The Bermuda Depths

Some things from your childhood stay with you a long, long time.  For me, one of those things was a made for TV movie called "The Bermuda Depths."

Way back in January 27, 1978 there came a made for TV movie called "The Bermuda Depths".  It was only shown once on TV but it was one of those events in my childhood that I remember even to this day.  I remember watching this movie, sitting spellbound in front of the old console Zenith TV and I remember feeling really, really sad after the movie was over.

"The Bermuda Depths" was a once in a lifetime event and if you missed it as a kid, you missed it and everyone was telling you about it the next day at school.  This was back before VCRs, before DVRs, before the Internet so you couldn't go rent this movie, you couldn't get on a computer and look it up and three months after it aired you couldn't go to a store and buy a copy of it.  Once it played and once it was over it was basically gone forever ... you either saw it or you didn't.  Those who saw it remember it to this day, so my experience has told me.

Check out some of the actors ...

Carl Weathers.  

Connie Sellecca.  

Burl Ives!  

It was Connie Sellecca's first TV appearance and if you were an 8 year old like I was ... whooooo, mama!  

We all know Carl Weathers as "the brother from Rocky" and later as "Action Jackson" and he faced down The Predator in a jungle down in South America.  

"I'm on a boat."

Carl Weathers has always been a bad ass of an actor, at least in my humble opinion.  If anyone can rock the "I've got a Gilligan hat, a speedo and a scoped bazooka with a harpoon loaded in it and I'm about to kick kaiju turtle ass" look, it's my main man Carl Weathers.

Burl Ives?  

He was "Sam the Snowman" in the Rankin Bass "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" children's holiday specials that we grew up loving so much.

Rankin Bass ... The company that brought us the animated "Hobbit" cartoon?  Remember that other unforgettable childhood event?  "The Hobbit" came along late in the 1970's when Dungeons and Dragons was just starting to get cool but I digress ... 

Rankin Bass got with Tsuburaya Productions who was famous for doing the special effects for "Ultraman" (another show I used to get up at 6am every Saturday morning in the '70's and watch on Ted Turner's  SuperStation (WTCG later renamed WTBS).

"The Bermuda Depths" came on only once, as far as I know, and those of us who watched it would always remember it ... for years ... for decades ... afterwards.

Here's a synopsis from IMDB

"Traumatized, orphaned college dropout Magnus Dens returns to Bermuda to find the cause of his father's mysterious death years before. At the Bermuda Biological Station, he finds Eric and Dr. Paulis, friends and colleagues of his late father, and joins them on a quest for gigantic sea creatures. He also meets Jennie Haniver, a mysterious young woman who was once his only childhood friend. Dr. Paulis' housekeeper, an island local, warns Magnus that Jennie is dangerous. The beautiful but vain young woman had sold her soul with the Devil centuries before and lives forever young deep in the waters of the Devil's Triangle (a.k.a. Bermuda Triangle). Nobody heeds the folklore and the researchers trap the giant sea turtle, setting the stage for a deadly confrontation with both minions of the Devil."

Here's a nice amateur review of the movie from Cinema Apocalypse.

Basically "The Bermuda Depths" is a cheap horror / thriller, made for TV but like I said, those of us who, as kids, tuned in and watched it ... well, we never forgot it.  "The Bermuda Depths" isn't just a cheap horror / thriller ... it's a supernatural love story that will break your heart (it did mine when I was a child).  There are many things that I remember about this movie but what I think I remember the most is the theme music.  It had this really sad song called "Jenny" that played in the background and that song stuck in my mind for years afterwards.

Decades after I saw the movie on TV, I keep running into people who remember the movie but never remember the name.  It was like one of those childhood events where, if you weren't there you missed it and that was that.  It took me decades to track down the information on the movie (thank you, Internet) and I finally got a copy of the movie on DVD (TV quality) off Ebay about a decade ago.

What's been neat is how many people I run into that, when we discuss growing up in the 1970's that "the monster turtle movie on TV" always seems to come up in conversation.

If you get a chance to watch this give it some slack ... the FX are done by the same people who did "Ultraman" so the monster / miniature sequences are about on par with a 1970's Godzilla film ... other than that it's a pretty good romp and, like I said, if you were 8 years old when you saw this (like I was), it's something that will stay with you for a long time afterwards ... decades.

Timothy Truman's "Scout" comic series

“Scout” is probably one of my all-time favorite series of comic books, written by artist and guitarist Timothy Truman and published by the stinky hippy managed, ill-fated Eclipse Comics which was itself an independent bastion during the “Direct Distributing” years taking on the likes of Marvel and DC.  “Scout” debuted back in September of 1985 and at that time I was just sixteen and a junior in high school.  Now, when it comes to comic books I’m not big on super heroes … I was far less a “Superman” kind of comic book fan than I was a fan of comics like “The Unknown Soldier”, “Sergeant Rock”, “The Losers”, “Weird War Tales” and the various horror comics.  Comics and I parted ways for a while, several years in fact, and when we met back up my interest in comics had changed considerably.

“Scout” piqued my interest because it had relevant issues in a time when those issues were still both relevant and a possible outcome to (then) current events.  I know that sounds kind of like a cop-out but “Scout” hit hard and it hit true, for the time that it came out swinging.  The series took place in the (then) year of 1999 in a story setting where the United States had been knocked far down the world political power ladder.  America was being punished for years of ecological waste with heavy sanctions levied against it by the other countries of the world (kind of like Germany was punished at the end of World War I).  Despite all the liberal guilt based background, the actual story followed the spiritual quest of a Native American Apache Indian by the name of Emmanuel Santana (who was actually named for Carlos Santana, the musician, which Truman was friends with).  

