Steal This Book Introduction p.xxiii-xxv

(Commonplace Book)

From my reread of Steal This Book by Abbie Hoffman:

Steal This Book is, in a way, a manual of survival in the prison that is Amerika. It preaches jailbreak. It shows you where exactly how to place the dynamite that will destroy the walls. The first section--SURVIVE!--lays out a potential action program for our new Nation. The chapter headings spell out the demands for a free society. A community where the technology produces goods and services for whoever needs them, come who may. It calls on the Robin Hoods of Santa Barbara Forest to steal from the robber barons who own the castles of capitalism. It implies that the reader already is “ideologically set,” in that he understands corporate feudalism as the only robbery worthy of being called “crime,” for it is committed against the people as a whole. Whether the ways it describes to rip-off shit are legal or illegal is irrelevant. The dictionary of law is written by the bosses of order. Our moral dictionary says no heisting from each other. To steal from a brother or sister is evil. To not steal from the institutions that are the pillars of the Pig Empire is equally immoral.

Community within our Nation, chaos in theirs; that is the message of SURVIVE!

We cannot survive without learning to fight and that is the lesson in the second section. FIGHT! separates revolutionaries from outlaws. The purpose of part two is not to fuck the system, but destroy it. The weapons are carefully chosen. They are “home-made,” in that they are designed for use in our unique electronic jungle. Here the uptown reviewer will find ample proof of our “violent” nature. But again, the dictionary of law fails us. Murder in a uniform is heroic, in a costume it is a crime. False advertisements win awards, forgers end up in jail. Inflated prices guarantee large profits while shoplifters are punished. Politicians conspire to create police riots and the victims are convicted in the courts. Students are gunned down and then indicted by suburban grand juries as the trouble-makers. A modern, highly mechanized army travels 9,000 miles to commit genocide against a small nation of great vision and then accuses its people of aggression. Slumlords allow rats to maim children and then complain of violence in the streets. Everything is topsy-turvy. If we internalize the language and imagery of the pigs, we will forever be fucked. Let me illustrate the point. Amerika was built on the slaughter of a people. That is its history. For years we watched movie after movie that demonstrated the white man’s benevolence. Jimmy Stewart, the epitome of fairness, puts his arm around Cochise and tells how the Indians and the whites can live in peace if only both sides will be reasonable, responsible and rational (the three R’s imperialists always teach the “natives”). “You will find good grazing land on the other side of the mountain,” drawls the public relations man. “Take your people and go in peace.” Cochise as well as millions of youngsters in the balcony of learning, were being dealt off the bottom of the deck. The Indians should have offed Jimmy Stewart in every picture and we should have cheered ourselves hoarse. Until we understand the nature of institutional violence and how it manipulates values and mores to maintain the power of the few, we will forever be imprisoned in the caves of ignorance. When we conclude that bank robbers rather than bankers should be the trustees of the universities, then we begin to think clearly. When we see the Army Mathematics Research and Development Center and the Bank of Amerika as cesspools of violence, filling the minds of our young with hatred, turning one against another, then we begin to think revolutionary.

Be clever using section two; clever as a snake. Dig the spirit of the struggle. Don’t get hung up on a sacrifice trip. Revolution is not about suicide, it is about life. With your fingers probe the holiness of your body and see that it was meant to live. Your body is just one in a mass of cuddly humanity. Become an internationalist and learn to respect all life. Make war on machines, and in particular the sterile machines of corporate death and the robots that guard them. The duty of a revolutionary is to make love and that means staying alive and free. That doesn’t allow for cop-outs. Smoking dope and hanging up Che’s picture is no more a commitment than drinking milk and collecting postage stamps. A revolution in consciousness is an empty high without a revolution in the distribution of power. We are not interested in the greening of Amerika except for the grass that will cover its grave.

******************************************

For better or for worse (probably for worse), this passage had a big impact on me when I first read it at age 18.  I was unfortunately influenced by some of Abbie Hoffman's outrageous pronouncements like: 

To steal from a brother or sister is evil. To not steal from the institutions that are the pillars of the Pig Empire is equally immoral.

...which at the time caused me to think it was okay to steal from a supermarket if you could get away with it.  (Sigh, what an idiot I was.) 

During my college years, I was fond of quoting this section.  My email archive reveals that on December 2nd, 1996, I actually copied this out into an email I wrote to a friend.  I included this introduction at the time:

Here’s some food for thought for you. It is a passage from Steal This Book by Abbie Hoffman (Yippie founder, and one of the Chicago eight--but you probably already knew that.)  Take note—I don’t agree with everything he says.  I am in total agreement with him when he points out the problems in American society (or Amerika as Abbie puts it, but I’m not sure what the unconformist spelling stands for) however I part ways from him regarding his violent solutions.  Here it is:

....and then I proceeded to quote the entire above section.

I also quoted a line from this section in my Chimes article on the Death Penalty from 1999 (see here and here):

“Murder in a uniform is heroic, in a costume it is a crime.” -- Abbie Hoffman.

....which I now also look back on with embarrassment.  For one thing, quoting Abbie Hoffman in a political article only encourages people not to take you seriously.  But even beyond that, this quote wasn't really about the death penalty.  Abbie Hoffman was talking about the difference between killing in war and killing in peacetime.  In my mind, it was related to the death penalty because I equated "murder in a uniform" to a uniformed officer executing the death penalty, and "murder in a costume" to the person receiving the death penalty.  But I think I was stretching things a bit too far. 

But put a pin in all of that for right now.  When I finish this book, and get around to reviewing it, I'll talk more about the politics of it.  For now, I want to forget about the politics, and focus on how effective this prose is.

I was taking a freshman English class at Calvin College at the time, and every week we had to bring in a piece of writing that we liked to share with the class.  I brought this piece in. I edited it slightly. I cut out the meandering parts and just kept in the punches.  And, because this was Calvin College, I changed "we will forever be fucked" to "we will forever be deceived".  If memory serves, my edited version was something like this.

We cannot survive without learning to fight and that is the lesson in the second section. FIGHT! separates revolutionaries from outlaws. The purpose of part two is not to change the system, but destroy it. Here the uptown reviewer will find ample proof of our “violent” nature. But again, the dictionary of law fails us. Murder in a uniform is heroic, in a costume it is a crime. False advertisements win awards, forgers end up in jail. Inflated prices guarantee large profits while shoplifters are punished. Politicians conspire to create police riots and the victims are convicted in the courts. Students are gunned down and then indicted by suburban grand juries as the trouble-makers. A modern, highly mechanized army travels 9,000 miles to commit genocide against a small nation of great vision and then accuses its people of aggression. Slumlords allow rats to maim children and then complain of violence in the streets. Everything is topsy-turvy. If we internalize the language and imagery of the pigs, we will forever be deceived. 

Until we understand the nature of institutional violence and how it manipulates values and mores to maintain the power of the few, we will forever be imprisoned in the caves of ignorance. When we conclude that bank robbers rather than bankers should be the trustees of the universities, then we begin to think clearly. When we see the Army Mathematics Research and Development Center and the Bank of Amerika as cesspools of violence, filling the minds of our young with hatred, turning one against another, then we begin to think revolutionary.

Surprisingly (this was Calvin College, after all), the professor actually liked it.  After I got done reading it aloud, she commented, "A very powerful piece.  And what makes it so powerful?  It's that parallel structure."

And, I think I agree. If you read the above passage aloud, and you emphasis the words dramatically, and get into the rhythm of the parallel structure, then it can be a very effective piece of rhetoric.

Sidenote:  In the sentence:

A modern, highly mechanized army travels 9,000 miles to commit genocide against a small nation of great vision and then accuses its people of aggression. 

...I was never sure if "its" was meant to refer to the army or the small nation.  That is to say, I wasn't sure if "it's people" was supposed to mean "its own people" (i.e. the people of the country that the army is from, or in other words, American citizens) or if "its people" is the people of the small nation. Back in college, I thought it meant the former, but rereading it now, I think it's probably the latter.

