Boss Obama

The executive action by the current occupant of the White House is the most outrageous political payoff in United States history. It is blatant vote buying of a sort that would make Tammany Hall’s Boss Tweed blush with shame. Flimflamming the country is Obama’s ambition, whereas Boss Tweed limited his political patronage to New York City. One can only wonder as to Obama’s next move. Committees of naturalization? His immigrant constituency, having won round one in the quest to Balkanize the nation, will no doubt have even greater demands. And who can blame them? They’re on a roll. A fraction of the population is compelling the nation into a constitutional crisis. Boss Obama seemingly has ambitions to become Emperor Obama. His argument is simple. Unless the Congress passes a law granting amnesty, he will do an end run around the Constitution. He has stated on twenty-two occasions he lacks the authority to grant amnesty. His executive action is the most outrageous act of cynicism ever to come out of the Oval Office. He learned nothing from the results of the midterm elections. His action will hand the Republicans the next presidency.

An Evening With Philip K. Dick

Science fiction fans of my generation pretty much followed the same course of evolution in our reading. We discovered S/F around age 12 – 13. Andre Norton was our first discovery, she wrote for readers our age. The master Robert Heinlein remains the best storyteller in the generation of the Golden Age. STARSHIP TROOPERS and DOUBLE STAR would be the favorites until he gave us STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND. Isaac Asimov’s massive FOUNDATION TRILOGY is to science fiction what THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE is to history. Arthur C. Clarke is the third of the Three Masters. He is best known for 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (he hated Kubrick’s movie version), but his best story is THE STAR. It concerns an epiphany that comes to a Jesuit Priest/Astrophysicist. After an expedition to a solar system 3000 light years from Earth he concludes the star that shone above Bethlehem announcing the birth of Jesus was in fact a star that went supernova and destroyed a wondrous human-like civilization. The Three Masters set the standard for science fiction. Until Philip K. Dick that is. He literally took science fiction to a higher plane. In the universe he created the United States was controlled by mega corporations whose naked greed was beyond even what the robber barons of today aspire to. A class system where the correct color credit card was required for entrance to upscale shopping malls. Police unrestrained by the courts (Gitmo would fit right in). Psychiatrist in a box functioned to make a person crazy and unfit to be drafted to a dreary colony and pointless existence on Mars. People with precognitive abilities (precogs) were common, and worth more in the employment marketplace than a Harvard MBA. Death was not the end, just a transition of the mind to a computer hard drive where loved ones could converse with the deceased on the telephone. (Sort of like James Cagney talking to his Ma while he did his time in the big house. “Top of the world, Ma!”) For a while anyway. All of his stories asked the question, “What is real?” His mind truly had more bandwidth, and as it turned out in the end, he had more than he needed. My encounter with PKD began with a knock at the door of my room at the World Science Fiction Convention in LA in 1972. A friend and I had rented a room at the International Hotel where the convention was held. We were members of the Original Gonzo Japesters (We modeled ourselves after Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters, although this was hubris. We did enjoy something of a bad boys reputation with the rest of Fandom. A reputation unearned but enjoyed. My room contained a small party, wild for the social outcasts that make up science fiction fandom. I did not ask for this party of louts but could not control them. Like an airborne virus they could not be kept out. 10 or 12 sat in a circle around a pathetic guitar player who assumed we would be enthralled with his nasty toneless drone. He was ignorant of the phrase “Eric Clapton is God”. A knock . . . I opened the door there stood Philip K. Dick. I said, “My friend and I were about to enjoy a pipe. Would you care to join us”? He joined my friend and I for a couple of hours of special adult smoking mixture prepared by my friend and smoked in a Dr. Grabow ‘Royal Duke’ pipe. I would like to report on a conversation with my science fiction idol, but such a report would be as much a product of an alternate reality as you might find in one of PKD’s novels. After forty years I just don’t remember. I do remember a pleasant time spent with an interesting, soft- spoken and imaginative writer. After a time his girlfriend appeared and spirited him away. It should be noted the hard-core science fiction fans enthralled by bad music did not recognize PKD. I doubt they would have known Asimov or Heinlein. Hardly surprising as they were the type of fan who dress-up in funny science fiction garb, standard attire for morbidly obese social outcasts that dominate the S/F fan census. In the spirit of full discloser I must admit several of the music lovers were dressed in Star Trek uniforms. This was the time before the Trekkies had their own massive conventions. Before STAR WARS characters began appearing at conventions. I remember assuring PKD they were dressed up like escapees from the Paramount wardrobe department, and not simulacra induced by our adult smoking mixture. After PKD was gone we continued to smoke, and the effect took real hold of me. I considered a verbal assault on the unwanted fatsos occupying my room like the SS in a French village, until I spied a phaser pistol in the belt of one of the Trekkies. I grabbed the pistol, took sloppy aim (the only kind allowed with a phaser as they lack sights) and disintegrated the guitar player. A collective moan emanated from the music lovers, Trekkies and non Trekkies alike. “You should have set it on stun.” “Shut your mouths and get out, or you’ll get what the wandering minstrel got. Time for Scotty to beam you out”, I told them. They made a mad dash for the door, all of them, including the reintegrated musician. I had a defective phaser! I never met Philip K. Dick again, but I had expected 20 years of new works by him. Alas, that was not to be. An epiphany, rather like a dance with the ghost of Hamlet’s father, led him to a mystic odyssey chronicled in his final three novels. Far too mystic for me. He was taken at far too young an age, but he left us a dozen or so novels and short stories that can be read over and over.

