off exotic nonsense like her hipster pad and the restaurant with Ed Sullivan as maitre d’/emcee. Travolta efforts to not get involved with Thurman, a gangster’s moll. Tarantino fractured our expectations of romance when Thurman snorts some overly righteous stuff she found in Travolta’s coat. She o.d.’s and we have a party of slapstick overdose humour.

I’ve said my say about Travolta. The rest of the cast seem like they’re having fun. Eric Stoltz as suburban drug dealer and Rosanna Arquette as his seedy wife. A shot of adrenalin saves Thurman and the scene ends with perchance romance in the offing.

The chapter with Bruce Willis is the most convoluted and superfluous. I place him in the same tank with Travolta and Cruise.  I guess he has some skill—albeit not on the harmonica—but not so much range. He plays a boxer who is supposed to throw a fight but doesn’t. He chases around trying to escape Thurman’s gangster. Things become more difficult when he has to go back to his apartment for the heirloom watch his father gave him. An earlier flashback/dream had Christopher Walken explain the history of that watch which Walkenfinally smuggled from a p.o.w. camp to be presented to the boxer as a then fatherless boy. The scene seemed so noble and telling until Walken, it had to be Walken, tells the boy he smuggled it in his ass. There is, by the way, no explaining Walken’s genius.

By chance Willis and the gangster meet and try to kill each other. Their battle enters a shop where the owner gets the best of both and ties them up. He and a cop, I don’t know how he got involved, take the gangster to another room and rape him. Just another shop of horrors. Willis frees himself and saves the gangster. That clears Willis who rides off into Hollywood happy ending. Tarantino playing to the cheap seats?

I didn’t mench that while back in his apartment Willis runs into Travolta, who was looking for Willis. Willis kills him, wait what?

We then go back to the scene where Jackson and Travolta apply muscle to the young guys. After Jackson’s interminable and not last recitation of a passage from Ezekiel a fourth guy comes out of hiding with gun blazing. And he misses. Jackson reads this as a sign from God.

The pair take the surviving guy. In the car Travolta accidentally shoots the guy. In a panic they get the gangster to call a fixer who, at the home of Jackson’s friend, played by Tarantino, helps them clean up and dispose of the car. The fixer is Harvey Keitel, who is lushly efficient and businesslike.

And after that, the two go to a restaurant for breakfast. Right, Amanda and Tim go forth with their robbery. Jackson calmly thwarts Tim but there’s a stand off with Amanda. Jackson invoked that damn Ezekiel passage again and lets the couple go, a sudsy happy ending. We are left thinking of Travolta’s imminent  doom. Except for that it’s a wishy washy ending.

Any Tarantino movie could be titled *Fun with Nihilism*.  That and the elegant violence seem consistent in his movies, from what I’ve seen. This movie had something of *Goodfellas* to it in the way it finds humour and elegance in the wrong places. Seems like he needs a grownup with him when he’s directing. Nonetheless, if you can take the violence and tidy grimness, this is a pretty fine movie. Even with John Travolta.

Glorious Basterds

Well, I watched this. I know Tarantino has certain roguish skills as a filmmaker, and excesses as well. Excesses plus John Travolta explain why I have yet to see Pulp Fiction. Brad Pitt, I don’t mind.

I had little sense of the movie when I began. It opens SS officer visits a dairy farm. With a courtesy that eventually becomes malevolent he interviews the farmer. Slowly and obsequiously the officer gets the farmer to admit he is hiding Jews. The actor playing the officer is outstanding.

The SS shoot up the hiding place but a woman escapes. The officer has her in his pistol’s sight but he doesn’t shoot for some reason. I don’t know if such urbane nastiness existed in the SS or anywhere, it feels more like a Hollywood  convention, but the scene sure was riveting.

That was Chapter One. The movie seems structured like a novel the way it presents the various threads. The threads come together in the end. So far so good.

The next chapter presents Brad Pitt as a lieutenant in command of a crack Nazi-killing outfit. It is not explained why this little band exists or how. Any number of Hollywood movies feature similar righteous bands of good guys on an extracurricular mission. The soldiers are all Jewish. Pitt is a Southerner with a healthy Army drawl. He and the SS officer carry the film.

