Thanksgiving

Funny, in all these years in posting blogs, including holiday-themed blogs, I’ve yet to post one on Thanksgiving.  Well, it’s clearly time.

 Here’s another “American” holiday, in this case associated with those thankful Pilgrims who survived to thank God for good food and friendly Indians.  But people everywhere can express gratitude and appreciation, virtues I hardly imagine are unique to Pilgrims.  Speaking of Pilgrims, I found out that they made a movie of Solomon Kane, Robert E. Howard’s bad-ass Pilgrim character.  Now if only I could find it….

 Dad.  My father used to cook the dinner.  He knew where to get the turkey, made his own stuffing, and got the production going in time for the dinner.  There was never any drama, emergencies, stress, or any doubt that he would successfully achieve the Dinner.  And he repeated this impressive task for Christmas dinner again a month later.  We can only hope to emulate him now that he’s gone: R.I.P.

 Turkey.  Clearly the centerpiece of a traditional American Thanksgiving dinner is the turkey.  I zone out about the sizes and simply focus on my preference: the white breast meat.  You can have the drumsticks – 2, 4, 6, 8 (?? Is it a turkey or a spider?), however many a turkey might have nowadays. 

 Stuffing.  I actually like the stuffing more than the turkey itself.  Yum yum.

 Others.  Mashed potatoes are fine, but I could do without cranberry sauce or pumpkin pie.

 Football.  NFL, not college.  In my case I get to see the Lions lose, but they are rarely a competitive threat to my beloved Vikings, more a target of pity than scorn.  What the Cowboys do is not my concern (unless it’s beating the Packers or Bears).  I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Vikings play on Thanksgiving (“Thank Odin this Vinland is ripe with ample game and friendly Skraelings!”).

 Macy’s Thanksgiving’s Day Parade.  I practically never watch this.  I’ve never been in Manhattan at this time; the closest was Merrick, Long Island in the 70s.  My Dad would put the parade on TV in the morning as he was making his initial preparations.  The balloons are interesting and charming – intriguing to see which characters are deemed worthy of balloons.  No Asterix?  No Refridgerator Johnny?  No Iron Maiden Eddie?  No AC/DC Whole Lotta Rosie? As you imagine, the balloons are mostly for kids’ entertainment and thus predictably wholesome.  Likewise for the fur-wrapped commentators, offering comments so dull and wholesome they’re calculated to put everyone right back to sleep again.  And don’t get me started on the marching bands (too late!).  If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.  They all have the goofy band uniforms (vaguely reminiscent of War of 1812 uniforms), majorettes twirling batons and wearing way too much, the goofy Sousaphones (“Activision reports sluggish sales of Sousaphone Hero”), and the predictably dull John Philip Sousa marches, with the exception of “Liberty Bell”, probably more infamous as the theme of “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” (chosen because “Liberty Bell”, by that time – 1969 – was in the public domain).  So this particular school, from Midwest Nebraska or Idaho finally managed to get its marching band – which looks exactly like all the others marching down the street in Manhattan – to the parade?  Whoopee for them, it’s their 15 minutes of fame!  But no one else need pay much attention.   Here’s an idea – instead of sending your marching band to the parade, how about sending your high school football team to play the Lions or Cowboys?  Even odds of beating the Lions…but seeing how the Cowboys almost beat the Saints, that game would be one I’d rather avoid.

 College.  Back at University of Maryland, the Thanksgiving weekend was too short to justify a trip back to Paris (winter break was 4 weeks, and summer break was, of course, the entire summer) so we’d have to hang tight and stay in the dorms, which were empty and dark.  Freshman year (1987) my Mom came into town and helped me buy a Fender Stratocaster.  Sophomore to senior years, my buddy Jean (John) came down from Boston U. (his mom was also in Paris) and joined Phil and my brother for dinner with my aunt and uncle over at Skyline – just down the street from where I live now.

 Dave.  My University of Maryland colleague who moved back up to Long Island after graduation in 1990 and has remained on The Island (with all organs, save maybe his liver, intact) ever since.  One of his sisters lives in Falls Church close to me, so for a few years he’d come down to visit his family there.  The Friday after TG would be spent seeing a movie, buying CDs or comics, and otherwise catching up on politics and music since the prior year.  Now his TG plans tend to involve Florida (no, no voting!) so my Fridays are back at the office where the secretary growls about being there instead of the mall. 

Philip K Dick

PKD was an American science fiction writer, mostly writing in the 1950s up to the late 70s.  By now I’ve read enough of his stories and books to make some sort of appraisal thereof, and a meaningful evaluation, though I still haven’t read all of them by now.

 Background.  Born in 1928, died in 1982, he is typically associated with Berkeley, well known as a bastion of left wing extremism (home of Country Joe (“Stalin”) among others).  Virtually his entire writing career concerned science fiction.  My closest comparison to him is Robert Heinlein.

 Themes.  Dick was less concerned with the specifics of technology than Heinlein.  Nor is there nearly as much sex in Dick’s books compared to Heinlein’s.  The topics Dick liked to address:

1.         Totalitarian dictatorships supported by high technology.  In his view, as societies grew more technologically advanced, the government improved its ability to spy on its own people.

2.         Anarchy & corruption.  By corruption I mean the gradual breakdown of technology – nothing works anymore and no one knows how to fix it.  As freedom and decentralization increase, technology decreases and approaches nature – anarchy and technology are treated as polar opposites.  Especially since technology is so closely related to dictatorship, people are uncertain, in a later anarchist society, whether to embrace technology again, although they sense some value in it for its own sake.

3.         Altered consciousness and alternate reality.  What is really going on?  Are we perceiving the real world, or something else? And how can we know for certain?  More so than any other writer, PKD’s stories often have you wondering, “what is really going on???”

4.         Robot self-awareness.  Particularly in “Second Variety”, this idea that robots achieve self-awareness and man’s creations turn against him.  Robots create more robots, and so on.  In “James P. Crow”, robots run the country, while humans are substandard – discriminated against and kept down – and no one can remember that it used to be the other way around, until Crow (taking an ironic pseudonym) manages to reveal the truth.

