Maryland

Odd, I’ve done blogs on New Jersey, New York City, Colorado, Paris, Bucharest, Rio de Janeiro, but have yet to write about my home state, Maryland.  I guess watching Clutch DVDs drilled it back into my skull; time to address that oversight.  Since it’s my home state, I can ramble on quite a bit about it, so bear with me.

 Basics. The name is, oddly enough, pronounced “Marilynd”, even in official contexts.  Pronounce it as “Mary-Land” and people will look at you funny.

            The state is named after Henrietta Maria, the Queen consort to English King Charles I.  Being Catholic, she was ineligible to be Queen of England.  She was the aunt of French King Louis XIV. 

            Maryland was a slave state during the US Civil War, but did not secede from the Union.  As a border state, its loyalties were divided between pro-Union northwest and pro-CSA southeast.  A major battle, Antietam, took place in 1862 close to Frederick in northwest Maryland.  McClellan’s unique victory over Lee persuaded the British and French to pass on recognizing the Confederacy. 

            The flag is actually unique.  Most states cop out and simply put their seal on a dark blue field (e.g. Virginia).  Maryland combined the black and gold banner of the Calvert family with the red/white cross of the Crossland family.   The Crossland segment was used by Maryland secessionists during the Civil War; the combined flag dates from 1904. 

            Maryland’s highest ranking politician in US politics was Spiro Agnew, Richard Nixon’s Vice President.

            Fort McHenry, near Baltimore, came under British fire during the War of 1812, but somehow managed to survive.  Francis Scott Key was inspired to write “The Star Spangled Banner”, which became our national anthem.  Personally, I prefer “America the Beautiful.”

 Geography.    On the East (Atlantic) coast of the United States, on the Chesapeake Bay.  To me, Maryland is as important, if not more so, for where it is as what it is – like our equivalent of Belgium, which finds itself conveniently located between two countries which hated each other (Germany and France) and had no less than three wars, of which two put Belgium in the crossfire.  Similarly, Maryland was a thoroughfare for CSA forces invading the North.  It’s surrounded by two more important states and two less important states. 

            The northern border with Pennsylvania is better known as the Mason-Dixon Line.  Pennsylvania is a big state with Philadelphia to the far east – across the river from Camden, New Jersey – and Pittsburgh in the western, mountainous section. 

            To the south, the District of Columbia (DC) is a diamond cut out of the state.  Clearly, our nation’s capital is far more important than anything in Maryland, in fact more important than most of the rest of the country with the possible exception of NYC or L.A.  Sorry, Chicago.

            Across the Potomac River is Virginia.  It’s hard to tell how important Virginia is these days; its major deal is being a relic of the Civil War, like South Carolina.  Its capital, Richmond, used to be the capital of the Confederacy.  Many of the Founding Fathers, most notably George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, were from Virginia; TJ’s home, Monticello, is part of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.  And most of the top Civil War CSA generals, like Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, were from Virginia, as was the CSA’s major arms works, the Tredegar factory in Richmond. 

            To the west is West Virginia.  To the east: Delaware.  West Virginia’s major distinction seems to be seceding from Virginia and giving that state a more aesthetically pleasing shape, at the expense of its own.  Delaware is forgotten except by students of corporate law (as I was) or anyone who wants to incorporate a business. 

 Roads.  Take DC as the center of Maryland’s road network, with the Beltway surrounding DC’s diamond shape and providing a useful ring from which to send forth various major highways.  

            Shoot northwest from the Beltway with 270, which passes Rockville, then Gaithersburg, then Germantown, and winds up in Frederick.  From Frederick, 70 goes east to Baltimore and west to Hagerstown.  What you thought of as 270 continues north as 15 and takes you to small-town Pennsylvania.

            Shoot northeast from the Beltway with 95, which goes up to Baltimore, up into Delaware, and eventually all the way up to Maine.  95 is the easternmost north-south highway in the US highway system which starts with 5 in California. 

            Shoot due east from the Beltway, as Route 50 which heads to Annapolis, crosses the bay, and then winds itself across the Eastern Shore to Ocean City.

            Roughly parallel to 270 is 355, which starts in DC as Wisconsin Ave. and continues all the way up to Frederick, where it ends.

 Clutch.  Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any other major rock band from Maryland.  These guys are from Germantown, and fly the Maryland flag on stage quite often.  They even refer to “Montgomery Village” in one song.  The singer Neil Fallon now has a bushy beard, but short hair, making him look vaguely like Tsar Nicholas II.  The lyrics are all over the place, and the rock is groovy.  I can even hear a fair dose of Frank Zappa in the mix.

 Montgomery County.  Just as Fairfax County is Virginia’s wealthiest, most affluent (and liberal) county (Death Star or not), Monkey County – as I call it, as opposed to Pig County (Prince George’s) – is Maryland’s elite county.  The county seat is Rockville, but it also includes Gaithersburg and Germantown.

 Montgomery Village.  This is where I grew up, from 1970-79, right next to Gaithersburg.  It’s a suburban planned community which dates from the late 60s.  We had a single family home on Lake Whetstone, but there are townhouses, condos and apartments as well.  Unfortunately the Village Mall is long gone. 

 Rockville.  Take 355 southeast from Montgomery Village and you’ll wind up in Rockville.  This is where the Montgomery County District Court and Circuit Court are, and Rockville Pike is the main commercial strip going all the way down into Bethesda.  I still love driving through Rockville on my way back from court.  Unfortunately Shakey’s (the pizza place) is long gone.

