Heroes of the Other Side

Now I see that in some parts of the US, Confederate statues are being taken down.  On one hand, you might wonder why they were up in the first place.  What’s the point of defeating a pro-slavery rebellion in 1865 if you allow the losers to honor their fallen leaders?   That doesn’t make a whole of a sense to begin with.  However, once you made that decision, why back off now?  Is there a nascent movement to abolish the Thirteenth Amendment, reinstitute slavery in the former CSA, and secede de novo, re-establishing the Confederate States of America?  Or is it just that some people are offended?  Ultimately, however, the voters of these states have the prerogative to decide for themselves.  If I were a rich and disgruntled CSA enthusiast, and these were being taken down off public property, I’d buy up the statues and erect them on private property.  Anyhow.  My loyalties lie with Grant, Sherman, Farragut, etc. so I’m not upset at all.

But it reminds us that many times there are some fairly “excellent” people on what we would consider the “wrong” side of the conflict.

Last week I profiled George Orwell (Eric Blair), arguably the best socialist among them, counting socialists as political enemies.  But there are still others worthy of note.

Saladin (1137-1193).  Born in Tikrit, Iraq (actually Kurdish) and died in Damascus, Syria.  Arguably the most noble opponent among Muslim military leaders during the Crusades.  Although the Crusaders were often complete bastards – sacking Constantinople, what’s the deal with that? – their opponent on the Muslim side was seriously cool.  He spared the Christians’ lives upon the Muslim recapture of Jerusalem.  He was so well esteemed among his opponents that Richard the Lionhearted and him swapped praises, although they never met.  Sadly, while still much revered among today’s Muslims, an analogous contemporary figure has yet to emerge.  And for his part, Trump is nowhere close to King Richard in character.  Even so, Saladin was a Sunni, so it’s questionable the Iranians would accept his latter-day incarnation even should that occur.  Is it possible for the West to make peace with both the Sunnis AND the Shi’ites?  Discuss.

Robert E. Lee.   The CSA lends itself to romanticism, and its leaders to being worshipped as gentlemen and gods, but there’s always Nathan Bedford Forrest to point to as the counterexample - as I’m sure Sherman qualifies as the Union Antichrist, though I don’t consider him nearly as much as a bastard as Forrest.  At the top of the heap of would-be CSA saints is this man.  Now his statues are being taken down – though not in Virginia, to my knowledge.  His former home and grounds are now the Arlington National Cemetery.  While no fan of slavery, Lee accepted the CSA’s military leadership simply because he couldn’t fight against fellow Virginians.  Like Rommel he was a bold and reckless general, expert at leveraging inferior numbers into successful battles, but eventually Grant called his bluff and it was GAME OVER for the Confederacy. 

Erwin Rommel.   Germany’s best Field Marshal during World War II, although Guderian also comes close.  Rommel was never a Nazi party member and considered himself simply a loyal soldier.  He was implicated in the plot to kill Hitler (July 1944) and thus forced to commit suicide.  In World War I he served as an infantry officer first in France, then in Romania, then finally in the mountains of Italy, where he earned his Blue Max (Pour le Merite), Germany’s highest medal, essentially by tricking a series of gullible Italian officers into believing his own forces were much larger than they were – an elaborate bluff.   In WWII he was most famous for cruising across North Africa with the Afrika Korps, a force which never amounted to more than two armored divisions: Hitler couldn’t spare more – plus Rommel did so well with what he had, he was a victim of his own success.   After the Afrika Korps surrendered in May 1943, he came back to supervise the Atlantic Wall preparations, and as noted, was eventually coerced into killing himself.  No German commander earned more praise and respect from his adversaries – including Winston Churchill himself – than Rommel.  I’m not aware that Stuttgart, his home town, has any memorials to him, but his son Manfred was the mayor for awhile.  Rommel was played by James Mason in “The Desert Fox”, and by Christopher Plummer (aka Captain Von Trapp in “The Sound of Music”) in “Night of the Generals”.

