fast quiet week: WotW, Isä hip

Stuff has been happening. Over the weekend, went to a party for a person in my comedy group, at which I bought a nice little sack, yay, been too long. Filled my fridge with food. Amos caused more shit, I saw a movie with EmmaFree.

The movie in question was War of the Worlds, and quite honestly, I think it might be the best movie ever made. The performances are absolutely stellar, Cruise is a sort of heinlein/hubbard übereverymensch (ever read any of hubbard's SF books? they don't actually suck that much) Spielberg visually references nearly every one of his movies - specific shots look like Schindler's List, ET, Private Ryan. I realized 20 minutes into the film that I had forgotten - he directed my REAL late 1970's favorite movie as a kid - not Star Wars, but Close Encounters. I believe the film is meant to read as a metaphor for the holocaust, with the martians as Nazis. They are never really explained, they are just there.

The birds near the end seem to me as representing freedom and democracy pecking away at a totalitarian regime. One message, which seems to reflect on life in general, not just on hard times, is "save the ones you can". The part where Cruise has to literally let his son go is poignant, human, and moving.

The ending is perfectly satisfying, though I can't help but think humanity still doesn't fucking stand a chance, there must be plenty of Martians left back on their home planet, with technology that we can't even begin to grasp, and we're on the ropes. Two years, tops, before they mount another attack, and that, as they say, will be that.

Seriously, go see it, maybe I was just stoned, but I think it's right up there with Citizen Kane, but more fun with the explosions - but way more fucking depressing in general. If this doesn't pick up a handful of Oscars, something is way wrong.

The big news of the week is I went up to Bakersfield to preside over Isä's hip replacement. His hip was wounded jumping out of a helicopter in Viet Nam (yes, he had to jump out), and the doctor at the time said "it's OK for now, but you're going to be able to replace the whole hip by the time you turn 60." At the time, he laughed that off as bullshit. Well, he turned 60 on the 9th, and had a hip put in on Wednesday.

He was freaking quite a bit about the surgery, which is really quite safe, because he had a brother die on the table for some similarly minor surgery. My purpose was mostly as a proxy for his blood children, holding his cell phone (what a symbol that is now) and the little card that says "if I'm fucked, pull the plug instead of marching me in front of the Supreme Court". I shot video onto my memory stick before and after the event.

(side note re supreme court: O'Connor? What the fuck? We need her, get Rehnquist out of there before he keels over and Baby Bush gets two!)

Surgery was done around 6 PM, and by 6 AM he was walking a few steps. That's cool.

I also met Isä's new wife, a sweet and hyperactive Philippina who loves him like crazy. She's good people.



The sucky part was that Bakersfield is a fucking armpit. I went on Tuesday, driven by Pollux, surgery Wednesday, picked up late Thursday, and Pollux brought Raggedy, so we went for a dip in the pool before heading home. I brought all my laundry, a bag that I could easily nap in, so as to use my time wisely.

I had hoped to use my time less wisely, in some sort of pursuit of inebriation and/or copulation. However, every time I saw a person even vaguely interesting, I asked them "hey, where do people who still have a pulse go for fun around here?" The reply was almost universally a blank stare, or an embarrassed mumble of "umm, downtown I guess."

Did I mention that Bakersfield is an armpit? It's an armpit. I can't even pick another body part, assholes can be pretty sexy. Maybe the crack between your big toe and second toe, but that's too small. Armpit. I would go stark fucking insane living there.

Oh, yeah, justydrink, you've got 110°? We did too, or close, anyway, but without the air conditioned sparkly casinos, giant fountains, and floods of drunken nubile people. No one goes to Bakersfield on vacation.

I wore my kilt and chrome nails the whole time. Great fun scaring the locals, and commando kilt is nice at 100°+. Rock out with my cock out.

Video Poker? Cirque du Soleil? Hell, no, I had three fast food meals, which is all anyone seems to eat there - BK, Arby's and McD for me - and walked in the swelter to a low-rent thrift store and blew $10 on a 15 volume set of delightfully cheezy "Woman Alive" books, with titles like "A Paycheck of Your Own," "The Sexual Side of Love," and "You in Your Kitchen." They now grace the ledge above my windows.

Quote from p. 26 of the pictured volume:

Even when a woman enters the essentially masculine world of business and excels in it, the mystery surrounding the opposite sex remains. A successful career woman has been known to be awed by the uncanny wisdom of an electrician. She may consider her ability to be a mere fluke, but his is an intrinsic part of the great, mysterious masculine heritage that is forever closed to her. He cannot bear a child, but she cannot fix a faulty lamp, repair the toaster she uses every morning, or comprehend the workings of the iron she presses her husband's shirts with. She has never been called upon to understand these things; she doubts whether she really could, even if they were carefully explained to her. The ability to understand how things work, and to fix them when they go wrong - all of this is part of the male mystique. It is also part of the "don't bother your pretty little head about it" attitude, which tends, unfortunately, to widen the gap between men and women. Perhaps, too, it is inevitable, because for a woman, any man doing a job - be it management, engineering, medicine, farming, truck driving, journalism, the law, or whatever - automatically assumes some of the mystery and power she associated with her father when she was a child.