So, if we're scoring this passage on its prose style, maybe take off one point for an ambiguous pronoun.  

Check this book out on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/4aGuSP3           (This is an Amazon Associate's Link.  If you buy anything through that link, I get a commission.)

Meteorbs--Interesting Random Facts

Since I've been revisiting He-Man and the Masters of the Universe recently (see here and here), I've been trying to collect my thoughts on the franchise.

One of my memories as a kid is that near the end of the original franchise, the toys associated with the franchise became more and more diverse, in kind of a weird way.  I mean, the toy franchise started out fairly normal--you have a bunch of people who are good, and a bunch of people who are bad.  But near the end, you had toys that were animals who could turn into rocks.

Image from here: https://toyzinger.com/en/blog/meteorbs/

As you can see above, there were 10 of them.  5 good ones, that were on the side of He-Man and friends, and 5 bad ones, that were on the side of Skeletor.

As a kid, I remember seeing these in the toy shop, and thinking to myself, "Wow, it's been a while since I watched the He-Man cartoon. I guess the story has expanded a lot since I last saw it.  Now they've added these meteor rock animals into the story.  I wonder what kind of stories they are telling about them."

Being naive, I had no idea as a kid that the toyline was driving the story rather than the other way around.  I assumed that the writers of the TV show had created these Meteoroids for the purposing of expanding the story, and that the toys just came afterwards.  (In fact, by the time these toys came out, the He-Man show had already stopped making new episodes, and was in reruns, but I didn't even realize that.  I just assumed that new episodes must still be coming out, even though I personally had stopped watching.)

I never actually saw these Meterorbs portrayed in any of the Masters of the Universe media, but as a kid I trusted that they must be part of the story somehow, and for many years after, in my mind they were emblematic of the endless creativity of this series, and how it kept expanding its story outward in new directions. 

As an adult, however, it's easy enough to research this stuff on the Internet, and discover that the Meteorbs never appeared on the He-Man TV show.  Two of them apparently appeared in one episode of the She-Ra show.  (Even though the packaging material on the toys clearly advertised them as allies of either He-Man or Skeletor.)

And in fact, a little bit of further research shows that they were not originally Masters of the Universe toys at all, but were originally a Japanese toyline of transforming eggs from Bandai called Tamagoras, and Mattel just repackaged them as Masters of the Universe toys, and assured us kids that they fit into the storyline somehow.

The He-Man fandom page states that:

In the Marvel comics series the Meteorbs are portrayed as members of the Rock People. The Heroic Meteorbs appear among Stonedar and Rokkon. 

...which, yeah, kind of makes sense, given that both are rocks that transform into some sort of creature. 

The Rock People were another toyline which were advertised as being part of the He-Man world, but apparently only ever appeared in the She-Ra show, because the He-Man show had already stopped production when these toys came out.  As a kid, I had one of the Rock People action figures (which I must have gotten as a gift on Christmas or my birthday).  As with the Meteorbs, I had never seen the Rock People in any of the cartoons, so I didn't know how they fit into the storyline exactly, but I assumed that they were in the cartoon somewhere, and I just hadn't seen the episodes.

I also had two of the Meteorbs, Ty-Grrr and Crocobite, which I think I got for stocking stuffers one Christmas morning.

Anyway, the point of all this is to try to convey the fascination that the Masters of the Universe franchise could have on a child.  As an adult, of course, I recognize that the Meteorbs were just a cynical and lazy cash grab to milk just a few more dollars out of a dying franchise by repurposing Japanese toys, and then trying to convince kids that they were really He-Man toys.

But as a kid, you looked at all these bizarre He-Man toys in the toyshop, and thought, "Wow, is there no end to all the magical creatures that are contained within the story of He-Man."  

See also this Youtube Video:

The Meteorbs - Oddities or just misunderstood? | The Toys of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe

PS--I was inspired to do this little dive into the history of fringe Masters of the Universe figures because of reminiscing brought on by this video HERE.  But I'll wait to post that until I've finished my complete review of Masters of the Universe: Revelation.

*******************

Check out Masters of the Universe #2 (The Coming of the Meteorbs! Falling Stars, Vol. 1) on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3ZCxFDJ

(This is an Amazon Associate's link.  If you buy anything through that link, I get a commission.)

It turns out that yesterday's linking to Steve Donoghue's reminiscing on Star Trek books was premature, because the main video he posted today:

A Star Trek: The Original Series Starter Kit! #booktrek2021!

Well, as long as I've started allowing Steve to get me to reminisce about old Star Trek books I read in 5th and 6th grade, I might as well continue.

Steve mentions Diane Carey again (although the specific Diane Carey titles he mentions were ones I haven't read.)

But other than Diane Carey, the only other titles and authors I recognize in this video were Yesterday's Son and Time for Yesterday , both by A.C. Crispin, which I read back in the day.  

Watch the video from 9:32

Like the Diane Carey books, this was yet another series I read out of order because I didn't know any better.  I read Time for Yesterday first because that was the book that I found in the bookstore.  And only realized as I was reading it that it was a sequel to another book called Yesterday's Son.  So once I finished Time for Yesterday, I ordered Yesterday's Son through the mail.  

As Steve mentions, these books were really good.  (Steve doesn't care for the sequel as much, but I remember enjoying them both when I was in 5th grade.)

As Steve explains in the video, Time for Yesterday is a sequel to Yesterday's Son, and Yesterday's Son is in turn a sequel to the original Star Trek episode All Our Yesterdays, which was also really good.

As I mentioned in my long post on Star Trek years ago, for much of my late teens and 20s (when I was desperately trying to be cool) I was ashamed of how much time I had wasted on Star Trek in my adolescence.  But I also acknowledged in that post that it was the perfect entertainment for a young boy.

And you know what, looking back on this stuff, I'm going to double down on that statement.  This kind of stuff hits the sensibilities of a 5th and 6th grade boy exactly right.  And intellectually, I think it's just about the perfect level for that age as well.  I shouldn't be ashamed of my young Star Trek obsession.  This is exactly the kind of stuff you should be reading and watching when you're that age.

Linking to Steve Donoghue once again:

Book Trek 2021 Plans! #BookTrek21!

What caught my ear on this video in particular was the mention of Diane Carey.  Watch the video from 5:36, when Steve is talking about his favorite Star Trek writers: 

of course Diane Carrey who I consider to be the best Star Trek writer, a writer who never phones it in and who never insults the the intelligence of her readers and who also understands nautical matters which almost no other Star Trek writers do, has spent time on the open ocean

Diane Carey was my favorite Star Trek writer when I was in 5th grade.  I read Battlestations! and absolutely loved it.  Then I read Dreadnought! next.  (Dreadnought! was actually the first book in the series and Battlestations! the sequel, but I read Battlestations! first because I didn't know any better initially, and then circled back to read Dreadnought! once I realized Battlestations! was a sequel.)

I actually did my 5th grade oral book report on Dreadnought!  I had to make a poster and talk about the plot of the book.  I must have done a good job of selling it, because afterwards several of my classmates were looking for the book in our school library, and I had to explain that our school library didn't actually have it, and I had gotten the book from a bookstore.  "What, did you just choose a book outside of the library just to frustrate us, so nobody could find it?" one of the girls said to me (only half-jokingly).

My memories is that I liked Diane Carey for her plots, and not for her prose.  I found her prose hard going back in 5th grade, but I loved the way the action of the book kept steadily escalating and escalating and the screws kept getting tighter and tighter on the main characters.

I want to say I've read one or two other Diane Carey books back in my adolescence, but I can't remember which ones they were.  Looking at her Wikipedia Bio, I don't recognize anything else.  Possibly I read Ghost Ship, although I don't have any clear memories of it.

