Gateway Horror

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I’m in two minds about The Gate.  Part of me says “bad movie” while another part says, “Yeah, I’d watch it again.”  A third part of me knows I probably will.  It came out in 1987 as family-friendly horror.  There’s far too much going on for the run-time and the acting is lackluster (child actors who can really pull horror off are rare; perhaps those with more life experience make it believable).  It does have some Poltergeist vibes, though.  So, Glen (12) and his sister Al (15) are allowed to stay home without a babysitter for three days.  A couple nights before, a storm blew over a tree in the backyard, and Glen, with his friend Terry, accidentally open the eponymous gate at the hole by breaking open a geode, allowing demons to come into the world.  And, of course, the parents are gone.

Glen fears he is losing his sister to, well, growing up.  They used to do model rockets, but now she’s interested in boys.  Terry listens to heavy metal and discovers in an insert to an album of a European band, Sacrifyx, that they’ve opened the gate.  As night falls, the stop-motion demons attack.  They’re little and can be blocked by doors.  Al, Glen, and Terry have to figure out how to stop the demons and seal the gate without the Dark Book insert from the Sacrifyx album.  What to do?  They grab a Bible and try reading a bit.  When it doesn’t seem to be working, Terry utters an expletive and throws the Bible into the hole.  It works!  But, ah, this is only the false resolution.  The really big demon bursts through a hole in the living room floor after Terry and Al are both taken.  Glen, left to his own devices, launches a model rocket at the demon, destroying it.

Okay, sounds bad, right?  The reason, it seems to me, is that it doesn’t put religion to work for itself.  The instincts seem good—use the Bible—but the demons are too corporeal and too physical.  There’s no possession here.  In fact, the demons are the old gods (we’re in Lovecraft territory now) who want to take over the world once again.  There’s some good material to work with in The Gate, and if I ever get around to a sequel to Holy Horror I’ll have to include this one.  Overall, the message seems to be that if the Bible doesn’t work, use a rocket.  Oh, and don’t give up on your sister.

Keeping Up

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Perhaps this has happened to you.  When you reach a certain number of decades, it’s sometimes a challenge to keep everything in mind.  I confess to being impressed by young brains.  I admire the confidence of youth because truth does seem to depend on when it’s discovered.  In any case, I don’t always recollect where I’ve put things.  Online this can be a real problem—I have so many bookmarks that I could open my own bookstore.  The place that it really bothers me, though, is email.  Perhaps somewhat foolishly, I use email as my reminder.  I file or delete emails when I have time to do so, but the volume is often difficult to keep up with.  Most of it isn’t personal, of course.  People don’t wonder how you’re doing with all this email, probably because they’re trying to keep on top of their own.

In any case, many organizations like to send out reminders that your membership is about to expire many weeks in advance of it actually happening.  I’m not exactly flush with cash and I like to renew the week before expiration.  If I had a pile of gold I’d be glad to pay a month to six-weeks in advance, but I live in the real world.  So I let the reminder sit in my email pile, figuring, naively, that I’ll see it in time.  Well, I wouldn’t be writing this post if I actually did.  No, other emails keep on coming, forcing my reminders off the top page and into internet purgatory.  It takes at least a holiday weekend to have enough time to file all my accumulated emails and then I find them, cowering, shivering and cold, under the weight of tons of other, less urgent emails.

Some have suggested that I put them on my Calendar app.  The thing is, I forget to look at it.  Or I could “set a reminder”—that’s not a bad idea, if the email doesn’t arrive with a bunch of others so that I don’t forget about it before it gets bumped too far down.  You see, different people think in different ways.  We’re only really starting to recognize that.  Some of us function better when the reminder is sent closer to the deadline.  It’s not like you need the time to take out a loan or anything before making what still feels, to me, like a big-ticket item.  The regular bills, they keep on a-comin’ and they can’t be ignored.  To people of a certain number of decades, it’d be helpful to remind us a bit closer to the deadline.  It’s not like you even have to wait for the payment to arrive through something that used to be called the mail.

