“Go ahead, make my day.”
Familiar? Of course it is. Then there were Charles Bronson and Chuck Norris and Shaft and a slew of others. They were our heroes. Before them were a host of others from the Humphrey Bogart era. For the most part, they each did the same thing: they went up against a bully or bullies and helped people who could not protect themselves who were being picked on. Evil was defeated by good. We were reminded that if we worked at it, we did not have to be powerless.
In those movies the world wasn’t coming to an end. The victims were individuals, part of the rest of us who were just normal people, the cows in the pasture who went to work every day. We were regular regulars.
Perhaps the advent of the nuclear bomb set us on the zombie train. They told us if we hid under our desks (public schools in the 50s) we would be safe from a nuclear blast. They told us if we lined up along the wall between the windows we wouldn’t get cut by the glass. And silly us, we believed them. Perhaps then the true sense of the end of humankind was not yet real.
The end of humankind as a theme, mass destruction of everything, comes later. Films like this existed and played all along. Nuclear destruction was one of many themes in them. Godzilla, King Kong and natural disasters were others. Mutations heading toward zombies weren’t in the picture yet. Of course we had Frankenstein, anther precursor to zombies, but the other themes were the ticket up to a point, until we moved to the apocalypse movies and zombies.
Space exploration and continued nuclear developments changed the nature of the mass destruction scenarios, as did scientific advances. Human error and folly, normally based in greed, began to lead us to mutants that make us zombies.
So here we are. We get remakes of the shipwreck movies and more technologically advanced monster movies. But the latest, biggest fascination are the zombies. Some devastation alters who and what we are. Or a greedy corporation led by a selfish mad scientist makes a grand mistake. Most of us are killed but not really. We come back as zombies, those poor, pathetic beings wandering endlessly for food.
The very rich are safe in their underground cities, or their segregated, gated cities, like in Hunger Games, or they are in their own city in space. We regular regulars are relegated to food for zombies, only to become zombies ourselves.
Why did we go here? Why do our movies and mass entertainment go here? Having gone here, are they leading us here? Where are we going?
Follow politics, follow the money and understand the simple mathematical concept of the least common denominator. These will provide indications of the answers to the questions above.
The fight between liberals and conservatives as a philosophical fight is about least common denominator. But our politics in general is Kabuki Theater, a show for the zombies-to-be. More than 50 percent of our leaders are millionaires. All the leaders, including the Hollywood elite, will have entry to the gated cities. The lefties preach least common denominator while they stockpile their own wealth. It’s the Al Gore hypocrisy: conserve energy so I can use yours. The righties preach self-sufficiency knowing they’re pretty protected and the odds are stacked in their favor, the favor of the already rich.
We, the regular regulars, are zombie food soon to be zombies. It’s a metaphor of course. Yet here we are and deeper and deeper into it we go.
The other day someone was recapping a movie and of course it ended with the dog and everyone else turning into zombies. This was kind of interesting. Another zombie movie. It seems as if every other movie is about zombies. Why? Why so many zombie movies? Well, the answer is really simple. There are so many zombie movies because we are the zombies.
Resident Evil, all of them, The Walking Dead, and countless others like them bombard our airwaves in what has now become a common setting of the wasteland filled with mindless entities trying to devour anything and everything alive. In most, what’s alive is a small ruling class, usually elite and always sinister in that its only real goal is for itself to survive and thrive. Don’t like zombies? Think of the Hunger Games series of movies. Same deal.
Why? Why these movies? Why have we moved away from the movies in which Dirty Harry eliminates an evil and society goes on? Or Charles Bronson in Death Wish movies? Or Denzell Washington or Will Smith saving civilization?
We’ve moved on to the zombies, the mindless masses, because we’ve become the mindless masses and they’ve become the political class, the elite rulers who do little else than attempt to maintain the illusion that they’ve got our backs, are on our side and are looking out for our best interests. This idea, that they’re looking out for us, is the biggest piece of bull ever. What they’ve done is dumb down education, purposefully to be sure, so that we don’t have the wherewithal to actually see what they’re doing and call them out on it. If we do call them out on it, for whatever the particular it is, they persecute us, bully us, gather their forces like circling the wagons, and attack from within their rigged system of government agencies and courts. The most common bullying tactic is to force the regular citizen to defend him/herself in court thus racking up enough in legal fees to either destroy his/her life and livelihood or force him/her to cease and desist. One of their biggest weapons these days is the IRS. A second weapon is Obamacare and its birth control aspect. A third is the redefining of marriage and the transgender bathroom issue.
We used to be cows in the pasture. That image seemed to suffice for the longest time. Cows in the pasture has a peacefulness about it. You get up, go to work, do your thing then go home and rest up for the next day. Life goes on day by day, year after year, and we trudge on. We used to know what marriage was, what bathrooms to go into, even what we could and couldn’t do. For the most part, we were happy cows. We got petted and were left alone in the pastures to be who we were. We only had to give the milk once a year on April 15th.