Update:

Steve Donoghue was kind enough to respond on Twitter:

These two are very, very enjoyable - if you can overlook the 800-pound Mary Sue in the room!

— steve donoghue (@stdonoghue) July 31, 2021

I was just looking this up on Wikipedia, and apparently even the cover art is based on Diane Carrey and her husband. But I am 100% willing to forgive it all. https://t.co/hpOwxHg3pj

— Joel Swagman (@JoelswagmanJoel) July 31, 2021

I had no idea that these books were known as Mary Sue back in 5th grade, but that does seem to be the predominate term associated with them on the Internet now.  See this Tor.com review: Mary Sue Fights Fascism: Diane Carey’s Dreadnought! and Battlestations!

From io9.gizmodo.com:
10 Cult Favorite (or Should-Be Cult Favorite) Movies Lurking on Disney+

I don't have a Disney+ subscription, but I did grow up on the Disney Channel in the 1980s.  (Back in the 1980s, the Disney Channel had a different format.  It was largely just a place to re-run old Disney content.)  And I have TONS of nostalgia for these old Disney movies.

So, here are my thoughts on io9.gizmodo's list:

1. The Black Hole (1979)

Oh, man! I love The Black Hole! I remember this got played on the Disney channel when I was in second grade, and I was so obsessed with it!

2. Darby O’Gill and the Little People (1959)
I totally remember watching this off the Disney channel when I was young.  I love Darby O'Gill and the Little People

3. Escape to Witch Mountain (1975)
Loved this movie when I was a kid.  This one and the sequel as well!

4. The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969)
Absolutely loved this movie when I was a kid.  Still love it.  I love the whole Dexter Riley trilogy. 

5. Return to Oz (1985)
This is a bit of strange one, but I do remember seeing it as a kid on the Disney channel and have fond memories of it.

6. Mr. Boogedy (1986)
I was just talking about this movie in a recent post.

7. The Black Cauldron (1985)
I've got tons of nostalgia for this movie.  As I mentioned here.

8. Flight of the Navigator (1986)
Oh man! I remember my grandma taking me to see this in the theatres back in 1986.  I absolutely loved this movie!

9. Fuzzbucket (1986)
Hmmm.... I don't think I remember this one actually...

10. The Cat From Outer Space (1978)
I've got vague memories of seeing this on the Disney channel when I was younger, but I don't remember anything about it.  It must not have made much of an impression on me.

From The Baffler:
Flakes Alive!

I heard about this article via Freddie deBoer, who tweeted:

Campus activism has always been filled with the kind of people Amber skewered so brilliantly in this piece. https://t.co/k1jVKzE0gM

— Freddie deFunct (@freddiedeboer) June 2, 2017

The thrust of the article, for anyone who is too lazy to read it, is that there sure are a lot of crazy people on the Left.

I hate to say it, but indeed there are.

From my old activist days, I remember the week I spent in Philadelphia protesting the Republican National Convention.

On the bus ride to Philadelphia, I met other protesters who did not seem to be entirely in touch with reality.  One couple tried to tell me that Marlboro cigarettes was affiliated with the KKK because their were hidden Ks on the box. When I asked them why they were going to the protest, the guy in the couple began, "Well, I was at this Pink Floyd laser light show…" The story ended up being that he was on magic mushrooms at this show, and on the way out he passed a tree, and somehow he knew then that he was supposed to fight for justice everywhere.

That same week, another incident happened at an organizing meeting.
The people not in affinity groups were told to pick an affinity group and chose a spokesperson. One of the girls nominated herself as spokesperson, but nobody chose her. She claimed it that she wasn't picked because she was a woman, and that it was discrimination.  The facilitator of the meeting (who was also a woman) questioned her right to speak, at which point the self-appointed spokesperson became very emotional and called the facilitator a dictator. She raised such a fuss that the facilitator let her stay "fine, you can be a spokesperson and represent two people." Later the facilitator made mention of that argument, and the woman became so enraged at being singled out that she started screaming and yelling and tried to attack the facilitator.  She finally left after a lot more crying and yelling. She later believed she would be singled out by the police for arrest because of the outburst, and again tried to attack the facilitator.

Anyway, the point is that for whatever reason, Leftist activist meetings tend to attract a lot of mentally unstable people.
Which makes it difficult to do any serious organizing work.

What to do about this problem, however, is a difficult question.

Anarchism in Grand Rapids

While researching information on Voltairine de Cleyre (for the previous post), I came across a 4 part publication detailing the history of anarchism in Grand Rapids.  See  here.

I looked in vain for the author's names, but couldn't find it.  Apparently whoever wrote it wanted to be anonymous.  But I've got a strong suspicion I know who it is--one of my former comrades from the Media Mouse days.

I suspect it's the same comrade who wrote this 2009 article: A History of Anarchist Organizing in Grand Rapids.  I linked to it back at the time.  And, just to show off how clever I was, I also chimed in with my own factoids about Grand Rapids and Anarchism down in the comments section:

Should one wish to go a bit further back, Emma Goldman once visited Grand Rapids and actually loved it. She gave a speech at which she was very well received. She writes about her trip briefly in her autobiography, and at the time she gave a brief write in mother earth magazine
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/goldman/ME/mev6n1.html#17

Also anarchist Voltairine de Cleyre lived and worked in Grand Rapids at the turn of the century
http://www.spunk.org/texts/writers/decleyre/sp001860.html

The author, though, was way ahead of me on this one, and responded:

@Joel:

Way to go with knowing my two favorite bits of Grand Rapids anarchist history! There was actually a hilarious article in one of the newspapers of the time when Emma Goldman was in town that basically expressed surprise that she wasnt an actual monster, it was pretty ridiculous.
There was also a very active IWW branch in the early 1900s.

So I said:

Ah, so I see I'm not the only one who knows this little tidbit then. I actually learned about it a few years ago, in Japan of all places, when reading through Emma Goldman's autobiography. Id be curious to know where you first heard about this. Is it common knowledge in West Michigan progressive circles, or did you have to dig around a bit?
I've not seen the newspaper articles though. Were these from the Grand Rapids Press or its equivalent of the time? And again, how did you stumble upon them? Are they publically available?
In her autobiography Emma Goldman also talks about William Buwalda, a US soldier from Hudsonville Michigan, who was court martialled and imprisoned for the crime of shaking hands with Emma Goldman. 

And the author responded with:

I came across the bit about Volteraine de Cleyre while reading her biography.
As for the Emma Goldman bit, I actually searched around a bit in the Grand Rapids Public Librarys local history room to find the articles. They were in whatever the Grand Rapids Press equivalent was back then, although there were actually multiple newspapers. I cant remember what one they were in. To find the dates I believe I cross referenced with a tour itinerary from another source.
I dont have access to the notebook with the references right off hand, but Ill try to find it. Maybe Ill see about scanning or retyping the articles sometime, just for curiositys sake.
Someday Id like to do a piece looking at radical history in Grand Rapids, so this would certainly fit.

So, I suspect that he's the same author of this extensive 4 volume history of anarchism in Grand Rapids.

Anyway, I've already commented on Emma Goldman and Volteraine de Cleyre in Grand Rapids in my 2005 blogpost: Emma Goldman Visits Grand Rapids....And Loves It!

Moving back to the 4 volume history of Anarchism in Grand Rapids:
My own activist days are covered in volume 4, which covers the late 90s and early 2000s (my time).

I was an active member of the group Media Mouse--whose history is briefly covered in volume 4 starting on page 30.
Since I like to wax nostalgic on this blog, I'll jot down a few reminiscences here from my Media Mouse days.  This can be read as a supplement to the history of Media Mouse that you'll find Volume 4 of the History of Anarchism in Grand Rapids.
I wasn't one of the founding members of Media Mouse, but I started hearing about them through the Calvin College Social Justice Coalition (which I was actively involved in at the time).  With several members of Calvin's SJC, we attended the April 17, 2000 Breaking the Bank Protest (which is mentioned in on page 31 of the history). The Media Mouse video of which can be viewed here.

