It belongs to human nature to hate those you have injured.
Tacitus
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Month: July 2019
The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 5 Episode 1 – In Praise of Pip
Jack Klugman plays Max Philips a small-time bookie who lives in a cheap rooming house and works for a small-time hood named Moran. The episode opens up with Max’s son Pip being carried into a field hospital in Vietnam. The young soldier has been shot in the stomach while on patrol and the medic is sending him up the line to a real hospital to attempt to save his life through surgery. But his prognosis is bleak.
We meet Max in his apartment and even though he is a crook we see the human side of him talking to his old landlady, Mrs. Feeney, and asking if any mail has come from his son Pip. Next we meet one of his “clients,” a young man named George who stole $300 from his job to bet on a horse that lost. He tells Max that if he can’t give the money back, he’ll go to jail. Max seems very cynical and unsympathetic about all this.
In the next scene we are at Moran’s apartment where Max hands over his profits to his boss. But Moran says that Max has stiffed him the $300 George owed. Apparently, Max let him off the hook. But Moran heard about it and sent a thug to beat the money out of George. Both of them enter the apartment. Now Max gets a phone call from his landlady telling him a telegram has arrived for him. Max asks her to read it to him over the phone. The telegram is from the Army stating that Pip was critically wounded and not expected to live.
Now Max regrets his whole shabby life and all of the times he neglected Pip while he was living his life of crime and drunkenness. He throws George the $300 and tells him to leave but the thug blocks the door and reaches into his jacket. Max pulls a knife and warns Moran to call off his goon. But the gunman fires his gun and Max knifes both him and his boss allowing George to escape.
Max staggers away from the building. He’s been shot in the gut and he’s reeling from the news that his son is dying. He pours out his regrets and then begs God for the chance to talk to Pip.
Now we jump to the hospital where Pip is being treated. After his surgery the surgeon tells the nurse that if Pip can last the next hour he should survive.
Walking into the deserted amusement park Max sees Pip but as the ten-year-old boy (played by Bill Mumy) who idolized him as his best friend. In this dream vision they relive all the fun they had together riding the rides and playing the carnival games. But after an hour Pip suddenly looks bleakly at Max and runs away. Max runs after him and follows him into the House of Mirrors. After frantically chasing Pip, Max hears Pip telling him the hour’s up and he has to leave because he’s dying.
Max staggers out onto the now deserted midway and begs God for another favor. He asks Him to take Max’s life and spare Pip. And then Max crumples to the ground.
In the next scene Private Pip Philips in uniform and walking with a cane is accompanying Mrs. Feeney and a young female relative of hers into the amusement park. From the conversation we learn that Max died a few months before. And as Pip relives the amusement park of his youth, he demonstrates the fond memories he has of Max.
This episode is a shameless and transparent attack on the audience’s heartstrings. The whole setup is meant to elicit an emotional response using several of the oldest tropes in Hollywood; the gangster with a heart of gold, the dying child and the appeal to God. But it’s also very effective. I alternate between condemning it for rank sentimentality and praising it for the effectiveness of the melodrama. Also, Jack Klugman and Bill Mumy? How can you go wrong with that? I’ll call this an A-.
Destination Moon – An OCF Classic Movie Review
The 1950 motion picture Destination Moon is in several aspects an odd duck. It was an independent production under George Pal’s control. He worked with Robert A Heinlein to adapt his novel Rocket Ship Galileo into a screen play. In point of fact the plot changes involved make the movie and the book completely different stories. For Pal who would go on to make such sci-fi classics as War of the Worlds, The Time Machine and When Worlds Collide this was a chance to make a realistic space flight movie with Heinlein providing the scientific accuracy.
After a government project to build an advanced rocket motor is sabotaged and abandoned a plan is hatched to overcome the loss of government funding in rocket design by recruiting patriotic business leaders to pool their resources to pay for and build a Moon rocket. General Thayer and Dr. Charles Cargraves were the moving force behind the earlier government project and Jim Barnes is the principal industrialist who uses his aircraft design facilities to build the atomic powered rocket. Along with Joe Sweeney who provides radio and communication expertise (along with Brooklyn-accented comic relief) these men will be the crew to travel back and forth to the Moon.
