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Jan232010

I’m Too Tired

I’ve been fuming for several days now, thinking I wanted to write a nice, long, expletive-filled, no-holds-barred rant about recent political developments. About cowardly, disarrayed Democrats who don’t have the conviction of their own ideals, and about a President I still basically like and respect, but who really needs to get it through his head that the other side ain’t going to play nice with him, like ever, and it’s time he drops the “cool and aloof” thing and actually leads his frickin’ party. A party that I continue to vote for because I really have no other choice — it’s not like a third-party candidate has a chance in hell of getting a national seat; Mr. Nader, I’m still pissed at you! — but which continually lets me down and embarrasses me.

I was also going to rant about the other side of the aisle and how unbelievably infuriating it is that the Republicans’ entire political strategy consists of stamping their feet and shouting “no” like recalcitrant four-year-olds. And about how maddening it is that the “no strategy” actually seems to be working, and that they get away with saying any old kind of bullshit thing because they never, ever back down and no one ever calls them on it. And about what a damn, ironic, tragic shame it is that Ted Kennedy spent his entire career trying to make it so no one had to worry about ending up homeless if they happened to get sick, but now that the health-care reform bill is finally only a whisker away from passage, it’s about to vaporize because his seat has been taken by one of those recalcitrant four-year-olds, and it’ll be another 20 years before anyone dares raise the subject again, just like the aftermath of Clinton-care. And I was going to hold out a special ration of bile for those damn-fool Massachusetts Democrats, who lost Teddy’s seat because they were so friggin’ complacent and apparently thought they were simply entitled to it.

Then I was going to go on about how vile it is that the Supreme Court just handed the electoral process over to anonymous, impersonal business entities. And how useless this country’s news media is for treating politics like a football game that’s all about who wins and who loses instead of explaining the things people really need to know (like, for instance, how the U.S. really does not have the best health care system in the world and how the bill that’s about to vaporize, while imperfect, could make things better, or what a bad idea it is to formally recognize and condone the influence of corporations in politics). And how the country that won World War II and sent men to the bloody moon is now filled with ignorant pussies who dress their children in suits of armor to ride bikes, and are ready to give up any civil liberty for some ineffable guarantee of “safety,” and who vote for whichever candidate tells them the scariest or most infuriating story. And so on and so forth.

But every time I called up a fresh Notepad window and actually tried to compose this rant, I couldn’t seem to get much beyond the bare bones I just outlined. I just couldn’t manage to get wound up enough about it. I know, I know: this happens sometimes to men my age and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. But still…

Instead of the soothing roar of my own bile, all I could hear in my head was dialog from a movie, echoing slightly the way it does when you’re walking across the parking lot of a drive-in theater. Dialog from Escape from New York, to be precise, a scene very near the end when Lee Van Cleef’s Houk asks Snake Plisskin — Kurt Russell — if Snake intends to follow through on an earlier threat to kill him. And Snake gives it a moment’s consideration, then growls, “I’m too tired.”

Yeah. Yeah, that’s it. I’m just tired…

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Jan192010

The Year We Make Contact? Really?

May I just briefly mention how really frakkin’ weird I feel every time I think about the fact that I’m actually walking around in the year 2010?

It’s the curse of being a Gen-X sci-fi fan, I guess. Thanks to all the silly stuff that obsessed me as a kid and a teen, there are certain dates that hold a powerful resonance for me and probably don’t faze ordinary people in the least: 1999… 2001, of course… and now 2010. Still to come are 2015, 2019, and 2029, the Year of Darkness, in which Skynet comes up with its dastardly plan to end the human resistance once and for all. In the case of that one, I think I’ll forgo my usual lament that the real future doesn’t match the cinematic version…

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Jan182010

The Meaning of “Post-Racial,” According to an Old-School Trekkie

As I’ve been puttering around the house on this day off honoring the birth of Martin Luther King, Jr., I’ve been listening to a segment of NPR’s Talk of the Nation called “The ‘Post-Racial’ Conversation, One Year In.” (Recall if you will that many observers believed President Obama’s inauguration a year ago would usher us into “post-racial” America.)

Now, if you think about the recent flap over Harry Reid’s “Negro dialect” comment, Rush Limbaugh’s ridiculous insinuation that Obama is politicizing the Haiti disaster, and the barely disguised (or not-at-all disguised) racism of some of Obama’s detractors — not to mention the quickness of some of his supporters to label any opposition to the president racist — it seems pretty clear to me that we’re still a fair distance away from being over the sticky issue of race in this country. But that’s something I’ve been hearing my entire life. Far more interesting to me is the question of what exactly “post-racial” is supposed to mean. What is this goal that our society seems to be eternally reaching toward, one stumbling baby-step at a time?

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Jan182010

He Fought Monsters

Reposting something from a couple years ago that still moves me and says what needs to be said on this particular federal holiday:

He may not have searched for lost treasure, discovered ancient civilizations, or killed aliens in outer space, but he was one of the bravest men this country’s ever known.

 

And he did fight monsters.

— Michael May

And now some of the greatest words ever spoken on American soil, right up there with the Gettysburg Address, in my humble opinion:

This is the promise, the duty, and the destiny of America. Equality, respect, and dignity for all, no matter who or what you may be. We’re still not there yet, but we’re getting closer all the time. And that’s pretty exciting…

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Jan182010

Salvaging Flight 1549

In case you missed it, this past Friday was the one-year anniversary of the so-called “Miracle on the Hudson,” in which airline captain “Sully” Sullenberger successfully ditched his crippled Airbus A320 in the Hudson River alongside Manhattan without losing a single life. (Human life, that is; God only knows how many poor birds got themselves puree’d inside Flight 1549’s massive CFM International turbofan engines.)

