Liz, 1932-2011

Elizabeth Taylor died today, after a long illness.  She was considered the most beautiful woman alive when I was a boy, first choice to play Cleopatra and Helen of Troy, a woman whose passions were legendary and front-page news.  There was no way I would not be enthralled.  I remember the moral disapproval of her, which was a constant refrain in the church circles my family belonged to.  My mother thought she was sin incarnate, yet she wouldn't stop me from seeing Taylor's movies, even though it was against her scruples to go to them herself.  

Cleopatra--the epic flop that I still consider one of the great films of the 1960s--was restricted to adults and minors accompanied by their parents.  So when neither of my parents would take me to see it, I wound up going with Sergeant Sherman, one of the men who worked on jets with my father, and Mrs. Sherman.  Nobody at the base theater at Yokota seemed concerned that my "parents" were black.  This was in 1963 or '64, sure, but it was also the military, which was integrated my entire life.

Frankly, despite my fascination with her personally, I did not think much of Elizabeth Taylor as an actor--her voice a bit shrill and throaty for my tastes, too sharp even for her career-changing (and perhaps career-killing) role as Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?  She was her most beautiful and well cast in A Place in the Sun, but it will always be for her flamboyant entrance to Rome in Cleopatra that I will remember her.  And in her rare interviews and talk-show appearances, she was radiant, down to earth, and shyly nervous all at once.  She led a courageous life, and I can't think of higher praise--or a higher form of moral integrity.

Sunday Beefcake (The Second Coming, A Second Helping)

Operation Odyssey Dawn

Next Friday I will have lived on God's less and less green earth for fifty-eight years.  I was born in 1953 in a US military hospital in Tripoli, Libya, the same hospital, I believe, President Reagan bombed in '86, purportedly killing Qaddafi's adopted daughter, at which time it was no longer a US hospital and I, of course, was long gone.  For the first fourteen years of my life, I held dual citizenship, US and Libyan, only vaguely aware of that fact and, obviously, since I left the country at age nine months, with little feeling for the place.  But with the Six Day War in '67, the Department of Defense insisted that I and other military dependents in my situation become "naturalized" citizens, in addition to only technically native-born, and "renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which [we] have heretofore been [subjects or citizens]."  Besides the addition of three new words to my vocabulary, the day did little for me the private person, the only identity that mattered (matters) to me.

Last night I rode with a friend and work colleague to a departmental planning dinner at our boss's house in Raleigh.  On the way we discussed the tsunami in Japan, the closeness of the moon, the coming again of the thirteen-year locusts, and some radio prophet who predicts that Jesus is coming back this May, perhaps in time for the premiere of Shania Twain's new reality show on the Oprah Winfrey Network.  My friend is a devout Christian and Tea Party Republican.  I am somewhat different than that.  We do, however, share a keen taste for the apocalyptic.  We were movie buddies for both 2012 and Zombieland a couple of years ago, and I lent her my dvd of When Worlds Collide and had to wait a good long while before I could pry it back out of her hands.

In the course of our conversation, I mentioned that a US serviceman in Japan, when I lived there, told me and some other military brats at Yokota Air Force Base, that Nostradamus predicted the end of the world would occur in 1968, which at the time was still in the future.  Specifically, the sixteenth-century pharmacist had said that there would be "fireworks on Earth visible from the planet Mars."  We kids were mesmerized and shaken by the news.  Later, after 1968, in a Christian high school, my Americanism Versus Communism teacher assigned me and my classmates the project of creating a scrapbook called The Signs of the Times, in which we taped newspaper articles that correlated with biblical prophesies of the end times.  Off the top of my head, I vaguely remember that my scrapbook contained news of volcanoes, riots, and a production of O Calcutta--the section on prophesied decadent sex in the latter days was the thickest and richest section of my finished project.