 Bethesda.  Just south of Rockville.  This is the home of a large Navy center, where I was born in 1969 (my mom was in the Navy at the time).  It never occurred to me to wonder what a naval base is doing far from any river or ocean, but we went to the PX and enjoyed it anyway; it’s the Navy’s equivalent of Walter Reed.  JFK’s autopsy was performed there in 1963 – after he was shot.

 Baltimore.  Easily the biggest and most important city in Maryland.  The funny thing is, when we lived in Maryland from ’70-79 we had no reason to go to Baltimore.  I ended up going up far more often years later after graduating from law school.  A few times we went to the Inner Harbor, a few trips to Hammerjacks, and a few shows at the Otto Bar and the Side Bar; and quite a few shows, far more recently, at the Ram’s Head Live.  And every now and then I have cases in the Baltimore City court (downtown) or Baltimore County up in Towson.  I recall back when we were kids and our family would travel up to NY (NYC, Long Island, or Glens Falls) we’d go through the Harbor Tunnel.  That’s a long tunnel.  The Inner Harbor area is well built up with lots of skyscrapers, an excellent mall, and by now several large clubs.  The US District Court for Maryland is close by, as is the immigration court at 31 Hopkins Plaza. 

 Columbia.  This is another planned suburban community, midway between DC and Baltimore.  If you think of Montgomery Village as being 30 minutes northwest of DC along 270, Columbia is 30 minutes northeast of DC along 95.  Montgomery Village has Lakeforest Mall, Columbia has Columbia Mall.  But Columbia’s major attraction is Merriweather Post Pavilion, a big ampitheater type concert venue across 175 from Columbia Mall.  My friend from University of Maryland, College Park, Ken used to live in Columbia – then moved to New Jersey after graduating from UM.  Edward Norton, the actor, is from Columbia; he actually went to Ken’s high school, Wilde Lake, at the same time Ken did.

 Frederick.  Now my mom lives there.  It’s an hour northwest of DC at the end of 270.  It’s pretty small, but it’s the 2^nd largest city in Maryland after Baltimore (which tells you how small Annapolis is).  When we were kids we’d go up to Frederick Mall, which is fairly small too.  The downtown area is kind of cool – old but classy.

 Annapolis.  This is the capital of Maryland, about 15-20 minutes east of DC via Route 50, right on the Chesapeake Bay before the Bay Bridge.  It’s the home of the US Naval Academy, which of course is colloquially referred to as Annapolis.  My occasion to visit this place is rare:  a few shows at the Ram’s Head On Stage, swearing in to the Maryland State Bar in December 1993, and that’s about it.

 Eastern Shore & Ocean City.  If you take the Bay Bridge across the bay, and follow Route 50 all the way to the Ocean, you find Ocean City.  I haven’t been there since an aborted trip on Memorial Day weekend of 1990 (when it rained nonstop and we left just about as soon as we got there).  When we were kids growing up, my family would go there, and stay in some hotel – the Decatur (first trip, but long gone) and later the Carousel.  This was the “beach trip” for us before moving off to France.

 University of Maryland.  I went to the flagship campus, College Park.  Worldwide, UM-University College (UMUC) is one of the largest in the US or the world.  I know there is a 2 year campus in Munich and they offer courses across Germany at the US bases.  The College Park campus is the largest of them, very spread out, which is what I wanted.  Their sports teams, the Terps, play in Division I – we even won the NCAA basketball tournament back in 2002. 

 Edgar Allen Poe.  The famous 19^th century poet lived in different places, including Richmond, Virginia, but he’s most known and associated with Baltimore.  “The Telltale Heart”, “The Cask of Amantillado”, “The Murders on the Rue Morgue”, and “The Raven” are his most famous. 

 Sports.  Colts/Ravens.  The Colts started off in Maryland, and were in Baltimore until 1984; before Peyton Manning, there was Johnny Unitas.  For a long time they were the football team in Maryland aside from the Terps.  I never really considered them to be direct competitors to the Redskins.

            Eventually the Browns relocated to Baltimore and became the Ravens, to take the name from Edgar Allen Poe’s famous poem.  With the Browns resurrected in Cleveland again, the Ravens are out of that shadow.  Plus, they’ve won the Super Bowl, which no Browns team can claim.  Now the Redskins are technically in Maryland at FedEx Field, but we still think of them as from Washington and not a Maryland team.

 Orioles.  They’ve been around for awhile.  Recall that episode of “Seinfeld” where George got them into the Yankees box and Elaine insisted on wearing an Orioles cap.  I’ve been past Camden Yards dozens of times – it’s right next to where 95 dumps you off into Baltmore, so you can’t miss it – but have never been to a game there.

Ivan Grisham 2.0

I’ve been reading Mr. Grisham’s propaganda, err...novels recently and noticed a disturbing trend.  He seems to be on the left side of the spectrum, but like Michael Moore, prefers to hide his allegiance to Moscow in clever, well-written stories with a surplus of drama and suspense.  Recall that Comrade Lenin was also a young idealistic lawyer.  By now I have digested the majority of his work and all the most famous stories.  Here are brief summaries of his enlightenment:

 A Time To Kill.  Our valiant oppressed minority hero is unfairly oppressed by the corrupt capitalist justice system after rightfully executing two degenerate criminals who raped his 10 year old daughter.   Another hero, the small town people’s lawyer, steps up to the plate, so to speak, and liberates Comrade OMH from ultimate persecution.