Cinema is my Religion

With “War Horse”, Mr. Spielberg brings to the forefront his publicity machine along with his great talent for self-promotion. Are we amazed his cloud of sycophants declare “War Horse” a sure Oscar contender while film is still running through the gate? We would be amazed if “War Horse” could claim ownership of a story with a beginning, middle, and a dramatic end, not just a place where he called a wrap as the music swells (“Lassie, come home”). 

His attempts at capturing the mood of the films of his sainted youth works occasionally as in “Raiders of the Lost Ark”. In fact it works so well he rolls it out over and over again when he is in need of easy cash after a shot at the adults. “Is this a children’s film?” “I really don’t know the age of the filmmakers, Sir.” When Spielberg has a novel with an adult theme and good story, he ignores it in favor of a series of great looking sequences, which fit together like a badly cut jigsaw puzzle. “How was the film?” “Great dinosaurs”. 

Do we really need another “Jurassic Park” movie; not that Spielberg bothered himself with either of the stories Michael Crichton gave us. His attack on Philip K. Dick’s, “Minority Report” kept the title and little else. The screenplay failed to note the “Precrime” police unit could only exist in a police state in which the Bill of Rights had been discarded. Tom Cruise’s Precrime Chief John Anderson is shown to be a drug addict, but there it ends. His addiction adds nothing to the story. The biggest howler is the introduction at the film’s conclusion of the 1861 Smith&Wesson .32-short-caliber Model 2 revolver. It is claimed this revolver was given to Civil War generals at the war’s end, a fact generals Grant and Sherman failed to mention in their memoirs. Civil War officers, including general officers, preferred large bore, hard hitting .44 caliber revolvers. The Robert Urich series, “The Lazarus Man” tried to pass off similar nonsense with the Colt .31 caliber Pocket Revolver. 

There is no doubt about Wells’, “War of the Worlds”. Wells pointedly explained the social purpose of this novel in Chapter One. It is doubtful Spielberg read Wells’ novel. Doubtless he relied on the Cliff Notes of Hollywood, the story analyst’s report. Spielberg jettisoned Wells’ idea for yet another rehash of his “reuniting families” theme. “War of the Worlds” will survive this hack attack. We can only wonder why Spielberg employed François Truffaut as an actor in the absurdly dreadful “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, when he might have invited the Master to direct a film from a good script. A good script would preclude employment of his gallery of gag writers. To paraphrase Victor Hugo,''Cinema is our religion and the theater is our church.  Spielberg has desecrated the altar; he has blasphemed.

Will Farrell

Will Farrell has turned banality into an art form. A low art form. Those never introduced to real humor, that is humor that is actually funny, are moved to laughter by his somnolence. Exposure to decades of Saturday Night Live and other snooze fests, combined with the vulgarity that acts as a stand-in for comedy peddled by stand-up “comics”, have left the audience confused, befuddled, and ignorant of the wit that acts as the basis of comedy and humor.

Wit has seemed to elude Farrell and it doesn’t seem to bother him. He abandoned the effort, resigned from the chase. A case in point was his Broadway show, purported to be a comic impersonation of George Bush. When the banality ran thin, he sprinted to the vulgar like it was his long lost brother. It didn’t matter, his audience, seemingly composed of hand picked Bush haters, would laugh at any vapid comment directed at the ex-president. They showed as much sophistication as a cluster of rubes at a taping of Hee Haw.