My understanding is that the world has been ending for quite a long time now.  The early Christians believed it would happen in their own lifetimes.  Jesus promised his disciples that they would live to see him returning in glory.  The apostle Paul taught the Corinthians that there was not much point in marriage and procreation with the end of the world being right around the corner, but admonished those who couldn't keep their legs together for even that long that it is "better to marry than to burn."  This is not to suggest that the world will never end, just that, like many of us, the world tends to procrastinate--and certainly quite a bit more than fundamentalist Christians think it should, its having taken approximately 3,799,800,000 years to create mankind in God's image, as opposed to the preferred six-day (E-Z drive-thru) version in Genesis.  (More statistics and side note:  the Google search terms "Obama Antichrist" produce 877,000 results in 0.08 seconds.)

Having now lived almost 58 years, I say that life is good, if seldom great and if often prone to fall on your head from time to time like a cheap cabin tent.  According to Complexity Theory, the more complex things (including societies and hairdos) become, the more likely they are to collapse.  I am not a good one for offering people hope.  Things are bad right now.  They look like they're getting worse.  But I am not a fretter either.  I believe we all need to do whatever we can do to make things better, if not altogether right.  Feeling disturbed or anxious never fixed anything.  In times like these, it helps to remind ourselves that we are mortal, that we are all in this thing together, that it will not kill us to show compassion and act mercifully.  It perhaps neither helps nor hurts to write a letter to our democratically elected representatives in  government from time to time.  We will "get by" for as long as we can and then will no longer "get by."  Over that eventuality, we have some--but so very very little--control.

At the end of his satirical novel Candide, inspired by witnessing a tidal wave hit Lisbon in 1755, Voltaire admonishes us, "We must cultivate our garden," an admonition towards unworried simplicity that I have followed religiously ever since I first read it.  Or, as Jesus said, "[D]o not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.  Each day has enough trouble of its own" (NIV, Matt. 6.34).

Amen.  You can say that again.  Duh.

Rhetorical Questions

What becomes of a democracy where the people think ideas are burdens?  Where to be opinionated means the same thing as closed minded?  Where you have your facts and I have mine?  Where those who think at all are told, "You think too much"?

What kind of democracy urges everyone to vote but encourages fascination with public figures the citizenry of no state has voted to current office, figures whose profoundest insights fit on bumper stickers?  What kind of democracy has only two parties, both of which value the rights of corporations over those of workers?

What kind of democracy encourages hope, pride, faith, and work but not debate, maturity, whimsicality, and pleasure?  What kind of democracy promotes private ownership as the chief happiness available to its citizens?  What kind of democracy celebrates the diversity of choice in breakfast cereals that differ only in shape and color and branding and packaging?

What kind of democracy celebrates 200-year-old deists and rationalists as supporters of biblical Christianity and a 2000-year-old bachelor as a promoter of marriage and family values?

What kind of democracy interprets a constitution framed by slave owners strictly according to original intent?

In what kind of democracy are "fascism" and "socialism" regarded as synonyms?  In what kind of democracy does the statement "lack of faith is itself a form of faith" make sense, but "lack of orange juice is itself a form of orange juice" does not?  In what kind of democracy can you not say certain words in public yet proclamation of any sort of hateful opinion is protected, as long as its wording is generally latinate?

What kind of democracy rewards children and teenagers for attracting attention on sports teams more than in classrooms?  What kind of democracy pays coaches more than school nurses?  What kind of democracy thinks it is not child abuse to tell children that they or their friends are in serious, imminent danger of hellfire?

What kind of democracy supports maintaining personal convictions without routinely subjecting them to the test of facts, experience, and sound reasoning?  What kind of democracy rewards following orders more than following one's bliss?

Go Get Em, Tiger

I know what the expression means, but "He's the kind of man who knows what he wants and goes after it" has never resonated with me.  My problem has always (always) been the first part.  I don't know what I want.  I have no problem with the "going after it" part.  Back in the days of my impressionable youth, all it took was for somebody to tell me what it was I wanted and I went after it and got it.

In high school it was a girlfriend.  I had several--really nice girls--the best friends I could hope for at the time and real "catches" too--but ultimately it seemed like I had them the way I had clean underwear on whenever I went somewhere.  I had them because I was urged to have them.  I had them because you never know if and when something might happen to you, so you had better be ready.

