All the Secrets of the Universe and Some Really Important Stuff Too!
The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
The poll on yesterday’s post Which State Will Grovel the Least to the Looters? has already accumulated over 150 votes and dozens of useful comments. When the link to whatfinger expires sometime tonight I’ll review the results and add some comments of my own to say what I’ve learned and what I’ll do next to use the info. But thanks to everyone who has contributed so far.
If some black man go out and start something, a riot or something or, I’m not going to jump in it and get killed because he’s gone out and started something I don’t believe in what he’s fighting for or his approach.
Muhammad Ali
The Enterprise comes upon two adjacent inhabited solar systems that have had their planets reduced to rubble. Heading into the next solar system they receive a garbled distress signal from the Federation Star Ship Constellation. When they reach the solar system, they find that all the planets except for the inner two have been destroyed.
As they navigate through the debris field, they discover the badly damaged Constellation drifting in space. Sensors determine that parts of the ship are still habitable but the warp drive and transporters are destroyed and the bridge has been depressurized. Kirk, McCoy, Scotty and some red shirts beam aboard and discover that the crew is missing. While investigating the auxiliary control room they discover the ship’s commander Commodore Decker (played by well known character actor William Windom) slumped over the control console in heavy shock. McCoy revives him with a medication and Decker relates to them that some device of mammoth proportions, “miles long,” was destroying the fourth planet of the system when they arrived and so the Constellation attacked it with all it’s phaser weaponry but with the machine’s hull made of “pure neutronium” it had not effect. The Planet Killer counterattacked with a beam of “pure antiprotons” and disabled the Constellation. To save his crew Decker beamed them down to the third planet and stayed with the ship. After the Constellation could no longer move the device ignored it and went back to destroying the planets. Decker’s crew called him and begged him to help them as the machine destroyed the planet, they were on but he had no way to save them and this is what led to his breakdown. Kirk speculates that the device is a Doomsday Machine unleashed in some long-forgotten war that destroyed both sides, leaving the machine to travel on indefinitely destroying everything in its path and using the debris from the planets it destroys as fuel.
Kirk sends McCoy and Decker back to the Enterprise and stays along with Scotty and the engineering team to reactivate the Constellation. Scotty is tasked with getting the impulse engines working and the rest of the team attempts to get the main view screen of the auxiliary control room functional.
Meanwhile back at the Enterprise Spock is towing the Constellation along and intends to head away from the subspace interference associated with the Planet Killer and warn Starfleet that the device is headed for the most populous area of the galaxy. Communication with the Constellation is cut off by interference and when Commodore Decker reaches the bridge, he relieves Spock of command and orders the Enterprise to attack the Planet Killer. And of course, this goes very badly. In the course of delivering a series of totally ineffective phaser blasts to the hull of the device the Enterprise is caught by a tractor beam and is slowly pulled toward the maw of the Planet Killer.
At this point Kirk gets visual sensors back on line in time to see the Enterprise heading for annihilation. Scotty provides Kirk with impulse power and some phaser capability. Kirk attacks the Planet Killer and this gives the Enterprise the chance to escape. Kirk contacts Spock and orders him to relieve Decker. Decker escapes from an escort and steals a shuttle craft and despite pleading by Kirk flies it directly into the maw of the device. The explosion of the shuttle craft’s small engine damages the Planet Killer by a small but definite amount. Kirk theorizes that exploding the impulse engines of the Constellation inside the device might destroy the Doomsday Machine.
Scotty rigs a 30 second delay to provide Kirk with time to escape the Constellation before detonation. As the Constellation comes within a few hundred miles of the device Kirk pushes the timer and calls to be beamed out. But the transporter was damaged during the battle with the Planet Killer and we get the comical scene of Kirk getting closer and closer to destruction and anxiously reminding Spock he needs to be saved. Spock provides monotonous reminders to Scotty of the imminent demise of Kirk while the engineer works feverishly to repair the transporter’s something or other. And of course, Kirk makes it out with nothing to spare and his atoms scrambling in the air as the transporter manages to collect him together out of the hellish nuclear inferno set off inside the Doomsday Machine by the Constellation’s self destruction. We get some prattle between Kirk and Spock about the Constellation’s detonation which is like a hydrogen bomb, the 20th century’s doomsday device, being used to destroy a different doomsday device.