But they’ve killed the cows, plucked them like they were golden geese. They’ve stripped them of identity, of purpose, of knowledge, and they are fleecing them of every bit of wealth they can steal from them. They’ve turned them into mindless zombies who get their news in fifteen second sound bites on Facebook. They kill the zombies every chance they get, not so much with bullets as with regulations, new laws, presidential orders and directives.
Man is by nature selfish and greedy. Our newish Political Class, the American Politburo, is the quintessential example of this. Won’t be long until they all live in the gated cities while we, the zombies, roam the wastelands their greed and selfishness have created.
Coming at the end of May 2017:
The Ghost Writer, Rose’s Story: A Look At The Worlds We Hide
In the meantime, a brief hiatus until May 10th when Fiction Outtakes return (and then some).
Eleanor’s last day was a Saturday, an OSU event day with lots of parents coming in to see their kids. OSU provided stupendous revenues for Columbus and Columbus businesses, especially hotels and restaurants, and both the east and west stores would run full all weekend long.
Bill and Henry Lee had started cutting extra supplies of steaks beginning on the Thursday. The Thursday night inventory was doubled. Friday and Saturday inventories were quadrupled, and then some. Neither Bill nor Henry Lee drank much as they worked now although they did get high in the deep freeze.
Mr. Jim came in to work on Friday. He did the line next to Bill. Bill did the broiler instead of Henry Lee so Henry Lee could stay downstairs cutting meat. The meat delivery had been doubled, up to three thousand pounds. None of it was put into the freezer. The walk-in was wall-to-wall meat and its refrigeration unit was working overtime.
If during ordinary times the help took extended breaks to fraternize, now there was no rest for the wicked. Bill spent the entire morning down in the meat room. Henry Lee came in early and worked late all weekend and no one rested much between meals. Mr. Jim worked with Mary before going to the line so Bill could stay downstairs cutting steaks.
At eleven-thirty Bill carried up the meat trays for the lunch. He made three trips. Then he made sure he had a full case of French fries. Mary and Grandma would both be doing breading.
Friday lunch was gangbusters. They had a reputation, and anyone who was anyone who did any recommending, recommended Suburban. Parents of students who’d been there came back again and again. Newbies made sure it was on their dining out agenda.
Tommy had to step up his pace calling orders. Bill ran a full broiler and he fired up and used both sides of the charcoal grill. That was the grill that had heated the sizzler on which he’d burned his hand his first day as a cook. He had no feeling in those fingertips now, none, zip, zilch. Bea had broken out three new cases of dishes. Nothing was worse than having food that needed to go and not having dishes to put it on.
Bam. Bam. Bam. Nonstop orders started at about twenty-to-twelve and ran till two o’clock when they finally ran out the board. Even then more orders came in, but Tommy drew himself a coffee and went out to check the dining rooms. Bill and Mr. Jim finished up the stragglers, Mr. Jim complimenting Bill on how well he did and how far he’d come along.
Bill took a quick cigarette break out in the hall. He sat on a metal milk case, drank a cup of coffee and looked at the outside through the screen door. Mary joined him, but only for a moment. They were all business. Two prime ribs were cooking. She told him check them at four. Alvin was coming over to help him and Jimmy do the dinner. She thought he might want to fire up the other Garland. Mr. Jim was coming in tomorrow to help out. Saturday of an OSU function or sports weekend was all hands on deck.
Bea came out while they were talking. She lit a cigarette from Bill’s and stood by them. She was sweaty, Bill could see. Her hair was pasted to her forehead in several places and little beads of sweat lined her brow and her mustache. Cigarette in her mouth, with both hands she hoisted her dress, squatted slightly and pulled her underwear away from her skin, adjusting it and resettling it. Then she reached inside and scratched herself, front and back.
“Ain’t you got no shame?” Mary asked.
“Not in front of you two,” Bea said.
“Mercy me,” Mary said.
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Coming at the end of May 2017:
The Ghost Writer, Rose’s Story: A Look At The Worlds We Hide
…The Chinese restaurant Murph’s mother Pearl loved to eat in was on the same block as the Roosevelt Theater, a bit further down the block and just before the curve. That block was a long one and it actually did curve, and just past the curve was the Long Island Railroad, still overhead at this point although by the time it got to the Bayside Station it was lower than the ground, down two sets of stairs. The Chinese restaurant wasn’t a Chinese restaurant anymore, but back across the boulevard, adjacent to the railroad bridge, on the second floor of a building whose first floor was vacant, was the pool hall and Tattoo Parlor that had always been there, their signs still in English. Murph had never been in either one of those places.
On toward Bayside and out of Auburndale, the memories were more adult memories than childhood ones. Murph sped up a bit and let his mind relax, thinking this wasn’t too far from where he lived now. If he didn’t follow the curve and left Northern Boulevard just before the tracks, he’d find his way toward a different part of Flushing than where he’d been, and with a couple of subsequent turns he’d be pretty close to his apartment. If he had come from there instead of from Carla’s, he would have made the trip on the Long Island Expressway, a faster and much more direct route. He could have done it that way from Carla’s too, but since he’d had the time he’d taken the cruise.
