Across the Great Divide

My Dinner with Samuel, Partie Deux.

[Part one is here.]

The plan was to meet for dinner at the Nepalese restaurant on Main, then weave through the shut down street, past four blocks of truly local farmer's market offerings, to the art film house, a restored 1920s-era theater and music venue called the Avalon. La vie en rose, the new Edith Piaf biopic, was playing.

"Do you know Edith Piaf?" Samuel asked.

"Yes."

"Do you like her?"

I was hoping this was not code. "As much as any French chanteuse."

He laughed.

Most of our pre-movie dinner discussion would be of little interest to anyone but us — and really only half was all that interesting to me. I gave the well-rehearsed museum tour of life's last 40 years, one I'd run through in a more truncated version over the coming reunion weekend. I reminded him of ways he'd influenced me, and he probed for how I had recognized talent in young writers during my business years.

Did they have some commonality, he wanted to know. Except for a desire to be good and willingness to work at it, I thought not. Each was different. Now, I would probably say the key was spotting the difference, not the commonality, that makes a writer unique. I think that's what Samuel did, but now his focus is on the shared metaphysical, the molecular and spiritual matter than flows through us all.

That's what got him in trouble as a teacher. He was still trying to awaken individual students, but doing it with increasingly fringe thoughts about the essence of life — in a town where even today, "this is a Christian nation" is broad public sentiment and many think if you fly only one flag on your property, it better be the Stars and Stripes. His growing interest in amulet-and-angel explanations was even more problematic 25 years ago than today, and Samuel would not accommodate narrow thinking just to keep his job.

He put it that he and the school administration parted ways over his bringing metaphysics to the classroom, but it was bringing in photos from a sojourn to the Philippines that I suspect convinced school officials he had to go. He did not talk about this, but my aging recollection is that the photos documented a healing ceremony where the shaman extracted palmed chicken entrails from a diseased person and claimed them cured.

The bogus pagan rite was bad enough. The sacred sweat glistening on the naked participants made it worse. And the presence of the teacher in some of the pictures made this impossible to ignore.

Hearing about it from afar, I thought I knew how he meant it — as an exotic but vital piece of information about the universe, something for his students to consider before their minds locked down within the local mores. Instead, it was physical evidence of the metaphysical dangers his opponents needed.

I wanted to hear more about the things that excited him now, about the events of the previous week he believed were going to be very significant for the earth. But time for the movie was fast approaching, and we had to take up fate of the planet later...

I have been given information about our planet which can help fire her bio-electrical nervous system and jump start her heart into healing and a new phase of restoration for the coming phase of humanity.

Weekendgame: It's Hard to Live Free or Die.

A hacker and Live Free or Die Hard hero John McClane have narrowly averted another incendiary assault by unseen bad guys. As they pick their way through the rubble, the overwhelmed hacker echoes Princess Leia's query of Han Solo:

Do you have a plan?

Yeah, kill all of them and rescue my daughter.

I meant "plan" as in how we do it.

I wish that didn't sound so familiar.

*****
London police foiled a pair of planned car bomb attacks this week, almost two years after suicide bombers attacked the London transit system and killed 52 people, and a second bombing attempt failed.

Trying to capture the plotters and avert further attacks back then, British authorities mistakenly tracked a Brazilian electrician to the underground and shot him without apparent provocation. The final police report, which took well over a year to be made public, revealed that Jean Charles de Menezes was restrained by an officer as he was shot seven times in the head at point-blank range.

Early reports of his acting suspiciously were not upheld by the investigation. Details from eyewitness accounts used to justify the brutal killing turned out not to be true. People at the scene were confused, yet bloggers continents away broke it down in real time as if they were dealing with gospel.

In the cartoon world of Die Hard, the good guys always manage to be in the right place — except when a loved one is about to be taken hostage. They operate without official oversight or backup. They shoot straight and shake off wounds. They miraculously connect with the one other person in the world who can help them. They are modest yet determined in discharging grave responsibilities. They might make mistakes but they get the job done.

