The Shape of Manipulation

After I first encountered the work of director Guillermo del Toro I was both hypnotized and impressed. Even his commercial efforts such as the second BLADE movie, and HELLBOY were fun to watch and full of playful material. I liked his work so much that I sought out interviews with him and pretty soon decided that he was likely the most intelligent guy making fantasy films.

My favorite of his work is probably PAN'S LABYRINTH which was sparked by the experiences of his politically leftist family during the Spanish Civil War. CRONOS is also another of his movies that I admire. It didn't hurt that in addition to his obvious intelligence, he also just projected a very likable, childlike persona when interviewed. I found myself looking forward to news of any upcoming projects from him.

However, with the second HELLBOY feature film he directed I lost much of my admiration for his style and his efforts. It was the first time that one of his movies lost the blush of imagination for me. That film was all effects and noise and offered pretty much nothing else. That was okay, I figured, assuming that it was a glitch in the program and that he'd get right back to work as usual. (It did, however, completely derail the HELLBOY movie franchise.)

Then came the execrable THE STRAIN television series that he created and produced (but, apparently did not direct). Perhaps one of the single worst genre shows I have ever seen on television. Even comic book physics have to contain some kind of logic; and weird movies about things such as vampiric worms should contain realistic characterizations and decent acting, none of which were evident in this piece of shit. His TV effort lacked anything whatsoever of value and I quickly lost interest in it. His name on a project was beginning to repel rather than attract me.

After that came PACIFIC RIM (about giant robots fighting giant monsters) which managed to make Idris Elba look like a first class ham; and CRIMSON PEAK (supposedly a kind of ghost-imbued romance) with a forgettable cast. Both of these failed to inspire me at any level whatsoever, with the former actually making me rather sick. He'd gone over to trying to impress his audience with CGI and, frankly...that got old some time back.

What the hell was going on with the guy?

So. I kept hearing about his homage to THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON and that it was headed for the big screen. I had not yet lost all hope for del Toro's work, so I was going to see this movie and give him one more chance. The film appeared, apparently to tepid fan response, and I kept missing opportunities to see it. Truthfully, after a number of crappy efforts, I wasn't in a hurry to view his latest movie.

Finally, though, it won the Academy Award for Best Picture so my wife actually found herself wanting to see it. As I'd heard, it was a kind of romance so I figured she might enjoy it. We drove to a nearby theater two days after the stupid Academy Awards ceremony and bought our tickets and had our seats in a mostly empty theater.

For her part, my wife adored the movie. She loathes genre films, but this one she loved. As the end credits were rolling she was actually crying at the sweetness of it all. I didn't say anything to break the moment for her.

As for me--that was it. No more Guillermo del Toro films for me. I was pretty much sickened by the spectacle. It was slick--I'll give him that. The monster was cool. Weird enough looking to be a creature from another environment, but not so disgusting that some people couldn't imagine that fucking it would be a hideous rape-y kind of experience.

Yeah, del Toro did his 'Beauty and the Beast' schtick without making any liberals feel creepy about it. In this case the heroine was with the monster by choice and not through force.

And therein lay my disgust with the movie: del Toro went out of his way, pulled out all of the stops, and rigged up every bit of neo-liberal gibberish that he could cram into a movie. How could the Academy not give him the Oscar for it? Well, apparently they couldn't resist. He played them like a fine instrument and won the popularity contest among his little clique of special people.

Here's what he did:

The heroine of the yarn was a woman. Points for that. And what they call, these days, a strong woman. Kudos. She was also not completely normal, not pretty, and had struggled to overcome not just adversity, but a major handicap. Touchdown!

The monster--also a hero--was strong and silent, sensitive and understanding, and loving. All things that, apparently, real heterosexual men are not.

And that's where we get to the true meat of the tale. What were the men like? You know...the men who are human beings and not fishmen from the depths.

They were almost all villains. First of all we had Strickland--played by the very talented character actor Michael Shannon. Boy, did del Toro deliver the liberal goods on this guy. He is everything that the groupthink informs us is horrible about males. First of all, he's white. Ding! Then he's aggressive. Dong! He's also a racist. (Aren't all non-liberals?!) He's self-centered, sadistic, cruel. Check. Check. Check. And then...so as not to leave any doubt regarding his villainy, he's a sexual harasser! Boing!!

At least in movies like PAN'S LABYRINTH the bad guy was courageous and dedicated. No admirable traits with this one. Such Liberal fun!

All of the other guys in the movie (but one) are also evil. Next we have THE RUSSIANS!  (Oooo! The scary Russians!) As you all know, every Russian is evil! Every Russian deserves to be killed. We need to go to war with Russia according to the liberals and boy do the liberals get to have their hate-on with Russia with this one!  Guillermo del Toro gives them this, in spades! Woo HOO! Warmongering liberal wet dream! All the Russians must, die! And they do!

Hell...del Toro even makes the one black man in the entire movie into a villainous, cowardly douchebag. Heavens to Alice Walker! SCORE! Right through the uprights!

In fact, the only decent human male in the movie is Giles, the heroine's next-door-neighbor who is a closeted gay. Yeah, you have to be a gay man to be worthy in this movie. All of the heterosexual males are pernicious. Jackpot, del Toro! You win the lottery! Enjoy yer dildo-shaped statues!

So, I found that this was easily far and away the most calculated bit of propaganda that I have seen in a major motion picture in decades. And it's not as if I can't enjoy a propaganda piece (such as PATTON), but this one was just so obvious in its pungent prostitution that the whole experience sickened me.

And then--that ending. The final scene of glorious transition. Give. Me. A. Break. Ya lost me, Guillermo. The trans bandwagon?! Lost probably forever. I'm pretty sure I've sworn off Guillermo del Toro as a filmmaker. Definitely as an honest creator, at any rate. He can whore off his mind for other people. I think I'm done with him.

Bestiality is fun!

A Stupid Thing to Do

One of my earliest long-distance backpacking trips was in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It began a few days from my 16th birthday and my actual birthday occurred at a trail shelter near the summit of a 6,000-foot mountain called Big Cataloochee. I recall that it got very cold that morning--close to freezing (June 28).