So it is puzzling that Farrell was awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. But, perhaps not. In the past the prize has been awarded to performers, or to a person who writes for performers. Although awarded in New York, it’s a Hollywood prize, as much as the Oscars or the Emmys.

True American humorists; Dave Barry, Ian Frazier and Calvin Trillin, to name just three, will likely never be celebrated with the Mark Twain Prize. They don’t stand on stage and act the fool. They don’t make asses of themselves, which seem to be the standard for past winners.

Wall Street Greed

The Second Gilded Age is with us and every bit as ugly as the first; uglier really. The Ultra Rich have redefined avarice. Their endless thirst for wealth, wealth they have done nothing to earn, exposes their lust for the vulgar accumulation of wealth for the shear joy of watching the numbers in their accounts increase. The accounts they admit to owing, that is. They keep an army of tax lawyers and accounts busy avoiding taxes; taxes being the only dirty word they recognize. Taxes are the responsibility of the middle class as the Ultra Rich see it. Controlling more wealth than one person can ever spend is the burden they must bear, alas. The middle class bear no such burden so paying the taxes that support the government is the least they can do. The very least.

It seems we have learned one thing from history, that avarice takes precedence over the knowledge of our mistakes. The Ultra Rich still manage to convince the so-called Average Joe their interests are superior to the interests of the men and women who do the work, produce the wealth. After all, might not we join the ranks of the Ultra Rich? The lotto awaits.

There is a greater likelihood of winning the lotto than joining the ranks of the Ultra Rich. They simply would not allow it. The employees of the Ultra Rich occupying the seats of Congress are there simply to protect the wealth of their employers . They believe their reelection to their House or Senate seat is vital to the welfare of the Republic. If the unthinkable should happen and one of the politically less skillful should be turned out of office, they may take comfort in the fact a lucrative job in the so called “private sector’’ awaits them, along with the Ultra Rich golf courses of the world.

The protests against Wall Street have gone on for weeks, and you know they cause Wall Street nerves to fray by the simple fact the cops have been sent in to bust some heads. How long will it be before protest organizers can expect the door kicked in at 3 am and the protester disappeared, never to be heard from? Why else would the Ultra Rich employ hard-core corporate security operatives? Travel in limos with the same or better armor than protects the president; protected by ex Special Forces Operators who carry weapons superior to what is available to Secret Service agents?

It is time to consider finishing the work begun with the French Revolution, absent the blade of the guillotine. Can justice be found in our courts? Too soon to tell.

In the meantime there is plenty of room in the streets for the people. People who cannot pay their mortgage, buy food or afford to buy gas for their cars as they drive the streets in hopes of finding a job, any job, that will see the family through another day.

While they consider their bleak future they can recall the bonus’ paid in the tens of millions of dollars to executives whose, greed, incompetence and sense of entitlement helped turn the United States of America into little more than a banana republic, where the civil servants party at so called meetings at the most expensive Washington hotels, and the city managers of mid sized towns pay themselves more than a heart surgeon earns in years.

Finally, we can ask why we are still in a war longer than World War One, World War Two and the Korean War combined. We should expect an answer from an ex president who lied and lied and lied so he might conduct a private war in Iraq. A vulgar, stupid little man cooked-up a story that has cost countless American lives, ruined others and hastened the Treasury to bankruptcy. The Ultra Rich benefit from both wars. The warriors are the losers, along with the people who will pay for the private wars of the Ultra Rich for decades, it not longer.

Rest assured the Ultra Rich will get richer. That’s what they do.

COWBOYS AND ALIENS

Wikipedia reminds us:

"Steven Spielberg, one of the film's executive producers, visited the director and the writers during pre-production to look over the script and the artwork. He provided Favreau with a collection of classic Western films.[15] Spielberg also invited the director and the writers to a private screening of several Western films and provided live commentary on how to make one properly.[22] The films included Stagecoach, My Darling Clementine, and Destry Rides Again."

Now, you have to ask yourself, who did George Stevens ask before he made SHANE? Or whom did Howard Hawks seek instruction from before he shot RED RIVER? Or Anthony Mann before me made WINCHESTER'73? They struck out on their own, armed with a good screenplay, written by writers of talent and experience.

Well, its seems the director and writers were foolish enough to pay attention to Spielberg
(ah, what was the name of the Western he made? Oh, that's right, he never made one), and came up with COWBOYS AND ALIENS

The reviews are in. I don't know about you, but I can't say I’m surprised. The film stinks. When was the last time Spielberg made a good film?

