The Seven Sisters of Sleep

More book stuff about drugs.   In this case, a book written in 1860 by Mordecai Cooke, intended as a definitive guide, at the time, on how to get f**ked up.  Or rather, how people around the world got high back them.   Cooke has been accused to writing this to suggest that what they do in China or India or South America is appropriate for them and not for UK souls, but I didn’t get that impression.  What Cooke was going for was suggesting that our natural nightly downtime had some competition from various inebriants of varying quality and potency, scattered across the globe.  

These were 1) tobacco, 2) opium, 3) cannabis, 4) betel nut, 5) coca, 6) Datura (aka Jimson weed), and 7) fly agaric (Europe’s magic mushroom). 

Tobacco – why does this qualify as a sister of sleep?  Isn’t nicotine a stimulant?  MC cites an 18^th century priest railing against the drug citing blackened lungs of heavy smokers revealed in autopsies.  So in the 1700s they knew what tobacco did!  Amazing.  But to read Cooke’s account, you would think that tobacco was LSD.  So far it’s a chapter on tobacco itself, then a chapter on smoking it in pipes, a chapter on snuff (tobacco consumed in the nose), and the next on chewing tobacco (most popular in the US where everyone spits).  Finally a chapter on “pretenders” (tobacco substitutes of various types, none of which he considers comparable though acknowledging that others do).

 

Finally we can move on… to opium.  After a tedious chapter on how opium is made (like anyone needs to know) he proceeds to finally tell us: WHAT DOES IT DO.   And so far as I can tell it’s the LSD of the 1800s.  Except that it’s addictive.  Thank you, Albert Hofmann. 

In fact there are not just one but – as with tobacco - several chapters on opium.  And what I found surprising was this.  By now we’ve been consistently presented with the spectacle of the opium addict, reduced to poverty and crime, health ruined, to support his habit.  But apparently there were “chippers”, occasional users, who may have used regularly but probably more like once a month instead of daily.  These opium users show no health issues, lived long healthy lives, and had normal lifestyles.  In other words, they were not addicts.  Overall Cooke takes the position that opium is actually no worse than alcohol in terms of aggregate damage caused to its users and society as a whole (what economists would refer to as negative externalities).  He observed that drunkards frequently became extremely violent under the influence of alcohol, whereas chronic opium users retreated into a dreamlike catatonia which threatened no one other than the user himself.  The real problem for either substance is excessive consumption, not consumption per se.

Next, there’s an extensive section on HEMP and HASHISH, with the inevitable reference to Assassins from Syria.  From what he says, recreational cannabis use was well known at that time, except that it was extremely uncommon as such in the Western world – that is to say, hemp was well known in its non-marijuana properties but cannabis was only smoked recreationally outside the Western world, with the Middle East being a consistent consumer of hashish, which is highly concentrated marijuana.  He makes some brief mentions of Fitzhugh Ludlow, who was a contemporary of his.  In fact, it would seem the express reason for Ludlow to write his book, The Hasheesh Eater, was specifically because marijuana and hashish were so little known in the US at the time.  Oddly, although Ludlow’s book was published in 1857 and reissued several times in the following decade, Cooke makes no specific references to it.  Apparently he didn’t read it.  For that matter, I don’t see any evidence that Cooke actually even tried hashish.  And that looks to be the case with the majority of the exotic substances he chronicles.  I would hope he at least smoked tobacco or drank alcohol.

Next is a chapter on coca leaves, mainly consumed by the Indians of Peru.  The active ingredient is cocaine, which was synthesized soon after this book was written, and acts as a more concentrated version of the coca leaf.  From Cooke’s writing it does not appear that coca leaves were exported abroad for recreational consumption, and my impression is that cocaine itself was initially marketed as a legitimate drug before being banned and turned – much later – into the rich and famous party drug.  Even so, although far less concentrated and effective than cocaine, chewing the leaves did produce a substantial narcotic effect and this practice counts as a form of recreational use, which was popular and widespread in that part of the world at that time.

Next are chapters – only one each – on eating clay/dirt/lime (quicklime/whitewash); low doses of arsenic, obviously a poison in higher doses, but also addictive and with no apparent narcotic properties; Datura, belladonna, and henbane, all of which appear to cause hallucinations but possibly death.  Betel Nut stains your teeth and makes you high.  Apparently he did not try it.