Vasili Arkhipov.   Born 1926, died in 1998.  Possibly most important.  During Cuban Missile Crisis, he was submarine officer in Soviet Navy – in fact, fleet commander.  His ship, B59, had been “nudged” by depth charges from US vessels.  Sub commander (Savitsky) and political officer (Maslennikov) wanted to launch sub’s SLBMs (submarine launched ballistic missiles) which required cooperation and approval of multiple officers – precisely to prevent rogue launches “Dr. Strangelove” went on about; in this case, Arkhipov’s consent as fleet commander was also required.  This man refused – and saved not only own countrymen back home scourge of US ICBMs, but also US population which would have been subject to not only his own ship’s rockets, but those of rest of Soviet rocket fleet.   Everyone, US and Russian alike, owes this man their lives.  

Orwell Rocks!

Well, really this is a review of Road to Wigan Pier, but since that title is supremely lame for the book itself, I couldn’t use it as the blog title either.

Wigan is a city in England, northwest of Manchester.  It is not on the coast, so the “pier” was just a riverfront with no access to the Atlantic Ocean, much less any beaches.   The title really says almost nothing about what the whole thing was about.  [All I knew about Wigan before this is that they have a soccer team.]

For those of you familiar with only 1984 and Animal Farm, let me clue you in.  Orwell had a substantial volume of nonfiction as well, and remarkably, his non-fiction is at least as entertaining as his fiction.  Mainly it’s because he had such a phenomenal way of describing things, a perpetual WTF attitude, that he could describe paint drying and it would be interesting. 

Up until this point I considered Homage to Catalonia, his “WTF” account of his brief experience in the POUM (non-Stalinist, socialist militia) in the Spanish Civil War, to be his best nonfiction.  He was in Barcelona in May 1937 when the various Republican factions – Fascists miles away – took shots at each other.  If you want to know about the Spanish Civil War, read this one.

Anyhow.  In Road, he goes up to northern England and visits different cities, notably Wigan, but also Sheffield (home of Def Leppard, not mentioned herein).  In particular he went into the coal mines to see what that was like.  As a tall guy, he had a hard time.  He came away with a much better understanding, tactically, of what coal miners do.  But he also came away with a better understanding of the bigger picture of working class relations in that part of the country.  There’s really no substitute for actually going somewhere to see with your own eyes, hear with your ears, smell with your own nose, taste with your own tongue, and feel with your own appropriate body part, what is actually going on. 

In the second half of the book, he takes issue with the contemporary socialist movement.  At that time – 1937 – Hitler and Mussolini were well in power, but so was Stalin in the USSR.  Capitalist democracies appeared helpless to fight the two extremes (what he would say once the US entered the war, might be something else).  One thing he noticed was that very few socialists were actually FROM the working class.  Most were bourgeois.  Another thing he noticed is that very few of these bourgeois socialists had ever even met, much less associated with, any members of the working class they professed to champion.  To the contrary, they could not bring themselves to shed their existing unease and contempt for these folk.  Moreover, on the few occasions in which they did, they could not resist acting as snobs, intellectual and otherwise, and using Marxist jargon, and going on about how great Stalin was and what a wonderful place the Soviet Union was.  The perverse result was that too many workers, whose interests were served by the socialists and opposed by the fascists - and were often even able to recognize that for themselves - were driven into the enemy's arms by the spectacularly poor job the socialists did of selling their cause.  Socialist Facepalm.  

I recall a Nation article ages ago written by Michael Moore.  Yeah, the fat “Roger & Me” guy.  He bitched about ivory tower socialist intellectuals who never come near a factory worker, wrapped up in Marxist ideology and jargon – “proletariat”, “bourgeois”, “class consciousness”, etc. – none of which means anything to the GM, Ford, and Chrysler workers who the socialists are trying to reach.   His advice (copying Orwell’s): “Hang out with them, go to a hockey game, go hunting with them.  Talk about how the company is screwing them over.  Whatever you do, don’t go on about Marxism.”  I assume Moore had read Road, as Orwell said the same thing to his colleagues in England in 1937. 