Not Making Decisions

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After anesthesia they tell you, “Don’t make any important decisions.”  That’s the excuse I’m using for having watched Llamageddon recently.  That, and it’s free on one of the streaming services to which I have access.  I only found out about it because of such services and I wasn’t in any shape to decide important things like how to spend the rest of the groggy day.  I’m of mixed minds regarding comedy horror.  Or is it horror comedy?  Decisions.  The fact is, quite a few horror movies do involve some amount of fun.  My favorite ones tend to be more serious, but once in a while you find yourself watching movies you know are (or you know are going to be) bad.  I knew this one was.  It’s so bad that it’s got a cult following.  It was, I’m pretty sure, made to be bad.

So a killer llama from another planet is forced to land on earth.  It kills an older couple in Ohio and after the funeral two of their teenage grandchildren, Mel and Floyd, are left to stay in the house.  Mel, who is older and more experienced, contacts all her friends so they can party that night.  Of course, the llama’s still on the loose.  It has laser-beam eyes and it bites and punches people to death and the partiers are picked off, not exactly one-by-one since many of them are electrocuted in the hot tub.  Generally they’re so drunk and/or high that they don’t believe any of this is happening.  Eventually Mel and Floyd’s father arrives and tries to save his kids.  Before dying of llama bite, he kills the quadruped by running it through a combine.

It’s worse than it sounds, but it’s played strictly for laughs.  And, I suspect, it’s one of those movies that’s meant to be watched under the influence.  Since anesthesia is about as close as I’ll ever get to that, I suppose this counts.  Some of the early horror movies have become funny with the passage of time as early special effects age and we become used to better, more convincing fare.     As it is, it’s difficult to find much about Llamageddon apart from IMDb, and the director’s name, Howie Dewin, is a red herring.  I’m fascinated by such films being able to gather a following.  Of course, I confess to enjoying Attack of the Killer Tomatoes when the mood is right.  And a day when decisions are contraindicated, anything can happen.

November Nightmares

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Music videos weren’t really a thing then.  And “Welcome to my Nightmare” was theater as well as rock.  I knew a movie of it existed, but I only made an effort to see it as October was slipping through my grip.  I have a strange, one-sided history with Alice Cooper.  We listened to the radio back when we were kids and we all knew Cooper from “School’s Out,” an unofficial anthem of the seventies.  We didn’t have much money when I was growing up (some things never change), but I had a copy of the album Welcome to my Nightmare.  I couldn’t recollect how I’d got it until my brother clued me in.  We were at Jamesway just outside Franklin one Friday night.  My mother, frugal to the day of her death, saw that Alice Cooper’s new album had a song called “Steven” on it and she bought it for me.

Now Mom knew full well that my official name is “Steve” (she named me).  There’s no “n” in there anywhere.  Yet still, even as I knew this, I found that song spoke to me.  Like the Steven on the album, I was prone to nightmares.  And the sequence of “Years Ago” and “Steven” on that concept album never left me.  Mom would not have approved of the movie version—I found the misogynist parts difficult to watch myself—but it did answer a question I always had: how did he perform these songs in concert?  They seemed too big for that.  They weren’t the snippets I always assumed rock stars did.  (I never attended concerts, so what did I know?)  Alice Cooper is still the only rockstar I’ve ever seen in concert, but the theatrics were brought way down and his back probably ached like mine did after that event.

I’d been looking for a horror movie to finish out the month, you see.  I keep a list of movies that, apparently, are never free on Amazon Prime or Hulu.  It ended up taking nearly all the little time I allot myself for such indulgences to try to find something.  Then I remembered Alice.  It was raining outside and I had caught up on my emails for the moment.  This step into a yesteryear I never knew made me realize just how creative people can be.  We have to get someone to pay us for doing something, and if you can sing and strut, well, you might consider sharing your nightmares.  Something many of us have in abundance, even in November.

Waiting for the Sun

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Waiting.  It’s difficult in the best of circumstances.  It’s even harder when dealing with multiple sources of delay.  For example: it has been unseasonably cool around here for a few months.  Looking at the US weather maps, it looks like we’ve got just about the coolest temperatures in the lower 48.  September is usually reliably a month where you don’t need the furnace in these here parts, but that’s not the case now.  A slowly moving weather system has blocked the sun for days and our poor old house just can’t warm up.  I feel like Noah waiting for some sign of hope.  The weather apps all say, “oh, two or three more days…”  Endurance, I remind myself.  Stoicism.  Still, we need some sun about now.  But that’s not all.