By the summer of that year, I started attending Media Mouse meetings regularly.

There were a lot of people in Grand Rapids who were vaguely interested in Media Mouse, but there were only about 5 of us who attended the regular meetings with any consistency.  And I was one of those 5.  I didn't have any valuable skills to lend to the group--I wasn't particularly smart, or creative, and I usually just went along with what the other members suggested.  But I was dedicated--I never missed a meeting.

I gained such a reputation for regular attendance that my absence was remarked upon in a Media Mouse e-mail shortly after I had left for Japan.

In total, my days at Media Mouse lasted for slightly over a year, and then I left for Japan in August 2001, and that was the end of my activism days.
(Much to my regret--it all seemed like a big adventure at the time, and I was sorry to give it up.  But it was impossible to stay involved in grass roots politics in America and live in the Japanese countryside at the same time.  So I had to choose one of the two adventures, and I chose travelling.  But I've always wondered about the road not taken.)

My own personal recollection is that Media Mouse itself, as an organization, was non-doctrinal.  (I don't remember anyone referring to it as an anarchist group at the time).  But I think all of us regular members self-identified as anarchists, so in that sense it was an anarchist organization.

On page 31, the history mentions Media Mouse's coverage and participation in the 2001 Quebec anti-FTAA protests.  For my own memory of that event, see excerpts from my journal here here.  For the Media Mouse documentary of the event, see here.  (The documentary contains some footage that I shot, and also contains me as part of a Media Mouse panel discussion).

One of the people tangentially associated with Media Mouse published her own Zine called "Get Up!"  This is also mentioned briefly in the history on page 31.

Anarchist ideas began to manifest themselves in other venues as well. A short lived zine called Get Up! featured anarchist symbols and described itself as “an anti-racist, anti-capitalist, pro-feminist, radically-oriented publication.”

At her request, I submitted two articles that were published in Get Up!  Report on 2000 RNC Protest , and Adventures at the Border.

When I came back to Grand Rapids in 2006, I tried to get back into activism.
I followed the pattern I had set before--I attended all the meetings regularly, and I showed up - at - the -protests, but I didn't provide any leadership or have any special skills.  And that was my history with the Grand Rapids chapter of the IWW (also mentioned in volume 4 of the history, page 31).  I attended their meetings regularly for a period during 2006, but that's as much as I can claim.

From Youtube:
Waking Up With Sam Harris #73 - Forbidden Knowledge (with Charles Murray)



Strange to think that after all these years Charles Murray is still around and still getting people upset.

I actually went to hear Charles Murray speak way back when I was 16.

He was one of the speakers of the Calvin College January series back in 1995.  I was still in high school, but our 11th grade religion teacher offered us extra credit if we would go and listen to several of the January series speakers.  Charles Murray was on the list.

I was largely ignorant of politics at that time, but our teacher gave us some background on Charles Murray.  A few weeks before the talk, our teacher said that Charles Murray had simply collected the data, and was simply reporting what the data showed.  Then, as Charles Murray got more and more in the news, our teacher later corrected himself.  "I may have been too nice to Charles Murray," he said.  "It's looking like some of his data collection sources may be come from questionable groups linked with white supremacy."

Going to the talk was my first exposure to a controversial political speaker.
Of course, this being Calvin College, the protests were muted.  (I remember people passing out leaflets, but that's about it.)

Once the talk began, Charles Murray completely charmed the audience.  (He joked about his reputation, and how he was just going to go as himself for Halloween.)
To this day, I haven't read his books, so I can't comment on anything in his books.  But everything he said at his talk was very moderate, and by the end of the talk the audience was largely on board with him.

That evening at swim team practice, some of the swim team members were quizzing Jeremy about what he thought about it.  (Jeremy had the reputation for being the flaming liberal on the swim team--I was still largely conservative at that age.)  But even Jeremy found very little he could object to in the actual talk.

None of which is to say that Charles Murray's book is or is not racist.  I haven't read the book so I can't say.  This is just to comment on the speech he gave at Calvin in 1995.

Anyway, point being that people protesting Charles Murray really takes me back to high school again.  Ah, what a trip down memory lane!

As for the above podcast:
I agreed with some things and disagreed with some things.  But what struck me most was Charles Murray's thoughts on universal basic income. Surprisingly, he's for it, and makes some very good cases why we should have it. And this coming from a small government conservative no less!  If Charles Murray can be behind a universal basic income, then may this is an idea that deservess closer consideration.

Passport Renewal Blues

I just completed renewing my passport...which made me realize that another ten years has come and gone.

...that's right, it's going to be yet another post where I bemoan the fact that I'm getting older...

I first got my passport in November 1996 when I was 18.  I noticed that it was good for 10 years, and that I wouldn't have to renew it until 2006, when I was 28.
At the time, 28 seemed so old I couldn't even fathom it.  Intellectually, of course, I knew I would inevitably age just like every one else does.  But psychologically, I couldn't believe I would ever really become 28.

And then 2006 came, and I had to renew my passport for another 10 years.  "Huh, I guess I got to 28  after all," I remember thinking to myself.  "But I can't ever imagine being 38!"

And now I'm 38, and it was time to renew the passport again.  Sigh.  Where does time go?

At the very least, I got good use out of this last passport.  This last passport was the first passport I filled up completely (and then had to apply for extra pages at the US Consulate).*

And now I have the stamps for memories.  But just in case I ever lose the passport, I'll duplicate the itinerary here.

When I first got the renewed passport in November 2006, I was living in the United States.
* And then in January 2007, I went back to Japan.
* September 2008, I went back to the United States for 2 weeks for my sister's wedding, and then back to Japan.
* January 2010 I left Japan to return home to the United States
* February 2010 I went to Australia.
* February 2011 I left Australia to return to the United States
* April 2011 I left the United States to go to Cambodia
* June 2011 I visited Vietnam for one week, and then back to Cambodia
* December 2011 I visited Malaysia for 3 weeks, and then back to Cambodia (pictures here)
* June  2012 I visited Thailand for 1 week, and then back to Cambodia
* March 2013: Attempted to visit Vietnam for a short trip on the Mekong Delta Tour, but was turned away at the boarder because my passport was full (or full by their standards--they wanted 4 completely blank pages)
* May 2013: Mekong Delta Tour second try--this time with extra pages in the pasport.  Visited Vietnam for 3 days, and then back to Cambodia
* December 2014 I went home to the United States for one month, and then back to Cambodia
* April 2015 I moved from Cambodia to Vietnam
* August 2015 I went back to Cambodia for 5 days (to visit friends and pick up some luggage) and then back to Vietnam.

Total: lived in 5 countries (America, Japan, Australia, Cambodia, Vietnam), plus visited two more (Malaysia, Thailand).  Not a bad 10 years I suppose.

Footnote
*Although part of the reason that this passport filled up so quickly was less to do with my frequent travels and more to do with the fact that both Cambodia and Vietnam issue huge visa stickers that cover up one whole page of the passport.  And then every time your visa is renewed, you get another huge sticker.  Simply by renewing my visa several times in Cambodia and Vietnam, I filled up half of the passport.

Reminiscing About Classic Horror Movies: A Blog Post For Halloween

Subtitle: My Review of Cinemassacre's Reviews of Classic Horror Movies

For some time now, I've been noticing that a difference in interest between me and my adolescent students.

My students are obsessed with horror movies.

But me, I'm mostly apathetic about horror movies.  You might even say I'm bored with the genre. I don't keep up with any of the latest horror movies that come out, which causes me to frequently be out of touch with my students.

A frequent conversation, one that I've been having for years now, usually goes like this.

Student: Teacher, have you seen____ (name of some new horror movie)________?
Me: What? What's that?  Is that the name of a movie?  I've never heard of it.