5.         Time travel, reverse time flow, paradoxes.  Time travel is as much an element of PKD’s stories as any other sci-fi writers, and he’s as likely to address the issues of causation as anyone else.

6.         His take on capitalism is more along the lines of, “damn incessant advertising for stuff we really don’t need”, and planned obsolescence.  He doesn’t seem to take on the system per se. 

7.         Many of his stories have an abrupt plot swerve at the very end, almost a “gotcha!” like “The Twilight Zone”.

 Short Stories.  He has more than I can count (121).  I read no less than 5 separate compendiums of them.  Clearly addressing them all would be useless, but here are the best – aside from the ones which were made into movies, which I’ll address separately.

 he Turning Wheel.  Asians as mystics controlling a futuristic anti-technology society; Caucasians are reduced to a small underground of lower class caste who actually understand technology.

 The Last of the Masters.  …is actually a robot, in charge of the last bastion of technology-driven, totalitarian dictatorship left on the planet.   A small team of anarchists emerges from the wilderness and takes on the Master in his home base.  This is the biggest “technology = totalitarianism” vs. “anarchists = nature” story.

 Exhibit Piece.  Mindf**k!  Bureaucrat/scientist can’t tell if the museum exhibit of a suburban home from several centuries ago is simply an exhibit piece…or if this is his real home and family.

 Pay For the Printer.  Another “dying world where nothing works anymore and almost no one knows how to fix anything” story.

 War Veteran.  Time-travel paradox involving a war between Earth, Mars and Venus.  By the end, the truth is revealed.

 Colony.  This is another paranoia trip: an intelligent alien race, very deadly and very aggressive, knows how to mimic inanimate objects.

 Nanny.  In the future, nannies are robots.  In addition to being loved by the children and taking care of them as well as any human possibly could, they have combat capabilities to defeat other robot nannies.  This means that parents have to constantly upgrade and trade in for newer, deadlier models.  The children are not at risk, but last year’s model certainly is!

 Holy Quarrel.  The computer running society develops self-awareness (yet again) and becomes a religious fanatic.

 Orpheus with Clay Feet.  A writer is considered too untalented to write his own material, so he’s initially sent back in time to serve as a muse to someone important.  Except that he screws that up so spectacularly, that they decide to send him back to Munich in 1924 to un-inspire Adolf Hitler.

 Waterspider.  A team from the future has to go back to the past to contact Poul Anderson at a convention of sci-fi writers in the 1950s.  This story seems like a “call-out” to a who’s who of sci-fi:  Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Robert Bloch, even himself (“Phil Dick”, as author of The Defenders).

 Beyond Lies the Wub.  The Wub is a very intelligent alien which produces odd effects when eaten.

 Not By Its Cover.  The Wub returns – with odd effects when its hide is used to bind books such as the Bible.

 Pre-Persons.  I could never imagine a story about abortions could be funny, but this one was.  Apparently the pro-choice movement succeeds in extending the time for legal abortions to the age of 12.  “Boobs are obsolete, like the Pontiac GTO.” 

 Cadbury, the Beaver Who Lacked.  A cynical “Wind in the Willows” meets “Married With Children” story.

 Faith of Our Fathers.  Apparently the Red Chinese managed to take over – and is continually dosing the entire population with LSD.  The resistance develops a drug which counteracts the LSD – yet the “normal” state perception varies, while the LSD perception is constant. 

 The Variable Man.  Astonishingly good story; they manage to get someone from the past, Cole, to fix their rocket in the future, to assist in the war against Proxima Centauri.  Cole has an amazing intuitive ability to not only figure out how things work, but also repair them and even improve them.  Lots of excitement and combat. 

 The Eye of the Sibyl.   A Roman noble is reincarnated in the future – his modern counterpart displays a natural inclination to cite Latin without realizing why.  I liked this concept of the “collective unconscious”, inheriting not merely genes but social and cultural memories.

 The Defenders.  After a nuclear war between the US and USSR, the survivors burrow underground and allow robot surrogates to continue the war above by proxy.  Eventually the humans discover that the surface had cooled and recovered long ago, but they had been lied to by the robots.

 Books.  He had 36, but of these I’ve only read a handful.

 The Man in the High Castle.  I described this earlier in my blog about alternate history stories in which Germany won World War II.  The Nazis run the East Coast of the US, the Japanese run the West Coast, and the middle is still independent.  Everyone consults the I Ching for guidance.  Fairly good, but not his best work.

 Now Wait For Last Year.  I liked this one.  It turns out that Earth is a former colony of an alien race and humans are not indigenous to Earth.  The humans from the original home planet (the Starmen) finally managed to reestablish contact with Earth, but treat the Terrans as second-class idiots.  They’re involved in a war with reegs (insectoid race like preying mantis) but the reegs come off as more sympathetic than the arrogant Starmen.  The main character ends up taking a drug which induces time travel – and even meets himself.  Very intriguing.

 Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said.  A popular TV/radio celebrity wakes up one morning to find his identity completely erased – no one recognizes him and his name is absent from every database.  Ultimately the answer lies with a policeman’s incestuous sister.

 Ubik.  Easily the biggest mindfuck book of all.  Joe Chip goes to the moon on a mission from Gene Lassiter, which goes horribly wrong.  From then on, things start getting weirder and weirder.  Towards the end we FINALLY get told what is really going on, and the truth is still strange and screwed up.  If they ever made this into a movie, “Inception” would get a run for its money.

 Movies.  Some of his stories have been made into movies, with varying levels of faithfulness to the original story and commercial success.

 Blade Runner (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?).  Easily the most popular movie, a real cult film.  The book has several elements missing from the movie: this whole business of robot animals (real animals are so rare as to be priceless, and even synthetic animals are valuable enough that a catalog of values – like the Blue Book – exists with regard to them) and Mercerism.  Deckard (played in the movie by Harrison Ford) sleeps with Rachel (Sean Young in the movie) a replicant who does not know she is.  His job is to track down replicants (androids) illegally on Earth – and kill them.  For their part, the replicants are dangerous and do not cooperate. 