In church it was a personal relationship with God.  I had that.  Maybe too much of that.  I was raised believing "once saved always saved," and if that's really true then I am saved still, even though I am an atheist and do not believe in salvation specifically--not at least in a God who requires a blood atonement, not even one who's willing to put up his own son to seal the deal, especially such a God.  I suppose my old crowd would tell me that I never was saved to begin with, but I tell you now, from the depths of my soul, if I was not saved, then nobody is saved.  I was earnest.  I was transparently trusting in the unseen.   I spoke to God every day and convinced myself I could hear him speaking to me in return.  I read the bible cover to cover three times a year from age sixteen to age twenty-four.  People think it's Darwin or Nietzsche that turns guys like me into atheists, but for me it was God's holy and inerrant word that did the trick.  Reading it so much, I got jaded, I suppose.  It simply started to seem ridiculous.  I never decided not to believe in God, any more than I decided not to believe in the tooth fairy.  It's just that, after a while, I discovered I no longer did.  In fact, I suspect there were five or so years there when I thought I still believed--just because it was what I was used to and what, I thought, I was supposed to do--but looking back I was an infidel in fact well before I was ready to accept that I was.  

Sticking with this point a bit further, some people would assume that my homosexuality turned me into an atheist.  My mother thought so.  When I first told her I was gay--she who had once warned me that if she ever found out I was gay (see, she must have suspected), she would put a bullet through my head (the one thing you've got to hand to Christians is that they have no qualms at all about killing off their only sons)--she gasped, hurt, and spurted out, "Then you must not be a Christian!"  Which was a fact, but with uncharacteristic clear-headedness I replied, "Let's just take things a step at a time."  Some might say the church's stance against gays and lesbians, the transgendered, the bi, might have pushed me away from God.  I can say for sure the Christian church's homophobia did not help matters, but, no, sorry, even if I were straight as Roy Rogers, I would probably be an atheist today.

I would never have gone for my doctorate had there not been professors in college who saw some ability in me and urged me to pursue my education further.  Graduate school was never on my must-do list.  It was not even on my nice-to-do list.  The biggest dream I had for myself, back then, was either to teach at a Christian private school or at a mission school abroad.  It's a good thing I had those professors.  I can't imagine the shit hole I would be in today if gay as a three dollar bill and faithless as the devil, I were teaching at a Christian school--probably married, with kids, too.  Thank God (ahem) that's not a hole I ever dug for myself.

I would like money, but how much?  I don't know.  I'm deliriously happy so long as my pockets are full.  I might like a lover, but what kind?  I don't know.  I'm not sure that a long-term relationship is even for me--or just one of those things I should want--or had better want unless I want to die of AIDS.  Again, the LTR as clean BVDs!  The thought of buying a new car makes me physically sick.  I can more easily imagine my own death (apologies to Freud) than I can imagine liking a house so much that I would want to buy it and live in it.  (By the way, I'm a renter, not a hobo.)  There's not a whole lot that I want that I don't have.  Some Blu-Ray disks, some books, some more Coca-Cola Zero, some more years with my dog Tom Ripley. 

I feel reasonably content with my life as it is.  People say I'm hard to shop for.  The real problem is I'm way too easy.  If there ever was a real "the thought is what counts" kind of guy, it's me.  On birthdays (and lesser holidays) I just want to hang out, usually with just a few friends, quietly, humorously, maybe a bit drunkenly.  The two times in my life people (in both cases, people I didn't know well and, in both cases, against the advice of friends who did) threw me big surprise parties, the surprise was on them--for the life of me I couldn't be convincingly appreciative of the imposition, thoughtful though it undoubtedly was.

Maybe I'm this way because, for the first fifteen years of my life, my father was in the military, and in the military (even if you're just a GI's dependent) you don't have any wants.  You do what you're told to do. You want nothing, "but to do and die."  Or maybe my experience has been that when I have gotten what I wanted, I quickly realize it is nothing I wanted at all and am bitterly disappointed with the vanity of existence--like that kid at the end of "Araby."  Or maybe I'm just a weak-willed kind of guy--stubborn, but no gumption, no get up and go, perhaps.  Maybe I'm just a sorry excuse for a man.  But like the bald girl says, "I do not want what I haven't got."