 The Firm.  A young, idealistic lawyer is seduced by the dark side of an Evil Capitalist Law Firm.  He realizes, eventually, that any rich, successful corporation, including a law firm, must be doing something illegal and/or unethical – and his own firm is no exception.

 The Pelican Brief.  A young, idealistic law student uncovers plot by an Evil Capitalist in Louisiana to secure favorable Supreme Court appointments to protect his anti-pelican exploitation. 

 The Client.   A young boy witnesses a crime and must be protected from various capitalists who wish to kill him.   Comrade Sarandon, well known for her progressive roles and politics, plays his lawyer in the movie. Dull and not enough explosions and deaths of capitalists.

 The Chamber.  The evil in America’s justice system, in the form of capital punishment, is really just a mirror of the prior evil of America’s southern culture.  A young, idealistic lawyer defends his grandfather, a Klansman on trial for blowing up a civil rights lawyer in the 60s.  He finds pictures of lynch parties in that town in the 30s, and his grandfather is in the pictures smiling as a young boy.  Grisham makes the dubious argument that somehow even this racist oppressor should be given mercy.

 The Rainmaker.  Young idealistic lawyer takes on Evil Capitalist Insurance Company, which wrongfully denied a valid health insurance claim, as a result of which the policyholder did not get his leukemia treatment and died (“Eight times you have filed this claim, and eight times we have refused it.  You must be STUPID, STUPID, STUPID!”); the insurance company determined that it would save more money by denying claims than it would lose in litigation. 

 The Runaway Jury.  An idealistic juror and his paramour hijack the jury in a trial against an Evil Capitalist Tobacco Company (in the movie, it’s an Evil Capitalist Gun Manufacturer), despite the nastiest tricks ECTC’s litigation consultant can throw at them.  Gene Hackman returns to portray the consultant just as it he did the Klansman in “The Chamber”.  Despite the odds stacked against them by the corrupt capitalist justice system in America, justice prevails.

 The Partner.  Not quite so young, but still idealistic lawyer is captured by evil capitalist agents in Brazil after hiding out for years.  It seems he stole the ill-gotten gains of his firm’s client, an Evil Capitalist Defense Contractor.  How he out-maneuvers his ex-wife and her lover, the FBI, local oppressors in Mississippi, and Evil Insurance Companies, with the assistance of Beautiful Third World Woman, is the charm of this adventure.  Lesson: those Davids who would defeat the corporate Goliaths should only do so for the sake of social justice, not personal gain.

 The Street Lawyer.  Older, jaded lawyer decides to take up the cause of oppressed minorities in DC.  A street person’s ruthless execution by jackbooted Fascist thugs (aka SWAT) eventually reveals the role of the lawyer’s firm in an unlawful eviction (of which said street person was a victim).  Yet again we see that large law firms in the US are invariably involved in illegal and unethical activity and consistently assist their bourgeois clients in oppressing minorities.  Jaded Lawyer experiences satisfaction of helping urban proletariat and leaving his corrupt, decadent lifestyle behind.

 The Testament.  Eccentric, misanthropic elderly capitalist dies, and cheats his corrupt, greedy heirs in favor of a daughter no one – even his own lawyer – knew existed.  The sole beneficiary is working deep in the jungles of Brazil, helping the oppressed indigenous peoples.  Comrade Grisham appears to be much enamored of Brazil, despite its military dictatorship from 1964-85, the aforementioned oppression, and the deforesting of the Amazon rainforest.

 The Brethren.  Three corrupt capitalist judges – like the witches in MacBeth – conspire to do evil deeds.  More clear examples of the depravity of American culture and society.

 The Summons.  Brothers are summoned back by last will of their estranged father.  Very dull, as with The Client, too little revolutionary justice.  Sometimes Comrade Grisham forgets himself and is self-indulgent, or in The Chamber shows inappropriate mercy to obvious class enemies.

 The King of Torts.  As with The Partner, sympathetic lawyer hero discovers that virtue (here shown by class actions to attack Evil Capitalist Corporations) should be its own reward.

 The Broker.  Sympathetic quasi-capitalist hero is injected into Italy and becomes part of an elaborate capitalist conspiracy which threatens his life.

 The Last Juror.  Comrade Traynor takes over the local paper and now enlightens 1970-79-era fictional Mississippi town of Clanton with his wisdom, including his opposition to the US aggression against the people of Vietnam and later his opposition to Evil Capitalist Supermarket Chain.  Regrettably, the local population proves stubbornly reactionary and resistant to class consciousness.  The particular tragedy here is the rape and murder of a young woman before her own children, and the near-victory of the murderer, a scion of decadent rural capitalist criminals, over the criminal justice system.  Traynor also finds, and describes in great detail in his Pravda, the extraordinary story of a Minority Family, all but one of whose children have PhDs and whose mother speaks 18 languages and invented cold fusion.

 The Painted House.  Comrade Grisham strays from his tried and true comfort zone of legal thrillers and successfully cures insomnia.  Story involves peasants in Arkansas, lumpen proletariat hillbillies, and glorious Mexicans.  Evil capitalist flood ruins farm, mom & dad run to industrialist North with boy who dreams of playing baseball for the St. Louis Cardinals (his name is not Mark McGwire). 

Bleachers.  Another snoozefest.  American reactionaries return to small town to reminisce about football after their legendary coach passes away.