 Screamers (Second Variety).  In a futuristic war, the robots originally developed by one side to help them win the war eventually develop self-awareness, begin fighting both sides equally, and develop new three new varieties of androids.  The first and third varieties are a wounded soldier and a 10 year old boy, but the “second variety” remains unindentified and at large.  More of this “who is human, who is really a killer robot assassin paranoia”.  The main character in the movie is played by Paul Weller.  Although the movie changes the human sides to fictional countries/companies, in the story the two sides are simply the US and USSR.

 Total Recall (We Can Remember It For You Wholesale).  Here the story takes place all on Earth and all issues are resolved at home.   A bored Earthbound citizen goes to a memory implant clinic to have memories of a fictional Mars vacation artificially implanted in his consciousness – only to find that he had already been to Mars and subjected to memory erasing treatment by whatever government agency he worked for.  The movie uses the story as a basis for a much larger story, in which the man (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger) goes back to Mars and gets involved in the mess there.  For this I’d recommend reading the story then watching the movie.

 Paycheck (same).  This has a similar memory-wiping deal; the story and movie are identical in basic plot but change the ultimate ending.  A high-skilled technician finishes a major project for his firm and finds, to his surprise, that instead of the expected fat paycheck, he’s opted to forgo that in exchange for the contents of an envelope which he left himself before undergoing the memory wipe – these contents are a bewildering collection of seemingly unrelated and worthless items.  The idea is that the contents of the package, when used correctly, will allow him to achieve a result 100x better than his mere paycheck would have been, if he can only figure out these clues he left himself.   Ben Affleck stars in the movie.  This is another one where reading the story first, then the book, makes sense.

 Minority Report (same).  In the future, crimes are solved before they’re even committed, by a “pre-crime” division which relies on a mysterious trio of psychics who predict future crimes.  Unfortunately, the main investigator, Anderton (Tom Cruise in the movie) finds himself implicated in a murder and then has to escape his own police force and find out what’s going on.  In the story he winds up committing the murder anyway (!) to salvage the pre-crime system. “Minority report” refers to the procedure of logging, but officially ignoring, the report of the third psychic when his/her report conflicts with the other two – Anderton finds that the minority report on his own “crime”, which might explain what is going on, is missing, i.e. he may have been set up by his rival (played in the movie by Colin Farrell). 

 A Scanner Darkly (same).  This Dick’s very intriguing critique of LSD and drug use, in this case a mysterious drug called Substance D, which doesn’t seem to directly correlate to anything we know of, but most closely resembles LSD; Substance D is highly addictive, LSD is not.  The main doper, Robert Arctor (played in the film by Keanu Reeves) is also a narc assigned to investigate his own house.  Down at the DEA headquarters he wears a sophisticated shapeshifting costume which warps his voice and disguises his identity.  He watches surveillance camera footage of events occurring at his own house, including himself.  His biggest problem is with his housemate James Barris, extravagantly portrayed in the movie (seriously underrated Oscar-worthy performance) by Robert Downey Jr.  Woody Harrelson and Winona Ryder are also major characters.  The movie uses a unique rotoscope technique.

Halloween & Elections

I decided to add two otherwise unrelated topics together as neither would be timely the week after.  And since Election Day is traditionally the first Tuesday in November, naturally that comes right on the heels of Halloween, which is always October 31.  If your party did poorly in the Election, the mock fright and terror of Halloween turn into something more real and substantial just a few days later.

 Halloween.  Surprise, surprise, I did not go trick-or-treating this year (no, not even as Angus Young).  I handed out candy to the boys and girls coming to my brother’s doorway, as his wife took his three children out to the neighborhood in search of free candy, solicited by means of the following costumes: iPod, Jango Fett (minus helmet you can’t see out of) and pink Batgirl.  They were all very cute, as were the charming children who graciously accepted the candy I dispensed, all name-brand and none of it raisins, apples, or other “nature’s candy” (which leads itself more to tampering than the standard candy does).  The parents were discreetly behind them. 

 For my part, I recall T-or-T’ing in Montgomery Village growing up.  Our costumes were purchased from the local People’s Drugs (now known as CVS) and came in cardboard boxes.  They had a plastic mask covering the face and secured by a flimsy rubber band stapled to the mask, plus a one-size-fits-most kids coverall fastening in the back.  Casper (the Friendly Ghost), Popeye (the sailor, can of spinach not included), Spiderman, Superman, Batman, were all the costumes I remember.  We’d get in fights if two boys showed up as the same superhero: “I’m the real one.  You’re a fake!”

 Some of the kids T-or-T’ing in my building were on the teenage side.  I recall in Paris, the kids couldn’t abandon T-or-T’ing soon enough as “ah, that’s for kids”.  Now it seems at least some of them – probably Middle Eastern kids who didn’t have that growing up in Iraq of Afghanistan – would prefer to bury their pride and enjoy themselves.  Amen to that, I agree 100%.

 In fact, why not bifurcate it?  Allow the adults to dress up too, and go door to door with their children.  Their bag gets filled from a separate stash:  cigarettes, condoms, free Viagra and Cialis samples, you know, adult stuff.  Why should the kids have all the fun?

 Years ago I did go to a costume party for adults, dressed as Angus Young (of course); as a costume, it’s fairly simple: I already have black shorts, black sneakers (often the same Reeboks that Angus wears), a blue blazer, and plenty of white shirts and ties.  Although I wouldn’t carry a $800-$1600 Gibson SG around, I do have the same guitar he plays – and bought it because I’m such a big AC/DC and Black Sabbath fan.  My friend sneered, “no one will know who you’re supposed to be.”  It turned out the only one who didn’t know, was his own friend Paul, dressed as a “naughty vicar”.  Everyone else referred to me as “Angus!”

 Another year we went as KISS.  I was Gene Simmons, Matt was Ace Frehley, and Phil was Paul Stanley; I suppose if Ken had been around he could have been Peter Criss.  We wore wigs, but the elaborate stage costumes were well beyond our capability.  No matter, the makeup was so well done – Phil even put an authentic topknot in my Gene wig – that the results were still stunning.  It’s too bad we can’t find the pictures we took.

 I also learned that Europe now celebrates Halloween, which strikes me as very ironic.  To me, Halloween is a custom harking to medieval Europe, not modern America, in spirit if not historical tradition.  It would be like us having a Pharoah Day, with Anubis, Set, Osiris, Isis, etc. and pyramids everywhere, and only years later would Egypt follow suit and start to do likewise.

