Yearly Archives: 2009

We Do?

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Liberals say there’s no justification for repressing sexual behavior.


One suspects one is not familiar with the terms of the debate here. Ordinary words are taking on meanings unique to the context of the argument. I suppose. 


Anyway, Linda Hirshman has grave doubts about Jezebel, one of the Gawker web sites.  From what she says, it’s about feminism as practiced by young women who drink a lot and wear dresses of a flimsy nature. Hirshman says she’s heard all about being called judgmental: “Judgmental! Judgmental!” Hilzoy says Hirshman belongs to that class of people “whose heart is two sizes too small, who have no more empathy than your average tin can.” Warning: At issue is what one of the Jezebel writers should have done after a sexual assault. Hirshman left out the reasons the writer gave for not telling police.

Electric Warrior, Planted in my Attic to Test the Faith of Later Generations

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Sussing out religion and science deep in a comments thread, Eric B. goes way, way back to Sir Edmund Gosse’s father Philip for this tidbit:

…he argued that God planted all of the dinosaur fossils, etc. as an attempt to trick and tempt people into the sin of rejecting creationism.

(That’s kin to the “omphalos argument,” from the navel, i.e., “Did Adam have one?” And Edmund chronicled their relationship in the classic Father and Son, predicting the evangelical-science strife to come.)

I’m struck by the theatrical, literary flair of the argument. God matters more than the world He created, so we can assume it’s a stage set. Quit teasing and raise the curtain. I love the image, which is especially good for fantasy/SF, as in the beginning and ending of the Chronicles of Narnia (religious), the first Matrix (faux-philosophic), or Dark City (intertextual). And others, like Electric Warrior.

I’ve never forgotten it since reading it as a kid– it’s a DC comic about a rogue robot in a futuristic city. Doing stuff. That is, I’ve never forgotten the ending. It ran for 10? 12? issues until the plug got pulled. Rather than just stop, or even resolve the plotlines set to run on and on, its creators sent down a spaceship to tell the cast their whole world was an elaborate stage set. Hop on, let’s get out of here. I even think they asked about the dinosaur bones, and they spaceship captain was like, “we planted them! Come on, I’m gonna miss my shows.” I guess it’s a meta way of flipping the bird at editorial.

So I don’t remember it very well (and I much prefer the dust on my memories to Google blotting out yet another part of my mind.). The ending floored me, though. Life hadn’t yet pulled any rugs out from under me– I was very young, my family all still living, and as to Santa, losing him didn’t stop the toys. And stories, for a kid miles from any other kid but his brother, offered a consistent escape in exchange for being given life by my attention. Having that attention betrayed made a mediocre work linger. The first one hurts. The next few times, as with Blazing Saddles‘ ending, I just got mad. Mel Brooks was flipping the bird at me! Then I got jaded and in on the joke, which meant I gave less and less to stories. (Until much later, when I needed them again.)

Now, like everyone else, I’m just navigating the huge swath of competing, contradictory stories without much dissonance. It’s a condition of media, spin culture, whatever comes after postmodernism. I’d love to wipe out the stories I disagree with and so reshape the world and school board to my liking, but in the end it might be all I can do to ignore them. Others disagree, and go through mental acrobatics that put Adam on a dinosaur, impressive to say the least.

This Fucking Dream

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Years ago there was a tv comedy star named Red Skelton, most likely forgotten now. His show was in its last years when I was a kid. I used to watch it, though not with much interest. Still, he was an appealing sort of fellow, with a gentle, sad-funny air about him. I remember him as having a long face with almost flaring cheekbones and a sandy trace of hair hanging on to the crown of his head. If you clicked the link just above, you’ll have seen that this memory is not completely accurate.

Last night I dreamt that I had wound up in a midsize French provincial city down toward the south. I was trying to fit in with the city’s crowd of wealthy American retirees, a very aged crowd, and was happy to seize on Mr. Skelton for a moment at the crowded party thrown by one lady in her musty apartment. He was in his 70s or 80s but had lost none of his vitality. The week before he had made a small international splash by showing up Olivia de Havilland and a venerable French comedian at a televised bout of t’ai chi, or what was supposed to have been a bout of t’ai chi but ran entirely counter to that quiet discipline’s spirit. Skelton interposed himself in the business, sitting cross-legged between the two, who were also sitting cross-legged, and flourishing with mock grandiosity a tiny pair of ivory boomerangs that implicitly mocked the whole travesty of t’ai chi that the proceedings represented. 
The coup de grace came when he seized the French comedian’s shoulders and simply lifted. It turned out the French comedian had smuggled himself inside a false set of shoulders and head. Skelton pulled them off so deftly that they appeared to sail thru the air. Revealed beneath was pretty much the same aged French comedian as before, but far smaller; his bald head stared out from the shell of his body like one Russian doll nested inside another.
The t’ai chi, or “t’ai chi,” event ended there. It could not continue. Skelton had made his point and brought a measure of needed sanity to the carnival atmosphere that had overtaken the world’s most beloved physical discipline. In fact the French comedian and Olivia de Havilland bore him no ill will. Perhaps they were grateful to be freed from the pretense they had got up to. Only the event’s presiding impresario, a wizened party from Asia, had been embarrassed.
Standing at the party amid all the ancient elbows and wattle, I congratulated Skelton on his feat. I did so with the relief and warmth one feels on being able to offer heartfelt praise. He responded graciously and with honest pleasure; a showman, no matter how advanced in his career, feels the success of one of his coups.
I suppose the dream reflects how I feel about getting old. But there was a lot more to it, hours’ worth, involving a film festival at a giant shopping mall in Connecticut, a pair of stand-up comedians’ debut as indy filmmakers, the role of Tony Roberts (Woody Allen’s old sidekick) in their film, my well-taken but much-resented remark during the comedians’ presentation of the film, and the hunt for a mens room in the shopping mall, which had a women’s room on the ground level and then another women’s room when you traveled down the long route to the lower level. The lower of the two was besieged by a crowd of frustrated women waiting for one neurasthenic party to stop hyperventilating and step out of the stall, which more properly resembled a telephone booth and was being used in that spirit.
Other parts of the dream: me and Candice Bergen and Jane Fonda getting high and going to the season premiere of Jean Doumanian’s edition of Saturday Night Live, me getting stuck on camera (thru no fault of my own) and having to hold still while the camera whirled about thru the show’s razzle-dazzle opening imitation of a Folie Bergeres show in Third Republic France, Candice and Jane laughing cattily at a humorous film that parodied the eccentric but brilliantly gifted comic actress Penelope Gilliatt.
So, something to do with women, I guess. But the fucking dream went on and on and on, and I never want to dream again.