Santana was an ex-US Army Ranger on a spiritual mission to destroy several mythical monsters of Native American folklore that had come to plague the land.  These monsters could take on human form and thus infiltrate various power structures of our once great country.  This particular quest comprised the first seven issues of the series, after that, the series got pretty serious up until the 24^th issue which ended the first series.  Along the way, Santana is reunited with an ex-lover, Rosanna Winter (also a US Army Ranger who, along with her psycho Ranger teammate Raymond, is tasked with hunting down Santana).  Santana also meets up with Beau Le Duke (a gun toting, beer guzzling, bearded real man’s man), Monday the Eliminator (who is a mostly immortal warrior created back in the time of the Greeks) and a mercenary group called “The Swords of Texas.” 

(Rosanna Winter would have her own off-shoot series, four issues, in the “New America” collection and “The Swords of Texas” got their own four issue mini-series as well to bridge the gap between the first series of “Scout” and the second series.)

  

“Scout” was gritty from the start, and it had a rough, shaky start to be sure.  When I first read it I noticed that it had that kind of Pepe Moreno “Rebel” feel to it (and I’ll discuss Moreno’s “Rebel” and “Generation X” in followup postings).  Originally published bi-monthly, “Scout” was later announced to being rescheduled as a monthly series.  “Scout” had a lot of growing pains and I was there for its birth as well as its whole life run.  “Scout”, in one form or another, was published from the fall of 1985 to the summer of 1989 and it was an epic run for a comic.  Equipment and hardware in the series were period specific and easily recognizable to anyone who followed pop culture action shows or movies … Monday the Eliminator preferred to carry a Franchi SPAS-12 shotgun (the iconic shotgun of the 1980s) and later had a cybernetic eye implanted so he could chip into a 5.56mm “smartgun” (itself a heavily modified M60). 

Emanuel Santana carried an Israeli made 9mm Uzi submachinegun (the iconic SMG of the 1980’s) and in the first few issues a Automag .44 caliber automatic magnum (much like Clint Eastwood’s character “Dirty Harry” used in the movie “Sudden Impact”).  Later a Colt .357 Python magnum revolver with a ribbed barrel was included and Scout carried a 5.56mm Colt M16, a H&K CAWS automatic 12 gauge combat shotgun, a 7.62mm FN FAL battle rifle, hand grenades, knives and later in the series, a British made .303 Lee Enfield bolt action rifle of WW2 origin.  Emanuel Santana’s outfit was a mixture of pop culture (a leather jacket with an American flag on the back), military surplus (his duty belt, holsters, and fanny packs) and traditional tribal Native American fashion (bandannas, war paint, groin cloth and boots).  He rode a Harley Davidson Sportster … that ever so ridiculous icon of 1980’s faux motorcycling because back then (and to a lesser extent today) Harleys were considered “cool” and “tough” even if they could live up to neither aspect of their pop culture reputation.

What made the comic interesting besides the ingredients that went into the comic itself was the fact that not only was Timothy Truman a musician but he put a lot of music into his comic as well.  One of the characters that Santana encounters is called “Guitar Man” and it is “Guitar Man” who plays his Fender Stratocaster loudly while the enemy base is burning around him.  “Guitar Man” always seemed to be the embodiment of Jimi Hendrix, at least to me; that’s the vibe that I got from that character.   Missy, a woman that Santana rescues early in the series, goes on to become a pop star with her own band.  In this way, the comic had that kind of “Streets of Fire” feel to it.  In issue number 16, Truman even included a flexi-disc record that you could play on your record player (some of you won’t know what that is) … a two song soundtrack for the comic itself.   

After a brief respite from the comic, Timothy Truman and his band “The Dixie Pistols” cut a vinyl record of blues rock that was inspired by the comic itself, another first and this time a LP based soundtrack to a comic book.   

The record included a mini-comic detailing some of the events after the first 24 issue “Scout” series concluded, namely the marriage of Santana.  Santana found a wife, was married, had two sons, his wife died, and he went back to traveling the devastated America with his sons.  The mini-comic paved the way for the introduction of the second full length series and sequel to the first; “Scout: War Shaman”.   

That series lasted sixteen issues and ended with the death of Emanuel Santana.

During this time, two other “Scout” series were produced; “New America” which chronicled Rosa Winter’s violent rise to American political power and “The Swords of Texas” which told the story of the mercenary group that had played a big part in helping Emanuel Santana.

There was even a technical manual / handbook published which detailed and gave the specs for all of the equipment that Scout and his friends used in the series as well as profiles, maps, etc.  One of the neater vehicles introduced in the series was the Israeli giant mecha called "Big Moishe".

“Scout” was one of those iconic comics that, if you got onboard with the first issue and managed to hang on until the end then it was an epic ride and one of those kind of artistic events that you “had to be there for” otherwise you just couldn’t really get the feel of what it was like to have been part of it.  Today, finding all of the issues let alone the flexi-disc and the vinyl album by The Dixie Pistols would be a real grail quest.  I’m glad that I’ve got all of my original stuff and every few years I sit down and revisit Emanuel Santana’s journey through the Second American Civil War, throw my Dixie Pistols vinyl album on the old turn table and just lose myself in some great childhood memories.

