Rockin' Roy's Rage 'n' Romance!

BIKER HAIKU TUESDAY 009

2011-11-28T23:30:00.000-07:00

Why dothe roads suck

So badfor a land so flat

Into NewOrleans?

MadcapNew Orleans

Strongdrink makes up for bad roads

Paganparty town!

I’mdressed for success

Justanother tourist sight

It’sreally too weird.

I can’tremember

How muchI drank where with whom

Anddamned if I care.

BIKER HAIKU SATURDAY 008

2011-11-25T23:30:00.000-07:00

InMississippi

The eyesof Gulfport

Wide openwith fear.

Frightenedgas store clerk

Sorry, Idon’t have a gun

Think I mightneed one?

Are mycolors harsh

Or doesmy freedom shame you?

Both?That’s twice too bad.

Your punyshit life

Go,grovel for your masters

Who fearme in turn!

So smalland afraid

So easyto hate you back

If youweren’t so sad.

BIKER HAIKU TUESDAY 007

2011-11-21T23:30:00.000-07:00

Tattoosgreen with age

Mossysun-leathered arms grip

Thechrome horns of life.

Fresh airfor the carb

Gulpingexplosive mouthfuls

Fartingdefiance.

Tonight inMobile

A roomfilthy with bad dreams

Simplysad with dawn.

Scrubbedclean by the wind

Asphaltvictory breakfast

The hogtriumphant.

BIKER HAIKU TUESDAY 006

2011-11-15T00:58:00.001-07:00

Ricerocket jockey

Roaringthrough the stalled traffic

On hisway to die.

I do pitythem

Lostsouls under sleek black hoods

Death’sfashion statement.

They doas they must

As thissteel horse must gallop

God andcountry miles.

As I mustlean back

My feetpegged high for comfort

Mysaddlebags light.

BIKER HAIKU TUESDAY 005

2011-11-12T00:09:00.001-07:00

Sheneeded a ride

Under thegray overpass

Negotiating.

Shebraked me hard, too

Coldbefore the barricades

I criedfor more road.

Floridasunshine

Hates apoet and his ride

Californiabound.

Backwashbends the grass

Growingtall in the ditches

Lair ofsnakes and trash.

Sun,blacktop, cycle

Themanifold of my soul

All runhot today.

###

BIKER HAIKU TUESDAY 004

2011-11-08T02:07:00.000-07:00

Hello Florida

I ride in search of my kind

Those who ride, who know.

Outside Jacksonville

A brother on the roadside

Stopped for want of gas.

He’s just cop-bait here

Siphoning fuel from my tank

His target moves now.

He offers payment

Your money’s no good, I say

Pass the deed along.

Thumbs up and roaring

Away towards Daytona
To meet family.

BIKER HAIKU TUESDAY 003

2011-10-11T23:27:00.001-06:00

Southbound 95

Wailing past these poor losttowns

Life small as nothing.

Something in this heat

Drives sweating heartsickpeople

Seething bugfuck mad.

Don’t mind me, I’m gone

In a rush of oily wind

You can’t stop me now.

Past Brunswick, Georgia

Another toxic waste dump

Slow death industries.

The way some must live

Hungry or poisoned by work

Why is this allowed?

BLACK FRIDAY POETRY HAUNT

2011-10-06T23:40:00.000-06:00

Poem for My 43^rd Birthday

I note withdull surprise

that I amstill here &

The Beatles’White Album

is still theonly music
appropriate for this

occasion

It has beenthis way since I turned 13

Only now doesit occur to me that

that was thelast truly

greatbirthday I’ve ever had

It’s not somethingso mundane

as missing

my LostInnocence™

as it seems

I wasn’t as bothered

by anything

at least notuntil

a month later

wheneverything

went to shit

& stayedmore

or less shit for

thirtystraight years

with justenough

sun breaks &

serendipitous

kisses

to keep me tunedin

for what might

happen

It’s a longstory

I hope tofinish telling

it in time to

startsomething new

for now

it’s apleasant afternoon

the childrenmore or less
staying out of my way though

I’m going tohave to

take them outfor

exercise in a

few minutes

We’ll walkthrough

the autumnsunshine

on this leafier-than-most

militaryhousing area

in westernWashington state

a place I’vecome to detest as

most placesI’ve lived

for theferocious pride

in ignorancethe locals call
their patriotism

the meanstupidity

they calltheir

common sense

Ob-la-di,ob-la-da...

Anyway we’vegot

sunlight,trees, a pond

with afloating dock

& Mama isaway on

the aircraftcarrier

marking timein the service of

our Imperialmasters so

she’s nothere to suggest

we doanything but

walk downaround

the pond

then up theroad

to theExchange where

My 7-year-oldson will

acquire atall plastic

scythe for hisGrim Reaper

costume &my 11-year-old

daughter willget black

press-onfingernails with

matchinglipstick

Fresh air& exercise & we

spend somemoney too

Actually,this isn’t what

I really wantedto do

I’d rather havespent the day in

bed readingbefore rising &

walking to myfavorite

café for aquick hello & provisions

beforeretiring to the balcony

for a quietsmoke & drink

in salute ofthe sunset

but that’sthe Amsterdam dream

again…

Tomorrow isanother week

I’m 43 &far

fromfinishing my novel

The least Ican do

is do what Iset out to do

by way ofentertaining

thesechildren I

never wanted

Fixing theirsupper

& after

cake &ice cream

I’ll sendthem up

to their baths

and bed

And I’ll situp

with a fewlast beers

finishingthis poem

wishingmyself

happy birthday

It could be alot worse

I’ve had alot worse

Tomorrow isanother week

I finally knowwhy

I haven’t let go of

The Beatles’White Album

after thirtyOctobers

It’ssomething to build upon

Hooray for me

Hooray forThe Beatles

Hooray forthe kisses

Hooray forthe beer

Tomorrow isanother week

Hooray forthat, too

###

BLACK FRIDAY POETRY HAUNT

2011-09-30T01:02:00.000-06:00

NymphomagicElectroshock

Theice cracks and weeps

blackrunning veins in the road

and it’s warmer, sure,

butthis is the worst

timein Alaska

because

themelt-off will take

weeks,maybe

untilthe end of

Mayto clear out

fromthe yard and

meanwhile

October’sdogshit emerges

fromthe gray stink of

Aprilmeltwater and damned

ifit isn’t just dirty-ugly, the

dirtyice, dirty snow

andwhat grass that

showsis as

brownas the

dogshitnot one of these

stupidmoose-humpers feels

obligedto pick up

whenthey walk their

dogs

andit was at this time of

yearcalled “Breakup” (no shit) that

Iwas feeling every second of my

41years walking out to

getthe mail and

Ilooked

down

thestreet and

therewas this

blondechild

ofabout

18or so

her blonde hair

flowing over

thecollar of her

puffyblue jacket like

moltenlife everlasting

whensaw me
seeing her she

wavedand

smiledso

BIG! like

shewas so

HAPPY!to

seeme!

and

mostunnerving

ofall was

shemeant it!

ifthis had

beena matter

oftossing a sad old

doga scrap from

herbanquet

itwould have

poisonedme worse

thandead.

Throughout the

long breakup season

Itreasured her

starshineslap

lettingit

sustainme though a

fitfuldrowse of summer

andthe sad breakaway from

Alaskathat happened that

Fall,when I drove

myfamily across Alaska

intoCanada,through forest

andcity and canyon and

settledfor a while across

thesound from Seattle,among

someof the most hideous and

warpedhumanoids I ever

sawin a climate that

wastoo bleak to be

believed.

Itwas two months longer

than the longest year before the

Navyordered us cross-

countryto Virginia.