This morning, there’s a new video floating around the ‘net that shows what happened after the passengers and crew were rescued. It’s a fascinating timelapse of the salvage operation that lifted the sunken airliner out of the freezing waters of the river and got it placed onto a barge. The photographer had a perfect vantage point, and the video is really quite beautiful. In particular, I found the ice surging and waning around the plane’s wing and vertical stabilizer — the only parts of 1549 that were above the water for three days — weirdly hypnotic. Give it a look:

Exclusive unseen video footage of the Miracle on the Hudson, flight 1549 New York City from David Martin on Vimeo.

I am one of those weirdos who sentimentalize and anthropomorphize machines, especially those that perform beyond expectations to save the lives of the people who ride within them, so I’m not at all ashamed to admit that I teared up a bit when 1549 re-emerges into the air. Of course, the music probably helps. It’s a selection from the soundtrack of Michael Bay’s Transformers, and I found it unexpectedly effective.

The guy who created this video, David Hugh Martin, has posted a number of still photos and some comments here; I found his video via Andrew Sullivan.

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Jan122010

Sartre Never Ate at Sizzler on a Saturday Night

To the worthless lump of failed humanity whose obnoxious children ruined my dinner at Sizzler the other night, the guy who sat at a table with all the adults of your extended clan, obliviously stuffing your soft, quivering jowls with all-you-can-eat shrimp while your noisy little brats went unsupervised in a nearby booth and generally behaved (and sounded) as if they were playing on a jungle gym in some open-air playground about a mile away from civilization:

You suck.

No, seriously, you do.

You see, the fact that your meager dreams evaporated years ago and your self-respect is dead and buried beneath that admittedly awe-inspiring paunch of yours does not absolve you from your parental responsibilities to actually, you know, parent. Yes, I know the only glimmer of pleasure you can strain from your gray and miserable life is the time spent discussing football stats with your equally corpulent brother-in-law over heaping plates of fried crustaceans. And I’m certain that your admirable ability to completely ignore the high-pitched squealings of your misbehaved progeny is an adaptive mechanism to protect what little intellectual capacity you may have remaining in that stupid round noggin of yours. But believe me, what you seem so adept at filtering out while you eat was unbelievably irritating to every other person in the damn restaurant. And as you’re the one who spawned the offending creatures, the responsibility for them irritating me ultimately falls on your ample and well-cushioned shoulders. So allow me to offer you some suggestions on how you should have handled the situation…

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Jan122010

Elvis at 75

Elvis at age 21

I was just shy of my eighth birthday when Elvis Presley died at the age of 42. His was the first celebrity death — possibly the first death, period — that I can recall being aware of and understanding as death, i.e., the permanent state we’re all doomed to achieve sooner or later, which those we leave behind experience as loss and pain. It was, with no exaggeration, a transformative event in my life. You want to know the origins of my compulsive obituary-writing? Blame Elvis Presley. Or more precisely, blame the way our culture responded to his passing.

I actually wrote my very first dead-celebrity tribute for Elvis. I had this red leatherette agenda book, the sort of thing businesspeople scribbled their appointments in before the advent of Day Planners, PDAs, and BlackBerries, a piece of branded corporate swag. It was given to me by our neighbor’s adult daughter, who worked for an airline. I imagine she thought I’d enjoy looking at the photos of jets that were interspersed between the calendar pages. (She was correct, of course.) But even at that early age, I was trying to express myself in written words, to record the things that seemed to matter. In other words, I was dabbling at keeping my first diary in that book. And on a page dated August 16, 1977, I was inspired to write the following in the shaky, block-printed letters of a young boy who hated to practice his penmanship: GOODBYE ELVIS, WE’LL MISS YOU. (I think I probably stole that from Walter Cronkite’s evening broadcast that day, but hey, I had to learn how to say these things from someone, right?)

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Jan062010

Congratulations Are in Order

Hear ye, hear ye (I’ve always wanted to say that):

My lovely Girlfriend, who has slaved tirelessly and with very little recognition for a wholesale carpet dealer for the past 10 years, was this afternoon elected to the position of Vice President of the Utah Floor Covering Association, an industry trade group concerned with, um, floor coverings. And the industry that trades in… floor… coverings. Ah, hell, the truth is I have no idea what the UFCA actually does, but I imagine I’m going to be learning much more about it over the next year. Anne has already informed me that I’ll be required to make myself available as her arm-candy for occasional functions, and she will likely be doing some business-related traveling as well. (The travel may or may not include me, depending on our respective schedules.) And, as if all this wasn’t exciting enough, she will most likely ascend to the presidency itself in only a year.

I’m very proud of her. I don’t know that this is going to be a game-changer or anything, but it’s bound to be a very interesting experience for her, and a good resume’ builder. And besides, “Madam Vice President” has kind of a sexy ring…

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Jan062010

Status Updates in a Galaxy Far, Far Away

This either speaks to the utter banality and base immaturity of the average conversation on social-networking sites, or it serves to craft an endearingly human side to beloved but admittedly two-dimensional characters. Or something. Whatever is going on here, it makes me laugh:

Facebook brings out the worst in everyone.

There are a few more here
Via.

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