I guess what strikes me as interesting is that as I’m writing this it has now been 28 years since I first picked up my first issue of Truman’s “Scout” at Brendon’s comic shop there on Hardy Street in Hattiesburg back when he had opened a shop right next to the hobby shop.  Twenty-eight years ago, way back in September of 1985, I was sixteen years old and the year 1999 was still so far away that it might never be reached.  1999 was a mythical, magical year.  Warren Publishing had an entire series of adult graphic magazines sold under the “1999” banner.  There was “Space: 1999” the old TV show from the 1970’s where the Moon was blown out of orbit by a nuclear chain reaction and went hurtling off into space on adventures every week and the pop artist Prince wanted us to party like it was 1999 in his hit song.  

1999, way back then, was so far away.

What is interesting, though, is that way back in 1985, at fourteen years in the future, the year 1999 was as far ahead of us (then) as 1999 is behind us (now) in 2013.  Think about it … Not only did we make it through the long fourteen year climb up to 1999 but the world didn’t end either and, now that we are the same amount of time and distance on the other side of 1999 as we were in front of 1999 way back in 1985 it is interesting to stop, take a deep breath, and look back at just how far we have come as well as what our expectations of our future once were.

Think about it for a minute ... the iconic year 1999 is now as far behind us as it once used to be in front of us.  That year is now as far behind as it once was ahead of us.  I find it interesting to look back on how we all thought the world was going to be … and to see how it really turned out.

The future isn’t what it used to be and that may not be a bad thing.  For all the troubles that this once great nation now has, for all the wrong choices that it has made politically in the last five years, thankfully, this once great nation doesn’t resemble the nightmarish hell that the United States in Emanuel Santana’s time is portrayed as. 

There isn’t a Second American Civil War … at least not yet. 

So if you’re like me and you like finding new and interesting stuff then I’ve got a real grail quest for you.   I've got all of my Scout series, extras, flexi-disc and vinyl record.  How about you?

Enjoy!

It's been a "Megaforce" kind of week ...

The title song to the 1981 Hal Needham military action comedy, sung by "707" (think of them as "SURVIVOR Light") has the lyrics of ...

There's something moving
In the air tonight
Something moving
At the speed of light

And it's calling
Calling, calling to you

I got a feeling
Rushing through my head
We might never get
This chance again

And it's calling, calling
Call to you, yeah

If the time should call
Should they'll find
What we believe
Then you can believe
I'm coming on

Like a mega force
Mega force
Like a mega force

"Megaforce" was calling to me.  For an entire week, "Megaforce" was calling to me.

It started out plainly enough ... I've got 707's song "Megaforce" on my iPod so I listened to that and started thinking how those first few guitar chords pretty much summed up the whole decade of the 1980's.  The '80's started out so strong ... so different, so full of hope, than the previous bleak, bland 1970's and here was a song that in just a few string licks pretty much summed the entire decade up.  As I thought about that, I realized that it had been a few years (quite a few) since I'd last seen "Megaforce."  I have it on DVD in my collection but it's a transfer from the VHS so "DVD Quality" is nowhere to be found.  Still it's viewable and in DVD format which is good since my last VHS player bit the dust many moons ago and I've never replaced it because the amount of VHS tapes I still own is less than the number of girlfriends I've had so ...

So I thought I might watch "Megaforce" again, maybe on a Friday night, grab a pizza and sit down with an old friend from long ago for about an hour and a half of mindless fun.  Simple enough.  Then I took my youngest daughter to the city park playground to play.  I like to look around the playground for stuff that people leave behind, just I guess some kind of sociologist / archaeologist fetish ... to try to figure out, from the stuff left, what kind of people had come before me.  Sometimes kids leave toys, broken toys, garbage, trash, broken toy jewelry, a condom wrapper or two (who fucks in a playground?) and other stuff.  This time was no different but I did find something pertaining to my plans ... there, in the dirt near a tube slide I found ... this!

It's one of the latest incarnations of the Hot Wheels "Megaforce Mega-Destroyer" fast attack vehicle as seen in the movie.  Armed with a gatling gun, an automatic cannon, triple rocket rack and a laser gun which raises up on a rear pedestal and can rotate 360 degrees, the "Mega Destroyer" had both a stealth skin and could run silently on electrics.  Hot Wheels planned a big tie-in with the movie, going to offer several die-cast toy cars but when the movie bombed at the box office the Hot Wheels stuff (and probably a lot of other cool toys) never appeared.  A few "Megaforce" Hot Wheels did hit the market but they were rare, low production and are sought after collectors items today.

Unfortunately the "Megafighter" and "Tac-Com" are mislabeled.  The dirtbike is the "Megafighter" and the six wheeled ATV is the "Tac-Com".  Mattel put some money into this line in anticipation of the movie being a big hit and when it wasn't, well, the MegaDestroyer and Tac-Com vehicles were kept and simply given new names and reissued every few years in different color schemes.  The Hot Wheels "MegaDestroyer" I found in the city park is missing the laser gun, the rockets on top and is painted in a bright yellow paint scheme which includes the words "Nitro" and "Payback" on each side.

Here is a pic of how the original "Megaforce" Hot Wheels were packaged.

"Megaforce" ... Long a guilty little pleasure (right up there with Roger Corman's "Battle Beyond The Stars" and other '70's cheese), "Megaforce" is a movie that is often bad mouthed and ridiculed mainly by pseudo-overly intelligent movie savants that "just don't get it."  "Megaforce" hit the screens in 1981, was the work of Hal Needham (who brought us "Smokey and the Bandit") and starred a host of then promising faces; Barry Bostwick, Persis Khambatta (now with hair, last seen bald in "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" as Ilia), Michael Beck, Edward Mulhare (who would later play "Devin" in "Knightrider") and Henry Silva.