This was back in the early 1970s when the Park still had chain link across the fronts of the trail shelters to protect overnight backpackers from bears. Because in those days most such folk did not practice safe bear-country habits and bears were attracted to the shelters because of the smell of food and actual food items left out where the bears could take them. Back then it was nice to be able to close and secure that chain link door and go to sleep knowing that a bear couldn't get in.

A couple of nights after that we were staying at another shelter called Peck's Corner. It got kind of crowded as this shelter was at the Appalachian Trail and lots of hikers use it. Fortunately, as things turned out, it also had the chain link barrier. Why 'fortunately'? Because one of the backpackers had brought along a can of tuna fish. For lunch he opened the can, walked out in front of the shelter, and drained all of that oil and fish juice on a large flat boulder a few feet from the chain link door. Then he came back in and prepared his meal.

In a few minutes a mother bear and three tiny cubs showed up. I suspect they smelled the tuna fish. But before the mama bear could get to the shelter she pointed her nose to the sky and seemed to be sensing something the rest of us could not. Then she rushed back to the tree where she'd stashed her tiny babies, called them down, and retreated to the deep forest.

Why? We found out.

In short order a very large, very scarred male bear appeared. A few people who'd been outside the shelter rushed in and the chain link door was closed and secured just in time, for he then came right up to it and peered in at all of us humans 'safely' inside.

Then he went to the big boulder where the idiot had drained his can of tuna fish. This boulder had about the same surface size on top as a big dining room table. Let's say four by six feet. But it was also about two feet thick. We're talking a mass amount of stone. Immovable, you might say. Here's what happened.

That big, scarred up bear began to lick the oil from the boulder. He licked it all off the top where the idiot had drained it, and then followed the streamlets of oil down the side of the boulder. Some of the oil had followed the contour of the rock and were now under the weight of it. So the bear stood to the side, hooked his claws under the lip, and lifted that mass so that he could lick the tuna fish oil from underneath the boulder. He hefted it up like it was nothing. They way you might move a dining room chair out of your way.

I kid you, not. (Keep in mind he did this with one arm while standing three-legged to do it.)

When he had gotten all of that smelly, delicious, yummy fish oil he released the boulder and it fell back into place with a thump that I felt through the soles of my boots.

At that point he turned his attention back to the shelter. He walked up to the chain link that was protecting us and he peered inside with those beady, dark, black-bear eyes. There was no humor in those eyes. There was no pity hiding in the depths. He was trying to figure out how to get to the food that he knew was in there with us. His nose was going snuff-snuff.

It was at that moment that he stood up on his back legs. I'd already realized that he was an enormous bruiser, but when you see one stand up like that you realize how big they are. The bear placed his paws on the chain link and he began to push. Yeah. He was trying to use his sheer bulk, and the power of the same muscles that had hefted that massive boulder to shove that damned chain link fence right the heck in. With every push he would give out with this little grunt.

Push! Oof! Push! Unh! Push! Grar!

After a few such efforts he seemed to realize that the steel was stronger than he was and he settled back where he sat and stared at us for a little while, those dark, black eyes smoldering with the frustration of a missed opportunity. If only he'd arrived a second or two sooner, before the door had closed in his face.

A few minutes later he was gone. Poof. Vanished back into the forest. Everyone came out of the shelter. He did not return.

I was reminded of this memory because I heard the story of a guy who backpacked into a remote part of Yellowstone National Park a couple of years ago. On the second day of his journey into the wilderness, thick with Grizzly bears who are far larger and far more aggressive than black bears, this shit-for-brains opened up his backpack to discover that the tuna fish he had brought along with him had leaked out and the liquid inside had permeated his pack and his clothing and everything in it and on it with the pungent scent of tuna fish.

To make a longer story very short, nothing happened to this idiot. No grizzly bear appeared to eat the now tuna-flavored moron. But I was reminded of the incident with the black bear. And it was all part of the lesson that I learned that day at Peck's Corner. And that lesson was never to bring any food item that is so pungent that even humans can smell it from a distance. Especially something like a can or packet of tuna fish that can leak out and turn you into a predator's target.

I mean...don't. Just don't.

See that kid inside the Laurel Gap Shelter? That was me. On June 28, 1973, the day of my 16th birthday. This was back in the days when the National Park Service had chain link on the fronts of the shelters to protect dumbass backpackers from bears. These days the chain link is gone. The Park Service has pretty much trained backpackers to not do stupid shit like get tuna fish all over the shelters, and to be sensisble and hang their food in bags away from the overnight shelters and tents.

A Couple of Cats My Dad Knew

Now and again I'll look up people on the Internet who my dad knew in his youth, or later during my own youth. Some of these people would come around his bookstores or his house from time to time. Strangely to me, these folk I recall were regionally famous and a few of them even well known nationally.

One guy I never met--but whose poetry I would sometimes read in the personally inscribed volume of his poems that he gave to my father--was Don West. West was the author of the mentioned volume, CLODS OF SOUTHERN EARTH, which had sold something like 200,000 copies in its day. I don't think he made much--if any--money from it, but I suppose it brought cash to his publisher.

West was, like my dad, a leftist in the days of the Great Depression. He continued his leftist ways long after such movements had been quashed and destroyed. I recall that my dad mentioned once that West sought shelter at one of my parents' homes when he was running from both the KKK and the FBI. For good reason, I suppose, because some time later the KKK burned down West's house in Atlanta. Even the publisher of the Atlanta Constitution publicly called for West to be cast out of the city.

One reason my dad moved us to Gilmer County in Georgia (where he had purchased 120 acres where he built us a house) was that West was born and raised there. So my dad assumed that there would be other people like Don West around those mountains, hills, and hollows. Alas, we soon discovered that Gilmer County and Ellijay were inhabited by people even worse than those to which we were accustomed--racism, hatred, and ignorance the likes of which it is almost impossible to believe.

Unlike West, who spent his life in a struggle against racism, the rest of the county's residents were basically monsters, or nearly so. It's no wonder that James Dickey's visits to Gilmer County resulted in his creation of the novel DELIVERANCE which illustrated the area as it was then with complete and utter perfection.