Itwas in Sioux Falls, South

Dakota, a frozen gray fogbound

sinusof a morning after a day of

windingaround the Black Hills and

Mount Rushmore and a sunset chaseon

theprairie with my wife and children by

therest stop before the long straight

deadlydull night drive into a

cigarette-stenchedhotel room.

Wewere so glad to be out

ofour smelly hotel room for a

freewaffle breakfast even though

itlooked as if we’d have to fit

ourselvesin among a girl’s

highschool basketball team on

theirway to play a game in

Nebraska

along way south but

that’swhat they do here.

No,this wasn’t at all like

thelast time, this time the

smile-blastwas buckshot with

meaningas I

motionedher to

goon ahead of me to

thewaffle iron and

upwent the corners

ofan otherwise

undistinguishedmouth

andI stood caught

Iwasn’t looking for even a

genericsmile, let alone

onethat dazzled and

toldme without

speaking“It’s all

right,Daddy, I’m still

wakingup but for

thisI love you so

verymuch and

soI grant you

this

“while denying the

vampiric old

slugwithin you

whichwould like
nothing morethan
to rub its soft naked
decay against mytaut
springtime warmthfor
the sake of affirming
its value as something
which somehow hasn’t
died yet, instead

“Iaffirm and

celebrate the

innocenceyou so

mistakenlymourn for

gone in everyone,
especially olderteenage
girls like meand even

(believeit!) yourself.”

andwith the

revealinglight of

hersmile, a wild

freshwind

blowing,as

theGreat

Bukowski

soaptly put it,

breathinglife

intoso many things

Ididn’t know

stillbreathed

thoughnow I

wonder,did I

haveto go all

theway to Alaskaand

SouthDakota to

experiencethis or was

itjust a matter of

beingsuch a

crankyold Daddy in

form,appearance and

(sometimes)function that

theserare Girls

couldn’thelp but

respond?

Inever knew such

guilelessand sweet-for

sweet’ssake Girls growing

upin South Carolina,they

wereas much out for

somethingas I was,

circlingpredators competing

forthe biggest chunks of meat

fromone another

andI presumed that

wasthe way it was

everywhere

fromMobile to

NewYork City I saw

nothingso much as

tosuggest an

alternative

soI count myself

luckyfor being

whereI was and

forwhat I have

beheld

evenif I sometimes
think that thegood
things that keepyou
going are sometimes
the worst

enablingmore

uselessstruggle against

adecidedly unpleasant

inevitable,still

yearsafter that

firstsmile among the

rottingice and

thawingturds and

thousandsof

milesremoved from

thebasketball

playerstanding

outamongst her

blandlychattering

teammateswith a

singularflex of

Olympian

heart

Istill get a

liftfrom these

visionsand (oh

hellyes) I

livefor the

possibility

of one

more

maybefrom the

prettyyoung

nurseas I lie

abed

rightbefore

thefinal

lights

out

Icould die

richerthan

God.

###

TALES OF THE SECOND GREAT DEPRESSION

2011-09-29T01:12:00.000-06:00

Oh Well, Whatever,

Nine Eleven Nevermind

I can’t help noticing a connection between the 20th anniversary of the release of Nirvana’s Nevermind on 24 September 1991 and the 10th anniversary of the cleverly named and even more ruthlessly marketed Nine Eleven. Namely that there’s a deep, shame-faced embarrassment about these anniversaries because they...well, look, these are not happy thoughts. Worse, there’s nothing you or I can do about it except take note and maybe get a grip on what’s really got us down these days.

Nevermind’s 20th anniversary reminds us that it’s been 20 years since an album changed the tone of an entire decade. Twenty years since giants walked the earth. A lot of the Seattle grunge scene hype was nothing more than that, but you saw Kurt, Kris, and Dave, you heard those amazing melodies, and you knew it was real.

So real the cock-rock circus of Poison, Motley Crue, et al., simply could not exist anymore. So real that what remained of the cheesy synth-pop that had dominated the radio for so long disappeared like a stale odor through a wide-open warehouse door. In one ascending four-chord riff all that was gross, over the top, big haired and goggle-eyed stupid about the 1980s was rendered history.

If you’re sick of hearing stuff like this, fine. Let’s get to the point already. We’ll do this by asking ourselves two questions:

Has another game-changing sound revealed itself in the 20 years since the original release of Nevermind? Can you imagine such a thing ever happening again?

Me neither.

Nevermind and Nine Eleven slammed the lid on the respective decades that came before them. The difference is that things got better throughout the 1990s after the release of Nevermind. The 1990s were a happy, hopeful decade. It seemed there was always something coming around the corner to look forward to, or at least laugh at.

Ten years since Nine Eleven it’s not that things haven’t gotten any better. It’s that they never will.

Gas is never going down below three dollars a gallon. Prices will backslide a bit to allow us more spending mojo during the imminent Fourth Quarter Festival of Extreme Consumption called Halloween/Thanksgiving/Christmas, but you and I know both know that gas prices will continue to creep on up. For all the hoopla about the Japanese earthquake and the Arab Spring and who-gives-a-shit what else this year, I’ll remember 2011 as the year they got us used to paying three and a half bucks a gallon.

Jobs are always going to be hard to come by, and they’re not going to pay as much or offer benefits as they did in the past. Left, right, conservative, liberal, who cares: it’s a fact, Jack, and you know that, too. We will always have troops taking shrapnel on foreign soil for...for America. Yeah. That’s it. For freedom! There’s no sense in arguing.

Just be happy to have a job if you’ve got one. I’m still looking, myself.

The situation is well and truly fucked and it’s up to us to make our way through it. As it was in the beginning, so shall it be forever, oh well whatever nevermind.

It’s just not getting any better and there’s nothing we can do about it but get through it. Even the music sucks from here on out.

###

BIKER HAIKU TUESDAY 002

2011-09-27T00:01:00.000-06:00

Turn back the throttle

Your gut’s own tachometer

Tells you when to shift.

Jacket, gloves, shades

All knew younger, freshertimes

They’re comfortable.

Burning oil, burning

Money, love, gasoline, life

I still feel it here.

Lean into the curve

I’ve skid though so manyhearts

Love, life and road rash.

###

BIKER HAIKU TUESDAY 001

2011-09-13T00:01:00.000-06:00

This sad, fucked-up town
I just cashed my last paycheck

Tomorrow I ride.

On the straightaway

Tailpipe hot with spent freedom

My ass to the wind.

Bugs caught in my teeth

Windburned joy into the sun

Screw the helmet laws.

###

CHRISTMAS ON LABOR DAY

2011-09-05T12:16:00.004-06:00

The following is a rejected prologue for my book The Crisis That Was Christmas: Reclaiming the Joy and Purpose of a Season Misused. So, I figure, why not post it on Labor Day and use it to goad me into finishing what I can use in the book?

A Very WHAT? Christmas

I don’t care how tough you are.

It’s big enough to hurt you.

Consider Charles Bukowski. The last of the GreatAmerican Manly-Man poets along the lines, if not the precise subject matter, ofRobinson Jeffers and James Dickey, Bukowski is probably best known today for writingthe loosely autobiographical 1987 movie Barfly.Among his vast body of work—thousands of pages of poems, stories and essays—Bukowskiwrote about his Depression-era childhood and his abusive father. He wrote aboutdiscovering alcohol and the city library as avenues of physical and psychicescape. By way of describing the complete experience of Life As It Is Lived,Bukowski made passing mentions of his bowel movements and how he would invariably vomitbefore reading his poetry before audiences.

The one subject he avoided was Christmas.

Bukowski recalled his father beating him with a razor strop in the bathroom doorway. He spoke of being chased over fencesby bullies. He wrote of the rains that kept everyone indoors for days at a timein the spring.