This is a great episode. The writer, Norman Spinrad, although not an author I preferred was a competent science fiction writer so he has crafted an interesting science fiction story. The Decker character is given a good part as the Captain Ahab trying to get his White Whale. Kirk gets to add a little humor to the situation of his transporter malfunction problem and he actually does this admirably. He even gets to tell Scotty he earned his pay. There really isn’t too much Shatner acting to mock but this episode doesn’t need it. I’ll call it a 10 // 0. This is as good as it gets for Star Trek.
The Los Angeles riots were not caused by the Rodney King verdict. The Los Angeles riots were caused by rioters.
Rush Limbaugh
Well not exactly. This morning I woke up feeling pretty bleak. Antifa and BLM have flushed untold billions of dollars and thousands of American businesses down the drain with their orgy of theft and destruction. Multiple lives have been lost in rioting to somehow make up for the single life that this was all supposed to be about. Governors and Mayors in the blue states are passing this whole thing off as a justifiable reaction. The usual suspects in the media are cheerleading the mayhem and somehow blaming everything on the President. It sounds like I might have a reason to be down.
But I thought about it a little. There is precious little other than blogging about it that I can do. Nobody I know has been burned out of his home or business, so far, and the fallout from all this madness should result in the Democrats losing a bunch of elections in a bunch of places. Possibly this will help to clarify in a lot of people’s minds what it means to put the far left in charge of your lives. If it does maybe it will be a net positive for the country. After all Donald Trump was elected partly as a reaction to the BLM atrocities under Obama. So that gives me a reason to be patient while the madness plays out. I can look forward to a change for the better.
And let’s play devil’s advocate and suppose that instead the country decides to knuckle under to Antifa and BLM and elects the whole leftist crew who then initiate the entire “destroy America agenda.” Well as bad as that would be, and it indeed would be the end of the world as we know it, it would also clarify my place in the world completely. It would essentially end the need for me to wait for things to improve. After all, if you take freedom out of America, you remove the original advantage that everyone came here for in the first place. Then my mission becomes relatively simple, find the place where I have the best chance of enjoying life. Maybe it’ll be Oklahoma or Mississippi, Idaho or Wyoming. I’ll be depending on local conditions to make life tolerable. I can try to remove myself from as many of the systems that the government has built up to control us and try to find a community that thinks like I do. At least in a place like that you might have some like-minded people around you. Who knows, you might be able to join a rebellion of our own.
So yeah, there are a lot of scary things going on and faith in my fellow Americans is at an all time low. But they have until November to restore my faith in them. If they do the right thing and re-elect the President and toss out a bunch of commies who backed Antifa and BLM then we have a chance to straighten things out here. It will still take decades to repair the damage that has already been done. The American people have been sorely harmed by the policies that the Democrats and Republicans inflicted on us over the last fifty years. But if the people choose wisely then we can get started. If not, then I’ll take care me and mine and anyone else I find who feels he’s in the same boat. I’ll look around and see where the deck isn’t stacked against me and I’ll shake off the dust of my feet and leave a place that doesn’t have a place for me.
So, I may not feel fine but I have plans for all eventualities.
Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey (D.) refused to condemn the rioting across America. “Yes, America is burning, but that’s how forests grow,” she said. Well, I hope the mob has a chance to add Healey’s house and car to the growth of America real soon.
Any of you who have followed the guest contributors here may know that The Fatman is a more learned student of the cinema than I am. When he saw my Ransom reviews, he alerted me to a ransom-type movie by the acclaimed Japanese director Akira Kurosawa called “High and Low”. Now, Kurosawa is best known to American audiences from his homage to the American Western called “The Seven Samurai. And the American Western’s homage to him is the movie “The Magnificent Seven.”
So anyway, I decided to give it a spin. “High and Low” is not a direct retelling of the Ransom story in fact it is based on an American crime novel called “King’s Ransom” written by Evan Hunter under the pen name Ed McBain. But I think it still fits under the umbrella of the Ransom comparison.
Kingo Gondo (played by Kurosawa regular, Toshiro Mifune) is the CEO of a large shoe manufacturing company with the very original name of National Shoes. He is extremely wealthy but came up through the ranks from humble beginnings. He lives in a beautiful home on a prominent hill overlooking the city. He has a wife, Reiko and young son, Jun and they share the home with his chauffer Yutaka Sada and his son, Shinichi, who is Jun’s friend.