As my dad was coming to the realization that he was not going to find the "good mountain men" he thought were present, he discovered that West had relocated to West Virginia where he was trying to operate a school teaching the history and common skills of the people of Appalachia. My dad planned to ride up to make a surprise visit, but for whatever reason he never did. 

(A bit of information here--Don West's daughter, Hedy West, wrote the universally famous folk song "500 Miles".)

Don West.

Another dude that I recall visiting my dad's store, and even our home, was Bud Foote, a professor at Georgia Tech. I vividly recall him stopping by the shop relatively often to converse with my father. I remember that he was funny in a very cynical way and that I enjoyed listening to him. And  he would stop by our home on Mead Road in Decatur, sometimes in the company of other professors from Tech. It was on one such visit where I first heard of plate tectonics and continental drift which was, at that time, considered heresy and lunacy. I don't recall if it was Foote or one of the other professors, but the guy showed me a Mercator map of the Earth that my dad had on a shelf and indicated how each continent "fit" together.

On a trip to see Foote at his own place closer to downtown Atlanta, he showed me a science-fiction magazine in which he had a story. I don't recall which of them it was, but I remember being impressed, because even as a kid of only nine years of age I knew that I wanted to be a published author some day. After we moved away from Atlanta my dad lost touch with Foote, as the common ground between the Princeton-educated professor and my working class dad had been my father's bookstore, and nothing else.

Bud Foote.

At any rate, I think of some of these characters from time to time and wonder about what happened to them and when they died. Foote seems to have led the good life of an Ivy League graduate who collected many friends and admirers over the years. West, although a graduate of Vanderbilt, led the much harder life of a man who actually acted to fight injustice rather than sitting at his desk and penning mild accusations against the system.

Insurance.

Since I left the USPS a couple of years back I get my health insurance through my wife and her employer. This, year, though, the insurance provider made a surprise demand that she present hard evidence that we are actually married. I suppose it's their job to prove that they are everything that is horrid and pernicious about the capitalist system.

So we had to drive all the way to downtown Charlotte to get a copy of our marriage certificate. (We can't find our original since it's boxed up somewhere--who knows where.) We checked with the government website first to find out where we had to go. It turned out we had to drive to a building and office complex that's named after a child molester. No, I'm not joking. It's named after a known child molester who was a long-time elected official in this county. We had to go to the third floor, office #20 we were informed.

Carole and I got there. At least the place had ample free parking. Going in, we went to the listed floor and to office #20 and approached the desk. The clerk there told us that this was no longer the office for that kind of thing even though the website says that it is. She gave us a newly printed card with the address of the building and office where that business is now conducted.

Previous to this I had not been that troubled, but now I was beginning to feel the urge to kick in a door or something like that, but I held it in.

We drove to the building complex indicated on the card, about a mile away from the first place that is named after the child molester. Carole and I had both been to this building before and it had its own parking. When we got to the driveway for the parking we found that it had been blocked off and the building no longer offered parking.

Another two circuits around the block revealed to us that there was a newer parking deck that charged $1.50 for the first half hour. And another sign informed us that if we lost the ticket we'd be issued upon entering that we would have to pay $15.00 to get out of the parking deck. We parked, put the ticket safely in the truck, then walked across the street to the entrance, climbing a bunch of stairs to get to the door.

At the door we realized that there was a metal scanner. And cops. Lots of cops. Did I mention that there are cops crawling all over this part of Charlotte? They're everywhere--like a lice infestation. Carole asked me if I had my pocketknife on me. I have pretty much carried a pocketknife with me since I was eight years old. Without fail. It goes into my pocket without thinking almost every morning.

"Shit," says I. Of course I had a pocketknife in my freaking pocket. So I turned around, descended all of those steps, crossed the street, walked to the spot where I had parked my truck, and put my fucking pocketknife with the fucking parking receipt.

A tiny bit more anger, but, well, nothing like boiling over. That anger had ample time to dissipate while I walked back out of the parking deck, across the street, and up the giant stack of granite stairs. (Thank Jove for Zoloft.)

We went in the building. I handed my wallet, my keys, and my cell phone to a cop holding a plastic basket. Then I walked through the scanner. It still went off. I then I had to stand in the middle of the goddamned hallway with my arms held out like Jesus fucking Christ on the cross at Golgotha while the cop scanned me again with a handheld device. (He didn't stab me in the ribs with it, but I wouldn't have been surprised if he had.) I un-Jesusly wanted to kick him in the balls, but I also didn't want to get arrested and, like I said, thank Jove for Zoloft. The new scan revealed that I had nothing on me that was metal with the exception of my belt buckle.

We then went to the nearest clerk at a big desk in the massive atrium and she told us that this was not the building we needed and that it was two buildings away. (You're laughing now, right? Right?) So we had to leave that place. The clerk told us to leave via a revolving door but when we got to it the door was barred and locked. "Not this revolving door, silly," a female cop told us. "The other revolving door." Which we found about fifty feet away in the atrium.

Yeah. I hate this shit. I hate everyone involved in it. The insurance company. The cops. The clerks. The child-molesting elected officials who make us jump through the fucking hoops. At this point, everyone. I'd have probably hated you if I'd seen your mug right about then.

Outside again we walked two buildings down, went in, walked to the office we'd been told was really, actually, truly, certainly, absolutely the right, correct, definite one that would give us a copy of our marriage certificate. We filled out a form. We gave it back to the nice lady clerk who had, I have to say, a cheerful smiling face and positive demeanor. Ten dollars later we had the certificate. Frankly, it looks exactly like the original and not a copy. We had applied for that certificate on May 21, 1984 and were married less than three weeks later. Carole is still married to my cranky ass. Amazing. Miraculous.

From there we left the building (no scanner), avoided the first building like it was an NRA member waving his AR-15 around, crossed the street, got into the truck, paid our $1.50 parking fee (somehow we'd done all of that in just under thirty minutes) and got the ripping Hell out of Charlotte, NC.

And now I am sitting at home writing this and dreaming of the day when I won't have to do this kind of ridiculous shit anymore. The insurance company has their pound of my frustration and anger, so I hope they're satisified.