When local bureaucracy threatens to tie up the launch in the courts, the team decides to launch immediately. Just as the sheriffs are arriving to serve the launch injunction the crew is riding the elevator up to the cockpit. The ship takes off and the crew gets to experience the pain of eight gee take off acceleration and the nausea associated with zero gravity conditions. Shortly after taking off they discover the need to do a space walk to repair equipment. One of the astronauts carelessly allows his magnetic boots to become separated from the ship’s hull while not holding onto his tether and begins floating away from the ship. One of his mates has to use an oxygen cylinder as a makeshift rocket to rendezvous with the lost man and bring him back.
As the rocket approaches the Moon, errors in the navigation (or should I say astrogation) force the crew to expend to much reaction mass from the rocket to land in their planned destination. Mission control on Earth begins calculating how much weight must be removed from the ship to balance the reduced capacity of the ship’s fuel load.
Meanwhile the crew investigates the Moon. The first thing they do is claim the Moon for the United States (for the good of all mankind). Using a Geiger counter General Thayer discovers large deposits of uranium. Later on, one of the astronauts takes a picture of Joe Sweeney holding his arm up in such away that it looks like he is holding up Earth in the sky behind him.
The calculations on the fuel are distressing. The ship has to be lightened by over a ton. The crew starts removing everything that isn’t required to get the ship back to Earth. But even after sawing off any metal components of the ship that can be removed, they’re still short by one hundred ten pounds.
Barnes, Cargraves and Thayer realize that someone has to stay behind and each one of them tries to convince the other two that he is the one to stay based on authority, age or responsibility. Meanwhile Sweeney takes it upon himself to take the last space suit and leave the ship. He tells them to leave without him. But Barnes figures out a trick to get them below the weight limit. With a rat-tailed file Sweeney puts a notch in the outer door frame of the air lock. A heavy oxygen cylinder is hung outside the ship from a line that runs through the notch in the door. With the door closed the airlock is pressurized with only a slow leak from the notch. Then Sweeney ties the space suit to the other end of the line. Once Sweeney reenters the ship the outer door is opened and the weight of the cylinder drags the space suit out the door. Then the ship launches back to Earth.
And the movie ends with the words THE END followed by “of the Beginning.”
Destination Moon is a landmark. It is the first reasonably accurate portrayal of actual space flight. Coming nineteen years before Apollo 11 it is remarkably realistic. Now as cinema it definitely isn’t King Lear or even King Kong but it’s excellent propaganda for a space program. And it does contain all the correct tropes of the time. If you are a sci-fi fan this movie is a must see.
19JUL2018 – Photo of the Day
19JUL2019 – Quote of the Day
Augustus gradually increased his powers, taking over those of the senate, the executives and the laws. The aristocracy received wealth and position in proportion to their willingness to accept slavery. The state had been transformed, and the old Roman character gone for ever. Equality among citizens was completely abandoned. All now waited on the imperial command.
Tacitus
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Article on Chinese Americans Joining the Right
Interesting article on Chinese Americans and how they find more in common with the Right than with the Left.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/chinese-american-right-new-generations-immigrants/
So here’s one of the first cracks in the coalition of the bribed. The Chinese Americans came here because they know what socialism means and preferred the meritocratic American system. They invested in educating their kids assuming they’d be competing on merit. Now they see the Democrats instituting the grievance based admissions criteria at Harvard and in the New York City Elite High Schools and it doesn’t seem just to them. Looks like one of the up and coming groups is not as woke as their allies think.
Could President Trump Alter the Outcome of the Democrat Primary?
President Trump appears to me to be forcing Nancy Pelosi and the Democrat candidates for president to line up behind the Four Horsefaces of the Apocalypse. Opinions differ as to how intentional are the rhetorical attacks that President Trump initiates on Twitter. I would have to say that this one is extremely deliberate. Nancy Pelosi was actively reining in these bomb throwers just to protect herself and the rest of the 2020 candidates from being tarred with the same crazy brush that these females decorate themselves with. But once he laid on the “go back to your rathole country,” nice and thick Nancy and all the other democrat clowns were backed into a corner and had to embrace the four harridans.
