Saturday, August 28, 2010

You too can enjoy time travel (if you're Australian)

I was watching HG Wells’ “The Time Machine” this week starring Guy Pearce, when it occurred to me that the other Time Traveller (they have no name) was Rod Taylor, in the same story a few decades back. Both are from Australia, the land of strange beasts such as the kangaroo and the duck-billed platypus. Were they brought back from the future by these two leading men? They do travel over 802,000 years into the future and might even have brought back Nicole Kidman, a creature who looks like she is from another Eden. (For Mel Gibson you have to go back 800,000 years).
Of course the films don’t portray anything from Wells’ novella other than the melodramatic action. The book in my library (showing a kangaroo reading a pocket book) is primarily a social critique combining Wells’ two main influences: Karl Marx and Darwin. But hey, those aren’t popcorn authors are they? All the action takes place in the Thames Valley in London, just as the end of “War of the Worlds” ends on Primrose Hill, one of my favorite places in London. The Pearce film seems to be placed in New York City. Science is a funny thing. As Mark Twain once said, “an idea doesn’t care who has it”. The theory of relativity came from a man working in Bern, the sleepiest city in a sleepy country. For all we know there is some spectacular breakthrough that will come from an American university where bowling is a Major.
I have a friend who is a mega-intellectual in physics located, in of all places, Sacramento, California. He can produce pages of profound and baffling equations and in the tradition of Euclid and Pythagoras he has dispensed with his family name and is known throughout the world of science as Dennis of Sacramento. Yes, this is the same town that the Werner Heisenberg of politics, Herr Schwarzenegger, works. He is, of course, the man who formulated “The Theory of Uncertain Fiscal Reality” (aber er ist ein netter kerl). I wouldn’t want the FBI to know this, but Dennis and I have traveled into the future ourselves. It happened when we walked across Hoover Dam from the Nevada side to the Arizona side. Arizona was one hour ahead of Nevada! Sure enough it was one o’clock in Arizona and it was still noon in Nevada. How such a place as backwards as Arizona could live even so slightly into the future was truly baffling. As Einstein said,, “the universe is not only strange, but stranger than you can imagine”.

Friday, August 27, 2010

It's called bigotry

A guest blog by Al Manzano, a writer and former editor who lives In Carlsbad, CA



Remember when the Supreme Court was hearing a case on pornography? One of the justices made a memorable comment. He said that he couldn't define pornography but knew it when he saw it.

The New York City mosque uproar makes me think that while most of us could probably define bigotry we can't seem to recognize it when we see it.

It's a comment on the ridiculous character of our national debates. Our politicians come to it with two minds, one is to capitalize on it as a way to win votes, another is to suggests ways to ameliorate the situation by compromise. They are all simply contributing to an increasing lack of decency and common sense. Sometime in the future we will bow our heads in shame at the way we are being led, confused, and responding.

The mosque is being described at best as an unintended offense to the memory of 9/11.

My memory of 9/11 is of a crime that will never be punished or forgotten. It is at the heart of the problem of victimization and survival: How to rid ourselves of our sorrow, how to get on with life.

I know people with murdered children and for whom there has been no c losure of identification and punishment of the murderers. I don't know how they manage their lives and go on. But they do. No one can really help them in the core of their suffering.

It is a private agony but is can also be a public one. The mass murdering of peoples seem to go on and on. Very few of these events ever lead to effective punishment and never to closure.

It is a matter of continuing sorrow wrapped deep in the need to go on living.

This is what bigots exploit without shame. Politicians are natural cowards. They come away confused by the noisome rants that frighten the unthinking and emotional and fearful of the damage they can impose on our society and values at the ballot box.

The builders of the mosque are being asked to move away from their long chosen and planned site as if somehow they were guilty. It must be confusing for them as free Americans. We have a long tradition of harming our fellow citizens because of who they are and not for what have done. We can't seem to end it.

It's called bigotry.