Finally, one chapter on fly agaric (magic mushroom), which mainly grows in Siberia and the far east of Russia, in Kamchatka (remember RISK?).  The big fun thing about this is that the active ingredient survives unscathed into the user’s urine.  The same person, or someone else, can conceivably drink that – if so inclined – and trip all over again.  Even Cooke couldn’t ascertain if there was a limit on how many times it could be so “recycled”.  But since Mexican mushrooms, which appear to be the strongest and most trippiest of all the psychedelic varieties (psilocybe cubensis), were not commonly known outside the little villages in Mexico until Gordon Wasson blew the whole scene open in the late 1950s, Cooke would have been oblivious to that branch of the shroom tree.  

Storm of Steel

Merry Christmas!  I’ve already covered the Christmas Truce of 1914 in a prior blog, but I still believe World War I is an inexhaustible source of holiday blog material.  The ironic juxtaposition of trenches, poison gas, and pointless slaughter really fits in with Christmas.  Or Festivus.  Anyhow.

A few weeks back we met our old Paris buddy Jean in Virginia, and while browsing through Barnes & Noble with him I picked up this book by Ernst Junger.  It’s his memoirs of World War I in the Imperial German Army.  

Junger was actually in the French Foreign Legion immediately before the war and returned to Germany to fight.  He started out as a private and won a commission through Germany’s equivalent of Officer Candidate School.  He served  throughout the war, though wounded several times.   Immediately after the war he wrote this.   Oddly, he never joined the Nazi Party, though he and Hitler exchanged autographed copies of their books.  During WWII he served as a captain in the Wehrmacht in Paris, France, in a non-combatant role.   He lived all the way to 1998.

I recall an Internet article on WWI a few years ago, which served to dispel the notion that troops were in combat continuously throughout the war, and this is reflected in Junger’s story.  In fact, the troops were rotated from behind the lines, second line, and front line, and even front line service could be fairly quiet if there was no battle actually going on at the time.  The battles themselves were terrifying, and Junger was amazed to survive brutal bombardments and fairly accurate enemy fire.  Grenades were popular because they could be thrown around corners in traverses.  Gas warfare figures heavily in his story, and is yet another peculiar horror of this war, and mostly absent thereafter.  The nature of mobile warfare – tanks and motorized infantry, e.g. WWII – make slow-moving clouds of poison gas impractical once the trenches are left behind.

The majority of his opponents were British, and all of his service was on the Western Front.  He had a high opinion of their morale and skill.  On rare occasions Junger faced off against the French, and they were also deadly foes.   His quotes of French were correct (!).  Despite serving through November 1918, he makes no mention whatsoever of Americans, and only brief mentions of tanks, after battles with no direct experience in combat against them.  Although the cover illustration shows Germany’s A7V and a British Mark IV, he makes no specific reference to either and a brief reference to smaller, faster tanks, presumably the French Renault FT.   The book ends abruptly with the end of the war and he offers no opinion on the outcome.

The obvious comparison is with “All Quiet on the Western Front”.   That story, though, is fiction, whereas Junger’s account is first person non-fiction.  Remarque’s story is apolitical; the German soldiers show no particular love or loyalty to the Kaiser or even Germany, nor any hostility to him or to the opposing sides.  The general idea is that the war is a huge slaughter and an equally huge mistake on the part of everyone concerned – i.e. pretty much anti-war.  Both film adaptations were American, with US actors.  Storm of Steel has yet to come to the big screen, and after having read it from cover to cover, I suppose I can ascertain why.  

Junger makes only passing references to the Kaiser.  He won the Pour Le Merite, the “Blue Max”, Imperial Germany’s highest award.  Nowhere in the book does he express the opinion that the war is wrong or a mistake, or that Germany bears responsibility for it; the closest is a later, vague acknowledgement that things could be going better for his side.   There is really zero politics here and certainly NO anti-war sentiment.  Hell, Junger even makes jokes.  He respects the British and French as worthy opponents (no mention of Americans, Russians, Italians, Austrians, Turks, etc.).   For him, war was glorious, fun, and exciting.  This alone seems to turn off many readers, especially since he’s happy to describe the appalling casualties he witnesses, even on his own side, which he obviously saw more of.  This lack of passion or remorse hits many people the wrong way – how could you go through WWI and NOT become a pacifist?  Well, that was his take on the whole thing, and people are free to disagree with him.  Apparently his non-combat role in WWII was simply because of his age, not his inclination. 

Movie directors and producers being fairly liberal and anti-war, no one short of Mel Gibson could be expected to turn this book into a movie, though even so I’m puzzled even the Nazis didn’t tackle it.  Be that as it may, it serves as a good compliment to “All Quiet on the Western Front” and well worth reading in its own right.