In addition to wearing three heavy layers and my fingerless gloves (in September—and this will last until May!), I’m also doing my prep for a colonoscopy.  In case it’s been a while—that means a liquid diet for a day.  I need to wait until this time tomorrow to have anything to eat and my teeth are on edge because the allowable fluids tend to be sweet and I really need something salty with a bit of crunch about now.  I see I’m allowed ice pops.  But did I mention that it’s cold in here?  If it were a normal year at least one of these two things wouldn’t been an issue at this point in time.  Nobody that I know of looks forward to a colonoscopy.  I know I’ll barely sleep tonight and the whole situation ends up looking downright Dickensian.  Chilly, hungry, persistent rain.  All I really need at a time like this is just some indication that the following days might improve.  Don’t look to the Weather Channel for support.  No, rely on your Stoicism.  Endure.

The trick I usually use on myself is to dangle a small carrot—lunch will be in just three hours!—to get through a long, chilly day.  (You’ll be able to eat something hot…)  I suppose giving up caffeinated beverages a few years back (when the last colonoscopy was well forgotten), might’ve been a poor decision.  I sure could use a Thermos of coffee right about now.  And one of those solar headbands that tricks you into believing you’re getting some sun.  Hey, September’s my second favorite month, after October, so shouldn’t waiting be just a smidge easier?  I’ve been waiting for September since last November.  And still I wait.  Such is the human lot in life.  Endurance is important, I know.  But a peek of sunshine (haven’t seen anything like it for three days) in September—is that too much to ask?  Or at least a hot meal.  What would Zeno do?  (Of course, he did live in sunny Greece…)

Funny Scares

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Camp has its own aesthetic.  I’m not talking about the kind with tents and sleeping bags, but that has its own aesthetic too.  No, I mean campiness in pop culture.  Creepshow, which was released in 1982, has maintained its value as camp and you pretty much still have to pay to see it (at least it’s free not on any streaming services I use).  For an episodic film it’s not bad, and since it’s comedy horror it won’t keep anyone up at night.  And of course both Stephen King (who wrote the script) and his son Joe (future horror writer as well), appear in the movie.  The elder King in a charmingly overacted segment based on one of his short stories clearly influenced by H. P. Lovecraft.  Put this all together with direction by George Romero and a cast including Leslie Nielsen and you’re in for a fun afternoon or evening.  (Or morning.  I won’t judge.)

It’s definitely a period piece.  The attitudes are those of the late seventies and early eighties.  That fact underscores, for me, how media affects everything.  Cultural outlooks change periodically and the more we know about what other people think, the more quickly they change.  Of course, since this is camp you can’t take it seriously.  And yet you somehow do.  The first vignette is, appropriately, holiday horror.  It has to do with Father’s Day which is, I suspect, a holiday to which most men acquiesce rather than anticipate.  This story is about a dad who takes it too seriously and a daughter who takes it too far.  Until…

The plots of all the stories are comic booky, and they contain many of King’s early themes.  “Something to Tide You over” is probably the most disturbing of the tales, at least by implication.  It reflects some of King’s fears as presented in some of his short stories but the method of execution is particularly distressing.  The comic book ending, however, shows it’s all for fun.  The prologue/epilogue reflects, I expect, the experience of many of us growing up.  I remember having comic books to which my mother objected because they were “too scary” for young boys (in our context).  I even recall her trying, and perhaps succeeding, to take them away and put them in the trash.  This is a situation as old as media for children.  The brothers Grimm knew just as well as King does that kids like scary stories.  Some grow out of that.  And others of us find a couple hours to watch Creepshow as an adult.  At least those of us who enjoy camp.

Generation Tech

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You can’t be lazy in a technocracy.  I find myself repeating this mantra to myself when dealing with many people who use technology only when strictly necessary.  They don’t realize the war has already been lost.  If you want to thrive in this new world order, you need to keep up at least a modicum with technology.  I deal with a lot of people for whom biblical studies means handling only pens and paper.  J. C. L. Gibson, one of my doctoral advisors, wrote all his books longhand and had his secretary type them.  That’s simply no longer possible.  For authors, if you’re not willing to put notice of your books on Facebook, Twitter (or, as it seems to be going, Threads) people aren’t going to notice.  Publishers don’t send print catalogues any more.  My physical mailbox has been quite a bit less used of late.