So, I had the week started with sponging to 707 - "Megaforce" ...

Then I found the latest incarnation of the Hot Wheels "MegaDestroyer" at the city park playground ...

Then two nights later a friend on FaceBook posted a link not only to the 707 "Megaforce" song video but also to a remake by none other than KISS guitar alumni Ace Frehley ...  Frehley's Comet - "Calling to You" 

And that's when I just said "to hell with it".  "Megaforce" was calling to me in a big way and who was I to deny it?  Friday night I got pizza, sat down and watched "Megaforce".  My older daughter opted out of watching it (she knows my taste in movies) but my youngest daughter sat spell-bound watching the explosions, lasers and vehicles doing their stunts.  She loved the motorcycles and the dune buggies and when they started emitting different colored smoke screens she really liked that but when Ace Hunter's motorcycle lit the jet engine and started flying, well, that was just the cat's meow for her ...

... and sharing that with her I remember why I really like this movie.  It's just plain fun.  It's campy, it's cheesy, it's unbelievable, it's funny, it has some neat hardware (and pre-CGI whored out special effects) and above all this movie is just a C-130 full of fun.  If you can't have fun watching "Megaforce" then chances are your childhood wasn't a great one and you're probably not a very fun person to be around today.

So many people are quick to ridicule this movie and add it to their top ten list of bad movies that they miss what this movie really was; an allegory of the Cold War.  Maybe "Megaforce" didn't start out like that or maybe it wasn't intended to be an allegory of the Cold War but that is what "Megaforce" is.  

 Let's look at this concept closer ...

"Megaforce" starts out with two fictional countries, the peaceful Republic of Sardun and their aggressive neighbor Gamibia. Unable to defend themselves from the Gamibia incursion, Sardun seeks help from SCUFF (Supreme Command United Free Forces) for help.  Now Sardun and Gamibia are simply arbitrary, they exist as convenient stereotypes of any of a number of second and even third world nations out there torn between aligning their selves with either the USSR or the USA during the Cold War.  SCUFF is representative of NATO and "Megaforce" is a united nations ghost army, consisting of the best of the best, independent thinking soldiers from every free country in the world come together under one command to fight for freedom and fight against tyranny and injustice (aka "communism").  In other words, SCUFF is NATO and "Megaforce" is a multi-national crewed world police force capable of military strikes anywhere on the globe, they are the world's, the free world's preeminent police force and in that regard they represent America.

It's a bit of a stretch but that's what makes it fun.

Looking at the late 1970's and early 1980's, it was America's (and Europe's and NATO's) worst fear that the Russians would roll their armor into the Fulda Gap and that would be the end of Europe.  In that regard, America knew that we couldn't match Russia tank for tank so we made our tanks better.  We made our weapons better ... the M1 Abrams tank, the M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle, the AH-64 Apache, the A-10 Warthog ... America took the technology high road and used technological superiority to counter numerical superiority.

It worked.

Of course had the Fulda Gap ever been overrun with Russians the obvious answer from NATO would have simply been to drop a few neutron bombs on the Fulda Gap and turn it into a giant parking lot full of glowing Soviet tanks but that scenario also never happened, thank God.

"Megaforce" wasn't just a allegory, it was a prediction that superior technology could counter vastly superior numbers and that better training and individual thinking could overcome group thinking and political indoctrination.  

On one hand, you have Megaforce ... the best soldiers and technology that the free nations of the world can put together, composed of an elite raider force operating machinegun and rocket armed dirt bikes, machinegun, cannon, rocket and laser armed dune buggies and all coordinated by a six wheeled cannon and electronic warfare capable ATV known as "Tac-Com."  Supplemented by electrics, stealth paint and smoke screens, the vehicles of Megaforce are more than a match, one one one, for the outdated, lumbering armor of Gurerra and his forces.  Even the lowly armed dirt bike can take out a main battle tank all by itself if it can get close enough.  The Cold War allegory here, again, is a well trained, technologically superior military force can and will overcome a lesser trained, numerically superior force operating with a lesser technology base.  This was, in essence, the position of the East and the West during the Cold War.  Russia had more, America had better.

"Megaforce" visited the long standing conflict between the idealist and the realist ... Ace Hunter (Bostwick) remains an idealist while Duke Gurerra (Silva) has become and remains a realist.  One of the more striking moments of dialog in the film occur between Hunter and Gurerra when Gurerra says that Hunter shouldn't worry about his men, that the other members of Megaforce are expendable, they are just numbers to powerful commanders like Duke and Ace.  Gurerra says that in the 1970's that commanders like himself and Hunter could be idealists but in the 1980s that being an idealist was too expensive. 

Another blatant tip off to the Cold War allegory.

Later in the movie, Hunter sizes up the situation knowing that he and his men are heading into a trap and he uses one of the best cliches of the Cold War ... tried and proven true time and time again ... "Sometimes what works for you can work against you ..." and we see the Fulda Gap scenario reversed.

I won't spoil any more of this movie.  If you've seen it, you either hate it or love it and if you hate it you might hate it for the wrong reasons.  If you love it, I might just have given you another reason to do so, especially if you're like me and you grew up in the '80's during the Cold War.   