 Voting.  Topic two, coming just days after Halloween.   My ballot consisted of one person-vs-person election (US House of Representatives), a bond issue, and a few dull and arcane constitutional questions (I picture Graham Chapman in Zulu garb, repeating once again in an Indian accent that “we are still holding out for a constitutional settlement.”) 

            They changed the polling location.  I was not notified by mail – I had to find out at my old polling place.  I was told they posted a notice on the bulletin board in my building, but I ignore those notices which are mostly about deaths of people I don’t know or more solicitations to trade in traditional incandescent bulbs for the new compact fluorescent ones.  Be that as it may, I found the new place, which wasn’t very far away.  Some of the old people had trouble choosing “machine or paper?”  If that choice stumps you, voting may be even harder.  Imagine the poor guy stuck in line after Brett Favre.

            Jim Moran is my entrenched Democrat Congressman, who was faced by Patrick Murray, the Republican challenger.  If Murray fails, it’s not for lack of exposure: his road signs were huge and ubiquitous.  While I did see Moran signs around, I think his followers probably assumed their man would win anyway and didn’t try too hard.

            There was no Libertarian running in my district.  The only third party candidate was an Independent Green – independent of who?  Beijing?  Havana?  Or North Korea?  The Greens are obviously Red.

            This gets me to my major issue with this.  I don’t fault people for voting against Libertarians if they are sincerely hostile to the party’s pro-capitalist ideology and plain do not agree with them.  What I have a problem with are Republicans (and some Democrats) who (A) are aware of the Libertarians and what they stand for, (B) agree with the Libertarian candidate’s platform 80-100%, and (C) are well aware that neither major party sincerely advocates its own positions, who (D) STILL vote Republican or Democrat because “the third party doesn’t have a chance.”

            I look at the Republicans and Democrats, and from what I can see, 95% of the candidates have no sincere desire to advance any particular political agenda (in Hillary Clinton’s case, I’d say that’s actually a good thing).  For every Ron Paul or Paul Wellstone who really cares, there are dozens of other Jack Johnsons and John Jacksons who simply want to be elected for the sake of a JOB. 

            The GOP wraps itself in the flag, but doesn’t even give the soldiers body armor or support veterans’ rights.  They talk about supporting “capitalism” and opposing “socialism”, but support big business getting bailouts, protectionism, and all sorts of cronyist corporate welfare bullshit.  Ayn Rand once noted that the one thing worse than being capably attacked is being ineptly defended, and the Republicans defend capitalism in a way which suggests they’re not really trying.  It was their bailing on the “Contract With America” in 1994 which pushed me firmly into the Libertarian camp.

            The Democrats try to turn cowardice into a virtue; and they don’t care about the common working man or the environment.  They would have us believe that Joe SixPack is finally going to get a fair deal under their administration, but once in power their blue collar supporters are quickly forgotten.  We should also recognize how much money big business pours into Democratic candidates – hedging their bets by supporting both sides.  Wake up: both sides are in bed with big business and no meaningful change will be forthcoming so long as that is true.  This business of the Democrats supporting the American working class is just more bullshit.

            Probably the most onerous segment of the Democratic camp is the teachers’ unions.  Talk about SCUM.  These people claim to have the childrens’ interests at heart, yet they oppose voucher systems, oppose any reform of the public school system, oppose anything which threatens their own economic interests.  The Democratic leaders insist that ordinary American parents send their children to crappy public schools, then put their OWN children into private schools.  Note: it’s not the teachers per se I have a problem with, it’s their damn unions.

 Close Calls.  There’s a lot of talk about “rational indifference” in the elections, where wide margins mean that individual votes have hardly any impact, so why bother voting?  Yet in 2000, we woke up the next morning after Election Day and they STILL didn’t know who won.  And in this election, several elections were still undecided the next day.  All I can say is: your polling station is probably just a few blocks from where you live – assuming you even registered to vote – bring a good book in case there’s a line, and VOTE.  If it makes a difference, fine.  If not, there’s another election in 2 years.

 School Elections.  Back in school it was fairly obvious that elections were essentially popularity contests.  But look at our own Presidential elections:  Obama, who was popular, beat McCain, who was not.  Bush, who was popular, beat two colorless dweebs that only equally colorless dweebs felt any passion for.  Dukakis and Mondale were candidates only left-wing Democrats could love.  Rand Paul has 10x the charisma of his father, who appears to favor freedom only because the alternative “costs too much”.  I fail to see how the grumpy old man who doesn’t want to pay for anything was going to beat Chocolate “WE CAN!” Jesus. 

            The Monarchist Party at the University of Maryland put the whole thing in proper perspective: they treated the whole thing as a huge joke.  King Tom’s key platform?  A moat of beer around the campus.  Needless to say, we’re still waiting.  But once in power the Monarchists simply did what the prior administrations did: distribute the student activities funds to the various student organizations, a fairly trivial and mundane task which each such administration could handle without much drama or fuss.  This was true whether it was the Monarchists, or some other party which claimed to take the whole thing seriously and make all sorts of grandiose promises made with a straight face, none of which they could actually deliver, any more than the Monarchists had any real ability to provide that moat of beer.  This is why I consistently voted Monarchist across the ballot.  Unfortunately, I’m not aware that any of the Monarchists actually entered politics in Maryland or elsewhere, but I’d certainly vote for whoever came across a ballot in front of me.  They’d probably be Libertarian anyway.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

I was referred to C.S. Lewis by my brother, through the backdoor of The Great Divorce, Lewis’ story about Heaven and Hell.   Although I had read the Elric books by Moorcock, and the Lord of the Rings trilogy (and the Silmarillion) by Tolkien, I had never read any of Lewis’ books.  I had seen “Prince Caspian” on DVD, but my impression of Lewis was that he was “Tolkien Lite”, very much a childlike, less sophisticated variant of Tolkien.  But if I could handle 7 Harry Potter books, surely Lewis was not beyond my tolerance.

 The Chronicles of Narnia are the books for which he’s most well-known. This order is completely different than the actual publishing order and was established after all seven books were published.