Last weekend I subjected myself to INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL. Besides being a rehash of the first Indiana Jones film, it was dull. It would take an army of archeologists to detect any Kingdom in this disaster (except perhaps the Kingdom of the Blind, lacking a one eyed man). It did have one humorous note. Jones, under suspicion of being a Red by the FBI, advises a student to read V. Gordon Childe (a Marxist archaeologist).


Sadly, Speilberg has WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE on his chopping block for future butchering. I expect the same bloody job he did on WAR OF THE WORLDS; a story he clearly did not understand despite the fact the author explained it to the reader in the first chapter. But then, he would have had to read the novel.



I suspect COWBOYS AND ALIENS will be yet another nail in the coffin of the movie Western, but will fill theaters with the dullards who wouldn't sit through STAGECOACH on a bet. But a STAGECOACH colorized, pursued by CGI enhanced aliens; well, that's a horse differently colorized.

Falling Skies

TNT unveiled its science fiction series, FALLING SKIES, from the childish minds of Steven Spielberg and his
gag writers last Sunday. Noah Wyle, the lead, claims he agreed to do the show (and I am not making this up) to gain creditably with his children. Poor kids, they must have seen old dad in an episode of ER.
Wyle has so little screen presence I have no doubt even he forgets he is on screen.

The story: six months before the opening, aliens attack Earth and killed off 90% of humanity. Why they are
here is never explained, other to kill Wyle’s wife, thereby eliminating the expense of paying an actress. It may be inferred Wyle is upset at her death, but his dull expression seems to suit his every emotion so we can’t be sure. Spielberg’s subtext of putting together families (can we forget the butcher’s work he did on WAR OF THE WORLDS? Did he completely miss the theme of that memorable book, even after Wells went to the trouble to explain it in the first chapter?), yes his family making is ever present, even when he stumbles through World War II in Pvt Ryan and a couple of other films. His reverence for the War was nowhere to be seen in the dreadful 1941. He managed to make a comic jackass out of General Joseph Stillwell, hero of Burma.

One of Wyle’s sons has been captured by the bad ETs. After capture human youngsters have something attached to their spines by these outer space folk. It looks like the tingler from the movie, THE TINGLER
("Terror is just over your shoulder!") and causes these poor kids, day players I’m sure, to wander around like zombies.

Which is just a step above the acting of the rest of the cast. Perhaps these kids are on their way to acting class? “What’s my motivation? What’s my motivation?” they must drone. A SAG card and
a weekly player’s contract, is the likely answer.

The aliens come in two forms: two legged robots that use the same laser targeting system the predators
in the Predator movies employ, and machine guns
behind their hands, like the mechanical Cylons in BATTLESTAR GALACTIA. The biological aliens look like six legged dogs, and act like an actor’s agent
chasing a free meal. You may wonder how such a creature with no arms, let alone hands with opposing thumbs, can build a ship that can travel to another star, but the minds behind this show are clearly
liberal arts majors who’s grasp of evolution is as shaky as their hold on the concept of “story”.

OK, Wyle was a teacher of history at Boston Collage who's read a lot of military history. He says crap like;
this is like the Scots against the English at
Stirling Bridge (forgetting the fate of William Wallace a few years later, and the fact his audience in the story and at home had no idea the Scots ever fought the English). He spouts this nonsense but his wisdom
is never acted upon, by him or anyone else.
While leading his first patrol he stumbles into a trap any boy scout could avoid. This stupidity is followed by yet another: he surrenders his guns.

He is in the Resistance, a unit calling its self the 2nd Massachusetts. There is no 1st or 3rd Massachusetts.
"Captain" Dale Dye (he insists on the honorific,
although he was a warrant officer for most of his time in the Marines. Warrant officers are addressed as, “Mister”. Oh, that wouldn’t do for the likes of Dye), veteran DI of many a war film, has been promoted to the rank of Colonel and commands the Resistance. Will Patton; the only actor in the bunch is Wyle's commander.

Anyway, the show's pretty much a dud and has none of the cleverness of BATTLESTAR GALACTIA.


I did detect a hint of Robert Heinlein's THE PUPPET MASTERS in this mess, without the Science Fiction Master's interesting characters, dialogue, or storytelling ability.

It should be noted the patriot Spielberg had this series shot in Canada, although it takes place in Boston.