If you go into "Megaforce" expecting "Last of the Mohicans" or "Masterpiece Theater" then you're headed for disappointment.  Stark, bitter disappointment.  Otherwise, you're in for a treat.

If you haven't seen "Megaforce" (and why haven't you?!) then do so.  It's hard to find but worth the effort.  Pick a Friday night, order a pizza and sit down to an hour and a half of pure cheesy camp, of guys wearing spandex, riding rocket and machinegun armed dirt bikes, jumping over tanks and dropping handgrenades down open hatches ... if you like laser armed dune buggies and of cliches and humor that survive even over three decades later then you're in for a treat.

"Megaforce" is one of the forgotten classics, a cult film, a two liter of your favorite soft drink and pizza movie that is not only retarded but it's the good kind of retarded like so many lovable '80's films were.

Enjoy and remember ... the Good Guys always win.  Even in the '80's.

For more info, check out this fan site ... Megaforce HQ

New blog! The March of the Twelve Backs!

 

I decided to start a "Star Wars" blog, filled with memories of my childhood and what it was like to be a seven year old kid when "Star Wars" hit the big screen in 1977.  I decided to do this because if I didn't separate the "Star Wars" memories from the rest of the things I wanted to talk about then the "Star Wars" memories would rapidly drown this "Angst and Speed" blog.

The years from December 1976 to December 1979 will always be golden for me ... a special time of magic and wonder.  The new blog is called "The March of the Twelve Backs" and the title is taken from the name of the card stock that the original twelve Kenner Star Wars action figures (released after the movie) used back then.  There were a hell of a lot of Star Wars products back then, speculation, talk ... Star Wars affected people around the world like a cultural supernova.  I'm a huge fan of the original 1977 Star Wars movie ... the first release ... before George Lucas re-released it and stuck the tagline of "Episode IV: A New Hope" into the prelude scrawl across the stars.

For me, there was only one "Star Wars" and that was the original, 1977, unedited release.  Everything after that pretty much blew sweaty Bantha genitalia.

There was a very palpable magic in "Star Wars" ...  Lucas was hailed as a visionary but as the decades would prove he was much less a visionary as he was a revisonary ... often with terrible results.  Lucas said that when he made "Star Wars" he set about to "Give a fairytale to a generation that didn't have any fairytales."  Of course, my generation had fairytales.  What Lucas meant was that he was going to give a fairytale to a generation that had no fairytales because they didn't believe in classic, traditional fairytales.  Lucas set about to turn "Star Wars" into the biggest, whine-fest of a liberal fairytale that the world had seen.  What started out as a simple tale of good versus evil with good triumphing over evil must have really messed up Lucas' mind and laid his spirit low ... all the talk of how evil Darth Vader was threw Lucas into overdrive to correct that perception.

How is "Star Wars" a liberal fairytale?

Easy.

It's the story of Darth Vader, aka Anakin Skywalker, and how it just wasn't his fault that he turned out to be evil.  In a liberal mindset there really isn't any such thing as good and evil, there's just different shades of gray.  No one is evil, no one is responsible for what they do or did, they're all victims of bad childhoods, not getting a pony for their 8th birthday, growing up in a single parent family, playing violent video games ... to a liberal anyone who does something bad is never at fault ... instead, it's their circumstances which are to blame.  Liberals are the kind of people who, when one person shoots another person then the person who used the gun and pulled the trigger isn't to blame ... no, they are just the victim of all the bad things that happened to them in life.  Oh, and it's the gun's fault for shooting the other person.  Liberals love to blame inanimate objects and give them animate traits and since liberals really can't punish a handgun they instead try to punish the company that made the handgun ... rather than punish the person who actually pulled the trigger and shot the other individual.

I've come to realize that most liberals are simply suffering from advanced mental retardation.  You cannot be a liberal unless you are severely mentally retarded because what they use for logic makes no real sense at all and defies everything else that we know is sound and true.

Darth Vader / Anakin Skywalker is a perfect example of liberal logic.  

Anakin was from a single parent home and over the six different movies we come to find out that Darth Vader, once considered cinema's reigning black armor clad prince of evil, was not so much a tremendous villain as he was just a tremendous fuck up.  After he is thrust into greatness at Naboo he consistently fails to live up to expectations after that.  In the second and third episodes he is refused what he wants, he breaks the rules of those who have taken him in and ultimately his greed and desires destroy everything around him.  He was supposed to bring balance to the Force, according to a prophecy, but instead he destroys the Jedi order ... almost.  In Episode IV he is tasked with retrieving the stolen plans to the Death Star and he fails in that ... it's only when the plans come blundering back his way does he get a chance to redeem himself.  Further charged with protecting the Death Star from starfighter assault, he fails in that task.  In Episode V, Vader is tasked with finding the rebels and when he eventually does they escape leaving him, literally, empty handed at the end of the movie.  Oh, he caused the rebels grief in Episode V but he really didn't do any permanent damage.  In Episode VI, he is charged with protecting the Emperor and the new Death Star.  In the end, he wusses out, attones for his sins, and, well, the rebels win (with the help of some teddy bears with sharp sticks).  "Star Wars" (1977) is an amazing film.  Taken as a whole, the story given to us in Episodes I to VI leaves a lot to be desired and ultimately disappoints in a huge way.

So why did Darth Vader go from being the epitome of evil to being the posterchild for liberal pantywads?  We can thank Lucas for that because unsatisfied with a simple tale of good versus evil, Lucas instead had to give us five more movies to explain why Vader really wasn't evil ... he was just misunderstood ... and each of those five movies took the "Star Wars" name and franchise and ruined it more and more with each new movie until by the end of the entire six part story the original magic that was "Star Wars" was pretty much dead and buried for all time.