People ask me why I am not happy with this country. Mainly I just stare at them when they say such a stupid, goddamned thing. So far I have not punched any of them in their smug, ignorant faces.

That may change.

I'm surprised they didn't name it the William S. Burroughs Building.

"The Loess Hills"

"The Loess Hills"

By James Robert Smith

My son and I were driving back east after two weeks in South Dakota and Montana. We had already ferried my wife to the airport in Sioux Falls so that she could fly back home ahead of us while we pulled the travel trailer across most of the country.

That same day my son and I were on the Interstate cruising along, not necessarily enjoying the scenery in Iowa, but finding it interesting all the same. We were driving through a section called the Loess Hills. As I drove and as my son sat I did what I always do because I have read too much and have a big mouth. I explained to him about the geological origins of those damned hills, so he had to sit there and listen to me explain about continental glaciers and rock flour and vast deserts of soil being tossed aloft and carried hundreds, even thousands of miles by westerly prevailing winds to be deposited in layers two hundred feet thick and now revealed as plateaus and hills made of fertile dirt without a rock in sight.

To our left as we drove relentlessly east was a big verdant green wall, the tremendously rich soil delivered in the wake of the glaciers, fertilized by millennia of colonizing grasslands and enriched by the dung of hundreds of millions of roving bison and extinct giants like mammoths, mastodons, camels, horses, and countless other creatures long since exterminated by the indigenous peoples of North America.

Blah blah blah.

It was getting late and we really needed to find a state or county park where we could pull in, hook up the trailer, and get a good, quiet night’s sleep. The sun was still in the sky, but it never helps to linger over such concerns. We did not want to have to pull into an Interstate rest area for a noisy night adjacent to some rattling semi with its generator running to feed the demands of a freezer. Nor were we attracted to the idea of an evening parked in a shopping center or hospital trying to get a few hours of rest.

The GPS device I was using could detect no county parks. We couldn’t even find a private campground that was not cheek by jowl with the howling Interstate. “Screw it,” said I, and took the next exit, aiming our truck/travel trailer rig for the looming wall of those loess hills of which I had read so much but never seen. We were going to climb to the top of that giant mound of fertility and find a campsite in a nice park and be done with it.

The truck pulled us up--200 vertical feet to the top. It almost felt like we were climbing the foothills of the Appalachians, but not quite. In short order the engine stopped laboring and we were on the summit of this vast, undulating, emerald barrier that stood above the plains below, the big Interstate highway appearing as a beige ribbon on the flatlands. We couldn’t even hear the whine of those tens of thousands of tires.

After climbing those slopes we expected to see it dropping off on the other side. Not so. The loess had been deposited not like a tall set of hills, but rather like a fantastic plateau of richness that stretched on to the horizon. We had merely been introduced to it by way of its leading edge. There we were, atop the sweetest stack of grass-friendly soil on the continent. Wonderful dirt that had birthed vast, almost unending vistas of wheat and alfalfa and maize that had fed and fueled the invading swarms of Europeans since this frontier had been wrested from the native peoples through murder and deprivation.

These were thoughts that tickled along the corridors of my brain but which I decided not to inflict upon my son. Instead, I asked him to see if he had cell phone service and could locate us a park while I drove. He tried, but had no luck.

At the next intersection I hung a hard right, taking us further east, paralleling the big federal highway hidden to us by trees and giant fields of green corn growing as high as that elephant’s eye, as promised to us by Oscar Hammerstein. (Or was he talking about wheat?)

“What are we going to do now?” Andy asked.

“I’m just going to drive until we see a sign for a state park or a county park with camping. Then we’ll pull in and rent a space.” It was a sure thing, a piece of cake, a walk in the park.

We drove on. No parks. We passed by lots of farms. Almost everyone seemed to be growing corn, but we saw other crops, too; all of it ridiculously green in the August sun, those fields bursting with vitality.

“Try your phone again, or ask the GPS if it can locate a park.” Andy did that, but no luck.

We pushed on. Not through the big muddy, but along an idyllic two-lane state road, emerald to our left, gorgeous green to our right.

Soon, it was crowding six o’clock, about the time when most state and county parks were closing their offices and sending everyone home for the night. Occasionally we passed a pickup truck or a big sedan, or they passed us. People, but no parks.

“It might be the rest area for us tonight,” my son finally said, foreseeing defeat.

“Maybe not,” I told him. We had just passed a city limits sign. Another small burg on this interminable hilltop of farms and fields, trees and cornstalks. Maybe they had a park or a private campground.

I slowed down. The town came out of the green to meet us. We saw houses off to the right and left. They were like something out of Ozzie and Harriet. We saw a mom and pop grocery. And a malt shop as we slowed to meet the speed limit of 25 miles per hour. A malt shop. Such as you'd see in an Archie comic book.

“Look at this place,” Andy said.

“Uh huh,” I nodded. The town was small. What we sometimes call a postage stamp town. One street light where we caught the red and had to stop. It was quiet. We saw a group of kids, their blonde hair shaved in similar crew cuts. I swear to Almighty God, they were wearing crew cuts. Flat tops. Three of the kids were riding Stingray bikes. I shit you not. One of them waved to us as they passed. Yeah. Blue eyes and perfect teeth.

The light changed and I pulled forward. There were five teenage girls walking past the local grocery store. They were wearing sun dresses. Fine hair, all of them in pony tails. One of the girls was wearing a ribbon in her hair about the same color as the blue sky in spring after the rains have fallen for the season and the soil is just beginning to give up some of its hoarded wealth to those endless rows of corn.

“Fuck," I said.

“Place looks like it stopped aging in 1958,” Andy told me, enough of those old TV shows under his belt to know what he was talking about.

“You thinking what I’m thinking?” I asked him.

“Yeah. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

So I hung a right at the very next state highway intersection and we were once more moving at 65 miles per hour, the tires on the truck singing that drone as we headed to dark where I knew I would pull into a rest area and snag four hours of sleep, my travel trailer vibrating from the powerful rumble of some generator growling away to power a refrigerator truck.

It seemed better than risking our fading luck in that little bit of blonde, blue-eyed weirdness up on the hill. Because something told us it was not a dream, but the alternative.

New Details in Old Photos.