 Playing for Pizza.  The least boring of the non-legal epics:  a former NFL quarterback, disgraced after being thrown to the lions in the AFC Championship game between the Cleveland Browns and Denver Broncos – as the third string quarterback – winds up in Parma, Italy, playing for their local American football team.  He experiences Europe for the first time and particularly enjoys Italian cuisine.  There is little revolutionary fervor here and more self-indulgence.

 Ford County Stories.  This is a collection of short stories set in fictional Ford County, Mississippi.  Grisham hits the usual targets of reactionary rednecks, albeit fairly haphazardly and leisurely, with no drama or suspense, much as life in these small American towns is alleged to be.

 The Associate.  A promising young third year law student is blackmailed into joining a major NYC law firm in order to provide confidential information to his blackmailers – they eventually escape and their true agenda is never revealed.  The true point of the story is to demonstrate how oppressive and unpleasant the top law firms are and to encourage similarly promising law students to forgo said firms in favor of small town firms which cater to proletarian clients.  

 The Confession.   A minority defendant faces the death penalty while the true killer, a white man with terminal cancer and a long history of crime and prisons, finally decides to come clean to save an innocent life.  Unfortunately for the MD, the Texas capital punishment system, from the police, prosecutors, judges, appellate courts, all the way up to the governor, have zero interest in justice and are adamantly committed to executing this poor boy they managed to pin the crime on – despite last minute appeals and ample timely provided evidence of the condemned boy’s innocence.

 The Litigators.  Comrade Associate, burnt out from a major Chicago law firm, drops into a petty bourgeois law firm specializing in chasing ambulances.  While the junior partner shyster attempts to win the jackpot by taking on a major pharmaceutical company - only sympathetically portrayed here because their anti-cholesterol drug actually ISN'T harmful - the CA finds solace in representing a small family with a child irreversibly brain damaged by a cheap vampire teeth toy (lead poisoning).   

Jethro Tull 2022

[Originally written in 2010, rewritten in 2022.  Bracketed portions are the recent additions.]

[Recently (November 2022) I've been on document review projects.  I keep my eyes and brain on the screen, but my ears are free, and I've been digesting the entirety of Jethro Tull's repertoire, plus the solo albums of ringmaster/vocalist Ian Anderson and guitarist Martin Barre.  By now, Tull have 22 studio albums from 1968 to 2022, with a major gap between the 21st, the Jethro Tull Christmas album (2003), the last album with Martin Barre, and recently released The Zealot Gene.   Although Anderson had pretty much free rein as the leader of Jethro Tull, he still put out six solo albums.  For his part, Martin Barre has eight solo albums, half of which predate the JT Christmas album.  Now I've finally heard them all.]

Thanks to my brother, I saw Jethro Tull once again, on Tuesday June 8, 2010 at Wolf Trap.  Come to think of it, every time I’ve seen Tull has been with him, as he’s far more of a Tull fan than I am or ever was, but I can honestly say I enjoyed this show as I did the earlier ones; as Roger Waters once said, “People come to a show and they don’t like it, they don’t come again.”

 I can’t remember how we got into the band, but Iron Maiden was probably a factor.  In every interview in which bassist Steve Harris is asked his influences, he consistently names Jethro Tull and Wishbone Ash.  Maiden has covered “Cross-Eyed Mary”.

 Note: Jethro Tull himself is/was NOT in the band.  He died in 1741, sometime earlier.  Safe to say he had no knowledge of the band named after him 226 years after he died.  His claim to fame is developing the seed drill. 

 Jethro Tull IS pretty much the band of Ian Anderson, the singer/songwriter.  Anderson also plays flute, harmonica, and a small acoustic guitar.  His signature pose is standing on one leg.  Even today, at age 62, he is very spry and jumps around stage, although he no longer wears Renaissance clothing or a codpiece. 

 For a month in 1968, Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath played with Tull.  Despite being in the band for such a brief period of time, he was Tull’s guitarist on the Rolling Stone’s Rock’n’Roll Circus special, pretending to play “Song For Jeffrey” on a left-handed Stratocaster. 

 From the remarks he made on stage, and from interviews, it’s clear that Anderson is not happy that Tull is often considered a “progressive” band and lumped in with Pink Floyd, Yes, Genesis, and King Crimson (among other such bands).  He kept Tull off the bill at Woodstock because he wanted to disassociate the band from the hippie movement.  There are elements of jazz, blues, classical, and folk all wrapped up; “Bourree” is clearly classical, even if Anderson admitted they had watered it down into second-rate jazz.  Tull are one of these bands who can appeal both to rock fans who might not like classical music, and classical music fans who consider all rock to be degenerate noise.  This is why they play Wolf Trap, a smallish ampitheater for the wicker picnic basket crowd, not the 9:30 Club (moshing at a Tull show?  Perish the thought!).

 In 1989, the Grammy people decided, in their immense wisdom, to not only begin a special category for heavy metal, but to bestow that award upon Jethro Tull for their album Crest of a Knave, instead of the presumptive favorite, Metallica’s …And Justice For All.  Anderson claimed to have been as stunned and surprised as Metallica were by this choice.  I do like Crest of a Knave, and as Tull albums go it’s about as heavy as any of them, but nowhere close to …And Justice For All.  In fact, before …And Justice For All, the only people to listened to, or paid attention to, Metallica were metal heads like my brother and I.  That album suddenly broke the band wide open to the R.E.M. and “progressive rock” crowd – and here I mean the skinny, VW-driving liberals who listen to R.E.M. and WHFS, and generally slam metal music and its fans as Neanderthal idiots like Beavis and Butt-head.  Now these guys were joining the Metallica bandwagon.  So really, by anyone’s standards and imagination, …And Justice For All was definitely the album which should have won in 1989.  When Metallica did win the Grammy in 1992, drummer Lars Ulrich joked, “we’d like to thank Jethro Tull for not putting out an album this year.”  [Actually, both Metallica - the self-titled, Black Album - and Jethro Tull (Catfish Rising) released albums in 1991.]