The original 1977 "Star Wars" movie is the best.  

My new blog, "The March of the Twelve Backs" will be about the magic and awe that George Lucas brought into the world in May of 1977 ... the first and last time that he did so.  The blog will be about memories of a time when magic was real and that magic was everywhere.  If you were a kid way back then and you were lucky enough to see "Star Wars" in the theater back in 1977 then you know what I'm talking about and I think you'll enjoy this new blog.

Enjoy!

Up, up and away!

Columbia

Columbia - City of Charm on the River Pearl ...

... at least that's what my police department patch says.  

Lord knows I blew through Columbia many a time in my youth ... It was little more than a couple of redlights set up on highway 98, a place I had to slow down for no real damn reason at all.  I started coming to Columbia when I was 15.  That was 1984.  I had a driver's license (back when you could get a DL at 15), I had a '78 Chevy Rally Sport Camaro and I had no good intentions at all.  Back then, Highway 98 was a two-lane affair rife with blind spots and its own "Bloody 98" reputation for having so many people killed on that stretch of road.

Later, in the late '80's, the MS DOT began to widen the major two-lane highways into four lanes and getting to Columbia from Hattiesburg and back wasn't that much of an adventure anymore.

Columbia never crossed my mind as a place to settle.  I never thought I'd stop here for long let alone marry into this place and live here one day but life is funny strange like that, especially my life.  I guess I should have known that if I passed through a place often enough I'd eventually grow to like it, maybe even enough to live there one day. 

I passed through Columbia many times in high school, on my way to play basketball games at other schools and riding our big school bus with the rest of the team.  Years later, I used to haul medical supplies and specimens for a long defunct medical lab and Marion General Hospital was one of my stops.  I never thought I'd be working there one day let alone working there for twelve years in a row now.

I've been in Columbia for over 15 years now, that's nearly a third of my life.  I look back at where I wanted to be ... somewhere else.  I always thought that I would be the one who would move off ... way off like to Colorado or Texas or Alaska.  Instead I settled thirty miles west of where I grew up.

Big leap there.

I've realized something along the way ... I've realized something over the years ... people leave the area where they grew up not because something is holding them back but rather because there's nothing really holding them back.  I know a lot of people I went to school with who grew up in this area and now they're in other states, scattered across this once great country and I used to be a little jealous of that fact.  I used to sometimes wonder why I hadn't left for somewhere else ... and then I realized that I didn't need to.  Everything that I needed, everything that I wanted in life was right here, just 30 miles west of where I'd grown up and gone to school.

People leave and go far away because they're looking for what they don't have here and often they're not only mistaken but they're dead wrong as well.  It's sad to know that someone you thought was pretty grounded is now on the other side of the country having the exact kind of life that they had here only somehow it's so much better way out there ... or so they tell me.  It's funny that I don't really hear the joy in their words.

Several people that I knew left for the big cities ... New York, San Francisco, Atlanta, Chicago, Washington, Miami ... and most of them are doing about the same as if they had stayed here, some worse, some better.  You couldn't get me to live in a place like New York city ... you don't go to a big city to find yourself, you go there to lose yourself ... to be absorbed because when you live in a city ... a city ... that has five times more people in it than the entire population of the state where you came from then you have to ask yourself one simple question:

"If I couldn't stand out in a place one fifth this size, how am I going to stand out in a place that is five times larger than where I came from?"

I'm 43 years old at the time of this writing and I've had a really good life ... no, scratch that.  I've had one hell of a great life.  I sit back and read about other people on Facebook and I have to smile.  Some are as old as I am and still chasing their dreams ... and truth be known they will probably still be chasing their dreams when the Reaper comes for them, all the while refusing to give up and admit that a dream was all that they were chasing.

John Cougar Mellencamp once sang about the charm or small towns and while I never liked that song when it was new the truth is that the song has grown on me over the years.

So, I live in Columbia.  It wasn't really a choice on my part, no, I married into Columbia way back in 1995.  Two years later I settled here so that my wife could be close to her family and have a job that she wanted.  I didn't mind commuting the 35 miles one way to Hattiesburg each day; I like driving.  A lot of time I turn the radio off and just listen to the hum of the engine, the song of the road and the cool breeze of the climate control system.  There are days when the road is covered in a light haze or a slowly wafting fog.  There are days when God draws up the curtain, slowly, on some of the most magnificent sun rises and slowly lowers the curtain on some of the most beautiful sunsets.  Bad weather tends to break north and south of Columbia though the clouds do get impressive more often than not.

Sometime in 1997 I started working part-time at Autozone ... in addition to my job at the DOT.  I just wanted some extra folding money for the weekend and for my sports cars and sportbikes.  I didn't have kids so ... Sometime in '99 I started looking at a MP position in the Army Reserve and was one step from being sworn in but Y2K was coming up and even though MDOT had to let me go they weren't happy about it since I was the only computer guy in the entire district.  About that time my manager at Autozone talked me into joining the Columbia PD as a reserve officer ... six months of training and all the powers and responsibilities of a regular police officer only I didn't get paid for my time.

I'm glad that I never signed on as the MP ... another guy I went to school with got that position instead and things were good ... until 9/11 when his unit got activated and he was one of the first to get shipped overseas where he stayed for a long time.  If I had chosen the MP position, that would have been my fate as well ... I may not have had children or had them when I did and I certainly wouldn't have been there for them growing up like I was.