Rockville Pike aka Route 355

We discovered Miller’s NJ Alehouse in Paramus, on Route 4.  They have a fantastic chicken cheesesteak.  As it was, I found there are two Miller’s Alehouses in the DC area:  one in Sterling, Virginia, the other on Rockville Pike (355) in Rockville, Maryland, where Shakey’s Pizza used to be (so far as I know the only remaining Shakey’s is in L.A., and I went there in summer 2010).   Anyhow.  Here’s a blog which serves as a HEY YOU to my readers from Montgomery County, Maryland, and former classmates at St. Martin’s. 

Wishing to visit my mom in Frederick, I decided to avoid 270 and take the long way, up 355.  At this point in its life, 355 is called Rockville Pike.

Rockville.   This is the county seat of Montgomery County, Maryland, and the location of its courthouse complex.  The old red brick building is still there, a “newer” concrete block dating from the 1930s (the former District Court), a brand new District Court building across the street, and a newly expanded Circuit Court building next to that.  The original courthouse was Hungerford’s Tavern, a real tavern.  Imagine if the local Hooters or Buffalo Wild Wings served as a courthouse.   Mind.  Blown.

Wisconsin Ave./Rockville Pike/355.  What we think of as 355 is actually VERY old.  It used to be called Rock Creek Main Road, and stretched from what became Washington, DC, all the way to Frederick.  In June 1863, Confederate forces stopped by Rockville on their way up to get their asses kicked at Gettysburg.

It starts out under the Whitehurst Freeway in DC as Wisconsin Ave., goes up the hill, and proceeds northwest to Friendship Heights, in Maryland.   Further stops:

1.         Chevy Chase.  Not the actor.  No idea why they both have the same name.  This is a densely developed urban area with lots of fancy stores, including Mazza Gallerie and Saks Fifth Avenue.

2.         Bethesda.  Home of the Naval Hospital, where I was born in January 1969.  The Chinatown bus stops here, on its way to/from Arlington, VA to NYC, and we stayed here for a bit in summer 1990 waiting for our sea shipment to come over from Paris. 

3.         White Flint Mall.   Now it’s kind of run down and half empty.  I took my LSAT prep classes there in fall 1989.  There seems to be a mattress store every block around here. 

4.         Downtown Rockville, including the courthouse complex.  Rockville Mall was closed in 1994.  There’s some new development here and a movie theater.

5.         Gaithersburg.  Where we used to live (actually, Montgomery Village) and includes Lakeforest Mall, still alive.

6.         Germantown.  Home of Clutch.  The Cider Barrel is still there, but it has been closed the last few times I went past it.  Check out “Opossum Minister” on From Beale Street To Oblivion, as it seems singer Neil Fallon used to live in Montgomery Village.

7.         Clarksburg.   Here the road is two lanes and winds through old houses and no particular development.

8.         Hyattstown.   Likewise.  Now it’s a country road, going up and down hills with farms on either side.  And it’s 2016.   

Leaving Montgomery County…

9.         Urbana, first stop in Frederick County.   75/80 Drag-A-Way is closed down.  I brought my Firebird Formula here several times in the late 1990s.

10.        Frederick, passing by Francis Scott Key Mall, and ending at Route 26. 

Of course, driving this way takes time, but it’s also extremely calming and therapeutic.  Part of the fun is remembering what something used to be.

1.         Drive-in Theater on Hungerford Drive.  Gone.  The Giant across the street used to be a Hechingers.  My dad was big time into hardware, so whereas Best Buy and Barnes & Noble are my current favorite stores, Hechingers (old days) and Home Depot (more recently, up to his passing in 2004) were his temples.

2.         Burger Chef gone.   Now it looks like they’re ALL gone.  If they can bring Roy Rogers back from the brink of extinction, why not Burger Chef?  Or Red Barn?  Yeah, I know – all those horrendously unhealthy burgers and fries we used to eat back then.  Now everything is “gluten-free” and “healthy”.  We’re still dying, though.  Why is that?

3.         King Pontiac is now just King Buick GMC.   The King farm is still behind it, and my dad told me stories about their family.  I bought my first new car, a 1992 Firebird there, on November 22, 1992.  Reed Brothers Dodge, across the street, is still around, and is apparently one of the older car dealerships in the area. 

4.         Montgomery College is still around.  However, I had no occasion to go there, we went to UMCP.  Why no Montgomery County campus of University of Maryland?

4.         Lots of Asian food places too, almost as many as mattress stores.  Is there a connection?

5.         Chafitz – the TV and appliance store - is gone.  It’s a mattress store now.  Or a liquor store.

6.         Phineas, a prime rib restaurant, is gone.  That’s were my parents revealed to us, in September 1978, that by January 1979 we’d be living in Paris.  And my Dad wouldn’t have to mow lawns anymore.

