Author Archives: Bob Evans

Photos by the Water

Yesterday I took the day off from the day-job and spent a little time down at the harbor. Normally one the weekends I’m taking photos at the San Diego Zoo but with the pandemic we haven’t been making our trips there every Sunday. So to get in a little more photography I decided to see what I could shoot from shore.

 This is a replica of the San Salvador the first European Ship to sail into our harbor.

 

 

 

I particularly like this photo of a USCG helo in flight.

 

 

 

Someone left the collection of flowers and I thought they looked fantastic.

 

 

 

The Nautical Museum has added an American Submarine to their collection.

 

 

 

Children played in the Fountain Park.

 

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No, The NAZIs Were NOT Racist Commies

Sometime ago a friend sent me a link to a YouTube Video expounding on the tired, worn, and erroneous idea that NAZIs were actually leftwing with the conclusion that they were in the end the same as Communists just also racists.

That video was either deliberately or unintentionally deceptive. It pulled quotes from Mein Kompf out of context, relied heavily on ideology from the Ernst Rohm wing of the NAZI party a wing that was murdered out of existence during the Night of Long Knives and the video begged the question by repeatedly citing a book whose entire focus was that NAZIs were of the left.

There has been considerable effort by some on the right to popularize the idea that Fascism is of the left just as from the 1030s through the 1070s, and perhaps beyond, to portray Stalinism as a thing of the right with terms like ‘Red Facism.’ Both camps are desperately trying to disassociate themselves with their own murderous extremes but this is nothing but spin.

If you want an excellent argument why the NAZIs weren’t Socialists here’s a video for you.

 

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Understanding Your Material

It’s interesting and instructive to compare two bits of film, though one is television, and their approach towards the military and their depictions of military men.

In Them! military characters confront giant ants created by mutation induced from the first atomic explosions. It is simply amazing to see the nuanced actions that are correctly capture in their bearing, their methods, and in their characters. One excellent example is when attacking a nest in the open desert and they are using bazookas as part of their assault. When you load that WWII weapon there is actually a wire lead that goes from the round to a terminal on the firing tube. I know this because I’ve watched training films from the war on how to properly load and fire the weapons. The characters in the movie correctly follow the weapon system’s procedure.

Nearly 50 years later in the iconic television series Buffy The Vampire Slayer the titular character Buffy is working with an elite special forces unit hunting down demons and monster in her hometown. When these best of the best warriors are briefed by a scientist on their next target thy have no questions for her and are silently dedicated to the mission and following orders. Buffy is the outsider and non-conformist with a string of questions and concerns.

This scene entirely misses the boat about what it means to be an elite warrior in U.S. service. These men are smart and those smarts are part of why they are elites. It is simplistic and reductive to think of special forces personnel as silent followers of orders.

The difference between the two productions likely comes down to the fact that in the 1950s nearly everyone knew someone who served and that close association informed the writing and production choices. For Hollywood of the late 90s and early 2000s people will actual services records in the production pipeline are likely to be rare to non-existent. Production companies get their writers and producers and directors from college and industry training with very few coming to film production later in life with the sort of life experiences that could help avoid these sorts of mistakes. It is also unlikely that anyone in the production system knows or knew anyone that served is such a capacity. All of us lead lives that are far too insular. Having veterans among the staff and having veterans review the material to help assure accuracy would be baby steps to getting such characters correct.

And the same is true for characters beyond those with military service. It is true for characters of religion, nationality, or ethnicity.

 

Representation matters.

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Into the Memory Hole

The polls, and these are a few really high-quality ones, have Trump behind Biden in all the battleground states and tied in both Georgia and Texas. Now as a smuggler once said, “Don’t get cocky, kid!” but with a scant few weekends left until the election things are looking not only for team Trump but the GOP control of the Senate as well.