Then they proceed to tell me all about the horror movie, and I proceed to completely lose interest in the conversation.

It didn't use to be like this.  In my own adolescence, I was just as obsessed with horror movies as they are now.  But I guess I've grown out of it.

Which (correct me if I'm wrong) is pretty much the common trajectory, isn't it?  Most of us are fascinated by horror movies when we're young, and most of us get bored with it by the time we reach middle age.

(Strange that.  For so long I regarded horror movies as part of the "adult world" that I never realized they were in fact actually juvenile entertainment.)

It's an interesting phenomena.  I'm tempted to try to puzzle out why this is exactly, but the question is probably too big for me.
I mean, first I would have to ask: why are young people so fascinated with horror movies in the first place?
And as far as I know, there's no logical reason for any of our primal fascinations.
I'm sure there are plenty of essays out there already analyzing this question from a Freudian perspective or from a evolutionary psychological perspective, but none of those are my field, so I won't waste your time with my sophomoric attempts at psycho-analysis.

...well, okay, I will waste your time with at least one of my sophomoric observations.
Part of the reason I've lost interest in horror movies, and in movies in general, is that as you get older movies lose their magic.
When I was younger, movies seemed real to me.
It's not that I ever confused movies with reality.
My mother used to be very concerned about this when I was a child, and constantly made sure we understood the movies we were watching weren't "real".  And I knew they weren't "real" in the sense that I knew they weren't part of our real physical world.  But they did seem to exist in their own world, which was real in its own terms.
Nowadays, when I watch a movie, I can't help but see the hand of the screenwriter--the tired old hacks who are writing in cliches, throwing around deus ex machinas, and creating flat one-dimensional characters.  I know some characters are written purely to be killed off in order to increase tension, and I know some characters will never be killed off because they are too important to the plot.  I know some characters are written to be unlikable just for the sake of being unlikable, and that none of their malice will ever make any logical sense or come from realistic motivation.

But as a child, you can't yet see behind the curtain.  Intellectually, of course, I knew that these were all actors, and that the story was written by a screen writer.  But as soon as the movie started, you forgot all that and were transported into another world.

This ability to lose yourself in the world of the movie increases the horror of it.  And, from a child's perspective, also increases the fascination of it.
I was at the same time both simultaneously attracted to and repulsed by horror movies (much like every child).  At the one hand, I felt like I was too scared to watch them.  On the other hand, precisely because these movies seemed real to me, I felt like I just had to know what happened to the characters.  Who would survive, and who would die?  These were important questions back when movies seemed to be actually real.  If you didn't actually see the movie, the curiosity would consume you.

Growing up in a conservative Christian family, for a long time I wasn't allowed to watch the horror movies that I was fascinated by.  At least not at first.
I think my fascination with monster movies started around 3rd grade.  I wasn't allowed to watch the old black and white horror movies until I was in 6th grade.
And although time rushes by so fast now, when you're a child, those 3 years were like a lifetime.  A lifetime in which those movies built themselves up in my imagination.

I read books about the old universal monsters.  I imagined the movies several times over before I ever saw them.
The old universal monster movies have become so much a part of our collective culture that even someone who has never seem them knows about the conventions--the graveyard surrounded by fog, the old spooky castle up on the mountain, the clouds covering up the moon.  I had dreams about these set pieces long before I actually saw the movies.

...And when I did actually see these old monster movies, I was disappointed that they were nowhere near as scary as I had imagined.
I guess after having being built up in my mind for so long, nothing could really have equaled my anticipation.
But there is also the strange and fascinating phenomenon of collective media desensitization.  By all contemporary reports, these movies legitimately scared audiences in the 1930s.  (People were so upset by the original 1931 Frankenstein that the movie theatres eventually started including warnings before movie).   Eventually, though, audiences became desensitized to these scares, and the the movie theatres had to go more and more extreme to get the same reaction.
This filtered down into all sorts of other media, so that by the time I saw these movies in the 1990s, there was scarier stuff on afternoon TV than there were in these old horror movies.

Therefore to this day my fondness for these movies is more in the idea of them than the actual movies themselves.  I'm more fond of the image I built up in my head when I was between 8-12.  I still like the creepy atmosphere, the fog machines, the clouded sky, and the spooky graveyards.

However I was still young enough to be somewhat sucked in by the story of the movies.  When characters died, it felt like someone really died.  When characters were in peril, it felt like someone was really in trouble.  I felt for the tragedy of Lawrence Talbot, and was fascinated by the moral ambiguity of Doctor Frankenstein.

And because of my nostalgia for these movies, I still maintain a fondness for them, even though I should have long ago outgrown their appeal, and even though I no longer find modern horror films interesting.  (Nostalgia is another funny thing...but that's another subject for another post.)

Anyway, all of that is a long pre-amble just to say I've really enjoyed cinemassacre's review of these classic monster movies.
With the later reviews especially, Cinemassacre goes into great detail about the plot--he covers the plot holes, the continuity errors between movies, and some of the behind the scenes production issues.
As Cinemassacre details in his reviews, the series starts out great, with some genuine classic movies.  (Not necessarily scary by today's standards, but still well-done pieces of cinema).  The series then eventually degenerates into camp, but if you are interested in the history of pulp fiction (and I am), then it's gloriously pulpy camp, with all the great cliches.

* Dracula (1931) here.  (Dracula was the first of universal's monster movies, and, unfortunately, the fact that the craft was still in its infancy is apparent.  It moves painfully slowly for a modern audience.  The first time I tried to watch it, I stayed up late to see it on TV, and then ended up struggling to stay awake for the whole thing.)

* Frankenstein (1931) here .  (And an overview of the whole series here).

* The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) here.  (As with any long running movie series, the Universal Monster series started out with great films that are still recognized by the critics today, and then degenerated into terrible films.  But The Bride of Frankenstein is usually recognized by even respectable critics as a great piece of cinema art.  See Roger Ebert's essay on the movie here.)

* Dracula's Daughter (1936) here.  (A direct sequel to Dracula, featuring many of the same characters.  But, unfortunately, not including Dracula himself.  Unfortunately there would only ever be one Dracula movie starring Bela Lugosi.)

* Son of Frankenstein (1939) here.

* The Wolf Man (1941) here.  (The Wolfman was always my favorite movie monster, because it was the perfect intersection of my childhood love for wolves with my childhood love for monster movies.  But even more than that, I always thought Lawrence Talbot's tragic story made the character much more interesting than Frankenstein or Dracula.)

* Ghost of Frankenstein (1942) here.  (Actually, Ghost of Frankenstein is the only movie in this series I never got around to seeing as a kid.  Not that I didn't want to see it, it just never happened to be re-run on TV when I was going through my monster movie phase.  I still haven't seen this movie to date.)

* Son of Dracula (1943).  Hmmm, strange, Cinemassacre hasn't reviewed this movie.  The only one in the series that he's missing.  Well, for the record, I saw this as well back in my adolescence.

* Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman (1943) here .  (I think this is my favorite movie in the whole series).

* House of Frankenstein (1944) here.  (This was the first movie to include Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolfman all in the same movie.  Unfortunately, the screen writers never really figured out a way to combine all three monsters on screen at the same time, so although all three monsters are in the movie, Dracula never appears with Frankenstein and the Wolfman.)

* House of Dracula (1945) here.  (The second movie including all three monsters.  This movie was never on TV when I was a kid.  I spent years trying to track it down, and finally found it at a VHS rental store some time when I was in college.  It was pretty terrible, as you would expect from a movie this late in the series.  But at least it still had all 3 monsters in it.)

* Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) here.  (The swan song for the series.  Despite the title, this was yet another movie in which all three monsters appeared--Frankenstein and the Wolfman and Dracula.  It's kind of official--it had many of the original actors--but also kind of not.  I've already written about my fondness for this movie once before on this blog.)