Columbia isn't a really exciting place to live ... it's an even more boring place to die.

People have asked me what it's like to live in Columbia.

I have only one answer; Columbia is like Mayberry ... if Quintin Tarantino had directed "The Andy Griffith Show".  In fact, Columbia is one part Mayberry, one part Picket Fences, one part Twin Peaks and one part Twilight Zone.  Columbia is like a frontier town in the Old West ... it's not much to look at, it has its own special charm, it has everything that you need and it gets a bit rowdy sometimes.

For a little while in the 19th century, Columbia was the capital of Mississippi but the capital was later moved to Jackson.  There is a famous large and very beautiful house, very old, that is to this day still referred to as "The Governor's Mansion."  Our courthouse has four giant clocks on it and reminds me of the courthouse and clock in "Back to the Future."

I told you what Columbia is like ... well, it's also part "Eureka."  There have been UFO sightings in and around Columbia and even a few Bigfoot sightings.  Hell, we even have a toxic waste dump that's kind of like Love Canal where I hear that there is a huge pond that has a chemical sheen across the top of it, mutated, tumor sporting fish swimming in it and tiny silver bubbles which burble to the top of the water and burst into puffs of smoke once they reach the surface.  I've never seen any of that but I've heard it often enough to think there might be just a bit of truth in it.   Anyway, it's interesting barber shop or coffee shop talk that seems to come up more often than not.

To give you a taste of what it's like to live in Columbia, I went out for a ride the other day and found myself sitting in the local McDonald's, eating my lunch which has gotten cold since over the last fifteen minutes I've had to talk to and converse with about six different people who know me or recognize me.  Looking out at the highway I see a dust devil swirl by, wind and loose dirt from a construction project nearby.  It might as well be a tumbleweed and the effect would have been the same.

A pair of people wearing western wear and cowboy hats are riding horses at a slow clop through the Super Walmart parking lot.  A woman in a long dress, white gloves and a bonnet is riding a rusty old bicycle through the parking lot trying to sell homemade peanut brittle.  A rusted out Papa Smurf blue Geo Metro with an unlit Domino's Pizza sign on the roof buzzes by sounding like a giant constipated beetle.  

Down the road is the old Walmart which has been gutted and retrofitted to a variety of smaller stores that share space in the strip mall that also has an aging Winn Dixie and the three trio of fast food; KFC, Hardees and Taco Bell.  Next to the Taco Bell, in the same parking lot, is a long ago closed Burger King ... the sign out front reads "CB Whop er Me L" and gives a price that is six years ago. 

Down the road and across the highway from that is the old Jitney Jungle which is now a Tractor Supply store, the old K-Mart which is now a flea market and a host of other small stores including a rent to own, a check cashing place and a liquor store ... the liquor store has been there longer than any other store ... vice is always necessary, it may even be something that Maslow needs to rethink the priority of, even adding it to his hierarchy of needs.

There's other ghosts and free market corpses as well ... the abandoned and half overgrown Sonic on Lumberton.  The steak house that is now a gym.  The two old western wear stores ... the Autozone that I used to work at that's now a consignment shop and had once been a bowling alley long before it was a parts store.  The empty slab where the old A-frame house used to sit across from Autozone ... a house of drunks and poor white trash ... the house where I personally saw two trashy women leave drunk one night ... only to French kiss a tree later that night and both perish in the twisted wreckage of their car.

There's auto parts shops, tanning places, family restaurants that change names and ownership more than they change menus, antique shops, a Walgreen's, gas stations, bait and tackle shops, hunting supply stores ... a Radio Shack ... and a Ward's (fast food).  Ward's is such a tradition in Mississippi that I don't think that you're even allowed to put a city dot on the map unless it actually does have a Ward's.

I finish my cold meal and ride my Honda through my neighborhood, passing a deep creek.  Looking down into the bottom of the creek I notice it is almost dry.  There, on a sandbar in the middle of the creek, with a trickle of water running around each side, is a large gray television set ... just sitting there on the sandbar with the power cord trailing off into the water and I think "there's nothing good on TV."  Two days later a collection of storms moves through the area, heavy downpour and when I ride by the creek  a few days later the TV is gone ... swept away by the raging waters of the swollen creek.

I ride around ... relaxing ... and look for the "Yard of the Month" sign or who got "Student of the Week" this time.  I'm often surprised by what the houses look like where I find those signs in the yard.  I head downtown on my Honda, passing over exposed bricks dating back to the 19th century when roads still weren't paved with asphalt.  I pass down Beef Alley, past buildings that are older than my parents, over railroad tracks that have been almost covered up completely and past loading doors in the sides and rear of buildings big enough to hustle cattle out of train cars and into the buildings. 

I turn and ride past the police station, heading for one of my favorite spots to relax and just be alone.  I ride past Pioneer Aerospace ... the company that makes parachutes for the US government, the company that used to make parachutes for the space shuttle and I remember tales of the employees taking the chutes out to the water park and folding them there.

I ride on to the scenic bend in the river.  I park my Honda, take off my jacket, my helmet and my gloves and sit on the bank watching the water flow by and occasionally a fishing boat or even the local tourist air boat go by.

Columbia: City of Charm on the River Pearl.

I guess that's not too far from the truth and I guess Columbia's not too bad a place to live ... if you like Mayberry and Quintin Tarantino.