There’s an irony to the fact that the generation that grew up on Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are a-Changin’” are now refusing to accept our robo-overlords.  AI is here to stay and shy of a total collapse of the electrical grid, we’re not going back to where we were in the sixties.  The times have a-changed.  And you know what Bob says to do if you can’t lend an appendage.  Now, if you read my blog regularly, you know that I don’t go into this future with a sincere smile.  But at least I try to keep up with what I need to to survive.  I have to stop and remind myself how to write a check.  Or fold a roadmap.  I suspect that many of those who object to doing academic business electronically also drive by GPS.  It beats getting lost.

How does this connect to the internet?

No, I’m not the first in line.  I still wouldn’t be using a headset for Zoom/Teams meetings if my wife hadn’t given me an old one of hers.  This despite the fact I complain that I can’t hear others who insist they can speak clearly without and whose voices are muffled by the echoes in their work-at-home room.  Nevertheless, if you want to be a professional of any stripe, you need to reconcile yourself with technology and its endless changes.  You wake up one morning and Twitter is now X and you find yourself xing rather than tweeting.  I need to get more followers on Threads, but you can’t do that on your laptop—I guess times are still a-changin’.

Who Are We?

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I wonder who I am.  Beyond my usual existential angst, I tried to access some online learning modules at work only to have so many barriers thrown up that I couldn’t log in.  Largely it’s because I have an online presence (be it ever so humble) outside of work.  Verification software wants to send codes to my personal email and my company has a policy against running personal emails on work computers.  Then they want to send a phone verification, but I don’t have a work cell.  I don’t need one and I have no desire to carry around two all the time because I barely use the one I have.  By the way, my cell does seem to recognize me most of the time, so maybe I should ask it who I am.

Frustrated at the learning module, I remembered that we’d been asked to explore ChatGPT for possible work applications.  I’d never used it before so I had to sign up.  I shortly ran into the very same issue.  I can’t verify through my personal phone and I found myself in the ironic position of having an artificial intelligence asking me to verify that I was human!  I know ChatGPT is not, but I do suspect it might be a politician, given all the red tape it so liberally used to get me to sign in.  Not that I plan to use it much—I was simply trying to do what a higher-up at work had asked me to do.  So now my work computer seems to doubt my identity.  I don’t doubt its—I can recognize the feel of its keyboard even in the dark.  And the way my right hand gets too hot from the battery on sweltering summer days.  It’s an unequal relationship.

My personal computer, which isn’t as paranoid as the work computer, seems to accept me for who I say I am.  I try to keep passwords secure and complex.  I have regular habits—at least most days.  I should be a compatible user.  I don’t want ChatGPT on my personal space, however, since I’m not sure I trust it.  I did try to log into the learning module on my laptop but it couldn’t be verified by the work server (because the computer’s mine, I expect).  Oh well, I didn’t really feel like chatting anyway.  But I did end the day with a computer-induced identity crisis.  If you know who I am, please let me know in the comments.  (You’ll have to authenticate with WordPress first, however.)

Movies about Movies

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The category of movies so bad that they’re good sometimes spawns the phenomenon of a movie about the bad movie.  The Room, generally on the list of worst movies of all time, was followed by The Disaster Artist.  Not exactly a documentary, it was a movie about the making of the movie.  There’s a macabre fascination with films that dare to be so very bad.  They’re released nevertheless, and if they’re the right kind of bad they grow a following.  Ed Wood’s movies inspired Tim Burton’s movie Ed Wood—dramatized, but apparently not far from the truth.  Troll 2 was followed up by Best Worst Movie, directed by the child star of the original, Michael Stephenson.  Such movies are irresistible in their own right.  So when I finally saw Troll 2 I turned around and immediately watched Best Worst Movie.

A few things stood out in this documentary.  One is that being part of something larger, it’s not always clear what this larger thing will be.  Most of the people in the movie (which was released directly to video) found out about the release by accident.  Many of them never acted again but one thing they all knew: when they did see it, it was clear that it was a bad movie.  The one person in the documentary who doesn’t accept this is Claudio Fragasso, the director.  Fragasso is Italian and he still maintains that this is a great movie and everybody else is wrong about it.  He skulks around the tributes made to the movie and insists to both actors and viewers, that the movie isn’t bad.  They are wrong, he is right.