 The Magician’s Nephew.  Nominally the first book, Lewis wrote this after LWW as a prequel.  He introduces us to Aslan, the White Witch, Digory Kirke (the “Professor” in LWW), and Narnia, which actually Aslan brought into existence here.  I followed my brother’s advice and read this after LWW.

 The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe [hereinafter, LWW].  Clearly the Dark Side of the Moon of Lewis’ series.  The Pevensie children – Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy – are introduced to the magical world of Narnia via a magic wardrobe portal.  Narnia is a magic land of centaurs, fauns, satyrs, dwarves, an evil White Witch, and the ever-popular talking lion, Aslan.  It starts out as a land of perpetual winter and snow – but no Christmas – but as Aslan’s power grows, spring returns and the snowmelts.  There is even a London lamp-post in the middle of nowhere. Theoretically you could get by with only reading this book, as it stands alone well on its own; indeed, Lewis wrote this one first and originally did not plan on writing any sequels. 

 The Horse and His Boy.  This is somewhat of a sidetrack to introduce the Calormenes to us, who are Lewis’ cartoonish, fairy-tale analogs to Earth’s Muslims/Saracens – think “Aladdin” and “Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves”.  They worship Tash, a deity whose true nature is revealed in The Last Battle.  Although they seem to have a rivalry with Narnia, to call them villains or enemies to Narnia is a bit of a stretch.  Tactically, the story involves two talking horses and a “Prince and the Pauper” plot with a noble-born boy, Shasta, who escapes his humble upbringing in the Muslim world and finds his twin Narnian prince brother.  He’s accompanied by Aravis, a stuck-up little Jasmine princess trying to escape an arranged marriage to some loathsome old noble.
  

 Prince Caspian.  Narnia has been taken over by an outside king, Miraz, and his Hamlet-like nephew Caspian enlists the aid of the oppressed talking Narnian animals – and eventually the assistance of Peter, Edmund, and Lucy – in overthrowing Miraz and liberating Narnia.  This has been made into a movie by the same people who made LWW.

 The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.  A punk-like kid, Eustace Scrubb, the cousin of the Pevensies, is pulled into this adventure along with Edmund and Lucy, joining Prince Caspian on a voyage to the eastern seas to find his 7 uncles, lords who were banished by Miraz, also to discover exactly what lies in the eastern seas of Narnia (possibly Aslan’s homeland).  Along the way, Scrubb turns into a dragon and learns not to be a spoiled punk-ass.  This story has a very Star Trek (original series and movie VI) kind of flavor to it; it’s one of the better ones.  Sure enough, it’s due out in digital 3D on December 10.

 The Silver Chair.  Scrubb returns and pulls in Jill Pole (I love that name – Lewis would have done well to provide stage names for exotic dancers) who are enlisted by Aslan to rescue Caspian’s grandson, who had been captured and enchanted (not yet seduced, it seems) by a successor Evil Witch to the White Witch; this one uses a magical chair instead of candy.  They are assisted by Puddleglum, a depressing, tall and skinny elf-like creature. 

 The Last Battle.  This is the last story.  Scrubb returns again with Jill to Narnia.  It seems that a talking ape, Shift, has persuaded his donkey pal Puzzle to put on a lion’s skin and impersonate Aslan.  Claiming to be Aslan’s “mouthpiece”, as it were, Shift invites the Calormenes to enslave all the talking animals of Narnia.  Tirian, a direct descendant of Caspian, gets Scrubb and Jill to assist him in the resistance to Shift’s new form of tyranny, and they manage to fix everything.  Remarkably, the deity whom the Calormenes worship, Tash, is revealed to be something close to Satan; however, Aslan explains that “good deeds done in the name of Tash are in fact done in my name, whereas evil deeds done in my name are in fact done for Tash”, echoing Dante’s concept of “virtuous pagans”. Another remarkable element is that once Puzzle is revealed to the Dwarves to be a fake Aslan, the Dwarves then refuse to accept the existence of the real Aslan.  Anyhow, Lewis wraps everything up with this story in a grand climactic finale which ties up all the loose ends and ensures there will NOT be an eighth book.  No word on a movie of this, or whether Eddie Murphy will voice Puzzle.

 The stories are nicely illustrated by Pauline Baynes, in a manner reminiscent of Tenniel’s Alice in Wonderland stories.  They were published around the same time as Lord of the Rings (early-to-mid 1950s), and Lewis and Tolkien were good friends and colleagues at Oxford.

 Narnia.  Unlike Middle Earth, which Tolkien apparently intended as a very old version of Earth, Narnia is a parallel dimension.  It gets confusing, because within the “world” of Narnia is a nation of Narnia, separate from some other nations such as the Calormenes.  The nation of Narnia is meant to be what we think of as fairy tale Europe, a romanticized and glamorized Camelot-type Euro-centric nation of blond haired, blue eyed Northern Europeans, as opposed to the swarthy, dark-skinned, Tash-worshipping Calormenes.  In Prince Caspian, the ruling class is said to Telmarines, as distinct from Narnians, but where the Telmarines come from is never quite explained. 

 Animals.  There are several classes of animals.  In Magician’s Nephew, Aslan separated the animals into talking, intelligent ones, who are slightly larger than their nontalking nonintelligent counterparts.  There are also giants, halfway between mythical giants and the Norse “jotuns”.  There are fauns, satyrs, centaurs (Greek mythology), dwarves, dragons, etc.  I don’t recognize any races or animals specifically created by Lewis; he seemed to be recycling familiar types of monsters and creatures, types the readers would probably already be familiar with from other stories.

 Cast of Characters

Aslan.  Instead of a tall guy with a beard and robes, the Jesus figure of Narnia is a huge, talking lion of immense wisdom and virtual omnipotence.  Aslan tends to stay in the background and ever-so-conveniently come out when he’s most needed.  He is the one who manages to get the Earthbound characters back and forth from Narnia.  Like Jesus, he has the ability to rise from the dead.

 The White Witch.  She is first inadvertently awakened by Digory Kirke and Polly Plummer, escapes to late nineteenth century London, and returns to the newly created Narnia.  Eventually she is defeated in LWW.