Gondo is being pressured by the Board of Directors to back their play to oust the founder of the company and start making stylish but poorly-made shoes at a high profit. Gondo disagrees saying the answer is to upgrade the style of the current well-built shoes and thereby maintain the brand and expand the market. The Board threatens to oust him instead. In discussions between Gondo and his assistant we learn that Gondo has anticipated this hostile takeover and has collected enough loan money to take over the company himself. He has a check for fifty million yen that his assistant will deliver by train that night to lock down the stock he needs for the takeover. The loans will basically mortgage everything he owns but he knows he’ll be able to pay them off once he has control of the company.
During these discussions we see Jun and Shinichi dressed as cowboys chasing each other around with cap guns. And now that Jun has won the game as sheriff, he trades costumes with Shinichi and assumes the role of outlaw. Gondo gives the check to the assistant and tells him which train to take. But before the assistant leaves a call comes in from someone claiming to have kidnapped Jun. The kidnapper says the ransom will be thirty million yen. Gondo tells the kidnapper he will pay the ransom. Now Gondo tells his assistant to cancel his train ride because Gondo will need that money for the ransom. Almost immediately Jun walks back in the room and Gondo assumes the call was a hoax. But when Jun asks everyone where Shinichi has gone the adults realize that the kidnapper mistook the boy wearing Jun’s costume for Jun and kidnapped Shinichi by accident. Sada is now understandably worried about his son but Gondo tells him that the kidnapper will release Shinichi when he realizes the boy is not from a rich family. But the kidnapper calls back and says he will demand the ransom for Shinichi instead and he will kill the boy if the money is not surrendered. Gondo refuses and hangs up. Now the police are called in.
The police show up and go through the same phone tapping routine we’ve seen in the other two movies and analyze the kidnapper’s demands and mindset. They try to convince Gondo that this particular kidnapper is extremely angry and seems to have a grudge against Gondo or at least against the rich. They ask him if he will consider paying the ransom but he explains that he must go forward with the takeover or he will be out of a job and ruined financially. At this point Sada and Reiko separately beg Gondo to relent and pay the ransom. Gondo refuses. The police ask that at least he tell the kidnapper that he will pay the money in hopes that they can catch the kidnapper during the ransom exchange. Gondo agrees to this. He gets the instructions from the kidnapper and after seeing Sada break down in despair Gondo relents and agrees to pay the ransom.
There is an intricate arrangement with bags of cash that will fit through a narrow bathroom window on the train once Gondo sees Shinichi standing with his captor adjacent to the tracks. The money is payed and Shinichi is freed. Gondo loses his house and all his possessions to his creditors.
The rest of the movie is a police procedural about trying to find the kidnappers and get Gondo’s money back. Small clues gathered from the kidnapper’s phone conversations and the somewhat vague information provided by Shinichi combine to allow the police to hunt down the gang. The final part of the movie involves some heroin addicts who were part of the gang and we get some scenes of the seedy world that these people inhabit. Finally, the kidnapper is caught and because of the murder of his accomplices he is given a death sentence.
We see Gondo get his money back but it is too late to restore his old life. He takes a job with a smaller shoe company and he actually enjoys the work more because of his greater creative control there.
In the last scene the murderer asks Gondo to come to the prison to talk. He explains why he picked Gondo. From his tenement below the hill he dwelt on Gondo’s affluence and the anger this engendered drove him to his crimes. He claims not to be afraid of his death but by the end of the conversation he breaks out in hysterics and is dragged away and the movie ends.
This movie is sort of a hybrid. The story really is a police procedural. The crime allows for the police to solve the puzzle of finding the criminal and getting justice for Gondo. But the predicament of Gondo is a very Japanese story. The honor and the prestige of the “great man” is a theme that interests Kurosawa and specifically he is examining how the modern capitalist model has removed the human element from the equation. Gondo was a poor man who became rich and Sada is a poor man who is entirely at Gondo’s mercy for his son’s life. Basically, we are watching a struggle for Gondo’s soul.
Japanese cinema is in some ways hard for Americans to enter. In addition to the language barrier and the need to read the subtitles, facial expressions and even mannerisms are decidedly different. I like the movie and thought it was well done. Whether anyone who hasn’t seen Japanese films would enjoy it is an open question. I recommend it.