Orwell also reviews much of the contemporary socialist literature, plus H.G. Wells and Aldous Huxley (Brave New World).  Again, I found his analysis of the contemporary situation and his fellow socialists to be riveting.  What I find especially refreshing is his ability to concede points and play devil’s advocate. 

I’m not now, nor have I ever been a socialist, and I doubt I ever will be.  However, by far the most persuasive case that can be made, is made by Orwell.   His closest contemporary equivalents are Christopher Hitchens (RIP) and Michael Moore.  Neither are very persuasive; both are too arrogant, too stuck up, too self-satisfied.  I’m not aware they were coordinating on the same team, though Hitchens seemed to fight the more intellectual capitalists while Moore focused on the trenches, as it were.  I don’t consider either to be particularly effective.  Judging by the outcome last November, Moore did a poor job getting the American proletariat to oppose Donald Trump.  What’s even more remarkable, and what Orwell was noting in his own time, is that most of Trump’s opposition, and Hillary’s support, came from people we’d describe as bourgeois:  upper class white people.  In fact, much of what Orwell describes in 1937 could also apply to 2017 – a surprising amount.  I have to wonder how recently Bernie Sanders or Jill Stein have consulted Orwell.  Not recently, it seems…if at all.  Then again, I doubt Trump is even aware of Orwell’s existence, much less having read any of his books.

As for my own readers, I would advise everyone, socialist or not, to read this book if they haven’t already.  Orwell’s analysis is superb.  It’s witty.  It’s funny (far more so than 1984 or Animal Farm).  Non-socialists will probably enjoy reading Orwell take the piss out of his fellow socialists.  And the socialists among you may well enjoy Orwell’s wit and honesty. 

Or maybe not.  

Metallica Returns!

The premier San Francisco thrash band kicked off their newest US tour of their latest album, Hardwired…to Self-Destruct in Baltimore, Maryland, of all places, at M&T Bank Stadium (home of the Baltimore Ravens) of all places, attended by my brother and I, of all people.   Oh, and few thousand others, of which we knew only a college suitemate up in the ozone rafters, section 5 million something, with his teenage son (and we did not cross paths – too bad).

First off, thank the Almighty One Upstairs for giving us clear, decent weather – neither hot nor cold – for what was for everyone an outdoor event.   Gone are the days of Metallica playing basketball/hockey arenas indoors – in any case the tour is coinciding with the NBA Playoffs and the Stanley Cup.   Whether you got seats up in the ozone or some “Hetfield leans over to kiss you” pit tickets, you were outdoors.  And the weather, as previously noted, cooperated.  Hallelujah!

Second, I would like to thank my brother Matt for arranging this: not merely paying for my ticket, but also navigating the substantially complex minefield of options available when purchasing a ticket for a large venue for an established band, an endeavor considerably trickier than simply buying general admission tickets for a small club show.  Also, he drove us up to Baltimore in rush hour traffic (and back).  Over the years, since our first show together for either of us, AC/DC in October 1984, he has been my most consistent concert companion (always avoid alliteration).  That remains true even today, when I’m seeing more shows in the NYC area or concerts by jam bands and stoner rock bands, a taste Matt does not share.  Although I’d say it’s more accurate to say my tastes have expanded rather than changed, because Dead and SunnO))) shows are in addition to, not instead of, Metallica and Iron Maiden. 