 Prince Caspian.  I find the “Princes” to be fairly interchangeable, differing only by generation.  Rilian, the prince of Silver Chair, is his son, and Tirian (Last Battle) is his descendant.

 The Earth Kids. The Earth kids spend years in Narnia, grow up, and then get magically returned to England where they discover that mere minutes have passed there.  They return to Narnia after a year in England and discover that hundreds of years have passed in Narnia.  The “Prince” they befriended in the prior adventure is long dead, and the prince they befriend in the next one is his son, grandson, or heir.  The Earth period, though, is WWII England; I liked how they added the Blitz, with Heinkel He111s dropping their loads over London, to the first movie.

 Peter.  He is the eldest of the Pevensie children and the wisest.  He ends up as High King. 

 Susan.  The older girl.  Later on she’s absent and slammed as being more interested in “nylons and lipstick” than Narnia.

 Edmund.  The younger brother.  In LWW he’s seduced by the White Witch, not by sex but with “Turkish Delight”, a sugary snack popular ages ago in England.  It has an effect on him which in a modern context would be considered crack or crystal meth.  After some “Turkish Delight” rehab he recovers and is OK from there on in.

 Lucy.  The younger sister.  She is the one who initially discovers the magical wardrobe, and unlike Susan does not forsake Narnia when she grows older in England.

 Eustace Scrubb.  He is the cousin of the Pevensies.  His parents are vegetarian atheist liberals with New Age ideas, who prefer to let children do as they please (no discipline whatsoever) and send the boy off to liberal school; no wonder he’s a spoiled punk brat to begin with.  Scrubb is introduced in Voyage, and becomes the main character thereafter.  He meets Jill Pole, who has been mercilessly bullied by the other children.

 Jill Pole.   Scrubb’s female companion in the last few books, almost indistinguishable from Polly Plummer.

 Polly Plummer.  Digory Kirke’s companion in The Magician’s Nephew, a generic girl character.

 Digory Kirke.  He first appears as a boy in The Magician’s Nephew, then as the wizened Professor in LWW, and has a brief cameo in The Last Battle.  Strategically not much of an important character.

 Allegories.  My brother remarked how Tolkien hated allegories and went out of his way to make sure Middle Earth had no clear God vs. Satan; even Sauron is not clearly the Devil.  Lewis himself denied any allegorical intent, insisting that the themes wrote themselves, so to speak.  But the allegories seem too obvious to ignore.  Aslan is blatantly a Jesus-type figure.  The Calormenes are clearly Muslims.

 Occasionally I’ll be at the gym in the morning and stuck on a treadmill in front of a TV tuned to children’s programming.  Unlike movies, which have substantial elements which appeal to adult intelligences, TV shows seem to wield their morals with a sledgehammer and practically zero subtlety.  Lewis’ morality is likewise front and center, impossible to miss.  Having read the seven Harry Potter books by now, and now the 7 (same number!) Narnia books, it’s likewise impossible to miss the clear Lewis influence in J.K. Rowling, far more so than anything Tolkien may have contributed. 

The Tea Party

The election is coming up, and there’s more talk about the role of the so-called “Tea Party” movement in influencing the outcome.  There’s also been a fair amount of ridicule heaped upon it from the usual liberal quarters, particularly Doonesbury, but also Tom the Dancing Bug.  Of course, when I hear it, I recall David Hockney’s clever observation, amidst “Tonight Let’s All Make Love in London”, about bars in London having tiny chairs, so that “it like an organized children’s tea party,” (I also liked his quip about “tartan on the walls” and “a pound for a drink”).  Note: I don’t recall Doonesbury lampooning ANY of the liberal protests.  He’s clearly trying to turn the tables now that it’s the other side of the spectrum doing the protesting.

 I have not been to any of the Tea Party protests, in DC or otherwise.  Ironically, I have been to a protest in DC against Israel, although I was not particularly participating, more like observing.  And here are my observations:

 It seems that the more people you get involved in these type of events, the wider the net cast and the more variety of viewpoints end up expressed in various ways.  In particular, the lunatic fringe truly emerges.  At the World Bank/IMF protests these ended up being the paper mache puppet crowd, vying with the anarchists for shock value.  I’m sure the liberal media is going to fixate on the “It’s the WHITE HOUSE, N*gga!” goofballs who make up a small minority of the Tea Party group.  At the WB protests you end up with oddballs accusing Bush = Hitler (sorry, Saddam makes a much better comparison) or “FREE MUMIA!” 

 I didn’t vote for Obama – I voted for Bob Barr (that’s another story….).  But here’s my problem with Chocolate Jesus as of October 2010.  As far as I’m concerned, he lowballed us in the election.  Even if he didn’t expressly promise to solve every damn problem he inherited from Bush, he certainly didn’t deny anything or stop his supporters from claiming that.  This whole business of “WE CAN” had the implicit underlying message of “if we can elect a black man as President, we can do anything.”   If you’re going to promise the Moon, don’t be surprised when people are dissatisfied at getting anything less.

 Well, we’re waiting.  I think he’s certainly a smart guy, very articulate, and very likable.  But so are a lot of other guys his age.  His problem is a lack of experience: he is in over his head.  

 Would McCain have done any better? Or Bob Barr?  Maybe not.  But neither of them promised to solve everything. 

 Getting back to the Tea Party.  I find it hard to discern a consistent or coherent message or ideology amidst all the rhetoric and flag waving.  What seems to be the beef? The two most vocal “beefs” are that Obama hasn’t fixed the economy (+ bailouts), and socialized medicine.  At a very basic level the Tea Party movement considers Obama to be socialist and opposes the policies of what it perceives to be the left wing of the Democratic Party, “liberals” in general as personified by their beloved Chocolate Jesus.  In a sense, the Tea Party opposes the vague and nebulous collectives who showed up to protest the Iraq War.  So let’s look at the sides.

Tea Party.   Clearly they have found a wide range of dissatisfied people. 

            A.         Hardcore racists.  Not everyone wants a black president, no matter how articulate he may be.

            B.         Opponents to socialism.  Count me in.  While I agree that the health care system is messed up, I’m not convinced that mandatory health insurance is the answer.