I often drag out old photos from years back and look at them. Sometimes I locate little details that I missed when I took them. I was playing about with the contrast on this old photo (2009) taken on a hike in Linville Gorge and I noticed a tiny detail that I didn't even notice when I took it. If you look in the middle of the photo you can make out a tiny human figure. It's hard to see what they're doing down there, but I think the person is taking a closeup photo of something. It's hard to say.

At any rate, I'm reminded why I save a lot of these old files. You never know what you might see on subsequent viewings.

I crept to the edge of Babel Tower and took this photo.

I think someone was down there taking photos just like I was.

Scalped!

When for some reason I can't see my regular barber, I tend to use one of those chain barber shops. The first time you visit one they want your phone number and address. Once when I went into such an establishment with my wife I said politely to the woman at the counter, "Is this necessary? I just want a haircut."

The woman was mortified. How dare I say such a thing?! My wife, too, thought my request was beyond rude.

Wimmen.

So, due to my schedule last week I couldn't go to the lady who normally cuts my hair who owns her own joint. So I had to go back to one of those chain stores where I had been before. The first thing the woman at the counter asked me was if I was a "member". I was and gave her my phone number.

My name popped up and she pointed at the screen to show the lady barber who was going to do my hair. "Oh. You haven't been to one of our shops since June--eight months ago!" Alas! What could I have been thinking?

The barber directed me to a chair. She had looked at my chart. As I sat down, she asked me, "Do you want the same cut as last time?" I assumed that, having looked at my chart, she obviously knew the kind of cut I wanted.

"Sure," I said.

When I get a haircut I am not one of those anal-retentive types who sit there micro-managing the process and watching every move the barber makes. In fact, I'm the opposite. Most of the time I will close my eyes and meditate. This is exactly what I did.

The hairdresser/barber got down to business. She ran the clipper through my hair. The sensation dragged me a bit out of my reverie. A second pass. Was that cold air on my scalp? I opened my eyes. And she had pretty much taken the hair off down to bare skin.

It was at this point that I realized that back in June I had taken my son to this chain operation and paid for his haircut. And he does indeed get his hair removed to the scalp when he goes. So what the barber did was look at my chart and saw the haircut my son gets...not the one I get.

So much for computers and digital file keeping.

But I didn't get upset. I just closed my eyes and went back to meditating. I couldn't very well get upset with the barber because she had, indeed, asked me if I wanted the same haircut as before. I had ample opportunity to tell her how I liked it, but I just said, "yes" to her question. Totally my fault.

I have to say...I've had this kind of scalping before, back when I was a letter carrier. And it is a comfortable haircut when you work at hard labor in hot weather. So it doesn't bother me. It was just unexpected.

This particular haircut did not take long. ZOOM! ZIP! All the hair gone. So I got up, paid my tab, and tipped the barber. As such haircuts go, she did a good job. It'll be weeks and weeks before I need another haircut, that's for sure.

"You're a gott-damn genius, Private Gump!"

Two Days of Total Solitude.

Some time back I had reserved two days to myself for an overnight backpacking trip. When the two days approached the weather report was for vile, lousy weather. Since I was going mainly to enjoy some leisure time and find some solitude this weather report actually looked better to me. If it was going to rain--and the forecast was for not just rain, but heavy rain--then there was the likelihood that few, if any other hikers would be on the loop I was going to hike.

The route I had set aside was similar to one I had hiked with other people some years back. My plan was to park at the fish hatchery near Looking Glass Rock and take the Cat Gap Trail to the Art Loeb Trail. Originally I had figured on taking an unmarked side trail to the summit of Cedar Rock Knob from Sand Gap and camp on the summit. But since I knew the weather could possibly suck mightily I had a backup plan to skip the summit and push on to the Butter Gap shelter where I would have a wooden roof over my head.

By the time I reached Sand Gap and began to climb the 300 or so vertical feet to the top of Cedar Rock the rain was coming down heavily and the atmosphere was like pea soup and the wind was gusting. I could hear the odd limbs crashing down to the forest floor here and there in the forest. So I decided that I should bypass the summit as my alternate plans indicated and instead I pushed on the couple of miles or so to Butter Gap where the shelter waited.

Once at the shelter the rain began to come down even harder. And by that time--despite my excellent rain gear--I was pretty much soaked. So I rigged some clothesline and changed into my long underwear (dry in my backpack) and hung my wet clothes on the lines inside the shelter. Then I set up my tent because there were a couple of small leaks in the roof and with the rain coming down as hard as it was I thought that some more leaks could develop and the tent would keep me dry. It was here that I saw the only person I encountered during the two days--a day-hiker doing essentially the same loop I was doing, but without a backpack and in one day instead of two.

After that I did the regular old backpacking deal. I got my tent comfortable, put the things I might need in the night close and handy (such as my headlamp), cooked supper, cleaned up, hung my food bag and then retired to the shelter to meditate. The rain was pouring down and the air was cool. Gusts of heavy wind would routinely blast through the forest. Limbs would hit the ground nearby, a couple of them actually just in front of the shelter. I meditated, thought about things, came close to doing some writing in the journal I'd carried along but ended up not even doing that. I just sat at the front of the structure, then lay in my tent and waited for it to get extraordinarily dark.

And it did. It got so dark that all I could sense was a sheet of purest black before my eyes. The world was essentially invisible to me. I had the sleeping pad under my back, my down bag around my body, the winds roaring outside the shelter, and the rain drumming incessantly on the roof.

It was cool.

As I sometimes do when backpacking I slept off and on, waking from time to time and then dozing off. Finally I was wide awake at a tad after 6:00 am. Even then I wasn't quite ready to fix breakfast and break camp so I waited for the sun to paint the gray skies with some manner of dim light and then finally got my motor running.

After breakfast it only took a few minutes to pack up and be on my way. My pants and rain coat had dried in the night but not my cotton shirt (stupid of me to wear a cotton shirt, but there you go). So I just wore my long underwear top on the final leg of the trip.

As near as I could tell from my map it was somewhere between 3.5 and 4 miles back to the fish hatchery. And almost all downhill. So I knew the miles would vanish, even carrying my backpack. Just past the shelter the Art Loeb Trail intersects with the Butter Gap Trail and I took that back down, intersecting once more the Cat Gap Trail that took me the final half mile or so.