Never once does Bukowski recall a boy’s happyanticipation built from Thanksgiving until Christmas Eve.

Amid Bukowski’s many thousands of pages you willfind one of two passing complaints about the “forced jollity” of Christmas. Bukowskidevoted all of one poem to an adult memory of writing with the radio on duringChristmas Eve, the sound of an ambulance signifying how life’s usual tragediesdidn’t stop for O Holy Night. There are a couple of other adult memoriesthat show up in his novel Women.

Yet for all of Bukowski’s memories of childhood—fromappetite-killing family dinners to his father’s gratuitous alpha-dog violenceagainst him and his mother, from having the severe acne on his teenage facedrilled to the poverty he saw warping the families of other children he knew in1930s Los Angeles—never once does Bukowski recall opening presents on Christmasmorning. As unflinching as Bukowski was in describing the most hateful andcringe-inducing scenes he’d endured throughout his life, he wasn’t goinganywhere near those memories.

No Red Ryder BB guns for Charles Bukowski.

For that matter, no Christmas sweaters forHemingway. His mother was stone crazy and one can imagine what A Very HemingwayChristmas with her was like. Imagine is all you can do, because amongHemingway’s thousands of pages, encompassing locales from Spain to Africa, fromItaly to Cuba, I cannot recall once reading a description of a Hemingwaycharacter participating in a Christmas scene.

Of course, he might just have found the wholething beneath him. Unmanly, even, the domain of children not old enough todrink liquor for breakfast and fish for trout. Certainly not for men who speak abruptlywith their women and think often about the war.

I’m only speculating, of course. Honestly, it’snot like I expect everyone to burst out singing “Joy to the World” or anything likethat.

My contention is that Christmas season involvesone full month, maybe more, depending upon how Thanksgiving lines up inNovember. It is the major touchstone for the entire year, the penultimatecelebration before New Year’s Eve and the start of New Things. You can’t sleepthrough it and pretend it isn’t happening. Christmas commands everyone’sattention—except America’s best writers. Even the British seemed to give up onit after Dylan Thomas’s “A Child’s Christmas in Wales.”

Of course, there are the complainers. They can befun to read, and why not? The best of them recognize the same things we do: the syrupy-sticky-awful music running ad nauseam in the stores immediately after Halloween,the crass commercialism, etc.

There’s a lot to hate about Christmas the way itis prosecuted in these United States. The shamelessbuy-something-because-fourth-quarter-earnings-drive-the-economy message we getfrom our “news” media, for one. I’m not arguing any of that.

In regards to Bukowski and others whosechildhoods are something best put behind them, I also understand how Christmasis ruined for some people. I’m just saying there’s no reason to throw Christmasout with the filthy bathwater of our pasts.

I say these things as someone who has had Christmasruined for him at age seventeen, who wasted the seasons throughout his 20s withnothing more than a bottle of gin and a bud of weed to get him through, I canbear witness: Christmas cleans up real nice once you decide you’re tired of gettingbeaten up by it.

The catch is you have to call off the fight.

This is not surrender. This is you declaring adifferent level of engagement. One that requires another kind of fight fromyou.

There is no better answer for a bad childhood, oragainst the hateful sham our Mammon-worshipping culture has made of the seasonthan to create a Christmas that is good and true. A Christmas that reflects whowe are and what we aspire to do. Or shouldaspire to do, assuming aspiration itself isn’t as dead for you as Christmas.

If it is, that’s okay. It’s all part of thepackage. A gift bigger than any box, yet accessible to all who are open toreceive it.

###

BOOKS

2011-08-22T19:18:00.003-06:00

The Post-Apocalypse as Process

EARTH ABIDES by George R. Stewart

Paperback, 368 pp. With an Introduction by Connie Willis,
Del Rey 2006. (Originally published 1949)

Cover of original Random House 1949 edition.
Love, love, love that old pulp paperback cover art
even if it doesn't match up with the text inside,
which it most certainly doesn't here.

I've been a fan of post-apocalypse fiction since childhood so it surprised me to discover this 1949 novel at this late date. Given its age I note that many have dared call it "classic," though that tends to bring me back to the question as to why I hadn't heard of the book until now.

Granted, George R. Stewart's Earth Abides isn't perfect, and the negative reviews on Amazon raise strong points I’ll need to address as I go along. For now I wish to invite you, Dear Reader, to bask in the amazing outside-the-box thinking that produces an End of the World scenario so unlike the one expected by a reading public barely four years removed from the radioactive fires of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. What takes down humanity is neither fire nor ice, but disease.

Sadly, this is an original conceit only in the context of Harry S. Truman's post-atomic America. In 1912 Jack London wrote a story called "The Scarlet Plague," in which a mysterious disease wipes out 99% of humanity, leaving everyone else to form tribes by way of survival.

Having re-read "The Scarlet Plague" I also can't help feeling that London had the clearer view, that the survivors and their descendants will find themselves ruled by the most ruthless and clever of the remaining alpha males, and that technology will be rapidly re-adopted once those alphas realize how technology (in this case, gunpowder) can be used to terrorize and subjugate other tribes.

George R. Stewart, however, as befits a man who wrote notable books about the life-cycles of storms and wildfires, is fascinated by Process. It is Stewart's fascination, and the thinking he applies to it, that makes Earth Abides such an absorbing and worthwhile read.

The story opens with a brief, italicized passage fulfilling the role of Greek chorus, filling in the metaphorical forest for the reader that our main character can't see for his own personal and physical limitations. In this case it's the so-classic-it's-clichéd Final Broadcast from the U.S. government letting us know that It's Over. The feds are telling the surviving military personnel to report to the authorities in the states they're in but it's a reasonable (and accurate) assumption that there are no more state governments, and no remaining military to report.

There's no time to dwell on this though because right after that our main character introduces himself while getting bitten by a rattlesnake on a morning hike.

Our man Isherwood Williams, hereafter known as "Ish," is a graduate student of anthropology who's holed up in a cabin in the woods while what Ish later calls The Great Disaster burns through the human population of Earth. Lest you think it's the cabin in the woods trope that saves our hero, it's made clear that the virus is airborne and that even the most isolated pockets of humanity are affected. In what is probably the lamest narrative device Stewart employs, it is the rattlesnake bite that saves Ish, while natural immunity saves the few others he meets later. Ish passes the time in a convenient venom-vs.-mystery-plague delirium while civilization sickens and dies.

Speaking of narrative devices, Stewart's handling of them in this novel are what puts Earth Abides above a lot of novels, and not just those of post-apocalyptic flavor. If the rattlesnake venom as plague-denier is eye-rollingly cheesetastic, Stewart's other tricks to move the narrative along are inspired. For instance, a lesser writer (i.e., every other writer) would have made much of the rattlesnake bite and used it to complicate the part at every dull turn a complication seemed called for. That does not happen here. Ish recovers, and though the bite is mentioned every now and again, it's not a factor in plot development.

The same goes for Ish's awakening, his discovery of the disaster, and subsequent road trip across America to seek out survivors. A road trip across America, with maybe one stop to work out a major conflict with an antagonist and his tribe, would have formed the entire narrative arc of most books. Although Stewart took at least three cross-country road trips in the pre-Interstate days, the first in 1924 when such adventures were an almost unimaginable novelty, he doesn't let Ish linger over as the journey as much as you would expect. Ish drives out from his San Francisco bay area digs, meets some people, gets as far as New York City, and comes back, meeting a few more people along the way. Some thought is given to the changes in the landscape, to the chances of various survivors he meets, to the evolving ecology now that man's domesticated animals are loose on the land and the other animals are free from the threat of the gun.