            C.         Opponents to corporate welfare.  Count me in this group too.

            D.         Vague “patriots”.  Just people who love waving flags and considering themselves “true American” or “patriots” (whatever that means) and who somehow sense that Barack Obama represents something anti-American. 

            ** How can Obama be funneling $15 billion to AIG and other greedy American businesses (who presumably don’t deserve the bailouts), yet be socialist at the same time?  Aren’t socialists AGAINST big business?  Probably the more appropriate label would be fascist, in the Mussolini/corporatist sense of the word.

 Anti-War Group.

            A.         Pacifists.  These are “peace at any price” people who believe that surrendering to evil is the best policy – anything to avoid bloodshed.

            B.         Anarchists.  These guys view themselves as the radical, violent vanguard of the movement against government oppression and the capitalist system.  As you can imagine, it’s a VERY small group, too small to be of any threat to anyone except themselves.

            C.         Socialists/communists.  They rarely call themselves that.  They supported the USSR, Mao’s China, every communist regime which ever existed – and now Cuba is their favorite (for some reason they avoid mentioning North Korea).  “Trotskyist” is a label they like now that Stalin can no longer assassinate them.  Michael Moore and Ralph Nader are in this category although for public relations reasons they would never admit it.

            D.         Vague “leftists”.  This forms the majority.  These are people who simply oppose the war, not due to a sincere preference for peace or due to any explicit ideology. 

             Most liberals understand that command economies like the USSR and North Korea don’t work.  They value private property and recognize that the market usually provides the best results, they just believe that it fails too often and needs to be fixed by the government.  Given the choice between trusting the private sector to do the right thing and assuming the government can regulate away any problem (given enough money and power – and when the government “solution” doesn’t fix the market failure their “solution” is more money and power to the government, not to admit failure) they’ll trust Uncle Sam rather than Bill Gates.  Their ideal ranges from Sweden to Cuba depending on the issue.  90% taxes?  Well, we’ll take that if it means free health care.  But most Americans wouldn’t accept that tradeoff. 

 ..and faced with that prospect, many Americans get upset.  Upset enough to protest!  Thus we have…the Tea Party.  

SCTV

“…Thursday at 9!”

 I suppose this entry could be called “Canadian TV”, although it only concerns one particular variety thereof.  I mentioned earlier that American TV and movies are the only ones in the world with any reasonable expectation of being exported to foreign markets.  The TV industries of most other countries, even England and its BBC, are primary inwardly-oriented with little pretense of appealing to foreigners as a broad category (leaving aside foreigners with some particular preference, e.g. married to a Brazilian so you watch TV Globo novellas). 

 I’ll also leave aside Canadian TV actors: Michael J. Fox and William Shatner being the big two.

 So SCTV is arguably Canada’s most important TV export.  It ran from 1976 to 1984, for six seasons, and was eventually picked up by NBC.  It pretended to be an independent network.  Some of the “sketches” (which I found the weakest) were intra-studio politics between Johnny LaRue (Candy), Guy Cabellero (Flaherty) and others.  If you watch closely, you’ll notice that practically every preview for a show promises the show’s airtime to be… Thursday at 9 p.m.

 Cast: John Candy, Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, Andrea Martin, Dave Thomas, Rick Moranis, Tony Rosato, Robin Duke, Harold Ramis, and Martin Short.  These names probably sound familiar!

 I liked Mel’s Rock Pile, featuring Levy as a hilariously unhip music show host (similar to his dad role in the “American Pie” films) – and the Russian TV spoof.
 Another survivor: Martin Short’s Ed Grimley character made the transition to Saturday Night Live.  Tony Rosato and Robin Duke also went on to SNL. 

 They sometimes parodied Hollywood types, with O’Hara as Lola Heatherton, Flaherty as Sammy Maudlin, and Levy as Bobby Bittman.  I thought these were just as weak as the intra-network dramas.  The impressions were the best: Dave Thomas as Lee Iacocca and Bob Hope, Andrea Martin as Barbra Streisand, Rick Moranis as Dave Cavett, Merv Griffin, or Woody Allen (surely his talents were wasted in the “Honey I Shrunk…” movies), Joe Flaherty as Gregory Peck (in “Taxi Driver”: Are you talking to me?).   Despite the low-budget look – which was all part of the charm and fun – the cast was incredibly talented and the writing was quality, in fact competitive with SNL.

 By far the most famous “skits” which survived were the Bob & Doug McKenzie “Great White North” segments, which even resulted in a full movie, “Strange Brew”.  Bob (Rick Moranis) and Doug (Dave Thomas) sat on a couch drinking Molson and generally acting stupid.  They had their own Canadian equivalent of Valley Girl slang, mainly to end sentences with “eh”, greet each other with “Good day”, and accuse each other being “hosers”.   The funny thing about this was that at the time (early 80s) we were going to high school in Paris, and several of our best friends were Canadian (all from Ottawa).   They did not talk like this, but they did find B&DM to be amusing anyway…so long as we didn’t let on that we thought these were typical Canadians (…eh).  Geddy Lee ended up helping them do “Take Off”. These skits were due to Canadian TV regs requiring “Canadian” programming.  Aside from Mounties and lumberjacks, what more could they do?  Well, they also parodied Canadian TV with such items as Monday Night Curling and Magnum P.E.I. (Prince Edward Island). 

SS vs. VC

I finished a fascinating book, The Devil’s Guard.  It had been out of print for ages, so I had to buy it used from someone selling it for less than $200.

 SS.  This was the elite organization of Nazi Germany.  No Holocaust film is complete without SS guards, guarding the concentration camps and rounding up hapless Jews; brutal guards and cynical officers – even the charismatic and articulate Hans Landa from Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglorious Basterds”.  With their black uniforms and dramatic symbols, the SS runes and Totenkopf (Death’s Head), the SS is certainly a fascinating incarnation of evil.  Although the SS was a vast organization with its tentacles in all walks of German life, most of what the SS is infamous for nowadays is its role in the Holocaust.  The Totenkopfverbande (Death’s Head Detachment) manned the concentration and extermination camps.  The Einsatzgruppen were special squads operating in the forests of Ukraine, Byelorussia, and the Baltics mowing down Jews in vast open pits dug by the victims themselves.  After the war, the SS was seen as Nazi Germany’s primary organization responsible for the atrocities associated with the regime. Its leader, Heinrich Himmler, escaped justice by swallowing a cyanide capsule upon capture by the British; Adolf Eichmann was kidnapped from Argentina by Mossad agents and brought to justice in Jerusalem.  