After the creepy SS officer, Pitt’s character is downright comedic. Pitt seems comfortable with the accent and the accent doesn’t feel overdone. At this point I realized that Tarantino was doing a Coen Brothers movie: edgy, skewed, oddly funny. The band’s reputation precedes it. Except for Pitt, the outfit is largely faceless. Most of the cast is unknown to me.

In one scene Pitt interrogates a captured German officer. The officer won’t spill so Pitt calls for one of his men, the legendary Bear. His m.o.: beating his victims with a baseball bat. He enthusiastically does so to the officer, like a baseball slugger, then whoops, citing Ted Williams and Fenway Park. That performance convinced that last German soldier to give information. Pitt etches a swastika in the guy’s forehead so that when he no longer wears a uniform, people will still know he was a Nazi. The dead get scalped. I don’t doubt that somebody tried scalping during WW2 but the detail here seems outre.

The various threads/chapters got a little confusing for me. The woman who escaped in the first chapter reappears, tho I didn’t immediately recognize her, as a cinema owner, having inherited the place. What seems like meet cute occurs when a German soldier chats her up.  She remains cool to him but later they meet again. It turns out that he’s an Audie Murphy style war hero. He convinces Goebbels to use her theatre for the premiere of the movie made about and with this hero. She uses this opportunity to plot the murder of the German high command that will attend the premiere.

The next chapter introduces a British operative who would work with a German actress to somehow, I’m not sure how, assassinate the German High Command at the premiere. This leads to a scene at a bistro in which the plotters intermingle with German soldiers. An SS officers sniffs out the plotters, I don’t know what they’re doing there anyway. Everyone has a gun trained on somebody. In what seems like a patented Tarantino moment, everyone gets shot. Except for the actress, none of these characters seemed vital to the story. The whole chapter felt superfluous, tho gripping.

This scene sunk me. The burst of violence felt so hopeless. Plus Tarantino makes it so snazzy with the explosive flash of the gunplay.  A young German soldier who just became a father survived. Pitt appears. They both discover that the actress also survived. Pitt tried to negotiate with the German to get the woman. It seems like a moment of release as the German seems to allow the woman to leave. As Pitt negotiates, she shoots the German.

Action culminates in the theatre. Pitt and what’s left of his company and the actress attend. The SS officer from the first chapter is at the theatre and discovers the infiltrators in his methodical yet courteous way. The actress is interviewed by the officer. After she admits of her role in the plot he surprisingly leaps at her and chokes her to death. That came from nowhere. Two of Pitt’s rather happy-go-lucky operatives in the theatre audience are not detained. They have explosives strapped to them and other weapons.

The SS officer takes Pitt and the one remaining operative away to negotiate a way the officer could surrender. The cinema owner has slipped a death-to-Nazis message into the premiere, at the same time starting a conflagration. Meanwhile in what at first appears to be a possibly romantic moment between her and the hero German turns ruthless and they kill each other. With even Hitler attending the premiere, I didn’t expect the complete destruction of everyone in the theatre. Tarantino chose an alternate reality. The last two American operatives madly and blithely shoot people in the chaos of the fire. O nihilism! None of the doomed have much notion or concern of imminent death.

So... the SS officer asks for all sorts of benefits, which are agreed to. He takes the two surviving Americans to Allied territory and surrenders to them. Pitt immediately kills the German driver, and carves a swastika on the forehead of the officer.

Tarantino manages to play with the audience’s sense of wish fulfillment. Yay, Hitler dies, but so do almost everyone else. Pitt’s character bobs along calmly in the chaos. Many other characters are on suicide missions. Tarantino presents the flowering beauty of murder and destruction.

Tho Tarantino manages some subtle moments the bombast of violence provides the tonic note for him. Compared to the Coens he’s ruthless and lacks their quirky surprise. I will say that he takes a different tack towards the Nazi horror than other films. He revels some in that horror, but at the same time sounds Vonnegut’s so it goes. He has made an imperfect but powerful movie.