Putting yourself on the line as the righteous and effective defender of all that is good in America is noble, of course, but for those not actually in the military or law enforcement, it's mainly an appealing fantasy. The farther you are from actual danger and real fighting, the easier it is to see yourself as John McClane or Captain America.

I do not oppose citizens' rights to bear arms; I just question the necessity of putting guns on the street in the hands of people with less training, less physical conditioning and a hell of a lot fewer special effects than your average John McClane.

*****
A while back, I got into a contretemps with some bloggers who had a different interpretation of events surrounding the shooting of an off-duty cop by a conceal & carry permit holder during a road-rage incident three weeks ago. My interest in that event, as in the de Menezes shooting, was not to show I had the correct interpretation, but to note how our searches for the "truth" are influenced by our own beliefs, experiences and ideologies. With cops in the family, I'm inclined to look a little harder at the guy who shoots a cop. A responsible conceal & carry advocate who distrusts the media and the government is a bit more likely to look for exculpatory evidence favoring the shooter.

That report, too, is slow in coming, leaving us all time for speculation.

Joel Rosenberg, a firearms safety trainer and gun rights advocate, has published the 911 transcripts from calls related to the shooting. Ambiguous, as far as I'm concerned, but highlighting why a thorough investigation is needed.

*****

I'm going out on a limb here... None of us will single-handedly save American life as we know it, or even rescue our daughter from violent hostage takers. We will not foil a rape, halt a bank robbery or help authorities outwit hijackers. We will not stop a terrorist from blowing up a night club.

This is not because we are cowardly or don't care. It's not even because we lack the requisite skills.

We simply won't get the opportunity.

If we do get the opportunity to save a life, it likely will be because we know CPR and first aid, think to use our cell phone, and have maintained a level of fitness that allows us to function mentally and physically in a high-stress situation.

Or more likely, we will be at work and a report will come to us that says some people exhibit a high rate of mesothelioma, a form of lung cancer associated with asbestos. We will not cut the funding for more study. We will not table a new report that shows a growing incidence of the disease. We will not suppress science and fire those who bring dangerous issues to public attention.

However, this kind of heroic behavior is apparently quite difficult and the circumstances are far too nuanced for quick and decisive action. But shooting brown people? Let's roll!

*****

One of our regular rides takes us past a small, charming stucco church near Lake Minnetonka, the New Thought Church of Religious Science. We'd think of stopping to investigate the strange name, but never did, and now it's too late.

The church building is now under new ownership.

Oh, it's still a church. A choir could be heard practicing, and a man dressed like a hotel doorman deliberately swept the front walk in preparation for the morning's service. In fact, this was more life than we'd ever seen there.

On my return, I checked out the church. The original New Thought denomination grew out of the writings and "medical" practice of Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, who also influenced Mary Baker Eddy, founder of Christian Science.

Quimby believed reason could erase ailments. It certainly allowed him to accept the prospect of death, which he simply considered to be "the change." On his deathbed, he anticipated W.C. Fields:

I am perfectly willing for the change myself, but I know you all will feel badly, and think I am dead; but I know that I shall be right here with you, just as I always have been. I do not dread the change any more than if I were going on a trip to Philadelphia.

The new owners of the little church? Why, it's Mac Hammond's Living Word Ministry, bring the prosperity gospel to the Lake People.

*****

Like any good actor, though, non-presidential non-candidate Fred Thompson has got our backs.

We were just talking earlier, and I remember the figure that stuck out to me -- in the year 2005, we apprehended over 1,000 folks that originally has come from Cuba. If they're coming from Cuba, where else are they coming from? And I don't imagine they're coming here to bring greetings from Castro. We're living in the era of the suitcase bomb. We can't be talking seriously about national security while that's going on.

Of course! The Cubans! They've been playing us all along!

Fun According to the Taxpayers League.

If the Taxpayers League blog allowed comments, I wouldn't have to comment here. David Strom approvingly quotes a Wall Street Journal opinion piece on why European economies lag the U.S.

Another interesting thing to note: Americans are more satisfied in their jobs than Europeans, putting the lie to the idea that the Europeans trade off wealth for other satisfactions. Apparently not.