There’s nothing wrong with pride in achievement, of course.  Sometimes, however, it’s more graceful to admit that you simply got it wrong.  Best Worst Movie follows some of the actors to conferences where they expected huge lines and great attention, only to find a handful of disinterested spectators wondering what all the fuss was about.  At the same time, there are screenings of Troll 2 in major US cities that draw sell-out crowds.  Bad movies don’t appeal to everyone, of course.  They can, however, serve some good and might even add some enjoyment to life.  Best Worst Movie underscores that not all film fans have the same taste.  It also shows that those who enjoy traditionally bad movies aren’t alone.  There’s an aesthetic to being bad enough to be good, and even that can spin off sequels of its own.  And please, Mr. Fragasso, don’t make the sequel you’re touting—this kind of magic only comes once, unless you’re a genius like Ed Wood.

Bad Movie Therapy

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I haven’t see Troll, but it doesn’t matter.  Troll 2 has nothing to do with it.  As a frequent contender for worst movie of all time, Troll 2 is an anti-vegetarian screed and campy horror film that’s impossible to take seriously.  It’s part of my bad movie therapy.  And it’s also an example of religion and horror.  But first, let’s set the scene.  The Waits family (Michael and Diana, and their kids Holly and Joshua) is doing a house exchange for a vacation.  Before they leave, however, Joshua’s dead grandfather appears to him to warn him about the goblins.  The goblins, who are vegetarians, make people eat/drink a special substance that turns them into plants so that they can eat them.  (Yes, it’s that bad.)  Ignoring Joshua’s concerns, the Waitses head for Nilbog (goblin backwards) and go ahead with the house exchange.

The locals (there are only 26 of them) can make themselves appear human and they try in vain to get the visitors to eat.  Joshua prevents his family from eating the plant food by peeing on it.  They go to bed hungry as the queen of the goblins plans her next move to get them floradated.  About midway through the film, we’re shown a church scene in which the minister preaches of the evil of the flesh.  Ironically, this is not far off from the teaching of some Christian denominations.   He tells the trolls what they already know—they have to get the visitors to eat so that they can eat them.  If nothing else, it will make you forget your troubles for ninety minutes, unless your trouble is that you’re being turned into a plant.

Any number of reasons have been offered for why the film is so bad.  While filmed in Utah, the crew was Italian, and most of them spoke no English.  The movie was low budget.  The acting is just plain bad.  All together, however, these features work symbiotically to grow a wonderfully therapeutic end result.  Some of the crew claimed that it was the intention all along to make this a funny film.  Comedy horror or horror comedy is a recognized genre, after all.  The only problem I have now, however, is where to go from here.  So how does the Waits family escape their peril?  I’ll need to offer a bit of a spoiler here.  The goblins are frightened away long enough by a double-decker bologna sandwich that the family can touch the magic stone and destroy the conspiracy.  What are you still doing here? Why aren’t you watching this already?

Hoppy Fourth

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Today is the one of the relatively rare summer holidays.  Modern industrialized nations tend to take a more relaxed view toward summers without having to give out too many prescribed company holidays.  This seems to follow on from school schedules because the kids are out in summer and adults need some flexibility when work demands collide with family needs.  The internet has made work-life balance a little tricker to achieve since work is always just a click away.  Some more generous employers gave yesterday as part of an extended four-day weekend, which is rejuvenating in a way that’s easily forgotten until you start to feel it.  The sense of obligation takes a couple of days to wind down, and then on Monday you realize “I’ve still got another day off!”  It’s a sublime feeling.  Why not watch holiday horror on it?

The Wicker Man is a holiday horror movie.  One of my arguments in the book is that holiday horror has to derive its energy from the holiday, and not just be set on it.  For example, I Know What You Did Last Summer and Return of the Living Dead are both set on or near Independence Day but the movies don’t really draw their horror from the holiday itself.  It falls into the same category.  Frogs?  Well, maybe.  Perhaps holiday horror, it’s definitely in bad movie territory.  A rich southern family is dominated by a Trump-like grandfather who controls the money and measures everyone by loyalty to him personally.  On his birthday, the fourth of July, nature revolts and his adult children and grandchildren (apart from one granddaughter), are killed by animals in this eco-revenge groaner.  But is it holiday horror?