* Wolfman Versus Dracula (unfilmed script) here.  (Cinemassacre does a nice job about talking about this never-filmed movie, and why he's pretty sure it isn't a hoax.  This was the video that got me hooked in, and made me re-watch all this other videos.)

Happy Halloween everyone.

Various Addenda
I've written once before about my adolescent fascination with  horror films here.

I've once before mentioned my fondness for watching these the old style horror movies on Halloween here.

I've noted my teenage students' fascination with horror films once before here.  (That was in Cambodia. I'm in Vietnam now, but my young students are still equally fascinated with horror.  I'm pretty sure it's true the world over among young people).

Also on the subject of classic horror films:
 When I reviewed the re-make of The Blob, I talked about my fascination with the 1958 Steve McQueen version.

And when I reviewed the  reviewed the remake of The Thing, I talked about my history with the 1952 version. 

Thoughts on Political Dialogue and Political Evolution

I'm going to tell a story here that's not unique.  You probably have had this exact same experience yourself.  In fact, I'm sure everyone my age has at least 10 stories like this.

...And yet, in spite of the ubiquity of this experience, we often don't seem to learn from it.  So I'm going to go ahead and write down some self-reflections.

Like I said, the story is a common one.  I recently re-connected with a childhood friend via the magic of Facebook.  And I was surprised to see his political opinions had completely changed.

When we were in the church youth group together, he was well-known for being the most vocal Republican in the group.  He was as conservative as they came--a huge fan of Rush Limbaugh, and big proponent of evangelical Christianity.  He didn't like government welfare programs, didn't like feminism, and didn't like non-English speaking immigrants.  And he was known for being vocal and opinionated.

I had started off as a Republican as well.  (In that environment, we all did).  But somewhere around 17 or 18, I began to pivot Leftward.  He and I naturally squared off against each other as debating partners, and pretty soon every time we got together we were trading jabs.
It was mostly in a good-natured way (we were both huge nerds who enjoyed a good political debate), but I also began to get more and more self-righteous in my arguments.
At first these were just spoken arguments, but then after we both went away to college, we carried on the debates over e-mail.  Until the debate ran its course, and the correspondence gradually petered out.

The last time I saw him was I think in 2003.  We were in our mid-20s then, and he was still as conservative as ever.

Imagine my surprise, then, to find he had gone full liberal.  His Facebook wall full of links to liberal articles, and he was supporting liberal causes.  (He had been a big Bernie Sanders supporter during the primary, but is now fully backing Hillary).

We started chatting on Facebook, and he told me that life and experiences had eventually altered his opinions.  "...it wasn't until I saw more of the world that I realized that not everyone had the same advantages and opportunities as I did..." he told me.

My initial urge was to react by saying something like:
"Ha! I told you I was right!  I finally won!  All those long debates we had, and now you finally admit I was right about everything!"

I didn't actually type that of course.  "It would be unnecessary to say so explicitly," I thought to myself.  "He knows it, and I know it."

But then as I continued to think about it, I realized that I couldn't take credit for anything, because nowhere in our political debates had I given him any space to evolve.
Everything I used to say in those e-mails was either trying to emphasize how smart I was, or emphasize how dumb he was.
None of my insults had been at all helpful in moving him towards my point of view.  And so consequently I couldn't take any credit for his political evolution.  He had come around to my point of view  in spite of my rhetoric, and not because of my rhetoric.

I had treated him not as a complex human being whose opinions could evolve over time, but as a caricature which I could use to contrast my own beliefs, and show how righteous I was.

And the thing was, I of all people should have realized that humans are complex and constantly evolving because I had undergone a political evolution myself.  But I didn't grant this same ability to evolve to other people. At 16 I identified strongly with the Religious Right, but at 19 I treated everyone in the Religious Right like they were idiots.

I guess the point is this:
People can and do evolve politically.  But they don't change their opinions because they are insulted.

At this point I'm probably boring you, because you're thinking "Well, obviously.  This is all just common sense."
And it is common sense, but it's something we forget all the time.  Go to Facebook right now, and read the comment thread of any political debate that's happening on any of your friends' Facebook pages.  How much of that dialogue is constructive?  How much of it is going to convince people to join our cause, and how much of it is just going to drive them further away?

In a democracy, the ability to persuade is power.  And we on the Left have been doing a terrible job of trying to convert the other side.  We just alienate and mock the other side.

And just to be perfectly clear,  I say this as someone who's confessing my own sins.  If you read the archives of this blog, you can see me engaging in emotional rhetoric more often than reasoned rhetoric.  And I've gotten in several pointless Facebook arguments this year alone.  But I'm going to try to do better.  And we all need to do better.  Because we on the Left are losing.

I mean it, the country's in a bad place, and we on the Left are really getting creamed.  Sure, Trump is going to lose in November, but that's cold comfort.  Of course he's going to lose--the thing that should shock us is that he got so popular in the first place, and the fact that he is still so popular with a large percentage of the American electorate.
And Hillary Clinton is basically a neo-conservative  running as a Democrat, so her inevitable victory in November is nothing to get too excited about.

We on the Left need to adapt a missionary approach like the modern Church does.
Most modern missionaries no longer go out into the jungles and tell the natives how stupid they are.  Instead, the Catholic Church, for example, sends out missionaries to work side by side with the local people and gain their respect first.  They listen to the local people and find out what their concerns are.

When I think of my own political conversion, I remember a big part of it was that certain people I admired and respected had certain beliefs, and so I began to think that maybe there was something to those beliefs after all.
If those same people had insulted me instead, I probably never would have bothered to look deeper into their belief systems.

It seems hard, I know, because it seems like so much of the American Right is motivated by hate.  But that's also where they're the most vulnerable.  Because love is stronger than hate.

And I know that sounds like a hippy cliche, but it also happens to be true.

In my youth, when I identified with the Religious Right, I hated homosexuals, single black mothers on welfare, and illegal immigrants.  But all that hatred took a lot of emotional energy.  When I decided that I didn't want to hate those people anymore, and that I wanted to help them if I could, then it felt like a big burden had been lifted off from me.

Human beings naturally want to help each other.  We don't want to hate.   People just need to be shown that there's a better way, and they will follow.

Link of the Day
Noam Chomsky - Right-wing Protesters

Oh, by the way, did I ever tell you the story about the time I got my name printed in the letter's column of the Star Trek: The Next Generation comic book?

Well sit down kids, and I'll tell you a tale.

The year was 1992.  I was 14 years old.  I had a subscription to Star Trek and Star Trek: the Next Generation comic books.
I was a huge Trekkie back in those days.  Not only did I watch the show religiously, I also read the paper back books, and subscribed to the comics.
Being a reader of the books and comics, however, was a bit thankless, because nothing that happened in the comics and books ever impacted the show in any way.  It was purely non-canonical, which means it never really happened.  The reset button would be set at the end of every story.
During this time, I would look enviously over to mainstream comic books, in which continuity actually mattered, and the events of one story would be real and meaningful to the characters.  During the summer of 1993, I would give up Star Trek comics to make the jump over to mainstream comics.

But I digress.  Back in 1992, I was still an avid read of the Star Trek comics.  I had subscriptions to both Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation.  And everyone was waiting for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine to come out in January.  But would there be a tie in comic book to Deep Space Nine as well?  I decided to write to the Comic Book Publishers and ask them.

At this time, Star Trek: The Next Generation comic book was doing its best to acknowledge all of its fans by printing the names of everyone who wrote in a letter, even if they didn't have the room to print the actual letter.  So I got my name printed in the back of the comic book, even though they didn't publish the actual text of the letter asking about the Deep Space Nine Comic.  In parenthesis, after my name, the editor wrote "sorry, not by DC"-- meaning DC Comics would not have the license to publish Deep Space Nine comics.  (The Deep Space Nine comic ended up being published by Dark Horse Comics.)
Because there was a time delay, it was several months later until the actual comic got published, and it didn't show up until the following Spring in the May 1993 issue.