Third, since this was the first stop on the tour, I’ll refrain from revealing the setlist, which is available on Setlist.fm anyway for those of you who are curious.  If Metallica has adopted its SF comrades the Grateful Dead’s policy of changing setlists from show to show, it would be news to me.  The only non-jam bands which do so are Clutch and Pearly Jam.  However, I can’t help sharing that the Spanish Civil War – Republicans with Mosin-Nagants, Fascists with Mausers – made its appearance, as did WWI, though the flat helmeted US doughboys got an unexpected upgrade, trudging past Mark IVs carrying M1 Garands, Thompson SMGs, and bazookas to blow apart the few A7Vs and captured Mark IVs they may have encountered in spring through fall of 1918.  Guess which songs these images relate to, and decide whether the answers surprise you.   Also, for those of you pining for Cliff Burton, there was a tribute of sorts to him.  It looks like Robert Trujillo understands he has big shoes to fill.  As Jason Newsted understood as well. 

Fourth, the opening acts.  I was busy trying to purchase a Baltimore-specific Metallica tour shirt (the one I managed to purchase, after much frustration and difficulty, was a Ravens-inspired variant) while Volbeat were playing, but we managed to catch Avenged Sevenfold.   Oddly, I have several of their albums, including the newest.  They sound like they decided to take Metallica as a startoff and add as much other stuff as their limited talent and imagination could produce, which is not a whole lot.  But it was the visual spectacle which sealed it for me:  mohawk, sleeve tattoos, skinny jeans, v-neck t-shirt, backwards baseball cap.  Like One Direction on steroids.  For an opening act, alleged sellouts Metallica picked a band that makes them look like an honest garage band on their first tour.  Bravo, James & Co.

Fifth: Metallica themselves.  Sadly at my age I’m often looking at my watch during concerts.  At a truly good show the watch on my wrist is forgotten.   As it was here.  Truth be told, James & Co. were a little rusty (particularly on the older songs they weren’t in the studio recently recording), but the mistakes show they’re not lip-syncing.  The energy and fun were definitely there.   Hetfield brings his modest but discernable wit and sincerity to the mix, but keeps the BS to a minimum as they let the music do the talking.  No remarkable surprises, but I think I speak for all veteran Metallica fans when I say the show was superb and well worth whatever you paid and whatever inconveniences you endured (again, thank God for the weather).

They had a huge stage with immense screens behind them, with a huge M on the left and an A on the right.  In addition to imagery from videos, it also showed the band members performing (including one past member, obviously not in real time absent some serious necromancy), which probably helped those too far away to see the band members on stage.   They had a middle ramp going forward through the crowd, like we’ve seen at a few AC/DC shows.  Despite the epic size and scale, it remained fairly simple, but the band couldn’t resist some FUEL & FIRE and eventually some fireworks.  There were a few other gimmicks I’ll decline to reveal.  Again, well done, impressive, a splendid time etc. etc. etc.

Here's another cool thing.  Towards the end of the set, Hetfield asked the audience whether they’d seen Metallica before or not.  Judging by the response, the mix was roughly 50/50 – which surprised Hetfield as well as me.  So half the crowd was seeing the band for the first time, although they’ve been around since 1983 (as I note below, our first show was in 1985).  

Previous shows.  Here I can share without spoiling the surprise.  In reverse order:

4/8/1997.   Load Tour, USAir Arena, Largo, MD.  Remarkably, it’s been 20 years since I’ve seen Metallica.  That tour I was working in Falls Church, we all had day jobs, and it was a weekday show, so Beltway traffic meant we missed the opening act, Corrosion of Conformity.   Towards the end of the set an “accident” occurred which doused the lights, and the band continued the show “in their garage” – though minus Dave Mustaine and Ron McGovney. 

7/17/1992.   Metallica (Black Album) Tour, RFK Stadium, DC.   Joint show with Guns N’Roses, Faith No More opening.   We were on the field, which was one huge mosh pit.  You had to fight nonstop with the entire audience.   Screw that.   We went up into the bleachers and watched the rest of the show from there.   We ended up leaving during the GNR set, before they played “Estranged”.   I’ll have to see about revisiting GNR to correct that.

4/1/1992.   Metallica (Black Album) Tour, Capital Centre, Largo, MD.  I don’t remember much about this, except that we had reserved seating and didn’t have a mosh scene to endure.