Personal Philosophy - Misanthropy

The trouble with being me is that I prefer to be alone; I am a jaded misanthrope and an irrepressible cynic. However, my wit, humor and charm usually lead me to spontaneously form small, close-knit groups of like-minded people who tend to really like me for who and what I am. It never fails and it’s rather frustrating sometimes, given my disdain for the human race and human nature as a whole. However this ongoing experience has taught me one thing and that is that the human race is surprisingly tolerable, in very small doses from time to time. In other words, it’s hard to be a misanthrope when you have a rather large fan club.

Musing

I am the ape-man

So here I sit, feeling like that ape-man in the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey when it was standing before the ominous Monolith. This time, the Monolith is called a "blog" and I have one. In fact, I've had one ... since 2005 and like the ape-man in 2001: ASO I guess I just didn't know how to use it ... or care to use it.

You see, I'm 42 years old (near enough to the truth) and I really don't have much to say to anyone. To pull a lyric from one of my favorite bands, The Drive-By Truckers; "ain't got no message for the youth of America." No, I made it this far on my own and if you're anything like me then I'm sure you'll do fine in finding your own way as well. If not, shrug my shoulders, the truth is that you're disposable, everybody is, and there are plenty more coming up from behind you to take your place.

Life is a wave, a big forward rushing tsunami of learning and experience and joy and grief and the key is that you have to ride it all the way to the end. If you wipe out ... chances are your ride's over so wax up your board and hang ten because that's all that anyone is going to give you ... at best, so take it for what it's worth and hold on to it with both hands. Tight.

I am the ape-man.
I am the walrus.
Coo-coo-ca-choo.

So what does a jaded misanthrope do with a blog? My guess is that I do what the ape-man learned to do ... I pick it up and bash the brains of my fellow ape-men out with it and in doing so I somehow become better than them ... and survive to breed and spread my superior genes on to the next generation. Oops, it seems I've already done that, twice, with the same woman that I've been married to now for ... God ... coming up on sixteen years. Knew her for almost three years before that so that means that I have been in a monogamous relationship, a stable marriage, a loving, family based unity for almost the better part of two decades now (or almost half of my life).

I never saw that coming ... never thought I'd get married, never thought I'd be a father, never thought I'd be a good husband or a good father but surprisingly I'm both ... or so I'm told not just by my wife and kids but by other people who know me as well. Maybe I have them fooled or maybe I'm just not willing to believe the truth. I live my life by one old quote:

"I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am." ~Joseph Baretti

Yep. That pretty much sums up my outlook on the human race. So, if there's hope for the human race, and there's hope for me ... Hell, I'm not an ape-man; I'm an anachronism ... a dusty old American artifact powered by an outdated code of honor and a pseudo-ridiculous belief system from an era that is long gone and forgotten. An era when things weren't disposable, when life was sacred, when you didn't push a button to get what you want, when you waited for the good stuff in life and worked hard for it rather than pitch a fit when it wasn't given to you and when life didn't change every damn day. It was an era when bad was punished, good was rewarded, phones were phones and music was music and things meant ... something or at least they meant something that lasted and could be counted on.

So I have a blog.

Big hairy deal.

Apparently I've had a blog since 2005 ... I just forgot that I had it mainly because I really didn't have much to say. Imagine my surprise when I found a link to my blog, blew the dust off of it and saw the date stamp. I think I must have had the same expression that George Taylor had in that scene from Planet of the Apes when he reads the ship time chronometer and finds out that so many years have passed.

It's been almost six years since I last did a blog.

So much has happened in that time.

So much has changed.

One thing I'm not going to do is get on here and murder a bunch of "1" and "0" bytes by whining about how my life sucks or something isn't fair. I don't think that I ever went through any kind of phase like that in my life mainly because I came from pretty hardy stock. I'm more a stoic than an Epicurean though I do like me some delights every now and then. Leisure, I've found out the hard way, is a corrosive that etches away the structure of discipline. Leisure is a trap.

The Spartans had it right. It's a good bet that no Spartan ever drowned in pop culture.

So, with all that said, I'm going to post here things that are important to me. I'm not going to post things that are important to the world, things like that pseudo-religious gobbly gook called "global warming" or any green issues because I just don't care. I stopped being active, an activist, if I ever was one, a long time ago and now I'm just content to watch all the idiots thunder by on their useless crusade. No. From now on, it's all about me and if you want to ride along then be my guest ... here's your ticket. Find a seat because the show's about to start.

When the ape-man touched the Monolith, he was changed forever into a different creature. I'm not sure that a blog will or won't change me ... or you. Time, and critics, but more so time, will tell.

Maybe I'm reading this all wrong.

Maybe stuff that I post here won't change me but it just might change others. I know from all the thousands of emails that I've received over the years that my website has changed the lives of others ... in fact, my websites have awakened quite a few ape-men and made them walk upright again.

That's good.

I think.

The truth is that I never intended my websites to do that but if they did, well, maybe that's something more than the next person has done for the world. Maybe if I just keep on doing what I've always done then this blog will turn out all right and if someone, out there, some where, some when, reads something on here or my websites that makes them rethink their self or makes them take a new look at life then ... good.

But I'm drawn back to that nagging question.

If I'm not changing because of what I post but people who read what I post, what I create sometimes change then what does that make me? Some kind of catalyst for change?

Hmmm.

If I'm a catalyst for change then that must mean ...

I'm not the ape-man.
I'm not the walrus.
I am the Monolith.
Coo-coo-ca-choo.

Indeed.