Should Trump go down in the inglorious defeat he so richly deserves taking the GOP Senate with him I fully expect that all of the Republican’s explicit and complicit support that extended to him will be shoved past the event horizon of their memory hole. There will be a herculean effort to portray themselves as people who never actually supported their party leader. This will be particularly acute among the ‘anti-anti-Trumpers.’ That constellation of politicians, pundits, and commenters who have never, or at least very rarely, voiced direct support for Trump but who have been vigorous in their zeal to attack anyone who does criticize Trump and his administration. Their silence on this administration’s corruption, malfeasance, abuse of office, and its entire lack of dignity shall be forgotten as they turn their fire upon the following Democratic administration.

We can’t stop them from doing this but we can remember and point out that their silence during these dark times exposed the hypocrisy of their ‘principals’ as nothing more than garden variety self-interest and unworthy of any respect.

Also, into that memory hole will follow any sense of responsibility for the rise of Trump. Trump did not fall out of the sky light a bolt of lightning to take the nomination and control of the GOP. The ground was well tilled and fertilized ahead of his arrival making his ascendancy assured. In my search for conservative leaning podcasts to add to my regular rotation I have found two that can listen to with anything approaching regularity, The Bulwark Podcast and The Dispatch. Both come from a conservative approach that is basically hostile to Trump but have a significant difference in their viewpoints. The Bulwark appears to be grappling with how the GOP made it possible for Trump to rise within their party while The Dispatch seems to treat his existence as a ‘black swan’ event and appears to think that once Trump is gone from the stage they can simply return to the party’s previous position.

The Bulwark is at least trying to engage with reality while the people at The Dispatch are lost in their delusion.

 

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The Turbulence From a Death

As many of you know a dear friend of 40 years died last week from COVID-19. (Wear your damn masks! Wash your Damned hands! And stay home as much as you can!) I wish I did not have so much experience with the death of friends and loved ones. Having that grim specter intrude into your life at a young age leaved emotional trauma that never leaves and forever alters you.

But even with all my experience a death remains an event that sends your emotions spiraling are odd and inconsistent times.

There are moments where the enormity of the event just pushes everything else aside and the realizing that it is all real, it is not some nightmare and that your dear friend is truly gone, pushes all other thoughts aside leaving only the grief and the sorrow.

There are moments when you are reminded of the challenges others will now face, those who depended upon him, whose lives were not only emotional but financially intertwined and you fear and apprehensive on their behalf.

There are the trivial and small concerns that sometimes haunt your thoughts, how to properly and with respect deal with his absence when social events like role play gaming resumes.

And there are the brief times when it is not at the front of your mind and prompts a guilt that stalks your mood.

Life is not just.

Life is not unjust.

Life and Death simply are.

 

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Silly Foreign Fun: T-34

A few of weeks ago I was watching one of my favorite YouTube shows where visual effects artists watch, react, and critique visual effects from various films and television shows. During that episode that had a couple of sequences from recent Russian films one of which was T-34 a World War II story about a Russian tank crew.

The story takes place in two period, the first during the German invasion of the Soviet Union as the NAZI forces approach Moscow when our lead character Ivushkin is part of a desperate effort to blunt the threat to his county. The second and majority of the film take place four years later when Ivushkin and others escape a POW/Concentration camp, thing seem a little mixed up in the movie but it is not one you’d watch for any form of historical accuracy, with a repaired T-34 tank and half a dozen rounds of ammunition making a desperate drive for freedom.

Sadly, the edition available on Amazon Prime is dubbed and there is no Russian language version for streaming. While the voice actors did what they could I and my sweetie-wife prefer subtitled movies to dubbed ones. She likes listening to the foreign languages and I find that the vocal performances tend to be better.

There are quite a few technical errors in the movie but this is not the sort of story where you want gritty, depressing realism. It is a story of heroism against an evil foe. (Set aside that the Soviet unions murdered millions this is their mythology and everyone is the hero of their own myths.) The use of elaborate visual effects through the tank battle sequences that follow fired rounds in exaggerated slow motions provided a lot of engaging moments.