You know that trick you're supposed to play on genies?  Where you're granted three wishes, but your third wish is always for three more wishes?  That's just one more thing I understand intellectually, without feeling very deeply.  Even as a child, still bursting with hopes and dreams, I was petrified by the pressure of coming up with three whole wishes.  I couldn't do it.  I'd be doing well to come up with two. And why do I not believe in an afterlife of some kind?  I just can't imagine its being much fun, so I'd prefer to concentrate on enjoying what comes to me in this life.  And it does come, just not all at once, and it's often not what you could have imagined, so it's never what you could have hoped for.

Lacking ambition, as I do, makes being idle a whole lot easier to do.  I have no particular hopes, so I have no particular worries of their never coming to pass.  So now that I am grown, an independent thinker, with a stubborn streak, I don't much care what other people think I ought to be going after.  But it does make me a little sad, at times, not so very often really, to think that I'm the type of man who doesn't know what he wants.

Wish List

If you have not been paying attention, there are only 12 shopping days left till my birthday.  Time to look busy, people!  One friend has already wished me a "happy belated birthday" on Facebook, which is what I call planning ahead.

I will be fifty-eight on the 25th.  I will not be attending any of my classes that day.  It's my high holy day of the year.  (Keep your Christmas.)  Some of you ask if I will be sixty this year, which is offensive, grossly offensive, on two levels.

One:  When I say kindly, No, I will be fifty-eight, not sixty, you snap back, "I didn't think so."  But, Bitch, it was your FIRST GUESS!  Own up to it.  

Two:  You ask if I will be sixty assuming that sixty, a round number, 6-0, is a "special" birthday, warranting a special celebration, perhaps more expensive gifts for my Diamond Jubilee--as if you think I'm going to let you ... or anybody ... get away with taking my 58 years on the CHEAP!  

So let's clear the air here.  Fifty-eight IS a big deal, okay?  Taking into consideration the Darwinian "dead pool" of longevity, I have already outlived Lincoln (56), Shakespeare (52), Proust (51), Gorgeous George (48), Billie Holiday (44), JFK (46), Van Gogh (37), Mozart (35), Alexander the Great (32), Kurt Cobain (27), Tupac (25), and James Dean (24), none of whom lived long enough to accomplish much of anything of importance blog-wise--so show a little fucking respect.

My prematurely dilatory Facebook friend aside, the rest of you guys need to get on the ball.  As you know, the longer you wait the pricier the gift ends up being--or you wind up giving me something "thoughtful," like a crinkled foil gum wrapper you will try to pass off as being in your pocket the day we first met--Bullshit!  To give a cheap thoughtful gift, you have to actually be thoughtful, which means you are already on top of this looming crisis, but for the rest of you, it's time to call Visa and verify your available credit.

To help you along, here's a wish list.  Study it.  Be prepared to be held accountable for it.

1. Ten-year membership to the Rent Boy of the Week Club--though undoubtedly it would be cheaper simply to pay my rent for ten years.
2. A year-round, permanently reserved carriage house at the Maison Dupuy Hotel, New Orleans.
3. Front row seats to WWE's Wrestlemania XXVII in Atlanta on April 3rd.  Yeah, that's very expensive now, what with scalpers and all, and it is ten full days after my birthday--but was it me who told you to procrastinate?
4. A 17-inch MacBook Pro in brushed silver, an iPad 2, and, oh, might as well, an iPhone 4.
5. A small but memorable role as Ryan Reynolds' valet, dresser, confidant, and personal assistant in the sequel to The Green Lantern.
6. Every Tarzan movie ever made on Blu-Ray, fully restored in high definition and enhanced 7.1 surround sound.
7. World Peace, an End to Hunger, and an internationally signed agreement that the climate not be permitted to change ever again.
8. Front row tickets to see Lady Gaga in concert at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas ... on my birthday!
9. A lifetime supply of Coca-Cola Classic (pricier than you may think--I'm addicted to the stuff--like frigging heroin).
10. A 24-hour shopping spree at Nordstrom's, the downtown Seattle location will do--it's the biggest ... I checked.