And that's my story.
Obviously I can't entertain too many cocktail parties with this particular yarn, and yet I've always thought it was kind of...something.  These comics become collectibles, and my name is now part of a collectible somewhere.

I don't actually still have my copy of this comic book.  (I got rid of it a long time ago when I was cleaning out junk.)
But with the Internet these days, there are so many websites that host digital copies of comic books, I thought I'd see if I could find it.  And sure enough, here I found it.
(Website here--I should warn you that this is probably in violation of the copy right holders, but I paid good money for this comic back in 1993, so I figure I've paid my dues.)

The comic cover is below.

Letter page is below.

And my name is here:

So there it is folks.  If I get hit by a bus crossing the street tomorrow, let it not be said that I didn't lead an exciting life.

The Nostalgia Critic does Dragon's Lair



I have some childhood memories of this game, which I suspect are probably very similar to those of anyone of the same age.  So I'll write my memories up, and see if anyone can identify.

I was 5 years old when Dragon's Lair first came out.

Children don't have much control over their own mobility (especially in the American suburbs, where it is impossible to get anywhere without going on a car ride).  So I didn't get to the video game arcades as often as I would have liked.  But there was the occasional party at ShowBiz Pizza (back when there still was a Showbiz Pizza(W)).  And there also were occasional trips to Putt Putt Golf, which had an arcade (back when there still was a Putt Putt Golf).  Plus, for a while during the 1980s, many family restaurants used to have video games in the waiting lobby.

So, I would see this game around, and I do have childhood memories of it.

It's funny the way the mind of a child works.  A child doesn't have any sort of sense about what things are normal, and what things are abnormal.  A child just assumes that whatever they experience is the way the world has always been.
So I had no idea how revolutionary the graphics were on Dragon's Liar.  Nor did I fully appreciate that this wasn't so much a video game as a series of short little movies with a joystick.

It was only until years later, after Dragon's Liar had disappeared from the arcade, that the memory of this game began to confuse me.
In the early 90s, when video game graphics were still quite primitive, I began to have vague recollections of this memory from the mists of early childhood.  (Time passes slower when you're a child, so the 10 years or so between 1983 and 1993 seemed like an eternity of time had come and gone.)  But the memory just confused me.  Was I really remembering a video game that had graphics as good as a cartoon?  How was such a thing possible?  Did I just dream the whole thing up, or were these memories real?

It wasn't until the Internet and Wikipedia fully came into it's own (about another 10 years later) that I finally got closure on the Dragon's Liar issue.

Pete Seeger Memories

When we were children, we had a Pete Seeger album in our record collection: Birds, Beasts, Bugs & Fishes
I'm not quite sure how it got there.  For that matter, I don't know where any of our records came from.  We weren't going to the store and selecting them ourselves when we were 3 or 4, so our parents must have bought it for us.  Or a Christmas gift from a relative.  Or a hand-me down from someone.  Who knows.

As tastes change rapidly in childhood,  my sister and I went through several stages with this record.  (Or I should probably just speak for myself actually....)
First I loved the songs.  Then I got bored with it.  Then I hit an age where I was just at the perfect stage to enjoy the humor in this album, and my sister and I thought "The Foolish Frog" song on this album was the funniest thing ever, and we listened to that song over and over again, laughing our heads off each time. 


And then eventually I outgrew that humor, and got bored with the album again, and it became disregarded.

I rediscovered Pete Seeger when I was 18, and beginning to become interested in the history of popular music, and  protest music.  I began to hear Pete Seegar's name a lot in connection with other artists like The Byrds, Bob Dylan, Peter Paul & Mary, et cetera.
I bought Pete Seeger's greatest hits on CD.  I hadn't realized at first that this was the same singer whose animal albums I had grown up with, but once I listened to the voice on the CD, I immediately made the connection.  I was pleasantly surprised to combine childhood nostalgia with my more adult tastes.
I used to play the CD around the Calvin College dormitories. 
My roommate Brett initially mocked me at first for the CD--the song Little Boxes in particular he thought sounded like a parody of a children's song instead of what an 18 year old should be listening to.  But then after a few spins of the CD, he became a Pete Seeger fan himself.  (This was back before the song got renewed popularity from the television show Weeds).



I saw Pete Seeger live in November 1999 at the School of America Protest down in Georgia.  I had gone down with a Calvin group, and we were sitting on the lawn listening to the speeches and the music, when suddenly I thought the voice of one of the musicians sounded familiar.  I left the group to get closer to the stage, and there was Pete Seeger singing.
Although this was 15 years ago now, he was already not young at this stage, being 80 years old.  His singing voice seemed pretty shot, and he was singing with his grandson who helped him carry the song.  But in between the songs he would tell stories, and his talking voice hadn't changed at all from the familiar voice I grew up on.
This was in a big field, and I saw him only from a distance, but I was happy just to say I saw him.

However I got a much closer look at him later that night.  We went to a non-violence training workshop in the evening, which was a small group of people in a small little room.  And before the training began, Pete Seeger came out and sang several songs to the room, and I was really elated to have seen him up so close.

During my time in Japan, I was delighted to discover Pete Seeger was also quite popular in Japan.  During my brief experiment with joining the town choir in Ajimu, I discovered the choir sang some Pete Seeger songs translated into Japanese.  The choir director asked me if I had ever heard of Pete Seeger.  "Have I ever heard of him?" I replied, "Let me tell you the story about how I saw him play in just a small room once..."
 I also enjoyed the Japanese version of Big Muddy.



By the way, sorry I'm a few days late on this post.  The news that Pete Seeger had died completely passed me by the past couple days.  Despite the fact that I try to keep an eye on the news, the past few days I've heard plenty about Justin Bieber's exploits, but nothing on Pete Seeger's death.  I suppose I always knew the media would largely ignore him, although I somewhat expected facebook and other word of mouth would alert me.  But my facebook feed has been surprisingly quite about Pete Seeger's death.

Related Posts: A post from about 10 years ago, when I recounted the same story as above.
A post on Non-violence, in which I recall a Pete Seeger anecdote that I heard him tell once in an NPR interview.
A list of the top 10 Biopics I would like to see Hollywood produce, in which I include Pete Seeger.

Link of the Day
reddit.com Interviews Noam Chomsky

Get Smart

(Movie Review) 

Although I'm far too young to remember the original run, I was introduced to "Get Smart" when Nick at Nite started re-running the show back in 1990. 

I fell in love with it immediately. It was a spy story with jokes. How could you beat that? 

At first I thought it was just me, but in talking with classmates from school and from church youth group I soon realized that this show was making many new converts among my generation. Every kid who had basic cable back in the early 90s was becoming a fan. And in fact, even now re-watching the show on youtube from time to time I still get a chuckle out of it. (That old cone of silence! When will Max learn it doesn't work? Why does he always insist on it?) 

(Whisky has collected a few "Get Smart" gems on his blog. Worth checking out). 

The movie, unfortunately, was a bit of a disappointment. 

Not that this caught me off guard at all. By the time films make it to my video store here in Japan, it's often about a year after their US theatrical release. So, I had read a few reviews, and I knew enough to keep my expectations down. 

Still, curiosity and childhood fondness for the original caused me to want to check it out anyway. 

This is a decidedly mediocre movie. But then, movies based on old TV shows are notorious for being mediocre. It's hard to take a premise built for a few cheap gags in a 22 minute time slot and stretch it out to 90 minutes. 

And it's worth remembering at this point that this is not the first "Get Smart" movie. There was also "The Nude Bomb" (W) released way back in 1980, (and which I saw re-run on cable sometime in the early 90s.) And which, despite having the advantage of the original Don Adams, was absolutely terrible. 

The TV movie, "Get Smart Again" (W) was alright as far as I can remember it. 