The film was a smashing success at the Russian box office and it is easy to see why. The stars are engaging, the story never really pauses, and it celebrates a heroism that everyone can imagine. This is a perfect streaming choice of a Saturday matinee.

 

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In Memoriam

On June 24th, 2020, COVID-19 killed my friend of 40 years, Craig Anderson.

He was a quirky, generous, geek friend and there is no amount of words I can use to capture his spirit or our loss. I will share a couple of stories here that capture the essential Craig and illuminate just briefly why he will be so missed.

 

Flightiness

Craig was gifted a ’66 Ford Mustang and he love driving fast. One evening in the mid-80s I rode with him late at night as he sped along Highway 8. It must have been nearly midnight or so because the freeway was pretty much deserted and Craig was doing nearly ninety miles per hour. (Speed limits at the time were supposedly 55 MPH.0

I looked across Craig as he drove through his driver’s side window and spotted a California Highway Patrol car exited Highway 8 taking a ramp along a north-bound freeway. Apparently the CHPie had more important matters to attend to and turned his car’s spotlight towards us, playing the beam back and forth across the driver’s side.

Befuddled, Craig asked “Why’s he doing that?”

“He wants you to slow down,” I explained.

“Oh.” And  Craig, at least for a while reduced speed.

 

Humor

I shall not recount any of the nearly endless terrible puns that Craig so loved. He could always be counted upon to find a pun that was truly terrible and rarely actually funny but I do have an example of how humor infused his life.

In the early 80s Craig was struck with testicular cancer. He went into the hospital and they removed one testicle and then proceeded to crock open his chest because they had spotted a shadow on his lungs. Luckily that was not more cancer but Craig endured weeks in the hospital for treatment and recovery. I was unemployed and home when the one-testicled Craig returned to the apartment. He opened the door, dropped his bag, waved, and in a terribly high-pitched falsetto said, “Hi, Bob!”

 

Generosity

In the early 90s I shared a house with Craig and another housemate Bear. (Truly that nickname is one of the most apt I have ever encountered.) Bear and I were driving back to the house and I was facetiously debating him in favor of Ayn Rand and her Objectivism with its core concept that at heart all people are selfish and selfishness is in fact a virtue. (Not a philosophy I believed then or now but mere fun debating.) we entered the house Craig was sitting crossed legged in the center of the living room. I walked over to him and said that I wanted $20. Explaining that I did not need the money, there was no crucial debt or need just that I wanted it and also that this was not a loan as I would never pay it back. It would just make me happy to have an extra $20. Without a moment’s hesitation he leaned forward and staring taking his wallet say “Sure, Bob.” And Bear died in a fit of hysterical laughter. Objectivism was no match for Craig big heart and boundless generosity.

We will not see his like again.

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Retro Movie: Ms .45

Released in 1981, and I watched this film on its initial released, Ms .45is an exploitation film that is charitably about sexism in society and more accurately an excuse to watch for nearly an hour and a half of a young woman taking revenge with the aid of a semi-automatic pistol. Be warned, spoilers for the entire film abound ahead.

Thana, played by the tragically doomed Zoe Tamerlis, is young woman, mute, who works as a seamstress in the New York City’s garment district. On her way home from work she is attacked and raped in an alley, then when she gets to her apartment, she interrupts a burglar armed with a .45 caliber pistol, who also rapes her. During the assault Thana fights off her attacker and kills him. With her sanity snapped by the violations Thana dismembers her attacker’s corpse and takes his pistol. The rest of the film is following Thana around as she disposes of body parts by leaving them in various trash bins or grinding them into dog food and shooting dead men who attack her, frighten her, or make sexual advances towards her. The film culminated in a costume party thrown by her employer where Thana attends dressed as a nun and after her boss makes a sexual advance, proceeds to shoot every male in at the celebration, though momentarily confused by the man who had cross-dressed as a bride for his costume. The final scenes of Ms .45 has a wildly different context today with mass shootings now ubiquitous compared to 1981 when there were still rather rare.