 Aqualung.  They’ve had good albums since this one (Minstrel in the Gallery, Songs from the Wood, Broadsword and the Beast, and Crest of a Knave), but clearly this is their Dark Side of the Moon, their Sgt. Pepper.  In concert You KNOW you will hear the title track and “Locomotive Breath”, and most often “My God” as well.  One of the more recent shows we saw a few years ago was one in which they played Aqualung in its entirety, including the other longer songs “Hymn 43” and “Wind-up”, and the shorter throw-away tunes.  What I liked is that unlike the more recent spate of such efforts by bands, they did not play the songs in exact running order consecutively, but in no particular order and alternating with other songs.   

[Stinkers.  My own opinion, mind you:  Thick As A Brick, A Passion Play, Under Wraps.   And the rest are OK, neither remarkable in good quality or bad.  That includes the solo albums by Anderson and Barre.]

 Live.  By now the only original members are Anderson and Martin Barre, the guitarist.  Barre by now bears an uncanny resemblance to Joe Biden.  What you have is an old guy playing VERY mean guitar.  Anderson hogs the attention, hopping on one leg, and regaling us with witty anecdotes and comments about the songs, much more entertaining than the usual “are you ready to rock, motherf**kers???” we can expect from lesser bands.  Overall the experience is exciting, interesting, and despite all the very obvious non-rock ingredients definitely needs to be classified as “rock”. 

[We later managed to see Martin Barre perform as a solo artist in 2018.  Mostly he played Jethro Tull songs, of course:  Steel Monkey, Hymn 43, Back to the Family, Love Story, For A Thousand Mothers, Nothing to Say, Nothing is Easy, Hunting Girl, Minstrel in the Gallery, My Sunday Feeling, Sealion, Pibroch (Cap In  Hand), A Song For Jeffrey, Teacher, A New Day Yesterday, Aqualung, and Locomotive Breath.   Still very agile on the electric guitar, fortunately, and an excellent show.]

Class and Cool

It’s time to tackle more vague and esoteric topics: “class” and “cool”.

 Class.  By this I mean that nebulous but nevertheless discernable quality people either possess or lack.  Its absence is often ostentatiously demonstrated by various elements:  excessive “bling bling”, NASCAR memorabilia, WWE/WWF fandom, primer paint job, low-riders, and other noxious and objectionable displays of poor judgment.  No race has a monopoly on class or its absence, but I’ve noticed that the races converge in appearance, style and behavior (possibly emulating each other) at the high end and diverge towards the low end.  Much of what we’d consider racism is probably better described as “classism”, as we have considerably more tolerance for people of other races who we can clearly ascertain possess genuine class, and look down on those who clearly don’t.  And I’ve noticed that classy people of whatever race are sincerely ashamed of their racial brethren of the no-class variety; the class-related contempt for those who clearly lack it can be shared across racial lines.  I’ve also noticed that classless people sometimes attempt to appear to have class (when they momentarily come into any sizable amount of cash) but it doesn’t fool anyone except themselves.  Sometimes, however, the classlessness is deliberate and conscious: Kid Rock, Larry the Cable Guy, anyone who claims to be “proud to be a redneck”.  I suppose the black equivalent is “ghetto”, but to me that often seems like guys trying to look and act tougher than they really are – as if a lack of class should intimidate anyone by itself.  “Don’t mess with me, I own a mesh tank top!”

            It’s not necessarily about money: some people of modest means can carry themselves with style and make an impressive statement on a minimal budget.  I think of Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in “Titanic”, holding his own in a borrowed tuxedo among the rich and famous, neither ashamed of himself nor trying to pretend to be anything more than what he was, which was good enough for anyone.

            Myself, I am no worse, nor any better, than bourgeois, for whatever tackiness or class that entails.  I never buy the cheapest stuff (which is almost invariably crap) nor do I see any status in overpaying (assuming I could afford to do so anyway). 

 Cool.  There is an aging alumni colleague from the University of Maryland who sometimes shows up my local Gold’s Gym.  Just as he did at College Park, he wears sunglasses 24/7, even indoors at night.  He has a common name, but back in college he expropriated for himself the one-word nickname of a metal guitarist (who is still popular, 20 years later) to enhance his coolness, as if the perpetual sunglasses were not quite cool enough.  To me, if you have to TRY, if it’s that obvious, it’s not cool.  Coolness, like class, is something you possess naturally and not by some concerted effort or campaign.  I like to think one example is NOT being an arrogant asshole when you have every right to be.  One of the coolest persons ever is Burt Reynolds.  He’s seen better days, of course, but he’s been aging fairly well.  Clint Eastwood is another, as is Bruce Willis. 

 In fact, it’s difficult to separate the two: most people who are classy are also cool, and most of the cool are also classy.  The exceptions are rare:  no doubt Martha Stewart and the Queen of England have class, but neither could truly be considered cool.  To the extent Kid Rock or Tommy Lee are cool, yet lack class, those are more examples of the difference. 