One scene may suggest that perhaps it fits the category, but the real significance of that day is that grandpa won’t let it be celebrated any way other than by his prescribed plan.  Even as the estate is overrun by frogs (mostly), snakes, lizards, alligators,  tarantulas, and even some birds (thank you, Mr. Hitchcock), he insists that everyone do what they always do on the fourth of July/his birthday.  The only scene that suggests holiday horror is where the eponymous frogs hop onto a cake decorated like an American flag.  I normally like nature-revenge films, and this one starts out well but quickly goes downhill.  The environmental message is there, but underplayed.  There are some firecrackers and a number of dead rich folks, but otherwise the film seems to have no message at all.  It’s a bad movie.  Holiday horror?  Not really.  Something to watch for a day off work?  Definitely.

Not Dagon

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There’s an aesthetic to bad movies.  And when your production company is Crappy World Films you’ve got to wonder if it’s intentional.  Chad Ferrin’s H. P. Lovecraft’s The Deep Ones, which was released in 2020, isn’t a great movie.  It is kinda fun, though.  I’ve had a weakness for explicit Lovecraft films ever since Stuart Gordon’s very moody Dagon.  That film was clearly the inspiration for this one.  With the “low” budget of only a million dollars (it feels strange to write that), it nevertheless has a clean cinematography that shows some artistry.  The story just isn’t that good.  A young couple is seeking a getaway at an oceanfront AirBNB only to discover it’s part of a “gated” community.  Their hosts, who are living in the boat down at the marina, keep on stopping in, not leaving them much privacy.

The set-up is very much a Rosemary’s Baby scenario.  The community, as the title suggests, worship the Old Ones.  They introduce Cthulhu early on, but the young man of the couple has never heard of him (he obviously doesn’t spend much time on the internet).  Speaking of the internet, the film makes the point that everyone spends too much time on it, and there’s perhaps some truth to that, but, if you’re streaming the movie you’re also participating.  In any case, the community wants women to offer to Dagon—and the monster here is clearly low-budget—so they can bear more children for the Deep Ones.  Well, not so much bear children for them as to be pregnant with tentacles that can somehow convert newcomers.  Once you’ve been tentacled, it seems, you’re a member of the community.

There is a kind of Lovecraft vibe to the film despite the often wooden acting and throwaway dialogue.  One thing Lovecraft had learned from Poe was the consistency of mood.  It’s here that the movie runs into some trouble.  At times it’s a little scary, at times dramatic, but too much of it just feels silly.  The case could be made that Lovecraft’s writing tends toward the puerile and there’s some truth to that.  It is never silly, however.  Sometimes when translated to the screen the outlandishness of Lovecraft’s view of the world comes across as so weird as to be funny.  It takes an able director, and a strong writer, to adapt him to cinema successfully.  It’s no accident, then, that the movie is dedicated to Stuart Gordon, whose Dagon is still difficult for me to watch, so full of Lovecraft as it is.

A Theory

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Do you remember that crazy college professor you had?  Chances are there was more than one.  As a late friend used to say, that’s why we pay good money to go to college.  I have an idea, perhaps even a theory, that the neurodiverse used to be largely institutionalized.  And I don’t mean in mental hospitals or “insane asylums.”  I mean in two well-respected social institutions: the university and the church.  Before you can object to the latter, consider that ministers, and before them priests, derived from shamans.  Nobody would doubt that shamans think differently than most people.  So, my theory is that when neurodiverse people came along in capitalist societies, they were shunted toward jobs in higher education and religion.  Out of sight to most people most of the time.  Then capitalism grew.

Both the church and the university became businesses.  Again, if you doubt me about churches, get to know a few bishops.  You’ll soon see.  In higher education, business people were hired as deans and presidents.  Not knowing how to handle their neurodiverse employee pool, they began hiring more “normal” people.  Those who, with no real insight or ambition, figure teaching is a cushy job.  It pays well, and it’s respectable.  But to do the job right you might just have to be neurodiverse.  Now, I don’t have the means to test my theory, but I suspect if you surveyed students over time as they graduated, you’d find fewer and fewer crazy professors.  As my departed friend would likely have said, they’re not getting their money’s worth.

Money doesn’t compromise.  Many people are driven by it without ever asking themselves why.  Do they want to be able to build private rockets to take them to Mars when capitalism finally destroys this planet?  Do they want private jets and the endless headaches of having to worry about getting even more money?  Studies tend to show that wealthy people are far from the happiest on the planet.  In fact, many of them are privately miserable.  They don’t have to work, true, but what do they think about?  Deeply.  I’ve never been driven by money.  I would like a bit more than I’ve been able to manage with my background and specialization.  Enough not to have sleepless nights over whether we can afford to fix the roof.  And still buy books.  It may be crazy to still read like a professor when I’m no longer in the guild.  I like to think I’m participating in a very old tradition.