Even the botany of de-populated America is considered. I found these passages engrossing, but a common gripe in other reviews of Earth Abides is the time spent on Ish's observations of the land and what kind of people it will take to build a new civilization as opposed to merely surviving. Fair enough: if you're into the disaster-as-backdrop-for-compelling-human-drama trope that cripples current genre television offerings like The Walking Dead and Falling Skies, then you will not like Earth Abides. Stewart brings you as much human drama as he feels he must, but again, the fascination with this book is Stewart's own fascination with the Process: how the way things are might become the way things will be once a new variable is injected into the equation -- or something else is taken away.

As that goes, I found Stewart's musings through Ish (a flawed and often irritating character, I'll grant) a welcome antidote to Alan Weisman's 2007 non-fiction book The World Without Us, in which the world is imagined if humans simply disappeared, rapture-style. Weisman let his aversion to offending religious fundamentalists and other right-wing pathological cases like climate-change deniers skew his speculations on a post-human Earth. His let's-all-get-along NPR parlor-liberal chickenshit stunk up the entire book, ultimately killing its credibility.

Not only does Stewart most emphatically not suffer such cowardice, he goes out of his way to tweak the bigots and the fools -- in 1949, no less, just one year after Democrats like Ronald Reagan had defected to the Republican Party because Harry Truman had had the nerve to order the racial integration of the armed services. Shortly after Ish meets the Eve to his Adam, a woman named only Em (think "M" for Mother, as in "Mother of Nations," which is how Ish often thinks of her), Em points out to Ish the "blue in the half-moons" in her cuticles, indicating she's a...a...well, she apparently managed to pass, back in the day. Em confesses guilt for not mentioning her background to Ish, even as she feels duty-bound to have his children in the childless waste. Ish's response is a stiff middle finger to the Dixiecrats:

Oh, darling," he said, "everything is smashed and New York lies empty from Spuyten Duyvil to the Battery, and there's no government in Washington. The senators and the judges and the governors are all dead and rotten, and the Jew-baiters and the Negro-baiters along with them. We're just two poor people picking at the leavings of civilization for our lives, not knowing whether it's to be the ants or the rats or something else will get us. Maybe a thousand years from now people can afford the luxury of wondering and worrying about that kind of thing again. But I doubt it. And now there are just the two of us here, or maybe three, now.

To behold such courage in 1949 against the don't-wish-to-offend gutlessness of 2007's The World Without Us makes me wonder if we haven't gone backward.

Then Stewart gets even bolder. Consider this passage, in which Em calls bullshit on the notion that a child-killing epidemic among the Tribe (as the group that builds around Ish and Em call themselves) might be God's vengeance for a perceived transgression:

“All I know is we did what we thought best. If there is a God who made us and we did wrong before His eyes—as George says—at least we did wrong only because we were as God made us, and I do not think that He should set traps. Oh, you should know better than George! Let us not bring all that back into the world again—the angry God, the mean God—the one who does not tell us the rules of the game, and then strikes us when we break them. Let’s not bring Him back! Not you, too!”

If this doesn't seem like a heroic opinion to you, consider that it wasn't until after September 2001 that people became so emboldened to declare themselves sick and tired of all the hateful crap done in the name of terrifyingly needy and psychotic (and all powerful!) imaginary friends. Stewart wrote this in 1949. Q.E.D.

A lot happens in the 345 pages that comprise the actual text of the novel. Characters go and come, even those you expect to be around forever, but the ever-expanding tribe of Ish and Em, as with the Earth, abideth. There are setbacks. Still, more incidents that would blossom into page-killing melodrama in other books are resolved with breathtaking efficiency. Stewart's mastery of avoiding such rabbit holes was what impressed me more than anything else in the book, more than Stewart's open scorn of reactionary politics and superstition.

We get more of the italicized Greek chorus, though those passages rarely go on for more than a page, if that much. Years go by. We see the roads disappear beneath the creeping plants. We see the houses crumble from disrepair. We see Process. I found it refreshing that Ish and his crew often talk about things yet never get around to doing them—natural human inertia is taken into account in a way I've never seen before in novels.

Still, there's plenty to argue with. As some reviewers have pointed out, canned goods would spoil quicker than one thinks, and the gasoline would be useless well before 20 years is up. Also, Ish and Em's people are downright lazy. I say this as the laziest person I know—even I would be willing to sacrifice a day or three at a time if it meant keeping the water and electricity running.

I was also puzzled and disappointed by the way the Tribe handled education among their young people. Despite the premium Ish places on imagination and vision it doesn't occur to Ish to adapt his curriculum and the way it is taught to the needs of the children of a post-apocalyptic society. I can't help wondering if this, along with the letting-go of indoor plumbing and electric light, wasn't deliberately serving Stewart's need to see humanity go back to a simpler, quieter, more pastoral state, the tribes too spread out to engender conflict and war.

Again, I can’t help thinking that Jack London understood human nature better. A tribe like Ish and Em’s would be a stark exception, and in grave danger of the rule.

Yet for all of the faults which become more and more apparent as I think through what I just read, I’m still pleased—hell, entertained—to see such a mind as Stewart’s at work. Earth Abides is not a perfect post-apocalypse novel but it’s a damned fine book nonetheless.

A postscript: Stewart cites the cause of his xenocidal catastrophe as the natural result of a population expanding into its tipping point—and tipping. Birds do it, bees do it, we all do it until a corrective plague or famine puts the populations back to barely viable numbers. Sometimes it means eventual and outright extinction. We see this in nature. It's part of the Process.

There were 2.4 billion humans on the planet in 1950, the year after Earth Abides was first published. In 2011 we have an estimated 7 billion pairs of mouths and assholes eating and shitting upon the face of the land, with more and more coming every day.

Just sayin'.

MOVIES

2011-04-12T15:38:00.008-06:00

Unstuck in Time with One Fluffy Freak
and a Handsome Couple of Freak Chasers

Movies I Saw Over the Weekend, 8-9 April 2011

I didn't know we had nudie channels in our satellite TV package but there she was in the pool, big brown nipples like cartoon eyes to the sky, helped along on her backstroke by a guy with his head between her legs. I don't know why but the bald spot on the guy's head really upped the sleaze factor.

It turns out this scene is playing on a TV in a limousine, where a young Kevin Spacey is attempting to seduce a plain, square-jawed thing with big, fluffy, wet-finger-in-the-socket hair. Appalled, the girl demands to be let out of the car. Naturally, it's raining, and naturally her humiliation is exacerbated by another car splashing a puddle behind her on the other side of the median. Somehow she makes it to her shitty cubicle-farm gig (are there any good ones?) where her asshole boss (is there any other kind?) snarls, "You're late."

Okay, I get it! It's Working Girl. I haven't seen Melanie Griffith in ages and I can't say I've missed her. The hair blown up and away from her face in this film accentuates her masculine-shaped head. Then there's that horrifying scene in which Griffith is dressing for some function in front of chick pal Joan Cusack. Griffith sports a black bra and a network of garters which emphasize what a vast and weirdly oblong butt she has to match her merely large and oblong head.

The limo porn scene was playing as I walked into the bedroom where my wife was watching this. We traded banter over the hideous Big '80s Hair on the ladies, and that's all there is to really talk about except there's a respectable gaggle of name (or soon to become name) actors in this movie, and that there's an unsettling amount of T & A for a movie that's ultimately about working-class female empowerment.

It's not even good T & A, either. As part of the Initial Nigh-Catastrophic Put-Down necessary to such Rise of the Underdog stories Griffith walks in on her boyfriend (hey, Alec Baldwin! so young, so thin!) with some skinny thing riding on top of him. The breasts on this poor creature looked like the flaps of skin left behind after a drastic weight loss. The effect was more "eew" than "ooh" when they jiggled. Then again, at least she had a normal-shaped head.