Part of the SS, but not part of the Holocaust operations, was an elite army known as the Waffen SS (Armed SS).  This was originally designed partly as Hitler’s personal bodyguard (Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler), which became the First SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler (LAH), and a modest group of special disposal troops, the Vefugungstruppe (SS-VT), which later developed into the Second SS Panzer Division Das Reich. They were intended both as an elite fighting force loyal directly to Adolf Hitler, but also as a militarized police force after the war which would have gained credibility and respect on the battlefield.  Complicating the “we had nothing to do with the camps” argument, however, is the Third SS Division, Totenkopf, which was raised from concentration camp guards and led by Theodore Eicke, who was responsible for developing the camp system and establishing its rules.  The two major stains on the Waffen SS were the massacre of French civilians in Oradour, perpetrated by a unit from the Das Reich division, and the massacre of US prisoners at Malmedy, in Belgium, during the Battle of the Bulge, by the Leibstandarte Division.

 The majority of Waffen SS units, however, were concerned with fighting the Red Army on the Eastern Front.  They formed ad hoc kampfgruppes (battle groups) which combined for specific operations as necessary, a flexibility unique to that army.  SS units were the scourge of the Reds and later the Allies, always feared and underestimated at their enemies’ peril.  Fortunately for their enemies, the SS was limited in number, never more than 10% of the size of the Wehrmacht, a few core German divisions and many more foreign units (see below).

 The Waffen SS attracted some German Army mavericks who had unconventional ideas for training which were frowned upon by the traditional German Army.  The Waffen SS trained with live ammunition and upgraded the exercise, fitness and calisthenics of the soldiers, plus a healthy dose of Nazi propaganda training.  Its soldiers received the first camouflage uniforms, a distinctive dot cammo (green or brown, depending on spring or fall) and also received the best weapons and equipment, and its panzer divisions received the newest tanks.  Waffen SS soldiers are the ones seen in the last third of “Saving Private Ryan” almost overrunning Tom Hanks’ small group of soldiers and paratroopers. 

 Another fascinating aspect of the Waffen SS was its multinational composition.  It initially accepted “Aryan”/Nordic volunteers from Norway, Denmark, Holland, and Flemish Belgium, plus “Reichdeutsche” (foreign nationals of German ethnicity).  Later, the SS lowered its racial standards and allowed French, Walloons (French speaking Belgians), Hungarians, Estonians, Latvians, and even Russians, Ukrainians, and other Slavs.  Leon Degrelle, commander of the SS Walloon Division, was the highest decorated non-German in the Waffen SS.  There was a Yugoslav unit, the Handschar Division, of Muslim Croatians.  However, the infamous “Britisches Freikorps” was little more than a 30 man unarmed unit which never saw combat.

 After the war, some of the Waffen SS veterans, fleeing what they perceived to be indiscriminate justice at the hands of the victorious Allies who labeled all SS personnel “war criminals”, wound up in France and received sanctuary in the ranks of the French Foreign Legion, which has a reputation for accepting disreputable characters from all over the world.  By this point the French were involved in a costly guerilla war in the mountains and forests of North Vietnam, against Ho Chi Minh’s US-trained and Chinese-supplied guerilla force, the Viet Minh.  The Foreign Legion allowed the Germans to form their own self-contained, independently operating unit.

 Viet Minh.  The precursor to the infamous Viet Cong (VC) was the Viet Minh, essentially the same organization under a slightly different name.  Without a sovereign state, North Vietnam, yet in existence, the army was purely guerilla but had substantial support from China and the USSR.

 The German unit operated behind Viet Minh lines and caused considerable problems for them.  Many of them were sharpshooters, carrying silenced rifles.  They learned fluent French and some Vietnamese, and were assisted by a Viet Minh turncoat, whose whole family had been wiped out by the Viet Minh.  Realizing that the Chinese were supporting the Viet Minh, the German unit went into China proper, dressed in black pajamas, tire sandals, the conical hats, and blew up several staging camps.  They also rescued several units of captured Legionnaires, and avenged others who were not so fortunate. 

 The Germans ruthlessly repaid Viet Minh atrocities in kind; on the rare occasion in which VM officers were lenient with French prisoners, the Germans acted likewise.  On one convoy, the Germans rounded up the wives and children of the local guerillas and used them as human shields to guarantee the safety of the convoy.  At another camp, besieged by a ruthless VM officer murdering captive Legionnaires outside the stockade of the camp, the Germans captured the VM unit’s local family and brought them to the camp, threatening to kill them if the VM officer didn’t back off.  This resulted in a mutiny in the VM ranks, who turned on their own officers.

On one remarkable occasion, one of the Germans challenged a VM officer to an open debate in front of the local villagers.  This German was well versed in Marxist ideology and ripped apart the VM’s arguments one by one; he was clearly excited and amused to engage in this battle of wits, words and ideas instead of bullets. 

  The Germans had also studied Mao’s guerilla warfare tactics and the writings of Spencer Chapman, a British officer who had been part of the UK advisors who remained in Malaysia after the Japanese took over, advising and organizing local guerillas to fight the Japanese; his book The Jungle is Neutral served as much as a primer in jungle warfare and counterinsurgency as Mao’s own teachings.  It turns out the French had done no prep work training the Legion for fighting in jungles (their training bases were in North Africa) nor had they bothered to study the tactics of the Viet Minh or of Mao himself, who literally wrote the book which Communist guerilla movements followed. 

 Unable to defeat the Germans in the forest, the Viet Minh used its political connections among the world’s Communist movement, particularly in France, to embarrass the French into disbanding the German unit.  Its men, unwilling to be parceled out piecemeal to the other Foreign Legion units, and having satisfied their enlistments, resigned from the Legion and found homes around the world.  In 1971, the leader of the unit, Hans Wagemueller (not his real name), met with the author of The Devil’s Guard and dictated his fascinating story.