Denver Memories

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It may be a strange thing to say (or write, as the case may be) but I was kind of hoping to spend some extra time at the Denver Airport.  When I traveled to Denver for a conference last year, I arrived to a workload (attending AAR/SBL as an editor is all work, not play).  I had no time to hang around the airport.  I knew, however, as a recent New York Times piece states, that the airport has a reputation for the paranormal.  While the Times article focuses on Luis Jimenez’s sculpture “Mustang” to start, it quickly moves on to “conspiracy theories.”  And the parts of the airport passengers never see.  The place has a reputation for being weird.  During construction in recent years, the usually anodyne partitions that block construction from the view of passengers, housed images of aliens, bolstering rumors that Denver, and its airport, have some connection with our extraterrestrial neighbors.

The Times story points out alien graffiti in parts of the Denver Airport where travelers can’t go.  And it also points out that although the fiery red eyes of “Mustang” are to represent Jimenez’s father’s start in the neon business, they give the giant horse a demonic aspect.  The artist died working on the sculpture.  A piece fell during construction, severing an artery.  But the conspiracy theories began earlier.  The southwest has a reputation of being the home of the shapeshifting reptilians that have made it onto mainstream television.  Is it any wonder that Trump stands a possibility of getting the nomination while yet more crimes are actively stacked on his record?

Of course, I was in Denver to work.  I claimed my bag and got a taxi on a snowy southwestern morning.  While there I worked, of course.  It was cold, in any case, back in November, so getting out to see the sights didn’t particularly appeal, especially since it was getting dark by the time the book stalls were closing and I was there alone.  I always want to be on time, and since I’m an early riser, and since Thanksgiving was just a couple days away, I went to the airport three hours before my flight home.  I was thinking I might have some time to do a bit of X-Filing while waiting.  Alas, it was not to be.  The helpful flight attendant put me on an earlier flight and I ended up with a three-hour layover in Chicago.  But I also knew that several “mothman” sightings had taken place at O’Hare over the preceding months.  When you’re a traveler, however, they keep you away from the interesting parts of the airport.

Finding Yourself

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Sometimes I look, fascinated.  At tracking info, that is.  I once ordered an item from Montreal, which is, I’m told, in the province of Quebec, Canada.  The estimated shipping time was five days.  It ended up being quite the tourist package.  Its first US port of call was Plattsburgh, New York, which makes sense.  The strange thing is the Canadian tracker didn’t include the states—just town names, all of them small, as if this were a covert operation.  From Plattsburgh it went to East Syracuse, because, well, who wouldn’t want to go to East Syracuse?  From there it leapt right over Pennsylvania, where I live, to Hodgkins, Illinois.  This is a town so small that you really have to be a fan of package vacations to find it.  From there it went to Maumee, Ohio.  It seemed to be heading in the right direction, in any case.  Maumee led to Middlebury Heights, still in Ohio.  Finally it reached Pennsylvania, in New Stanton, not terribly far from my childhood home.  Then Carlisle, about halfway through the state.  Finally to Easton, from which it reached me.  Surprisingly, on time.  

It’s gotta be around here somewhere…

Logistics baffle me.  I had it drilled into me as a child that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.  Montreal is about 400 miles from here, pretty much straight north.  I wouldn’t venture to tell UPS (the carrier in this instance) how to do its job, but when you’re ordering something carbon neutral (that, of course, you can’t get close to home) it feels kind of excessive to have to stop in so many small towns only to skip the destination state by flying from New York to Illinois so you can drive it back to Pennsylvania.  Logistics people need jobs too, I guess.

Amazon has made many people ask why things can’t arrive more quickly.  The fact is, shipping companies have their own protocols.  It’s like when you have to fly south from a regional airport to get onto a flight north.  You have to reach a hub where they know how to direct your package.  And if your item requires sea freight, well, all bets are off.  There may be no tracking points between Shanghai and Los Angeles.  No matter how much some people may say they hate it, we live in a global society.  We rely on China, and Canada, and everywhere else, to make life go in these United States.  Even following your tracking information can, in that way, be an exercise in thoughtfulness as well as a learning experience.