I walked out, then for some reason came back just in time for the Horror of the Garters scene. I left again and therefore missed Sigourney Weaver playing Mean Old Woman to Melanie Griffith's Good-Hearted Girl Just Trying to Get Ahead. I did note when I walked back in for the final scene that Griffith is wearing a much more flattering hairstyle. Apparently a large part of the moral of the story is, if you want to be taken seriously as an adult, don't dress and style your hair like some silly peasant dance-club tramp circa 1988. Who knew?

We do love our moral-to-the-story, even from a director who never misses an opportunity to show some skin. What I wonder is, did Mike Nichols put all that nudity in at the behest of producers who figured all the bare tits and ass would gratify the poor suffering boys taking their dates to this ostensible chick flick, or did he just get off on ordering young actresses to remove their clothes?

The correct answer is, of course, who gives a fuck? The good news is you can see butt-nekkid wimmin on Fox Movie Channel. The bad news is you had to watch this tawdry '80s relic to see any last Saturday night.

* * *

On BBC America Sunday night I fast-forwarded ten years to a decade I actually miss. There were a couple of grins and groans at the outdated tech -- the cell phone with the monochrome screen, the big fat CRT monitor on the desk -- but I'll take the '90s over the '80s any time, and not just because the technology and fashion are closer to what I'm used to now. The 90s were a happier, greatly less ridiculous time than the age of Red-Ink Ronnie Reagan, especially once we got past the deep recession following Reagan and the one-term administration of that senile fool's presumed puppet-master, George Bush the Smarter.

I'm convinced now that people dressed stupidly during the '80s because it truly was a stupid time. Ketchup was counted as a vegetable in school lunches and people really believed that if rich people were exempted from paying taxes, revenues to the federal government would increase. That people believe that latter item today only reflects how stupid this country got once again following the attacks of 11 September 2001 on the watch of George Bush the Not So Much.

Stupid and afraid: we MUST [do grossly stupid thing irrelevant to matters of real security] or the terrorists win! I'll never forget the pompous yuppie pussy who angrily proclaimed "irony is dead!" and how nothing could be funny again, ever, because everything stops being funny when 3,000 people in the Holiest City of All Civilization -- we're talkin' New York, chump, where you can't hail a cab if you're black, or smoke in a bar -- are killed by government negligence (as opposed to, say, Bhopal -- 50,000 people and still counting 2o years later don't count if they're brown-skinned wogs on the other side of the planet murdered by corporate negligence). So don't laugh! Stop being ironic! A pompous pussy of a writer for a pompous, pussy-ass New York publication hath commanded you!

That said, I found nothing so ironic as The X Files: Fight the Future, a movie about global paranoia in an age when there was absolutely nothing to be paranoid about. Back then it was all charming make-believe, and lots of fun, besides.

Oh, the goosebumps when I heard Mark Snow's synthesized whistling-past-the-graveyard theme! It's all of four notes, but you know what's coming. That is, you'd know if you'd watched The X Files from September 1993 until May 1998, when it was the best damn show on television.

Unfortunately, if you hadn't seen the show you'd have a hard time following the movie. You'd find yourself wondering why it's so significant that a certain mismatched trio is the first thing the hero sees when he wakes up in the hospital after being shot. You wouldn't know that those three are the Lone Gunmen, and that the first episode of their short-lived spinoff show in 2001 was about a conspiracy to fly commercial aircraft into the World Trade Center, something then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice would later swear she never imagined happening. You wouldn't know that the wrinkly-faced guy with the cigarette is Cancer Man, though you might guess he's something of a nemesis. Hell, even I'd forgotten the name of the group of powerful elites who had negotiated with the aliens to hand over Earth's human population as slaves. It's been that long, and the point is made: the movie is too dependent on episodes of the old TV series to stand by itself.

As someone I knew at the time said, the show's creators should have just let everything be after the movie. He was right. Lead actor David Duchovny turned diva and demanded that the TV show's shooting location move from Vancouver to Los Angeles, starting with the sixth season. Sunny L.A. canceled the show's spooky vibe Vancouver's rain and gloom had so effortlessly provided. Worse, the show's writers were either changed out, or had forgotten how to write.

While the first five years of The X Files had many notable episodes, I couldn't describe one show of the sixth season to you. By season seven Duchovny had himself written out of the show by way of an alien abductions, as Gillian Anderson had done during her pregnancy a few years earlier. From that point on The X Files went from unmemorable to unwatchable, so I didn't. The end came three seasons too late in 2001 with a busy, not-sure-what-happened-here finale that I did watch, but couldn't say much about, except it was made extra-special clear that Cancer Man got killed.

Fight the Future (which doesn't show in the opening credits, by the way, just The X Files) was everything X Files at its peak. It was great when I saw it during the summer of 1998, and though I'd forgotten bits of the mythology, it still looked pretty good when I saw it Sunday. Gillian Anderson sure as hell looked good, anyway, and I still can't get over how X Files' creator Chris Carter had to fight for Anderson's casting as Scully, as Fox studio execs thought her not pretty enough for a television lead actress.

One of these has top billing in a "sexy comedy" with Sigourney Weaver and Harrison Ford.

The other isn't pretty enough to play the lead in a TV show. I need a drink.

Like Griffith, you don't see Gillian Anderson anymore. In a neat switch, it was Anderson who had to be talked away from her London home to do the second X Files movie, 2008's I Want to Believe, while Duchovny is already begging to do a third movie. Every movie Duchovny was in following the first X Files movie bombed, and, sadly, the second X Files movie was no exception. The hell of it is, I Want to Believe wasn't bad. If anything was to blame, it was the last three seasons of X Files that happened after Fight the Future. People forgot who Special Agents Mulder and Scully were, and why they cared.

I remember, though. Even now the melancholy of good times gone forever still lingers. A real-life Fox Mulder and Dana Scully would have long since disappeared into unmarked graves while investigating why NORAD stood down that September morning in 2001 despite four passenger jets going off the grid. One would like to think our fictional friends are still out there, still mixing in matters ectoplasmic and extraterrestrial, but it's impossible to suspend disbelief. The horror and paranoia are just too goddamned real these days.

###

MUSIC

2011-04-06T14:58:00.003-06:00

I'd forgotten how much heart and courage a great song can provide in times of dark passage. Great songs have been hard to come by since Clear Channel and its corporate compatriots filled the airwaves with insipid girly disco pop and growly-voiced crap from soulless, whiny shits out of McMansionland. This song actually makes me glad to be alive and in the fight. I honestly can't remember the last time a song made me feel this way. It's been that goddamned long.

It's Poetry, Bitch!

2011-03-22T01:03:00.005-06:00

had my organization not paid for me
to be here I wouldn't have even considered

a life lived

city to

city in

highrise

hotel rooms &

working

from

“an insanely comfortable

Heavenly Bed™”

king-sized, y’all,

4 big fluffy

pillows a poofy

white comforter &

I don’t

even have to

make it

the soap

smelling so

nice & the

air conditioning

turned way

down &

me fresh-

showered &

swaddled

in a white

velour

bathrobe my

feet cozy

beneath the

comforter

half-

watching the

enormous flat-

screen with

stereo sound that

sounds like it’s

coming from

somewhere

else entirely

while

the coffee’s

brewing (they’re

charging me two

bucks for this

but it’s a

deal compared to

everything else

in the Refreshment

Bar below the

TV)

I’d like just

enough money

to live like

this with

friendly goons

in clean beige

suits using

walkie-talkies

& hard brown muscle

to keep the

riff-raff

from my

presence

the lovely bird-

like blondes

fresh-squeezed into

black tube

dresses serving

me breakfast

among the

quiet babble of

fountains

downstairs

Just give me

enough

to live like

this Let me

live like

this Oh

please

no one

complaining

or asking

me anything

wanting

nothing

but my

Signature

(right here,

Sir) &

I’ll

write novels &

poetry & essays &

whatnot to

break your

mother-

lovin’

heart.