3/9/1990.   And Justice For All Tour, Capital Centre, Largo, MD.  I went to this show with Ken.  Shortly before the show, I got the single which had “Breadfan” (Budgie cover) as the b-side, and the band actually played it.  Ken was thrilled to be familiar with one song which must have baffled much of the audience.  I seem to recall a statue of justice crumbling as part of the stage spectacle.

6/10/1988.  $5.98 Garage Days Re-Revisited EP Tour, RFK Stadium, DC.  Van Halen’s Monsters of Rock.  Jason Newsted’s debut.  This was just months before And Justice For All came out.  The lineup was Kingdom Come, Metallica, Dokken, the Scorpions, and Van Halen, the latter with Sammy Hagar on their OU812 tour.  We arrived during Metallica’s set.  With the new album not out yet, their set was older songs and no previews, but “Last Caress” (Misfits) from the EP.  For me, it was the first show with Jason Newsted on bass.  The crowd got extremely rambunctious during Van Halen’s set, setting fires in the bleachers, leading Hagar to have the house lights turned on.  Crazy, man.

During the summer of 1986, Ozzy Osbourne toured the US, with Metallica opening on their Master of Puppets tour.  They played Merriweather Post Pavilion that August.  Our parents wouldn’t let us go.  However, the following February, 1987, Metallica toured Europe as a headliner with new bassist Jason Newsted taking over for Cliff Burton, who had died the prior September (famous bus accident).  I was in Maryland for my freshman year at University of Maryland, College Park, while Matt was finishing his senior year at ASP, our high school.  Matt not only saw the show on February 5, 1987, at the Zenith in Paris, he sent me a concert t-shirt.

8/17/1985.  Ride the Lightning Tour, Donington Monsters of Rock Festival, England, UK.  Our first show, and one of our first concerts.  We were in London in August 1985, and the festival was going on at that time.  The US Embassy had a group going, with a rented tour bus, leaving from the Navy Annex in downtown London at the crack of dawn that Saturday morning.  Our father got up very early, drove us from southwest London to the Annex in our hosts’ right hand drive car (fortunately streets deserted at that time) in time for the bus, and picked us up equally late when we returned.

Matt and I arrived around 11 a.m.  I bought the only Metallica shirt they had, “METAL UP YOUR ASS”, which horrified my parents (yes, knife sticking up from toilet) and which I only wore to school on the very last day, by accident.  More recently I bought an XL version since the Donington one no longer fits.  We listened to Magnum with modest interest, sincere interest for RATT.   Then was Metallica, easily the heaviest band on the bill that day, but none too popular, as the crowd threw bottles and cans at them, forcing the band to duck periodically as they played.  Even “Am I Evil” didn’t seem to help.  We certainly enjoyed James, Kirk, Cliff (!!!!) and Lars.  But a crowd which loves Fish & Marillion was unlikely to enjoy this brutal band from San Francisco.  

[Recently, a friend of mine from Ottawa, Canada provided me with bootlegs not only of Tool (10,000 Days tour) but also of Metallica on this tour (Ride the Lightning, Oakland Park 8/31/85), with the same setlist (Creeping Death, Ride the Lightning, For Whom The Bell Tolls, The Four Horsemen, Fade to Black, Seek and Destroy, Whiplash, Motorbreah, and Am I Evil).   Later, college suitemate Bill provided me with a bootleg of the Donington show itself.  Thanks, Diane & Bill!]

From then on it was Bon Jovi (ignored, I took a nap), Marillion – who are these guys?  As noted, they were much more popular at the festival than Metallica – though nowadays NOT playing M&T Bank Stadium with Steve Hogarth – and finally the headliner ZZTop, though by that time I was exhausted and resting in the tour bus waiting to go home.  It was one of our first shows, our first festival, and an experience we will never forget.  And thanks to blogs such as these, I can make sure my readers don’t forget either.