Since it was raining very heavily off and on I had opted to leave my camera stored safe and dry in my backpack. Thus, from the shelter and on to the truck all I had to record the journey was my GoPro camera which I had strapped to my chest.

Despite how steep and slick parts of the trail was on the way out, I made very good time. Even stopping occasionally to view and make video of waterfalls along the way (there are a lot of waterfalls on that stretch of trail) I made extremely good time. By 10:00 am I was back at my truck and storing my backpack and camera gear.

Since the fish hatchery was locked up tight--even the rest rooms--I drove to the single toilet that was unlocked in the entire area at the Sycamore Flats Picnic Area and washed up and changed into clean, dry clothes that I had brought with me. When you've been backpacking in heavy rain and are that wet, there's nothing better than changing into clean, dry clothes and shoes.

After that I killed an hour just walking around, thinking, and then ate at a nearby restaurant that I like and drove back home.

It was a good trip.

The first bridge near the fish hatchery parking lot.

There are a LOT of stream crossings on the web of trails I took. Some have foot bridges. Some do not.

This dead tree had recently fallen across this campsite. I was tired and used the dead tree as a seat to catch my breath after several miles of uninterrupted hiking.

The Butter Gap Shelter. It's in poor repair and needs some fixing up. But it was still a hell of a lot better and drier than pitching my tent in heavy rain and howling winds on a mountaintop.

My tent and stuff inside the shelter.

My truck, waiting safely for me at the end of the trip.

Two days condensed into ten minutes.

Deadfall!

Whenever I talk to people who do not hike and who never backpack they almost always ask me if I'm scared of bears or coyotes or some other horrible animal that will attack me in the night and kill me. And the answer is always, "no".

The odds of being attacked by an animal are slim. Almost to the point of being able to statistically dismiss even the dimmest of possibilities where such things are concerned. Yes, I take certain precautions against even such an outside occurrence by not cooking in the same spot where I'm going to sleep; never taking any food into my tent--not even a snack; and hanging all of my food and heavily scented things (like toothpaste) from a sack high in a tree before I prepare for bed.

But there are a few things that I do worry about when I go backpacking alone. First and foremost is the possibility of being attacked by a human. This does happen to hikers and backpackers and almost always when they are hiking or camping overnight near a trail/road intersection. The kind of person who is going to do such a thing as victimize a backpacker is a lazy sack of shit and will only walk a short distance. Thus, I always try to camp at least several miles from the nearest road.

Then there's lightning. Lightning does kill people. You don't have to be hiking to be killed by lightning, but when you're outside, the great, gray dome of stormy weather overhead can be a threat. Whenever I hear thunder I know the possibility of a lightning strike is there and so I mitigate them by doing my best to stay away from high ground (such as summits) during an electrical storm. I will go down into a cove or gap and wait it out if I can (additionally being sure not to hunker down near a tall tree).

And that brings me to the one thing that I do actively worry about when I backpack. And that thing is deadfall.

When you're in a forest a respectable percentage of the trees are dead, dying, or growing in a place where a stiff gust of wind or saturation by water of the loose soil can bring it down. If you happen to be camped under such a tree it can fall over on you, or it can lose a stout limb overhead. And then it's curtains for you if you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The possibility of such a thing is rare, but it is one of the concerns that I seriously take when I am picking out a spot to pitch my tent before nightfall.

On this trip into the Pisgah National Forest I was travelling in mainly heavy rain, and during brief periods of gusty wind as bits of the front passed through. I saw limbs falling, and at one point in the night I heard a very large tree give up the ghost somewhere in the woods and hit the earth. Later, on my way out of Butter Gap I saw what was probably the tree I heard as it fell. It wasn't far from the shelter I used and it had fallen across the trail.

But even that--my main concern when I backpack--is less than the odds of being involved in an automobile accident on my way to or from a trip to the forest.

This tree had very recently fallen at an established campsite along the Cat Gap Loop Trail. Anyone under it would have been crushed like a slug.

I encountered a ridiculous amount of recent deadfall on this trip.

Cautionary information.

Backpacking in Torrential Rain.

I had set aside two days to take a backpacking trip in western North Carolina. After thinking about my options I decided on a loop from the fish hatchery near Looking Glass Rock that would use the Cat Gap Trail to take me past John Rock, near Cedar Rock Mountain, then to the Art Loeb Trail, after which I'd intersect and hike the Butter Gap Trail, meeting again with the Cat Gap Trail and back to the Hatchery.

The forecast called for heavy rain but I decided to go anyway, mainly because I knew that it would make the likelihood of finding some solitude that much more likely. And that is, in fact, what happened. I saw only one other person on the trail for the two days--a day-hiker who passed by the Butter Gap shelter where I spent the night.

I'll post details about the hike later. It has been a while since I've carried a 45-pound backpack over rugged terrain and my muscles are complaining. More after a night's rest.

The point where I caught the Art Loeb Trail. I really appreciate the well-signed trails of the Pisgah National Forest.

Initially I had planned to camp out on the summit of Cedar Rock Mountain. But I had told my wife that if the weather was too horrible (it was) then I would bypass Cedar Rock and head over to the Butter Gap shelter and stay there. It proved to be a wise decision.

Since the old shelter has seen better days, I decided to pitch my tent inside it to avoid the leaks from the decaying roof. This worked out well. If anyone else had arrived I could always take the tent down, but I suspected that wouldn't happen due to the incessant heavy rain.

Accidental selfie. I had set the camera up for self-timed shots, then realized I had forgotten my mini-tripod and put it down on my camera bag. Whereupon it went off, catching this photo. Pretty cool!

This was the second day toward the end of the hike. Cedar Rock Falls. I was so tired at this point that I decided to just take some GoPro video footage and leave my camera in my backpack. I really was just too tired to dig my camera out.

How's This for a Pitch?

"Here's the plan! We get to the Moon, see? And then we make a handful of visits, right?"

"Yeah. And then what? We build bases? Research stations? Colonies, even?"

"No. Then we never come back. Not ever."