###

from Nymphomagic Electroshock
& Other Middle-Aged Complaints (2011)

TALES OF THE SECOND GREAT DEPRESSION

2011-03-22T00:25:00.009-06:00

I see all the people as I’m turning the corner and I think, well, this is good. Somebody has money!

The strip mall anchored by King Sooper’s on Woodmen Road and Lexington isn't one of those stylish faux-Italian villa-looking things, but it isn’t a Po’ Peoples Plaza with a Big Lots or a Dollar Tree, either. There are a few empty storefronts but Artful Adventures, of all things— a place where toddlers and pre-schoolers can get semi-professional guidance in making a mess with their paints—is still a going concern.

There are more than a few parents and kids going into the tae kwon do place, which is always thumping with activity when I pass it during operating hours.

So there are parents, mostly of middle-of-the-middle-class spectrum, not necessarily driving shiny Suburbans or anything mind-blowingly expensive, who can provide their children with private art instruction and martial arts training. It seems incredible to me that there are still people out there who have jobs and can take their kids to these places. It’s almost encouraging.

Then I remember that not only am I not of their world, I don’t have any chance of crossing over any time soon.

My wife and I committed suicide, me in November, her just a few weeks back in February. We might as well be ghosts.

I’m crossing in front of the King Sooper’s now. This store survived because the parent company invested money here for renovations. It looks enough like a semi-upscale supermarket that enough semi-upscale people still shop here. (It also helps there isn't another big supermarket like this for miles in either direction.) I know most of the people who work here by face, if not name. As far as they’re concerned I’m just the guy who comes in once in a while to purchase Powerball and Colorado Lotto tickets. I’ve haven’t done that in a week since I let that guy behind the service counter talk me into buying the ten dollar ticket. Five lines of numbers with the multiplier for each. I matched maybe three numbers across the five lines, which, of course, is good only for reminding me that the odds of winning the lottery aren’t worth my playing.

It’ll be a while before I get over my shame and I come back to try one more time. But not too long. Right now, winning a lottery is still the best hope we’ve got.

Across the service road leading to the loading areas behind the main of the mall is Aerial’s Gymnastics. I see all these guys in shorts and duckbill caps and soul patches taking their little princesses in.

I almost can’t believe I’m seeing this. It’s good, I’m genuinely happy for them.

But it’s just these people.

It doesn’t mean anything’s getting better for anyone else.

Even for these people it just means they’ve got a little while longer.

Past the gymnastics place, past the hot wings joint, lies my eventual destination: Woodmen Liquors. I’m only here because I walked here. Made it part of my usual three-mile walk through the paved sidewalk trails beyond my neighborhood of crumbling starter homes built in the early 1980s. It was the only way I could think of to justify the calories and the expense.

My six-pack of seasonal pale ale costs nine bucks plus the hefty Colorado sin tax. I keep telling myself I’d have spent the savings driving to the cheaper place. Besides, I don’t want to drive anywhere. Funny, though, how it’s always assumed you are driving because the clerk doesn't even put my six-pack in a bag; I have to get my own.

The plan is to take this home, go in through the garage door and drop this into the front seat of my Jeep on the way into the house. Once Cynthia goes to bed I can get it out and put it into the refrigerator. She’ll see it in the morning, know exactly what I’ve done, maybe say something, maybe not. Regardless of whether she says anything I know she's not going to like it and I have to watch for potential flashpoints.

I just don’t want to hear about it tonight. Tonight it’s me and this beer, and the knowledge that the resources for it and everything else are extremely finite.

Please tell me you at least understand what I meant when I said my wife and I committed suicide. I’d hate to think I'd spent all this time talking to a stupid person.

###

TV

2011-03-20T19:28:00.019-06:00

Killer Queens Killin’ Good:
V “Season” Finale: “Mother’s Day”

as seen on ABC, Tuesday, 15 March 2011, 8 pm. MDT

If I hadn't looked up at the clock and realized it was Tuesday I would have missed a mess o' glorious carnage. A matricide, a patricide and a stupid kid I’d have shot myself if someone had given me a walk-on part, but this death was so much better, because….

Before I go into detail here’s the ‘splainin’ I owe all the normal people with normal lives and normal TV viewing habits who are wondering what I’m talking about, and why:

V is a remake of an NBC mini-series that first broadcast in the spring of 1984. Although the storyline was bound-up with cheese when the inevitable sequel was produced, and flat unwatchable when the mercifully short-lived TV series was made, the first hours of that original mini-series rank among some of the best science fiction on TV. The Visitors (“V,” get it?) park enormous ships over every major city on Earth. The sight of these massive things casting their huge shadows as they rumbled in to hover just over the tallest buildings was a chilling sight a full 13 years before it was appropriated for Independence Day. In due time, however—just long enough to let us savor the suspense of Who The Hell Is Driving These Things And What Do They Want?—we were relieved to learn that the Visitors were all attractive humanoids (in early-to-mid-1980s humanoid fashion) who just need a little help. In return for letting them park their ships over our cities, some of our abundant water, the Visitors would share some of their wondrous technology with us.

Hello, Brave New World. First contact, childhood’s end for human civilization, nothing but blue skies and light-speed ahead with our new grown-up space friends. The first mini-series actually reveled in that concept for a brief, glowing period as the story got going. For a while the viewer actually wondered what could possibly go wrong.

If you’re a Twilight Zone fan and therefore familiar with the infamous Damon Knight short-story which became the even more infamous “To Serve Man” episode, you have the basic germ of the idea. TANSTAAFL, as Robert A. Heinlein fans understand the concept: There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. In this case it so happens the entire human race is lunch, but the Visitors, like the Kanamits of “To Serve Man,” are paying for their lunch with cheap energy, no more war, etc. Libertarians are understandably confused, as they see no problem with what it obviously a fair exchange. People with more solid moral grounding, let alone a sense of self-esteem that is revolted at the idea of existing as nothing more than well-cared-for livestock, will bring conflict to the story.

What made the multiple hours of the original V mini-series stand well and apart from the classic half-hour Twilight Zone tale, was how cleverly everything was developed over time. The arrival of the giant ships and the pause before learning who and what was in them was one example of this. The sinister nature of the Visitors was brought forward so slowly, so stealthily you wondered if the Big Twist was going to be that the Visitors weren’t lying after all. You actually found yourself wondering what the few skeptics of the Visitor’s generosity were complaining about, even as those other details nagged at you.

Yes, those other details. Some subtle, some not so much. Like the best science fiction there are any number of tangents I can go off on here. Suffice it to say that I was excited to learn there would be a new V series. Others who remembered the show and how it was the most talked-about mini-series since Roots no doubt felt the same way. Would it be a harrowing re-imagining along the lines of Ron Moore’s first three seasons of Battlestar Galactica?

Earthling, please.

The new series started with the giant ships rumbling into view overheard and they aren't stopped for ten seconds when Morena Baccarin’s classically beautiful and serene—and therefore, to our debased American eyes, alien—face appears on the bottoms of these ships, like the digital displays on sports blimps. She’s telling everyone in the dominant languages of the world’s major cities that everything’s okay, we’re from somewhere else obviously, but we are at peace, always, and there’s so much we can do for one another, etc. No buildup, no ships appearing and just sitting there while all of Earth wrings its hands and wonders what the hell. Nope, straight to the introductions. Oh yeah, and they’re evil. Except for some good ones, of course. We’ll meet everyone as we go along. Try and keep up....