Saturday, August 21, 2010

To play a great American, cast a Canadian

I can rest my case with Raymond Massey, the Canadian actor who made the best Abraham Lincoln on film. Or maybe even Alexander Knox, who played Woodrow Wilson. I'll skip Dan Ackroyd who played Jimmy Carter on SNL. My point is that many American characters are played by Canadians. There's Marty McFly, a creation of Michael J. Fox, Ace Ventura, played by Jim Carrey. The list goes on: Margo Kidder (who went to my high school) was Lois Lane and Alan Young (who also went to my high school) was Mr. Ed's pal on TV. The tradition goes back to Mary Pickford through Walter Pidgeon up to John Candy and Dorothy Stratten. But can an American play a Canadian? I'll give you two examples: George Segal played a tough RCMP officer in Tom Ardies' thriller, "Russian Roulette" and no less than Paul Newman played Reggie Dunlop, the player-coach in "Slap Shot". He could skate like the wind, swear like, well, like a hockey player, and he slept under a giant Canadian maple leaf flag.

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

And so it goes

Here is a guest blog by Anne Kmit, a Las Vegas writer and poet.


All by herself, she shopped and bought the lacy white dress.
All by herself, she arranged a picnic meal for her few friends after the ceremony.

She had to because her mother said "You'll be sorry. I'm not going."
Her father said "Neither am I. He's a phony."

She knew in her heart that he was selfish and immature.
But she hoped, no, believed her love would change him.

He came an hour late to the chapel, tipsy.
She married him anyway, it was the beginning of the end.

Monday, August 9, 2010

Before Mad Men & Don Draper there was Vic Norman

Vic Norman is the hero of Frederic Wakeman's 1946 novel "The Hucksters". The story takes place in New York during WWII and Norman wants to get into advertising so he can make $25,000 a year and wear $35 hand-painted ties. In the movie he is played by none other than Clark Gable. His boss at the agency is Adolphe Menjou wearing the same perfect-fitting suit that Roger Stirling wears in Mad Men. I guess this is why account execs are always called "suits" in the business. The little 35 cent pocket book in my library says: "The whole story the movie didn't tell". Actually the movie is much better than the book thanks to the odious and tyrannical client played by Sydney Greenstreet. He terrifys everyone including Gable by insisting they be "on the beam" and say "check" when he demands approval. Of course there are too many women in Norman's life (just like Don Draper). But the advertising thinking in The Hucksters is very primitive. You'd never hear Draper come up with anything as limpid as "Love that soap" for Beautee Soap. But then this is the precursor to the creative revolution of the Mad Men era. One nice touch in the movie is when Norman/Gable gets up in a meeting and pours a jug of water on Greenstreet's head and walks out. Today we're all well acquainted with the world of advertising. Between focus groups, and messages bombarding us night and day, we have all become lunch for the advertisers who have made us easier to use. One odd and coincidental note for both stories. One of the stars of Mad Men is Jared Harris. The Hucksters is dedicated to Jed Harris. The moving finger writes and moves on, but not very far.

Saturday, August 7, 2010

The song is me.

In one of his journalistic pieces George Orwell said that he would rather have written a popular song than all of his serious material. He meant a song that ordinary people would sing and hum and listen to in their homes and his mythical pub, "The Moon Under Water".
What would he have written: "Underneath the Arches", maybe, or "I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts", perhaps, but certainly not "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square", or the posh Noel Coward song, "Poor Little Rich Girl". They're both wonderful tunes but not in the DNA of the man who wrote "1984".
I too wish I had written a song, and not just any old song. It would be nice to have my name on "Stardust", which is really two songs in one or anything by Gershwin, anything by Frank Loesser, anything by Cole Porter, but let's be realistic, these are the geniuses of popular song and Orwell and I are mere scribblers who wish upon a star. I would be happy to have penned, "Let's Get Lost" and I think Orwell would have been proud to be the composer of "There'll Always Be An England".