Deutschland Uber Alles

A few eons ago I posted a blog about various alternate history stories in which the South won the US Civil War, or at least in which the Civil War took a dramatically different course than it actually did.  Of these, Turtledove’s timeline was the most ambitious: not only did the South win the Civil War, North and South clashed again three more times, ending in a vast WWII conflagration in which the South’s blacks perished in concentration camps, a Southern Hitler, Jake Featherston, ran a CSA dictatorship with his Freedom Party, and the Kaiser nuked Petrograd.  Now it’s time to review a similar slew of books in which Nazi Germany won World War II.

 In The Presence of Mine Enemies, by Harry Turtledove.  This takes place in Berlin, Germany around 2009.  The US had stayed out of WWII, allowing Hitler to defeat the USSR and England.  A few decades later, an atomic-equipped Germany managed to defeat and overrun the USA as well.  Having won, the Nazis make no secrets about the Holocaust.  In fact, they’re starting to bump ugly with the Japanese, though it’s still just a rivalry between the two remaining superpowers.   Hitler, Himmler, and Waldheim, a succession of Fuhrers, have come and gone; now a new Fuhrer, Buckliger, with new ideas has come to power.  And the few Jews still alive, hiding out in German roles, finally see some hope for salvation.  The Gauleiter of Berlin is an obnoxious, womanizing liberal (analogous to Boris Yeltsin) and Buckliger is very much the Gorbachev of this story; as Turtledove so often does, he simply transposes a “plot” of history to another context but otherwise keeps the story faithful to the original (“historical plagiarism” is my term). 

 The Man In the High Castle, by Philip K. Dick.  Nazi Germany has won WWII and taken over most of the Eastern US.  The Japanese control the West Coast.  Between them is a lawless, neutral middle zone where fugitives from the coasts tend to reside, including the so-called “Man in the High Castle”, a recluse who has written an alternate history book in which the Nazis lost WWII.  Among other notable achievements in this timeline, the Nazis managed to plant their flag on Mars.  I don’t recall much in the way of a plot; most of the characters consult the I Ching for guidance.  Despite the vague non-plot, I did find it very entertaining and enjoyable. 

 Fatherland.  It’s 1964, and Adolf Hitler is turning 75.  After a Cold War with the US, a rapprochement, a détente is imminent; the US president is Joseph, not John F., Kennedy.  But in Berlin, some top Nazi Party and SS men are mysteriously turning up dead.  An SS police detective starts snooping around, and finds that the victims share knowledge of a hideous secret: what really happened to all those Jews who were supposedly “resettled” in the East.  Of all the books listed, here, this is the only one made into a movie: Rutger Hauer plays the main character, March.  Incidentally, March has SS rank and membership because he’s a police detective (the Kriminalpolizei, KriPo, as opposed to Geheime Staats Polizei, Gestapo, come under SS jurisdiction), not because he’s an SS butcher. 

 SS-GB.  Len Deighton takes the Nazis to London, in November 1941.  The US is unconquered at this time, and the USSR has yet to be invaded.   A British physicist working on the Nazis’ atom bomb project is murdered and the protagonist has to solve the murder, which leads him to the Underground, the imprisoned King, and a linkup with the US.   I remember being only modestly entertained by this story and never compelled to re-read it later.

School Bus Memories

The other day I was stuck behind a school bus on a two-lane road.  It brought back memories of my own experiences on school buses.  No, no Ottos or crazy woman who can’t hear right, but I recall an African school bus monitor who told us kids to "shut your mouse!"  Here were my adventures.

 St. Martin’s.  This is a private, Catholic school in Gaithersburg, Maryland.   I went here from first grade (1975) until Fall semester of 5^th grade (late 1978).  The school bus – those big orange (or is it yellow?) things - really didn’t directly connect us to the school.  The bus stop was on Montgomery Village Avenue, at the entrance to the subdivision, Lakeside of Whetstone, which is a 5-10 minute walk from our house.  To make matters worse, the bus didn’t go to St. Martin’s itself, which is on 355 at the corner with Summit Ave.  We had to walk 10 minutes over to Gaithersburg High School.  You can’t really mess up getting ON the bus in the morning, as only one school bus will come to your stop.  But in the afternoon, I can remember what seemed like an infinite amount of buses, and having to wait for the right one, with a specific three digit number, while being surrounded by dozens of high school kids and having no one from my school living in my neighborhood and being on my bus.  Eventually my mom decided it was better to drive us to school.

 Marymount – Rue Van Loo.  We moved to Paris, France in January 1979, and started going to Marymount, which was a Catholic school in Neuilly, which is a suburb of Paris to the northwest, immediately next to Paris itself.  Our sea shipment took about a month to arrive from the US, in the meantime we were in temporary quarters in the 16^th Arrondisement (far western part of Paris).   The bus stop was at the Michel-Ange Molitor metro stop, and the way to the bus stop from the apartment was extremely convoluted, though I believe if you put me there today I could probably find my way.  This was also the last stop on the route.  It was a 30 minute walk.  Fortunately the school bus went directly to Marymount, so on that end there wasn’t a problem.

 Marymount – Neuilly Compound.  In February 1979, our shipment came in, so we could move into our apartment in the Neuilly compound for US Embassy employees.  Although both the school and the compound were in “Neuilly”, they were very far apart.  In fact, one day we missed the bus, so our dad made us walk the entire distance, something like a full hour.  But at least the bus did come to the compound – and this time we were not the only kids at the stop.  I remember having disputes with the other kids as we lined up for the bus, since whoever got on the bus first had a better choice of seats, but there were enough other kids to fight about this issue.  The buses were commercial buses (not the classic American school buses) which had some provision to convert the seats into beds, but we never had occasion to use them for that (no overnight trips by bus – all such trips at Marymount were by train).