I had a feeling the show’s creators figured that everyone watching already knew the whole Sinister Motives thing, and wanted to cut right to it. But what of the younger viewers who never saw the original? Short attention spans, cynical, won’t buy the goodness-of-their-hearts approach from the git-go. I’m sure those were the reasons that came up at the writer’s meetings, assuming anyone got together at all to discuss what they wanted to do with the storyline. That’s the way things are supposed to work behind the scenes in TV land, but it doesn’t show here. The show’s creators wanted to dispense with all the high-fallutin thematic crap and cut right to the central conflict. So they did. End of story. Which, in a way, it very much was.

There are a few modifications to the original mini-series premise on top of all this. For one, the overall Sinister Motive in the new series doesn't have anything to do with these V’s wanting to use the human species as a protein source. Which is good, because that was one of the things that made no sense in the original series, as it was made clear the lizards (for they are indeed lizards beneath the skin) like their prey small and live. A scene in which the original Lizard Queen Diana’s lower jaw hinged down, out and away as she swallowed a live guinea pig whole was one of the great WTF moments that had people talking long after they saw it. It was so WTF no one thought to consider that harvesting humans for chunks of meat was not only impractical for the Visitors compared to simply breeding Earth’s abundant and prolific rodents for themselves, but unnatural as well.

So what do these 21^st century V’s want from us? This was the one thing the show’s creators held back for as long as possible, and not nearly as gracefully, either. When the revelation did come, it was of such underwhelming impact that it made you wonder, as with the rest of the show, the creator’s weren’t just making things up as they went along.

The first really off-putting thing to me was how the creators got all cute and contemporary by touching on the health care “debate” that was going on in 2009 at the time. These Visitors start out by setting up Healing Centers all around the globe where anyone suffering anything from arthritis to cancer can drop in and get themselves fixed up free of charge. Eeew! Horrible! Alien! For God’s sake, they’re healing sick people! For free? Nothing good’s gonna come of this, Gladys, you just watch! Smarty-pants elitists like myself face-palmed at the weird ironic blowback inherent to the concept while idiot Tea Bagger types nodded and went, “Yuh-huh! Just like Obamacare! Next thing these aliens are gonna wanna do is tax us all to pay for all the free nigger babies and their Big Government-issued crack habits!”

As it was in 1984, there are a lot more smart people than there are Tea Bagger types. The smart people stopped watching this version of V early on. The Tea Bagger types, not liking science fiction much to begin with (just a buncha pointy-headed silliness, cain’t unnerstand a damn word these weirdos are sayin’) went on to their usual (and much more realistic) fantasy shows involving intelligent, principled and caring cops, lawyers, and doctors who spare no expense or effort to solve their cases.

I missed a couple of episodes towards the middle of this season, but I saw enough to notice the big idea of universal health care as Evil Lizard People Plot To Make Us All Dependent Upon Them vanish after two episodes. Long enough to watch this version’s Lizard Queen, now named Anna, go ballistic, hit a button and make the skies all over Earth turn red at the end of the first season’s finale—only to see blue skies at the second season opener, and the terror of those red skies brought up and dismissed in a few obviously forcibly inserted lines as a completely different subplot got underway.

Or maybe those red skies were a big deal as a few obviously forcibly inserted lines in subsequent episodes have indicated. What was clear was the writers didn’t know what they were doing. They supposedly had help from Rockne O’Bannon, the very creator of Alien, but I get the impression he came on way to late to develop a story arc for V. Either that, or Alien was his one-hit wonder, as O’Bannon didn’t do the 1985 reboot of Twilight Zone he worked on any favors, either.

I couldn’t tell you. I didn’t care enough one way or another to follow the behind-the-scenes stuff online. The main reason I watched the show was Morena Baccarin. At first I didn’t recognize the exotic beauty who played the high-end prostitute on Firefly because her luxuriant hair had been chopped so drastically short for V. It wasn’t exactly unattractive, but it did give a creepy, almost androgynous edge to Baccarin’s Anna. Almost androgynous, that is: there was no mistaking those curves under those exquisitely tailored dresses that looked as if they were sewn together right over her body. Whenever she was onscreen I had eyes for no one else. Damn, but that woman has presence.

That, and Baccarin is easily the best, most compelling actor on the show. It’s strange that I can’t find images of Baccarin as Anna standing ramrod straight and still as a statue, gazing coldly out her spaceship windows at New York, because those scenes were downright iconic. Or rather, they should have been iconic, but even the promoters for the show didn’t know what they had on their hands. For all the forehead-slapping stupid lines the writers put in Baccarin’s mouth, her Anna’s graceful, confident, smiling-serenely-in-your-face evil was so right you never held the stupid lines against her. I know I didn’t. I just wanted to find the writer of whatever episode that was and rend him to screaming bits with a claw hammer.

I’d love to go off on another tangent and talk about the monumentally stupid Power of the Immortal Human Soul and God-bothering that got stirred even more forcibly into the stubbornly chunky shitpot of V’s story arc but it’s late and I want to talk carnage. Carnage engineered with all the pent-up resentment a gaggle of halfwit TV hacks can come up with when they know there’s no tomorrow for their jobs. After 22 episodes spread out over two seasons they finally got something right. Indeed, they got a lot of things right.

First up was Old Lizard Queen Diana. Yes, Diana, In this version of V we learn she’s not so bad after all. She’s so not-so-bad her daughter Anna felt obliged to betray her and put her in some weird dungeon on the mothership. Save for a few savvy lizards, everyone thinks she’s dead. Anyway, this being the “season” finale, Diana escapes to lead her people.

It’s important to understand that Diana had been built up in previous episodes as a Force To Be (Soon) Reckoned With as all the Fifth Columnists of the ship, and eventually the humans on Earth got to know her. So there she is, out of her dungeon, speaking to a vast, assembled CGI multitude on the Wonder of the Human Soul and how it and Human Emotion Must Be Embraced when she’s interrupted by Anna, who comes up right behind her (no one gasps when Anna walks out on the stage? it’s at the end of a long catwalk!) and stabs an impossibly long, pointy space-lizard tail through Diana’s abdomen.

Anna’s impossibly long, prehensile tail not only stabs Diana, it picks her up and shakes her around over the assembled multitude of Visitors before slamming her down to the edge of the stage. If I had a clip, I'd embed it here. It's so beautiful. Beautiful!

But that’s not all. As she dies, Anna croaks, “You have doomed our species!” Holy shit! Whine and cheese! One major player and potential plot point squelched, just like that.

Anna tells everyone to ignore what they just heard, the old broad was just weak and silly and had to be put down. Anna is still Queen and just in case you forgot, you’d better kneel. Which they do.

Then Anna turns to the entourage who came in with her, looking a little pale and sweat-damp for the proceedings. “This is how you kill your mother,” Anna sneers to her daughter Lisa, who just now realizes she’s been had by Anna’s fake show of emotion when Lisa had a gun pointed at her at the start of the episode.

Excellent presentation, superior flavor. This was just the appetizer, too. Keep your backside planted firmly to that sofa cushion because we’ve got another plate of tasty kill on the way before the main course.

Somewhere during all the kneeling—as Anna’s hard, reptilian eyes scan the sea of her faithful—a black guy gets up and runs out of the room. I don’t see how he could have escaped given the situation but I can understand why he’d have to try. This is his last best hope to get his daughter off the ship.

We met Ryan in the very first episode. He had been part of an advance guard of Visitors sent to infiltrate Earth society and its institutions before the arrival of Anna and her multiple motherships, presumably to soften us all up for the invasion to come. Ryan went native and discovered emotions, especially the kind inspired by his hot girlfriend, whose name I forget because, like so many people on this show, I couldn’t bring myself to give a shit.