(Although it's been about 15 years since I saw either movie, so I probably should rewatch them before pronouncing judgement.) 

The new "Get Smart" at least did a good job with the casting. Steve Carrell recreates Maxwell Smart's arrogance mixed with cluelessness. And Anne Hathaway also does a good job with 99; just like the original Barbara Feldon she's slightly impatient with Maxwell Smart, but not altogether unfond of him. 

Bill Murray did a great cameo as agent 13. Patrick Warburton was perfect as Hymie the robot. And, even though he wasn't portraying a character from the original series, I enjoyed seeing Masi Oka in a small role. And David Koechner at least looks a lot like the original Larabee, even if he plays the character differently. 

The problem is that none of the jokes are all that funny. 

Well, if we were perfectly honest with ourselves, maybe the original "Get Smart" was not all that funny either. A little silly, maybe, worth a few chuckles, but seldom laugh out loud funny. 

But, when you sit down for a movie, you have higher expectations. 

Link of the Day
The Legitimacy of Violence as a Political Act?
and Striking a blow against tyranny -- with teabags!
Also I don't know if you've already heard this or not, but I found this NPR interview with Bart Ehrman really interesting The Gospel Truth: Sometimes A Little Hazy

Get Smart: Movie Review (Scripted)

A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

(Book Review)

Since I've been busy with school and work, I've not had a lot of free time for reading. But thankfully there's always time for audio books.

This is a book I should have read a long time ago. My aunt gave it to me for Christmas 10 years ago (wow, that long ago already!) after my friends and I had hiked the Smoky mountains during spring break. (Not hiking on the Appalachian trail per se, but intersecting it a couple of times on our route).

Around the same time, my best friend Brett read the same book. And I still remember him recounting some of the funnier parts of the book to me on one of our hiking trips. (With all the major things you forget over the years, it's strange some of the inane things you remember, isn't it?)

I didn't read this book at the time for a number of reasons. Back when I was 20, I was trying to make up for a childhood that consisted almost entirely of solitude and books by trying to be more social and making a conscious effort to limit the amount of books I read. (Sounds a bit silly now, but that was my attitude at the time). Also, partly because I'm a slow reader, it takes a tremendous amount of time and energy for me to get through a book. And so I rarely read a book simply on someone else's recommendation, and will only pick up a book unless I'm personally motivated to get through it.

I did however spend two different spring break trips during college hiking the Smoky mountains, and at points overlapping with the Appalachian trails. I posted my journal from second trips as a retrospection a few years ago. The first trip, from Sophomore year, was before I started my journal, which is a pity because we had much more adventures and interesting stories on that trip. At least I can still remember a lot of it even if I didn't write it down at the time.

...Anyway, both trips were among the best experiences of my life. I love hiking, and the only thing better than a good hike is being able to share it with some of your best friends and have a lot of laughs along the way. And the scenery was absolutely beautiful. Words can't describe the beauty of the Smoky mountains. At times the woods were so thick with foliage we thought we were in a rain forest.

And it ended up being quite an adventure as well. I've mentioned this before, but on our first trip the trail criss crossed the river at several points. We had of course noticed this while we were looking at the map, but didn't think anything of it. I guess we had just assumed there would be bridges at all of these points. Not being experienced hikers, we were shocked when we came to the first crossing and there wasn't a bridge in sight.

The first river crossing we were able to hop skip and jump across using some rocks. But, just like a video game, the crossings became progressively more and more difficult as we continued. Pretty soon we were having to make long detours in order to find a spot with rocks we could jump to. Then we had to shimmy across a fallen tree to get across. Finally we got to a large river where there didn't seem anyway to cross.

It was early March, and we were still wearing our winter coats, so it was much too cold to wade across the frigid mountain river (especially considering we didn't have any warm place to dry off in afterwards). So we walked up and down the river for a while looking for another place to cross. We argued and some people talked about going back. And in the end we ended up spending close to two hours making our own bridge: going into the forest and finding fallen trees and branches which we would then lug into the river and attempt to make foot paths between some of the bigger boulders. The four of us guys were trying to show off as much as possible for the girls in our group by making leaps of daring back and forth along the rocks (or maybe I'm just speaking for myself).

Finally when the bridge was completed, we helped the girls across. (Our bridges, such as they were, were a bit flimsily and wobbly and hard to walk across unassisted).

And then, one girl slipped off the bridge, falling in the cold water and even worse getting her back pack and all her gear soaking wet. We all rushed to help her.

That night, we got caught in a heavy snowfall. And the next day the adventure continued on...

You'll excuse me if I spend most of this review talking about my own experiences rather than the book. But reading this,( or listening to it rather), did bring back a lot of fond memories.

Anyway, now that a friend gave me a copy of this book on audio, and having recently finished and enjoyed two other Bill Bryson books (The Lost Continent and The Life and Times of Thunderbolt Kid ) it was the perfect time to continue onto this book.

And what can I say? Bill Bryson is a funny guy! I enjoyed this book thoroughly.

In addition to Bryson's dry wit, his hiking companion (under the alias of Stephen Katz) is a writer's dream.
In "The Life and Times of Thunderbolt Kid" Bryson recalls his childhood with Stephen Katz. And, although I've not read them, apparently Katz makes appearances in several of Bryson's other books. He's fat, grumpy, lazy, surly, vindictive and more or less the perfect comic character to write about on a long grueling hiking trip. When asked how he feels about bears, Katz responds, "Hey, they haven't gotten me yet!" When forced to share a lodge with a group of preppy spring break kids, Katz remarks, "One of these guys just called me Sport. I'm getting the fuck out of here!"

(In "The Thunderbolt Kid" Byrson mentions in passing that the real Stephen Katz called this book largely a work of fiction. Bryson never went on to elaborate the truth behind the charge, but it did have me wondering the whole time as I listened to this book. Either way, given how Katz comes off in this book, it's not surprising that the real Katz would have some objections).

Despite the fact that Katz is almost the perfect character, the thought did occur to me a few times: "I bet our gang would have had Katz and Bryson beat." If we had been taken notes on the trail, if we had written up the experience when it was still fresh, and if one of us had the wit and writing skill of Bryson, we could have made a much funnier book. Maybe that's arrogant to say, but when I remember all the funny things that happened to us, all the laughs we had, and all the insane arguments over pointless things, I bet our story would have been better. Bryson may have had Stephen Katz, but I had a whole host of characters on my trip.

....But the thing is, none of us did have the writing skills or subtle wit of Bryson. And that's the thing about writing: the actual story doesn't count half as much as the skill in telling it. If you go follow my links above to my journal entry about our trip, you'll note it's not exactly Shakespeare. Whereas Bryson can take something as mundane as a road trip across the Midwest, and make it into an hilarious book in "The Lost Continent."

Oh well. I guess writers like Bryson gives the rest of us something to shoot for.

In addition to adventures along the trail, Bryson also tells a lot of the history of the Appalachian trail (how it came into existence, and the problems it has faced over the years) and some of the geology and botany of the trail. I know this sounds boring, but it's actually a lot more interesting than you would think once Bryson starts getting into it.

Bryson also continues many of his observations about American life, including the lengths to which ordinary non-hiking Americans will go to avoid walking. Continuing on themes in some of his previous books, Bryson observes how difficult it is to walk across an American city even if you wanted to. Once off the trail, Bryson recounts a near death experience trying to walk to a local K-mart, and being honked at by the passing drivers for "having the temerity to try and cross town without the benefit of metal."

As I said in my review of "The Lost Continent", I couldn't agree more on this point. With the coming energy crisis, American cities are going to have to be redesigned to be more cycling and pedestrian friendly.

According to Wikipedia, a film adaptation of this book is in the works. I'd be interested to see that when it comes out.

Link of the Day
Chomsky Speaks: On Iraq, Iran and Norman Finkelstein
and The Republican Good News Fairy

A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson: Book Review (Scripted)