7.         Congressional Plaza.  Now it’s fancied up, but that is apparently one of the older shopping centers.

8.         Shakey’s.  As noted, it’s gone, now a Miller’s Alehouse.  The Toys R Us across the street moved down to Nicholson Lane, and Montrose Road and that area is getting a huge development of high rises to make the older condo building (the Forum?) look small and lost by comparison. 

9.         St. Martin’s Catholic Church & School.  It’s at a crossroads with Summit Ave. – who figured that thing out?  We went there as kids, and I remember many Christmas masses there.  I still go there occasionally, out of sheer nostalgia.  Mind you, it’s a church and not a cathedral.  The pastor joked about reading it called that in the local paper, and remarked, “I missed the part when they made me a bishop…”

            I went to school here from first grade until fall semester (1978) of fifth grade, as did my brother.  At the time we left for Paris, January 1979, my sister was too young for school.  The first and second grade building is now closed up and used for storage.  The third through eighth grade building is completely gone, replaced by a different one.  Now my memories of recess and playing at the school are receding into oblivion, but I can remember the church, its basement, the school buildings, and the rectory across the street with its large field in front.  When I passed by they were selling Christmas trees on that lot.

10.        Corner with Montgomery Village Ave.  The Holiday Inn is still there, as is Lakeforest Mall.  Gaitherstowne Square is still there too.  The A&P is now something else.  For that matter, the A&P in Fort Lee, NJ only recently turned into an ACME, as did the Pathmark in Edgewater.  I point this out because ACME doesn’t sell beer, but A&P did.  At least the one in Fort Lee.  GF would refer to it as “The A and the P”.

11         From Gaithersburg up through Germantown and most of the way to Frederick, as noted before, are incredibly rural, and at that point the memories drop off from the past.  By the time we were kids 270 (70-S) was in place, so our few trips north of Gaithersburg were on the highway.  Besides which, 355 had long since stopped being called Rockville Pike, i.e. Hungerford Drive north of downtown Rockville.

Enjoy it up and down, thankfully as Montgomery County’s main commercial road it is unlikely to disappear any time soon.

Westworld

Recently Episode 10, the final episode of season 1, was broadcast.  As yet I’m unaware if a second season will be on its way, but apparently plans are in place for that.   This is a remake of a 1973 film, which actually had a sequel (FutureWorld, 1976) and a brief TV series (Beyond Westworld, 1980), neither of which I’ve seen.

Basic Premise.  The company has developed a fantasy world staffed with lifelike androids (hosts) programmed to cater to the whims and desires of the guests (humans).  The main such world is WestWorld, patterned after America’s Wild West, while the original film also included a Roman world and a medieval world, both absent from the current HBO series.  As a practical matter, the male hosts act as cannon fodder – they can be killed, but their guns cannot harm the guests – and the female hosts are anatomically correct sexbots.  Well, in theory.  But the general idea is that the robots begin malfunctioning in a particularly deadly fashion – in the original, it’s attributed to an unintentional computer virus, in the HBO series we begin to wonder if it wasn’t intentional….

Westworld (1973).  Recap:  a pair of rich guys, Peter (Richard Benjamin) and John (James Brolin, the father of Josh Brolin) indulge in Westworld, where they can play out fantasies of being wild west outlaws yet – theoretically – not suffer the retribution of the robotic “hosts”.  The most noticeable is called The Gunslinger, played by Yul Brynner. 

Of course, nothing goes according to plan, and the Gunslinger proves capable of killing John.  He stalks after Peter, chasing him through the other two worlds with a final showdown in the depths of the company’s underground complex. The Gunslinger-as-unstoppable-killer-robot is a precursor to Arnold’s Terminator a decade later.  The “computer fantasy world gone haywire” is clearly similar to “Jurassic Park”.  Overall the movie is suitably disturbing and exciting – but one thing it isn’t is confusing.

Westworld (2016 HBO Series).  This is a full remake.  It’s missing RomanWorld or MedievalWorld - perhaps in subsequent seasons, but I haven’t seen anything in the current narrative to suggest that.  If anything, there are too many bugs in Westworld as it is, much less expanding.  However, they’re really knocking themselves out by bringing this up to the next level. 