Hot Girlfriend got pregnant, which was not supposed to happen—what with him being an African-American space lizard, and she an earthling—so this child is really, really special. In the original mini-series this is where the show jumped the shark clear into space, but for most of the series the Hybrid, as she’s sometimes known, is just a hostage so Anna can exploit Ryan.

Anna, being the delightfully evil bitch she’s been from the git-go (she murdered Hot Girlfriend right after she gave birth), has tightened the bond between Ryan’s daughter and herself by giving Ryan’s daughter doses of some seriously tranquilizing psychic mojo called Bliss. This being a human/space lizard hybrid the child grows rapidly and identifies Anna as her mother. This child looks all of eleven years old when Ryan runs in to “rescue” her.

The child first demands to know what Ryan is doing in her room. Ryan explains he’s there to rescue her, blah-blah-blah, and the child says Bullshit! or something to that effect and her long green space-lizard tail whips out and wraps itself around Ryan’s neck. Ryan, in keeping with the nature of all of the presumed good guys on this show, is a dumb-ass. It has never occurred to him that his beloved daughter might have imprinted all of her filial loyalties to the Lizard Queen who Blissed her throughout all of the weeks of her very existence. So the tail is around his neck and the Hybrid declares she’ll never let Ryan hurt Mommy again. And thus snaps Ryan’s neck.

God, it was past time we had done with that whiny fool! Blackmailed by Anna he’d betrayed the Fifth Column. He’d somehow survived an explosion and in recent episodes he could be seen trying to make amends. Yet here he was getting his neck snapped by his own daughter. We’d met Ryan in the first episode, sure. But the longer we’d gotten to know him the less we cared when his own daughter killed him. Seriously. This show was that fucked-up.

Now on to the main course. Anna’s daughter Lisa is taken to the dungeon where Anna once kept her own mother. Lisa wonders why Anna doesn’t kill her outright and Anna notes that vengeance is a human emotion she rather likes. Vengeance isn’t an emotion, of course, but we’re satisfied that Anna is letting Lisa live. Lisa, like all of the putative good guys on this show, has all the intellectual dynamism of a jar of pickled pig’s knuckles, but she is at least nice to look at. I didn’t realize this until I looked her up but she’s the same actress who played Supergirl on Smallville. As a fan of the latter series I should have recognized her, but if you've seen one hot blonde on TV, you've seen 'em all.

Lisa was supposed to be the Lizard Queen who would mate with a genetically altered human and therefore accelerate the evolution of the Visitors with her spawn (lizard women apparently can lay thousands of eggs with one fertilization). Anna had a feeling Lisa might go flaky on her, though, and therefore kept a queen egg in reserve. Anna had the hatching accelerated by her top scientist goons and clothed the hatchling in skin that looked just like Lisa. And so the Big Sinister Plan—to accelerate the evolution of the Visitors with human DNA and then wipe out the humans—is on track.

Yep, I just told you the Big Sinister Plan. The only part that got my attention was the part about getting wiped out. I’m still not clear on why that’s supposed to happen, unless the Visitors want to take over Earth for themselves. I’m guessing that’s it.

The young man Lisa was supposed to mate with happened to be the son of the resistance leader, an FBI agent named Erica. If I haven’t mentioned Erica yet, it’s because she’s the sorriest excuse for a protagonist with top billing on a TV show I have ever seen. She’s distracted, she’s flaky, she lacks the nerve to follow through in so many cases Anna can’t help but win at the end of every episode.

One of Erica’s distractions is her dumbshit teenage son, the most annoying dumbshit teenage son I’ve seen since Spielberg’s War of the Worlds. Tyler loves the V’s, loves Lisa and Anna, and is thus always arguing with his mom. For the last few episodes he’s been living aboard the ship and supposedly training to be a pilot, though that last part has been a ruse to keep him on the ship because there was something wacky about his DNA and it was delaying the big lizard-on-human evolutionary speed-ball plan.

All that’s fixed, though, and now Lisa is in Diana’s old dungeon. Anna makes things extra hateful/painful for Lisa by having Lisa watch the Live Lizard Sex Cam stream of Imposter Lisa mating with Tyler. Poor Lisa actually had real feelings for the boy, which is what ironically turned her on to the side of the humans—ironically, because dumbshit Tyler is a V partisan. This might be poignant in the hands of more skilled writers. Here, all you can say is these idiots had it coming.

Apparently Imposter Lisa knows Real Lisa is watching because Imposter Lisa leers up into the camera from time to time. While watching this I wondered if what happened after Anna mated last season would happen here. I was not disappointed.

They made us wait for it, though. The Rite of the Lizard Queen apparently doesn't have to happen immediately after coitus. The couple is shown to sleep for a while. But then Imposter Lisa awakens. She climbs back on top of Tyler (lizard ladies like it on top, the sick freaks) and leers up into the camera one more time—are ya watchin’ this, Lisa? (she is!)—before the long, pointy cluster of teeth emerge from her mouth and she chomps down on Tyler’s neck.

I mean CHOMP! Tyler’s surprised scream, and the way Imposter’s Lisa’s eyes rolled back as she savored the fresh, raw bloody meat in her mouth—God, that was the most messed up thing I’ve seen on TV in a long, long while. I can’t believe this was on broadcast television. Oh, it was a thing of nigh-pornographic beauty!

So, three characters dead and the invasion is on. Thanks to the dumbness of our heroes and a friendly assist from the Hybrid, Anna can call in the rest of the invasion fleet from where they’ve been hiding. A lot happened in this episode. I’ve wasted enough words on it already.

The killings, as artfully and so necessarily executed, still didn’t make up for all the incredibly, mind-roasting stupidity that went on with this reboot. So much potential was wasted. I watched as this show tried to take on topics like freedom-fighting versus terrorism, topics that were handled so much better in Battlestar Galactica, and it was like watching a workshop on how not to do things. Like how not to script, or how not to frame arguments. Like how not to bother if you’re going to be this goddamned incompetent at it. In the end, I couldn’t help but think of those words from Mel Brooks’ Spaceballs, “And so once again Evil triumphs, because Good is dumb.” That’s exactly what happened here.

I regret not having photos and clips because—surprise!—there aren’t any good ones available from official or even unofficial sources. Annalee Newitz of www.io9.com, however, got some captures on her finale post mortem. Io9 is a decent sci-fi fan's site and has some good rants about the show, but they're a lot more forgiving than I am. As it is, this show is already two weeks old by this writing and we're already on to the next atrocity.

This fan of sci-fi/supernatural media sees a bad moon a-risin' here. There are so many achingly bad TV shows and movies that have come and gone I fear the genre may yet push itself itself back into the ghetto from which it emerged. Worse, I expect all these terrible movies and TV shows will stigmatize the genre and it's fans like never before. I hope I'm wrong. But this latest incarnation of V, along with the howlingly awful The Cape, etc., only shows the implosion is right on track.

###

Just sayin'

2011-03-16T17:53:00.003-06:00

Something you never hear anymore: “It’s a cinch.” I’m guessing it's because nothing is, nor has been for a very long time now.

INVOCATION

2011-03-11T10:16:00.023-07:00

I challenge the gods themselves

to convey the euphoria

a blazing white freeway
a shiny clear Saturday
75 mph
in a solar yellow Jeep

the steel-blue bay to one side

a tall fence of evergreens

on the other

the mountain entire

before me

“Achilles’ Last Stand”

galloping

from the
speakers

###

from Nymphomagic Electroshock
& Other Middle-Aged Complaints (2011)