 ASP – Neuilly Compound.  From Fall 1982 onward, I went to the American School of Paris, for high school.  Instead of Neuilly, this was located in St. Cloud, which is a suburb a bit further out, about southwest of Paris.  The private buses were nice, very similar to tour buses. 

            Now that I was in high school, the issue of extracurricular activities arose – how to get home from school after rugby practice.  Fortunately ASP had two “late” buses which actually did come to the Neuilly compound, so it wasn’t a problem.  However, I’d have had NO idea how to get from the compound to ASP by public transportation.

 ASP – Malesherbes.   In spring of 1984 (my sophomore year) my family moved from Neuilly to Paris itself, the 8^th Arrondisement on Blvd. Malesherbes, which is northwest Paris.  The school bus picked us up a few blocks away, on Blvd Courcelles.  Unfortunately, this was the end of the line, and the school bus company had hired some incompetent clowns to drive that route.  Often the bus was late or didn’t come at all.  Around exam time of 1985 (junior year), we discovered the local train station was a better option.

            Moreover, the “late” buses didn’t come all the way to our neighborhood.  They’d stop at the Etoile, which was 4 Metro stops away.  However, I didn’t mind walking, as I walked past the huge record store, FNAC, on Wagram, and spent my excess lunch money on vinyl and cassettes (the latter I could listen to on my Walkman on the walk home).

 ASP – Malesherbes – Train.  The train station, Gare St. Lazare, was 10 minutes away.  Near the high school, there were two train stations:  St. Cloud, which was too far to walk (take a bus the rest of the way), and Garches-Marne-La-Coquette, which was a 5 minute walk down the road.  Much better.  Back at St. Lazare, there were three morning trains, all commuter/suburban trains.  The 8:00 a.m. train only went as far as St. Cloud, meaning you’d have to still take a bus.  No good.  The 8:15 train went to Garches, and got there around 8:45.  With the 5 minute walk, you’d get to school at 8:50, just in time for the first period which started at 8:55.  The 8:28 train would put you in the classroom no earlier than 9, so you’d be late for class.  If you missed the 8:15 train, you could at least try to catch the 8:28 train.  If you missed the 8:28 train, the next train was 9:15 or so, VERY late.  So I’d shoot for the 8:15 train.  Matt…well, he preferred to sleep later and take the 8:28 train.

            There were other advantages of the train.  In the afternoon, there was no “3:30” or “late train”, you’d just take whichever train left Garches when you got to the station.  No hurry to “make the bus” and no issue about a late bus which left you off 4 metro stops away from home. 

            The other (huge) advantage was that to pay for the train, you’d buy a “Carte Orange”, an orange ticket good for an entire month of travel, on every form of public transportation: Metro (RATP), RER, bus, and SNCF (train).  The same carte orange we’d use for the train to get to school would get us around Paris on the weekends on the Metro, without having to buy the individual yellow tickets. 

             By the way.  The bus route from Neuilly to ASP had to pick up two kids who lived in a neighborhood at the bottom of a hill where the streets were extremely narrow.  This was a major detour and caused the bus driver a ton of grief and inconvenience.  This was easily 30 minutes extra just to pick up and drop off these kids. If, for whatever reason, the two kids were not on the bus going home, everyone on the bus (not just the poor bus driver) cheered as we could completely bypass their damn neighborhood and get home 30 minutes earlier.   Anyhow.  When I started taking the train to school, I noticed the train went right through their neighborhood, and the local station was a block from their house.  D’oh!!  These idiot kids could have taken the train and made everyone’s lives (including their own) much easier.  We ALL could have slept another 30 minutes each morning.

 Headphones.  Nowadays, I’m driving in a car, not a school bus.  But I always listen to music in the car, which is why I make sure both the Neon and the Formula have good stereos.  Back in high school, I would listen to music on my Walkman – unlike Otto (above) I wasn’t actually driving the school bus (actually, I’ve never driven a school bus).  On one occasion I was listening to Speak of the Devil, the live album by Ozzy Osbourne in which he plays nothing but Black Sabbath songs.  Oblivious to the distinction, I thought these Ozzy songs were great!  One of the older students asked if he could listen to what I was listening to, and I said sure.  His reaction: “Hey, these are BLACK SABBATH songs!”  Clued in, I later checked out the Black Sabbath records at FNAC.  Hmm, this guy Ozzy Osbourne is on these albums.  And those songs are there!  Wow!  So after that, we asked for Black Sabbath albums for Christmas.  And we got:  The Mob Rules (with Ronnie James Dio) and Born Again (with Ian Gillan).  D’oh!  But I ended up buying the Ozzy/Sabbath albums at FNAC, on my way home from school.  It all worked out.

 Specifications.  Aside from “short buses” and larger transit-style buses, what we think of as the classic American school bus is the “class C”, or conventional.  It seats up to around 77-80 kids.  One of the major manufacturers, and among the few surviving ones, is Blue Bird.  Its current standard model, the Vision, seats 77 and has a Cummins diesel engine, inline 6, 5.9L, running anywhere from 200-260 HP.  The “yellow” color was established in 1939 as the standard color.  