This is brilliant. These harpies are on record with so much anti-American venom that even a child will be able to put together a greatest hits reel for the Republican 2020 campaigns. Who knows? It might even be possible to unseat a few of these psychos. But regardless, what it might really do is energize the democrat primary voters to throw poor old Creepy Uncle Joe under the bus and nominate Kamala Harris or even (be still my beating heart) Cory Booker! Can you imagine Spartacus up there on the stage with President Trump at the debates? It’s all Booker can do now to remember to put his pants on. He’ll probably bolt if he gets too flustered.
All along I’ve maintained that the power brokers in the DNC will put their thumbs on the scale and throw the nomination to Biden. But what if Trump pushes the Dems to a place much farther along in their intersectional identity politics calculus? What if his insults catalyze the anti-white position into a mandate? Then Bernie, Biden, Buttigieg and even Warren become personae non gratae. Oh, wouldn’t that be lovely?
It is my contention that Barack Obama’s obvious anti-white bias and the pathetic economic policies of his administration have inoculated America from feeling racist for voting against a black candidate. That and the drum beat of woke sentiment has finally started to wise up Americans to the Left’s white guilt playbook. That’s why I think a Harris or Booker candidacy would be a boon to President Trump and all of us. If Harris gets blown out in a landslide it would put to rest the whole demographics is destiny hustle. As many on the Dissident Right have pointed out the Coalition of the Entitled don’t really like each other all that well. In fact, the only thing they dislike more than each other is normal white men. So, if you pick a candidate that doesn’t belong to the particular sliver of the coalition that is up for grabs (Hispanics for instance) then chances are you could be out of luck on Election Day if the Republican does a good job of selling his record or platform. And if some of those slivers, like white women and Hispanic traditionalists, start thinking that their interests actually align better with the Republicans than with the America-hating Squad then things could get very interesting.
So, my thesis is that President Trump is jabbing at “the Squad” in order to drive the Democrats to solidarity around them. His intent is to associate the Democrats with these America-hating crazy women and make them less electable. And possibly he would like to radicalize the Democrat primary electorate to nominate a sure loser like Harris or Booker. Now, have I changed my mind about the inevitability of Biden? Not yet. These things blow over and Biden really is the only dwarf with even a snowball’s chance in Hell in 2020. I’ll recalibrate based on whether President Trump’s attacks on the Horsefaces continue or abate. Either way I’m really enjoying this extended election season and I anticipate a bumper crop of election night Democrat caterwauls.
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The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 4 Episode 18 – The Bard
Julius Moomer is a struggling tv writer. He’s awful. After he’s been rejected for the millionth time he begs his agent for just one more chance. He goes to a bookstore and a book on black magic flies off the shelf and lands at his feet. He takes the book home and tries to conjure up William Shakespeare to help him write his script. After several failures he succeeds and Shakespeare agrees to write a couple of scripts for Julius.
When Moomer brings the script to his agent he actually likes it. He sells it to a tv show and a committee of producers, directors and the sponsor rewrite it so that Rocky Rhodes (Burt Reynolds doing his best Marlon Brando impression) could play the romantic lead. But when Will hears what they’ve done to his plot he gets upset. When Rhodes accuses Shakespeare of being a Tennessee Williams hater Will decks him with one punch. Then Shakespeare quits and goes home.
Now Moomer is in trouble. His first play is a hit but how will he do the next one? The tv station wants an epic on American History. Of course, he goes back to his book and the next day he shows up at his agent’s office with his writing consultants; Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, George Washington, Ben Franklin, Abraham Lincoln and Pocahontas.
Yikes! Moomer is played by Jack Weston, a very recognizable character actor. In addition to Burt Reynolds, John Williams played Shakespeare. I remember him as the police inspector from the movie Dial M for Murder. And Howard McNear who played Floyd the Barber on the Andy Griffith Show is one of the tv executives. This is a goofy episode. It’s played for laughs from beginning to end so I’ll take it in that spirit. There are a few good laughs so I’ll just go with a B.
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18JUL2018 – Photo of the Day
18JUL2019 – Quote of the Day
Crime, once exposed, has no refuge but in audacity.
Tacitus
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