David, I thought you knew there are other satisfactions in life besides jobs and wealth. Apparently not.

Bambi vs. Gozdilla Second Round is Coming.

Since June 2005, the Harper's containing David Mamet's essay, "Bambi vs Godzilla: Why art loses in Hollywood," shuffled from my living room to bathroom to bedside as other outdated publications were kicked to the curbside. I'll get around to it, I swore, and last night in span of wakefulness, I did, madly circling quotes all across the pages.

The essay isn't available online, but it was just announced Mamet has expanded it into a book to be released in February 2007.

Before he gets around to the artist's plight, he places moviemaking in its proper context: that show business is a business, and that business is a form of gambling.

People may buy a stock becuase it is heavily touted, the stock may be thrust down their throat, they may buy the stock because it seems undervalued, they may buy it knowing it is worthless in the hope of selling it to a greater fool.

The price of the stock has no relationship to the worth or prospects of the company traded, the stock does not know the trader is betting on it; it is, essentially, inert, a marker in a gambling game.

Gambling, of course, is purely about the advancement of fortunes by extraction, not creation. Competition, collusion and deception are all part of the contest.

Mamet describes politics as a ritual entertainment.

One party suggest retreat to an imaginary past, one advance to an impossible future. One party sells fear, one hope. And all pre-election skirmishing is, essentially, to guess which label, at that time, is preferred by the electorate.

These elections would be the stuff of comic books, except that, curiously, the two combatants wear identical costumes.

Once elected, the leader still has a gambling problem, or at least the gambler's hope of a few more good rolls that will change everything, and then, the power to

institute all of my Good Ideas. Would it not, then, be in the best interests of all concerned for me to devote my energies to subversion of the needlessly and foolishly "democratic" system, which prevents me from doing so?

Thus, the enlightened is self-schooled to devote his energies not to the stated tasks at hand — government, corporate oversight, statecraft — but to the consummation of Power, which, once achieved, will make all tasks easier.

Here, he explains how the reality-based candidate is at a severe disadvantage:

Law, politics and commerce are based on lies. That is, the premises giving rise to opposition are real, but the debate occurs not between these premises but between their proxy, substitute positions. The two parties to a legal dispute (as the opponents in an election) each select an essentially absurd position. "I did not kill my wife and Ron Goldman," "A rising tide raises all boats," "Tobacco does not cause cancer." Should one be able to support this position, such that it prevails over the nonsense of his opponent, he is awarded the decision. (The criminal propensity of business: Buy Low, Sell High, sell the sizzle not the steak, etc., and its resemblance to a lying cotnest is, I believe, generally acknowledged.)

In these fibbing competitions, the party actually wronged, the party with an actual practicable program, or possessing an actually beneficial product, is at a severe disadvantage; he is stuck with a position he cannot abandon, and, thus, cannot engage his talents for elaboration, distraction, drama and subterfuge.

I expect the book will spend more time in Hollywood, but since politics  is ever closer to show business, it may be hard to tell it from Washington. And, perhaps, one would hope, some editor will find, by then, the use of commas less essential.

Number of the Day: 23

Because 12 + 11 = 23

Today's Quiz:

What do George Lopez, Deborah Harry and Annette Bening have in common?

If you know the answer — or at least my answer — it tells me you don't get all your news from New York Times Select.

The answer for certain is that all three have been featured in the Strib with publicity photos celebrating their stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame! Although I attempt to track consecutive sightings, the 155-day gap between Harry/Blondie and Bening+Beatty makes me wonder if I missed one. (The last interval was only 55 days.)

Bening's enshrinement seems timed to coincide with the recent opening of Running With Scissors, based on the memoir by Augusten Burroughs. But why does an average Walk photo with an unrecognizable Warren Beatty bending into the frame merit this coveted coverage? What was wrong with the Ruta Lee pix back in October?

No need to thank me for this free service. It's the least i could after consecutive posts about inverted yield curves and Anne Frank on war.

Frat Boys Aren't Laughing at Borat.