"And then we never come back. Not ever! That's the ticket! Yeh."

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp

I watch a fair amount of older films. Mainly because I am not impressed with the modern films that I do manage to see. With the vast wealth of older movies out there I could just watch those for decades and never miss not seeing any new cinema.

Last night I watched a film that has been on my to-see list for a very, very long time. It's a UK film called THE LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL BLIMP. Now, some sources that I had researched refer to the movie as either the best or one of the best British movies of all time. Having now seen it and digested the experience it certainly is not the best British film I've ever seen (much less of all time). What I can say is that I enjoyed it immensely and it may actually rise in my estimation as time passes.

One thing that I came away with from watching the movie was that it is very strange. Almost a weird film. It begins as what I could only term as a farce--dialog and situation almost slapstick in some respects and with humor that spans from low-brow goofiness to almost Wilde-like.

At the end of this initial episode we are introduced to an old general (Clive Candy, portrayed by Roger Livesy) who is the principle character of the movie--and then are reintroduced to him in flashback as a young officer in London on leave from the Boer War some decades earlier.

COLONEL BLIMP was filmed in 1943 and was meant as a patriotic film for the public during the Battle of Britain when London was being regularly bombed by the German Luftwaffe. As a bit of gaudy nationalism is it effective and obvious without being terribly offensive in that respect.

On the other hand it is an excellent biography of a fictional character who could very well have been one of the old guard officers who has found himself made obsolete by a new form of warfare and against a modern opponent who is altogether more monstrous than anything previously encountered (the Nazis). The movie focuses on that career and on the strange happenstance of a friendship that arises between the British officer and a German officer--the friendship that carriers over for decades, though they mostly find themselves on opposing sides.

And then there is, of course, the love story. Deborah Kerr was--I think--only 22 or so when she made this film, and I was struck by her beauty. I don't recall seeing her act at this age since my exposure to her were in films made in the 1950s and 1960s. In this movie she was heart-stoppingly gorgeous. And another sub-text of the story is that Livesy's Clive Candy only realizes that he loves Edith Hunter (Kerr) after he has relinquished her to his German friend Theo before he understands that he has fallen in love with her. By that time it is too late, and so he ends up searching thereafter for a woman to match her.

For her part, Kerr plays three different roles in the movie--Edith Hunter and two other women that Candy sees as matching her in beauty and personality as the film progresses.

Livesy pretty much overwhelms the movie with his performance as Clive Candy. First as the headstrong young officer, and later as the career soldier moving up the ladder until he is a major-general. Although he was in his 30s when he made the film--and his youth and athleticism are evident in the sections in which Candy is young--he also makes you believe the parts of the film that portray him as first a mature, and then an aged general.

I don't recall ever seeing Livesy in any US films, but his voice stood out the second I heard it in the opening moments of COLONEL BLIMP. So I've obviously seen him in British movies I've watched when I was a kid, but I couldn't recall his face. However, that voice immediately reminded me that I'd seen at least some of his movies when I was much younger. Once you hear him speak you can't forget his voice.

I was impressed enough with the movie that I'll watch it again. But to my way of thinking it certainly is not the finest British movie I have ever seen. I don't know why anyone would tag any movie with that label. But it is a great feature with an effective script, clever direction, and wonderful performances.

Livesy as the young officer version of Clive Candy.

Livesy as the aged Major-General. The makeup was excellent, but even Livesy's speech patterns and body movements displayed those of an old man.

Deborah Kerr as Edith Hunter. I think she was 22 years old when she made this movie and was absolutely gorgeous. I had previously seen her in movies like From Here to Eternity and The Innocents and had not been so impressed with her beauty.

This is what passed as the trailer for the restored version of the film. It demonstrates two of the principle actors Roger Livesey and Anton Walbrook. One can also note the gorgeous color of the film, the striking camera work, and an overwhelmingly excellent soundtrack.

Remember!

In 2020 in the Presidential election it will be The Great Bolo versus Brute Bernard! Which way will you vote, America?! In whose beefy paws will you place the fate of the USA?!

Choose wisely!

On one side, The Great Bolo!

On the other, Brute Bernard!

Remember...the US Presidential election, like rasslin', is REAL! Don't be fooled! Get out and cheer for the good guy! And recollect to vote, dammit!

Votin' is for reals, people.

Hey! Conspiracy Morons!

Those lines of water vapor you see high in the atmosphere are called contrails. They are not called "chemtrails". They are, however, made up of chemicals, mainly condensed water vapor. Yes, my moronic "chemtrail" fellow citizens, water is a chemical compound. It consists of two atoms of hydrogen bonded to one atom of oxygen. Life on Earth can't exist without it.

Water is an amazing substance. Here on Earth it exists at what we call the triple-point. That is, at the temperature ranges and atmospheric density on our planet, H2O can exist as a gas (water vapor), a solid (ice) and a liquid (water).

For you morons, here is what you see when you look up into the sky and perceive your stupid, fucking "chemtrails": you are seeing the contrails produced by cooler, moisture-laden air (that would be water vapor--please pay attention, you fucking morons) flowing over and through jet engines that produce heat and cause the water vapor to condense into first tiny droplets of liquid water and then ice crystals. Both the condensed droplets and the ice crystals are very tiny and very light and they tend to remain suspended in the atmosphere for extended periods of time at the extreme heights at which they are formed.

Eventually, winds will disperse these elongated contrails, and sometimes a weather front will emerge and engulf them. But they are not trails of poisonous chemicals created by dastardly super-villains sitting in subterranean lairs or in their billionaire penthouses in New York, Berlin, and Moscow.

Contrails have been around since the first meteors and asteroids began to pelt the surface after the atmosphere formed with high levels of water vapor. An incoming meteor will also create a contrail. No evil scientists needed. Humans began to create contrails with the invention of the first high-flying aircraft. There were contrails reported over the battlefields of Europe during the First World War. Fighter craft such as the Fokker DVII could climb to 20,000 feet (6100 meters) and they certainly left contrails under the right conditions. While military engineers were involved in creating the Fokker DVII (and other aircraft) they certainly were not trying to control the minds of human beings through the application of some wily chemical brew.

It's water vapor, you fucking morons.