Zombies!

Last night I watched the first disk of the AMC series The Walking Dead.  I'm realizing that zombies are probably just not the right fit for me, monster-wise.  Vampires, yeah, because they're sexy.  Werewolves, definitely, because they cut loose every four weeks.  No doubt about giant apes because, you know, they are giant frigging apes!  But zombies?  Too close to my reality.

I am enjoying the fact that the series is set in Atlanta, a city I lived in for a year and a half in the 1970s and have visited frequently since then.  It's a modern city, with malls, sprawl, gated communities, and every fast-food chain known to man, encircled but hardly contained by a gigantic highway (285).  I love the city, but it strikes me as a perfect setting for a TV show about zombies.

The scariest part of The Walking Dead, so far, is the scene in the first episode when three human characters are bunkered in a house, windows covered to escape the undead's attention, characters only whispering so as not to be heard, knowing full well that zombies are swarming around the neighborhood after dark, including one who used to be the wife of one of the characters and the mother of another.  Just the whole situation of being vital and alive, yet forced into immobility and silence, just strikes me as eery and nightmarish, especially since people without pulses control the new social order--as I said, too close to my reality.  Especially creepy is a shot of the front doorknob twisting as the former lady of the house, with masklike lack of affect, except for her constantly moving jaw, tries to reenter what used to be her life.

I suspect American conservatives and liberals view zombie movies contrastingly.  Perhaps one reason for these movies' popularity right now is that different audiences can understand them to mean different things.  The human characters in these movies must strike conservatives as prototypical survivalists--good decent "real" Americans who hunt and fish and pray, who, when the times get apocalyptic, are tough enough to do what it takes to thrive--which basically means looking out just for yourself and your own (family, race, etc.) first of all and steering clear of the freaks (me and people like me).  It must also be fun for them to imagine a world without taxes or zoning laws.

For liberals and leftists, the unavoidable analogy (or it seems unavoidable to me) is that the constantly craving, never satiated zombies are prototypical consumer capitalists.  Indeed, George A. Romero, father of the modern concept of zombification, which he uprooted from its voodoo context and spliced with 1950s sci-fi invaders, suggested as much in 1978's Dawn of the Dead, when the undead gather at the local shopping mall ("This was an important place in their lives").

Unlike other kinds of horror movies that invoke the supernatural, it is really unnecessary to "set a mood" for a zombie movie.  Zombies fit into ordinary reality effortlessly--unlike vampires or ghosts or giant apes.  No need for dark shadows, cobwebs, theremin music, dry ice, and medieval iconography.  A Pizza Hut is as good as a castle in a zombie movie.

One thing you never see zombies doing in a zombie movie is drive cars.  This is an oversight, in my opinion.  I never feel so dead and so out of touch with my environment as when I'm behind the wheel of a car ... in traffic.  And when I make the effort to look through the windshields (assuming they're not tinted to prevent such an invasion of privacy ... er, in public places) at the other drivers and their passengers, I am always struck by the occupants' glazed, expressionless faces--even when (and this is creepy) the people are swaying and nodding and hopping to the beat of music.  It's not so much the fact that I can't hear the music they're quasi-dancing to, it's the fact that their faces so often look crematorium-ready even while their shoulders rock and jiggle back and forth.  A couple of years ago my car broke down on a busy interstate highway, and my long walk along the shoulder of that constantly roaring road (yet curiously lifeless--witness all the dead animals I had to step over) has changed my perception of postmodern reality forever.

Besides wandering the mall and driving cars, zombies should do more things that would enhance the movies' realism--stand in line, for one.  Long slow lines, preferably.  Watch television.  Go to church.  Text.  Lurch toward familiar brand names.  Sit in desks and stare straight ahead while their teachers lecture.  Stand, blank-faced, with phones glued to their ears, waiting for the next available representative.  Take their shoes off before shuffling through security checks.  Have blogs.  Yeah, zombies most definitely would blog.