Ms .45 was written and directed by Abel Ferrara and had I realized eleven years later that he also wrote and directed Bad Lieutenant I would have dissuaded by friend from selected that film as the one we were going to see. The film while attempting to have a thematic point about sexism and the treatment of women in American society lingers on the violence presented following the footsteps of other exploitation movies about crime and revenge that populated theaters of the 1970s and 1980s. Thana’s marksmanship with her pistol is never explained falling into one of Hollywood’s most beloved firearms tropes, precision shooting is easy.

On its release the film received terrible reviews but has become something of a cult favorite and has even had a high definition released of a restored print from the original negative.

Zoe Tamerlis as Thana is really quite good. Bereft of dialog and voice she fully conveys Thana’s inner life with her large and expressive eyes. Sadly, she was devoted to recreational drug use and died from it at the age of 37.

For people who enjoy the trashy sub-genre of rape and revenge films Ms .45may possibly fit your tastes but I was not moved by this movie in 1981 nor in 2020.

 

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Your Opinion Will be Meaningless

Trump’s reelection is in trouble. To be sure it is far from assured that Biden will win this contest. If fact, while it can’t be quantified, I think a major factor in Hillary Clinton’s Electoral College loss in 2016 was that so many people assumed that the election was predetermined, certain that Trump simply couldn’t win that, that those who stayed home and did not vote subtracted just enough votes from her to give the Presidency to Trump. That’s a factor I do not think will be repeating.

During the Obama Presidency conservative commentators and friends seemed to harp on an endless list of ‘scandals’ and ‘abuses’ committed by the president and his administration. (I placed them in quotes because it is my opinion many of them were simply ginned up for political purposes but I have no intention of litigating them here.)

Many of those same commenters and friends have been silent on such abuses, fraud, and corruption during the Trump presidency.

Should Biden win the White House I expect that many of those voice will suddenly find corruption and abuses to horrify them. To which I say to them:

“I do not care at all for your opinion on this. It is valueless.”

They will cloak their opinions in phrases such as ‘rule of law’ and ‘abuse of power,’ but their silence during Trump’s years make plain that their interest is not in principal but politics. They have devotion to morality, fairness, or justice but only to whatever club is convenient for them to wield against their political enemies.

 

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Weekend Movie: An American Werewolf in London

This past Saturday and friend and I re-watched An American Werewolf in London, John Landis’s 1981 groundbreaking and genre defining monster movie. It had been decades since I last watched the movie but my memory was one of it being an entertaining but flawed film and my experience this weekend confirmed that.

The story concerns David and Jack two Americans on a backpacking trip and their encounter in the north of England with a werewolf that leaves one dead and the other cursed with lycanthropy. There is a tragic romantic sub-plot with a nurse, Alex, played by genre favorite Jenny Agutter and a massive climatic sequence of the werewolf rampaging through central London to complete the movie.

An American Werewolf in London is a film that has left its mark on the horror genre and specifically on how people have dealt with and described werewolves and their transformations ever since. Both this movie and The Howling, released earlier in 1981, presented the first on-screen transformation that were not simply variations of the lap-dissolves used in previous werewolf films all the back to Universal’s The Wolf-Man in 1941. Both Rick Baker who did the special make-up effects in An American Werewolf in London and Rob Bottin for The Howlingprogressed to careers that pushed the boundaries of practical effects until the advent of digital visual effects.

An American Werewolf in London also presented the transformation from human to wolf as something terribly painful and motif that with its overuse has since become a cliché.

With a running time of 97 minutes the movie is by far too brief, and simultaneously feels leisurely in its developing romance and rushed in its head-long drive to get to the next supernatural sequence. This blinding speed short-cuts characters and their development for the sake of plot and exposition and contributes the film’s finale feeling abrupt. I distinctly remember sitting in the theater during its initial run feeling like the it needed to be more, that it was unfinished, as the credit’s scrolled across the screen.

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