"But there are so MANY of them, Mr. Smith! Explain that!! Gotcha!"

Alas, you stupid fuckheads, you again show your ignorance and display the fact that where your brains are supposed to be there is, instead, a vile wad of shit.

On most days in the USA there are close to 90,000 flights, a huge portion of them being aircraft with large and powerful jet engines flying at high altitude. Those warm surfaces on (and in) those engines encounter otherwise invisible water vapor (the gas I mentioned earlier) and transform it into airborne streams of liquid water droplets and then into tiny ice crystals which form the human-caused equivalent of skinny cirrus clouds. And keep in mind that even propeller driven aircraft create contrails. You don't have to fly to 30,000+ feet to create a contrail.

So, instead of poisoning your already weak minds with bullshit delivered via websites about comic book conspiracy theories, read some science tracts my dumbass "chemtrail" numbskull citizens. It's bad enough that I have to share the Earth with more than seven billion humans. I'm supposed to deal with fucking morons who don't understand basic chemistry and the simplest of physics?!

Contrails created by B17 Flying Fortresses during World War II. Multiple contrails for the bombers with four engines, and single contrails for their fighter escorts.

Contrails, you dumbass "chemtrail" shit-for-brains! Water! Look it up! Understand its properties. Read some basic science you fucking morons.

My Rabbi of Rock (and Voice of Reason).

My pal Bill Gronroos died sometime over the past week. We're not sure of the exact date, but I suspect it happened last Saturday.

I normally hear from Bill every couple of days. So it was unusual for four days to pass without so much as a brief e-note from him. And—as with so many modern US citizens—this is how I stayed in touch with him. When I hadn’t heard from him I asked if any other people had spoken to or visited him and this cascaded into a request from a relative for the police to visit his house and they found that he had died.

Bill was not a shut-in by any means, but he did live alone. He was a gregarious sort who enjoyed the company of other people, but he lived by himself as he had since his family had died one by one. He had an on-again off-again relationship with a girlfriend who finally left him some years ago and broke his heart. But that was a while back. Since then he had the company of various friends and cousins, an aunt, and a host of local pals. His adopted dog, Nicky, died not many weeks ago and I wonder if this small tragedy may have played a bit of havoc on his already precarious health.

My pal had all sorts of health problems, mainly resulting from his chronic obesity that had beset him as a kid and with which he dealt the rest of his life. At times he would shed a vast amount of fat, but of course it created a strain on his system. As a clerk for the United States Postal Service he got a viral infection which settled in his heart, thus ending his career there, after which he lived on disability.

There were many health scares over the years since that viral infection—some of them severe—but he always recovered. But apparently the weak ticker finally took him down.

I used to refer to Bill as “my rabbi of rock”. He had an almost supernatural knowledge of rock and pop music. Personalities, dates, writers, producers, agents, earnings, chart positions, tour dates—you name it. Whenever I had a question about any kind of 20^th Century pop music, Bill could answer it. Last week I asked him the title of a Statler Brothers song giving him only vague hints and he reminded me that the tune was “This Haunted Old House”.

I met Bill through a shared love of comic books when I moved to Brunswick Georgia in 1975 after graduating high school. He came into my dad’s shop to sell some old comics that he had from his childhood. From there we struck up a friendship that lasted to his death.

When I met Bill he was a DJ on a local radio station in town. His love of rock music had dictated that he would be a musician and he was an exceptionally talented guitarist. I only saw him perform once at an oldies show in town and was amazed at his proficiency, nailing Bill Haley tunes perfectly. But his career as a musician could never earn him a living, even though he did have a regional comedy hit some years back that did make him some money for a while until the royalty checks dried up and people mainly forgot his song “You Don’t Steal Hogs in McIntosh County”. Bill thought that pigs were an exceptionally funny topic and from a local news item he turned the event into a humorous song that enough southerners liked to make it a small hit.

Never happy with the radio business, Bill also fell into another career path that dropped into his lap. Millions of people heard Bill’s golden voice and never knew his name. During the last ten years or so of the F.W. Woolworth Company’s existence, Bill was the official voice of Woolworth’s. If you walked into one of their stores and heard the recorded ad on their P.A. system, that was Bill. A Woolworth’s executive while driving down the Interstate had tuned in and heard Bill on the radio. Impressed with his vocals, he took the exit, found out where the radio station was and asked Bill if he’d be interested in the job as Woolworth’s voice. The company eventually even offered Bill an executive position in New York City, but after a visit to the offices there he decided against it, figuring he’d reached his high point as the in-store pitch man for the company.

Over the years, Bill had many opportunities to leave the horrible town of Brunswick, Georgia behind, but he never took any of them. For some reason that I could never fathom, he was hooked permanently into the polluted dust of that trash village and would not leave it, except for brief excursions. Now and again Carole and I would invite him to visit us, to join us on camping trips, or to take him canoeing and tubing down clear crystal rivers in Florida. We enjoyed his company. Easily, far and away, he was one of the funniest people I ever knew.

That’s the way it is with people like Bill. Life had not often been good to him, not even in his childhood. Battered, bruised, all but broken by the world, guys like Bill can turn one of two ways—bitter and angry, or sadly sweet and funny. Bill’s demeanor led him down the latter path. And I am glad for that, and happy for the company he provided over the years.

We’ll miss him terribly.

My pal, Bill Gronroos.

Ironically, this was the last pop tune Bill helped me recall. A bit of sad nostalgia for which the Statler Brothers are famous.

Tolerance Level Exceeded.

There are two specific things I can no longer tolerate on any level or for any reason.

The first is racism. That shit is insane, and anyone who obsesses over the differences in skin color or ethnicity is beyond crazy. I don't put up with that crap anymore, no matter who they are. I no longer tolerate it when it comes from former friends or from relatives, or from acquaintances. 

The second thing is from a relatively new type of loony toon and they identify themselves with an obsession they have with something they call "chemtrails". If you bring it up, I know beyond any shadow of a doubt that you are a complete and total idiot. I have two words for you if you start talking about your belief in "chemtrails" and those two words are "FUCK YOU"!

That is all for today.

Those morons said "chemtrails", Gort! Disintegrate them now!