John Carter, Warlord of Mars

A few years ago I read one of Robert Heinlein’s later books, Number of the Beast, which was a bit strange.  The crew members encounter fictional universes and fictional characters brought to life – even Heinlein’s own creations, Lazarus Long (from Time Enough For Love) and Jubal Harshaw (from Stranger in a Strange Land).  But the four main characters were Zachariah Carter, his wife D.T. Burroughs, her father Jacob Burroughs, and his wife Hilda Burroughs.  D.T. is short for “Dejah Thoris”.  This led me to read the books which apparently inspired Heinlein, the John Carter trilogy.

 The books are Princess of Mars, Gods of Mars, and Warlord of Mars.  Edgar Rice Burroughs, the author, is best known for his other creation, Tarzan.  These were written around 1913-16, and have a very stilted form of writing which even Tolkien and Moorcock don’t reach.  The closest is Robert E. Howard of Conan fame, but even Howard wasn’t this pompous and stuffy; nonetheless, I’d find it hard to believe that Howard wasn’t influenced by Burroughs.  Having said that, though, Howard’s stories are somewhat more Byzantine and complex than the John Carter stories, but it seems as though the John Carter stories definitely provided a solid bedrock of ideas and basis upon which Howard was able to craft Conan.

 Carter himself is a Civil War veteran from Virginia, who mysteriously finds himself teleported to Barsoom (Mars); how he got there is NEVER explained.  There he meets a warlike race of very tall green men with four arms.  He finds the gravity to be much lower than Earth, so he can jump around.  His warlike bearing and skill at arms soon earn him the respect of Tars Tarkas, one of the Jeddaks (chieftains) of the green men.  Eventually his travels take him to Helium, land of the “red men”, and he meets the Princess, Dejah Thoris.  He wins her love and her heart, and the rank of Prince of Helium, a title he uses in the next books.  By the end of the first story, he has to fix the atmosphere plant which provides the sentient races of the entire planet with breathable air – yet is suddenly and abruptly (again, never explained how) teleported back to Earth without knowing whether he succeeded or failed.

 In Gods of Mars he returns to Barsoom and meets black men – though they are not negroes, just apparently caucasians with black skin; and Therns, who are white men who wear blond wigs (see Carter disguised as a Thern, above middle).  This time he is catapulted 20 years into the future, and chases after Dejah Thoris, and meets his son by her, Carthoris.  Unwittingly, he has destroyed Barsoom’s major religion by revealing its goddess, Issus, to be mortal.  Dejah Thoris is imprisoned in a temple for a year, so we don’t know if she will survive.  Thus ends the second book.

 In Warlord of Mars, the story is wound up.  He continues to chase after Dejah Thoris (who did survive), who has been captured by a renegade black man and one of the Therns.  He finds jungle men (some variant of the red men) (what? No Tarzan?) and finally yellow men (not Asians, just white men with yellow skin) in the frigid wastes of the north pole of Mars.  There is a climactic battle in which his allies (of course) come to rescue him, very much the Martian cavalry of the story.  Like Conan, John Carter seems to enjoy a strikingly convenient supply of good luck which he, of course, is amply able to take advantage of to his benefit and the detriment of his enemies, who consistently underestimate him.

 While there are plenty of swords, I see no sign of sorcery.  Flying machines get their power from repulsion rays.  The flying ships are described and illustrated (see above middle) in a way which brings to mind the ones in “Return of the Jedi”.  All the technology has a curiously simple explanation like ERB simply made it up with a minimum of thought. Guns are rare; most of the fighting is with swords and spears.  Despite plenty of religion, no magic occurs and the one deity is exposed as a mortal.  Except for the green men, a race of plant monsters, and a race of white haired apes, all the races are pretty much different-colored Caucasians (no Blue Man Group, though).  The sex, to the extent there is any, is merely implied (how else would Carter have a son with Dejah Thoris?), although most inhabitants of Mars, including the women, are consistently scantily clad.  And ERB never explains how they got to Mars or whether any of the races are actually indigenous to Mars (unlikely, as they all need an atmosphere plant).  

Princess of Mars (DVD). Until 2012, this was the only actual film treatment of the stories.  Despite the fact that these stories were written before 1916 and have been known for ages, this film was made – apparently direct to DVD – in 2009.  John Carter is played by a soap opera heart-throb, Antonio Sabato Jr., and the only other major star is Traci Lords, the former porn actress, portraying Dejah Thoris.  I can appreciate her effort to find normal roles, but the reality is her acting stinks: she simply scowls 99% of the time like a female Clint Eastwood.  Although I found the overall acting in this to be equally bad, they did stick pretty much to the story.  Hell, they even came up with an explanation on how he got to Mars.  Give them a B+ for effort and a C- for execution.

 Recently Disney took a shot at this, with Lynn Collins & Taylor Kitsch (both in “X-Men Origins: Wolverine”) as Dejah Thoris and John Carter, respectively, which came out in 2012.  This had an all-star cast, which also included Willem Dafoe (as Tars Tarkas), Thomas Hayden Church, and Mark Strong.  I liked it much more than the prior attempt, but the moviegoing public seemed to prefer "The Hunger Games", which I refuse to see for that reason.  While they took a few liberties with the plot, overall it was extremely well done.  Even Bryan Cranston (Walt White) is in here as decrepit Union cavalry officer.  Good job; more people should have seen this tribute to one of the earliest, most original forms of science fiction, rather than waste their attention on the completely unoriginal "Games".