It has an A-list cast.  Anthony Hopkins is here as the ultimate mastermind of the complex, Ford.  Others include (but are not limited to) Evan Rachel Wood, Thandie Newton, James Marsden (Cyclops in the X-Men films), Jeffrey Wright (from “Hunger Games”), Jimmi Simpson (House of Cards), and Ed Harris as a particularly nasty guest, the Man in Black – itself an intriguing role for an actor who usually plays good guys (e.g. John Glenn, RIP, in “The Right Stuff”).  Everyone does a knockout job in the acting category.  No complaints there.

The production values are high (as you would well expect from HBO), but where HBO really ramps this up from the movie is on two items.  First, the hosts (the robots) begin to develop self-awareness.  In particular, Maeve (Newton) talks to her human technicians and persuades them to upgrade her programming.  Eventually she takes her rebellion to the next level.

Second, the plot becomes extremely byzantine and complex.  In fact, it gets downright confusing.  Are there multiple timelines?   Are these events flashbacks or are they happening in real time?  Much of this seems to be from the perspective of Dolores (Wood), who is a host, not a guest.  Maeve’s point of view is also well represented, with Teddy (Marsden) a distant third.  Brynner’s Gunslinger never got that treatment.  But as I said, confusing.  To me that level of complexity compromises the enjoyability of the show.  All will be revealed?  Actually, not exactly.

While there were a few loose ends at the end of E10, don’t assume that means there will be a season 2.  Ever see “Dirty Sexy Money”?  The series ended on a cliffhanger yet the show wasn’t picked up.  Talk about frustrating…   

Comparison with “Jurassic Park”.  I posted a humorous meme on Facebook about this, but in reality Michael Crichton was behind both of these, so the similarities are hardly a coincidence.  However, I don’t see dinosaurs gaining human intelligence, much less self-awareness (T Rex to programmer: “Make me a vegetarian.”)

Everybody Wants To Be Dazed and Confused

I finally caught this one, the most recent film by Richard Linklater.  His most famous project would be “Boyhood”, a film he took 14-something years to make allowing the actors to actually grow, which was remarkable.

Now that I’ve seen “Slacker” through “Everybody Wants Some” I can comment on the majority of his films – certainly the most high profile and popular.

Good

A Scanner Darkly.   Fantastic rotoscope, killer cast (Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson, Winona Ryder) but much of the credit has to go to Philip K. Dick for providing the essential plot.  It’s clear to me that Linklater is a big PKD fan – as I am – but I’ll give him credit for doing justice to this story.

School of Rock.  Jack Black teaches private school students how to play heavy metal.   I share Black’s musical tastes and probably give them a pass for this reason alone.

Dazed and Confused.   The first film which put him on the map.  Ben Affleck and Matthew McConnaughey are here, but at the time they were nobodies.   Excellent soundtrack.  Basically it’s a day in the life of a bunch of high schools students in the middle 1970s, leading up a night of shit happening.

Bad

Before Sunrise/Before Sunset/Before Midnight.   Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy meet in Vienna (Sunrise), then Paris (Sunset), then Greece (Midnight).  They simply TALK for the entire films.  It’s boring AND pretentious.

Slacker & It’s Impossible To Learn to Plow By Reading Books.  The first two.   Highly pretentious stream of consciousness crap.  

Waking Life.   Similar, but uses the rotoscope effect from “A Scanner Darkly”.  But this time he didn’t have an excellent PKD story, he simply strung together a series of unrelated sketches which are basically people bullshitting.  Guess what – Ethan Hawke is here.

Tape.   Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman and Robert Sean Leonard talk and argue in a motel room.  The highlight is UT’s character pretend to narc on EH’s character (a drug dealer), inducing the latter to flush his stash down the toilet.

In Between

Boyhood.   A remarkable gimmick, but aside from that the film is pretty boring.  The Oscar is won by a gimmick.  There you go.  Ethan Hawke’s character originally drives a GTO.

Everybody Wants Some.  A de facto sequel to “D&C” even if no characters or actors remain the same.  It takes place at some south Texas college in 1980.  A bunch of baseball players hang out, drink, smoke dope, and eventually play some baseball.  Almost all of them are complete assholes, which gets tiresome immediately.  Like “D&C” it has a killer soundtrack but a less than compelling story.

Fast Food Nation.  Interesting story and a quasi-documentary, better than “Supersize Me”, with which I get it confused. 

Bad News Bears.  Competent remake of the 1976 Walter Matthau film, with Billy Bob Thornton as Matthau’s character.

Overall I’d say he has a terrible habit of making extremely pretentious films.   If I were running a totalitarian dictatorship and this guy was mine to order around and execute if he didn’t do as he was told, I’d have him simply make PKD stories into movies with killer soundtracks.  That or a bullet to the head.