Over the Orca

Recently I watched two films on DVD which have some sentimental connection, but are otherwise independent of each other. 

Over the Hedge.  This is a 2006 animated film.   In August ’06, I was in Bucharest, Romania, visiting a particularly attractive, sexy, but also very difficult woman, Gia.   Apparently she had a Romanian boyfriend I soon learned about – in addition to her Dutch husband living in Holland AND a French lover she’d been living with in Bucharest while married to the Dutch guy but who had recently returned to France - a seriously complicated social life.  This Romanian guy, Adrian, was married, but for whatever reason could not leave his wife for Gia.  However, apparently he had promised her that if she left me, he would leave his wife and marry her.  So despite my coming across the globe and renting an apartment in downtown Bucharest, she moved out (back in with her sister, who lived nearby) to placate Adrian, thereby giving me considerable free time to kill before returning the US and never returning to Romania again, for Gia or for anyone else.   This movie was playing in the local theater, so I went to see it.

Bruce Willis plays RJ, a devious raccoon who managed to destroy the entire winter stash of junk food accumulated by a particularly nasty bear, Vincent (voiced by Nick Nolte).  In exchange for Vincent sparing his life, RJ agrees to replenish the stash.  To do so, he needs to persuade an unwitting group of forest animals to cross a hedge into a residential neighborhood and steal the food from the kitchen of the subdivision’s nastiest woman, the HOA president (voiced by Allison Janey).  She’s assisted by the local exterminator, voiced by Thomas Hayden Church, best known from “Wings”.  The animals include a hyperactive squirrel, Hammy (Steve Carrell), an anal-retentive and risk-averse turtle (Gary Schandling), a porcupine couple (Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara, obviously teaming up for the first time ever), and an impressively overacting opossum (William Shatner) and his daughter (Avril Lavigne). 

Needless to say, stuff happens.  Some of it is funny.  It’s worth watching once.   Since the film was fairly recent (11 years ago) I remembered most of it, but not really so much in terms of the Romanian angle – which is probably more interesting than this film.  Anyhow.

Orca the Killer Whale.  This movie came out in 1977.  We saw it once, and once only, and the only time we (our family, or for that matter, I) ever saw a movie at a drive-in movie theater.   That theater was on 355, Rockville Pike, just north of the Montgomery County (Maryland) courthouse complex.  It’s now long gone, as is the Volvo dealer and the Hechingers which used to be close by as well.

Richard Harris – oldsters will remember him as King Arthur in “Camelot”, younger viewers may recall his last role as Dumbledore in the earlier “Harry Potter” films – plays a whaling captain in Newfoundland, Canada, though originally from Ireland.   He managed to kill a pregnant female killer whale and its baby, enraging a male killer whale, presumably the father/husband/boyfriend/male life partner.  This MKW embarked on an elaborate campaign, showing sufficient intelligence to support this entire movie and its implausible and tiresome plot.  

First the whale caused major trouble in the little fishing village in Newfoundland where the Captain sought refuge.  Jaws eats a helicopter?  MKW: "Hold my beer".  This whale manages to destroy the fuel depot for the village, resulting in a huge night time explosion.  Yeah.  And he almost kills Bo Derek by knocking out the supports of a house stilted over the harbor.  Finally the now-unpopular Captain realizes he has to bring the dispute out onto the high seas, and there the MKW leads him and his crew all the way to the Arctic for a final showdown.  

Incidentally, the primary female character (Charlotte Rampling) is a fairly arrogant marine biologist who treats Captain with contempt: “you fishermen are cluelessly screwing with the ecosystem”, all that nonsense.  Eventually even she becomes horrified by the whale’s behavior.  But both her and the Captain realize that apologizing to the whale is not an option.

I won’t spoil anything, but suffice to say a resolution is achieved.  Will it satisfy anyone?  Only so far as the movie finally ends.   Enough.  Other notable co-stars are Bo “10” Derek (fully clothed, sorry), and Will Sampson, better known as Big Chief in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”.