Borat is a very funny movie, constantly skirting the edges of racism, sexism, homophobia, Kazakhstan... okay, I'm not making it sound very funny. Let's just say, if the makers of Borat had been involved with the creation of the Tammy Lee spoof site, the next few Minneapolis School Board meetings would be a lot quieter.

But there was one episode I found pathetic and disturbing rather than funny, involving three drunken frat boys who pick up the Borat character in an RV and basically spew anti-woman diatribes. Because of the election, I never got around to writing about that scene in which they make total asses of themselves.

Now, it turns out, two of the lads have filed suit, saying they were set up. It's not clear whether their improvised lines were their own sincere creation or whether, paid $200 each and well-lubricated, they went deliberately over the top.

Either way, it's good they feel embarrassed and humiliated upon seeing their performance. It should be seen by frat boys of all ages everywhere.

*****

[UPDATE] Speaking of which, I received a comment from Jim W. of anti-Strib, which is one of the blogs continuing to pick at Chris Stewart's claims regarding the creation of the Tammy Lee spoof site. Whatever you think of the political paparazzi who posted it, one exploiter is Lee. Her linking to the site and keeping it active is a bit like a starlet suing over nude pictures of her and then sending them around the world to show what the photographer did.

As for parsing whether someone else or Stewart himself did the work, we may need some sworn testimony from the parties to sort that out. But I'm inclined to believe Rahelio Soliel is more than one person.

Break down the name. It refers to three suns.

The Foley Artists

The Foley artist produces the sound track that heightens a film's verisimilitude, sets a mood or builds suspense. Since live recording during the shoot can't adequately capture the levels of ambient sounds and special effects, the Foley artist recreates them. Footsteps echoing in a marble rotunda, highway hum, dish clatter, a body blow. A special track with these new sounds is synched to the action, replacing the original, less distinct recording.

Republican leaders produced a Foley track of their own, but to mute reality, not accentuate it.

Months, perhaps years ago, they should have offered Mark Foley help or jail. Instead they chose silence. Omerta.

Now there are new sounds being laid down. Dry leaves crunching. Underbrush whipping across suitcoats.  Panting. Headlong splashing. And far in the distance, muffled shots. We still don't know what bodies we will find in the clearing.

Date Movie: "Paradise Now"

If John Kline and I were going to catch a flick together, I'd take him to "Paradise Now."

How to Beat the Dirty Player.

About half the sports movies ever made feature a stock character, the Dirty Player. Sometimes the Dirty Player is a goon. Other times he is a skilled player who has gone over to the dark side. Or a misguided youth under the influence of the Evil Coach or the Frustrated Father.

The Dirty Player's role is fairly circumscribed. Sometimes he takes out the Home Team's Star Player. In other stories, he distracts the Home Team from playing its Own Game. The Home Team usually has to lose a few times before it Learns Its Lesson.

Soon, it's time for the Big Game. How will the Home Team get revenge on the Dirty Player? Will the Fat Kid pressed into a starting role knock the Dirty Player into the stands? Or will the Home Team resist the Dirty Player's tricks to compete and learn to win As A Team?

Will the Dirty Player be humiliated? Will he end up in tears when he realizes how others have misunderstood his competitive fire?  Will he See the Light and turn out to be a Good Guy after all? Or will Evil Win, forcing the Home Team to learn a different lesson?

You have seen all these movies and have predicted all their plot lines.

Now figure out the real game being played.

*******

Rahelio understands how Michael Brodkorb takes the Home Team out of the game when we respond to his elbows and leg whips. (I wrote this before seeing his updated version of the post that exempts this blog from his indictment.)

We should expose his tactics. We should clarify his connections to the people who really matter — the Team Owners paying him and benefiting from his dirty play. And when he is occasionally right and makes a good play, we should acknowledge it rather than twist ourselves into contortions to avoid facing the truth.

At the same time, we should resist stooping to his tactics. We should not think he is our friend because he shakes hands when the clock has expired. We should not under-estimate that he is very, very good at being a Dirty Player. And we should not confuse the Dirty Player with the Big Game.

Because then he wins. And worse, so does his team.