Murph and ugly Mary spent quite a few times together since Alan stayed with his girlfriend and eventually married her. At first they didn’t like each other. Murph thought she was ugly and maybe she thought he was too. She didn’t want to be there, wherever they were at the time, and neither did Murph. She was cold to him and he reciprocated in kind so that their first time at the RKO they could have been sitting in different rows, that’s how far apart they were. She was chubby and pimply and one corner of her blouse stuck out of her jeans. Murph was chubby, had a flat top haircut and wore thick black-frame glasses, a fat four-eyes with braces. Well into the movie, at one point they each looked over to Alan and Andrea and saw them deep into making out, Andrea’s hand stroking Alan and her pants open with Alan’s hand buried in there somewhere.
“Wanna make out?” Murph asked.
“No. I don’t even want to be here.”
“Well, me either. Want some candy?”
“No. Just leave me alone and we’ll get along fine.”
Their second time at the RKO was like an instant replay. Murph only went a second time because Alan promised to buy the beer for the next two months. Murph found out later that Andrea had promised Mary she would do her English homework for six weeks.
“Anyway,” Mary said when they were talking about it, “I wanted to see this movie and Alan had the passes.”
“I don’t care about the movie,” Murph said.
“So why you here?”
“Same as you, to help out my friend.”
“Well, that’s a good thing.”
“Yes it is.”
“That’s why I’m here too.”
“You have a boyfriend?”
“Would I be here with you if I did?”
“Well, same here.”
“No kidding?”
“No kidding,” Murph said. Then, in a bold and daring move, he put his arm around Mary and she didn’t tear it away, which was a surprise. In fact, he thought, she kind of moved a bit closer to him. Feeling emboldened, he started leaning in to kiss her.
“Wait, wait,” she said. “I really want to see this part.”
Disappointed, Murph sat back in the chair and he would have sulked to the end of the movie if ugly Mary hadn’t leaned over to him and kissed him once on the lips, closed-mouthed, when the part she really wanted to see was over.
“If we have to do this again,” she said, “I’ll make out with you…”
Look for Rose’s Story toward the end of May 2017
Mr. Jim taught Bill to carve the round and retired after Bill was trained. He’d waited so he could teach the boy, and teach him he did. Every now and then, though, he still came in and sometimes he even worked. Mostly he visited, ate, then cut out.
Mr. Jim was average size and trim. He was mostly bald and sported a scraggly, grey goatee on his chin. He had worked the better part of his life on dining cars for the railroad. A tremendously refined, mild-mannered man, he never raised his voice, never scolded, never answered back in haste or anger. “Act,” he always said. “Never react.”
He was Yulie’s uncle on his mother’s side and so Mary, who had loved Yulie, was automatically endeared to Mr. Jim. While neither she nor Yulie made Mr. Jim privy to their activities, Mary had spoken with him several times regarding Yulie, imploring him to somehow intervene. Mr. Jim tried, but Yulie was too far into it and not about to go away to a rehab. A wasted life, Mary thought about Yulie, but not completely. He’d been over in Vietnam and come back this way. One time, at his place, while they lay in bed together, just before Yulie shot up, Mary confronted him about it. He told her that after what he’d seen, he didn’t want to see the world anymore.
And so it went. She’d loved his sad eyes now permanently closed.
The Steamship round was basically the rump of the cow, the hind quarter. A full one weighed in at about sixty pounds, so the half they sold most of every day was about thirty pounds. It was so named because it was used on transatlantic cruises since one round could serve hundreds of people. Steamboat. Cut in half, center up, the meat looked kind of like a boat with the oval “deck” that tapered down much like a boat’s hull did.
At first, Mr. Jim had Bill watch. He taught the idea of the carving, how to work all the way around keeping the cutting surface even and level. Then he allowed Bill to make some cuts. He laughed at the hatch marks Bill left and explained gently how to flatten the knife more and how to gently slice through the meat as opposed to sawing through it. Watching the boy amused Mr. Jim, but even as Bill made every mistake there was, Mr. Jim remained calm, even-keeled and jovial. He reported to Tommy Stevens daily that the boy was learning.
Mr. Jim never did like Drenovis. He’d told Mary that Drenovis was an abusive, crude, vulgar cracker. Mary agreed. She told Mr. Jim that Drenovis abused the waitresses and those that didn’t give him what he wanted didn’t stay around very long. Mr. Jim said he wasn’t surprised. Then he asked where the black waitresses were. Mary reminded him there weren’t any.
“So,” Bill asked Mary once when they were alone, “am I a cracker too?”
“Technically, yes,” she said. But then she kissed him, a long, deep lover’s kiss. “But only technically,” she said.
Finally, Mr. Jim had Bill trim the round and allowed him to cut out the one circle of fat in the midst of the meat. When Bill could do everything start to finish, Mr. Jim brought Tommy in to show Tommy what Bill had learned. He stood over Bill like a proud papa.
Bill was nervous with Tommy looking on. He went around that fat deftly but he cut down too deep so when he pulled out the fat, a solid two-pound chunk of extremely rare beef hung at the end of it.
“Look at what he did,” Tommy said.
Mr. Jim laughed. He grabbed the fat from Bill’s hand and dangled it in Tommy’s face. “The boy got to learn,” Mr. Jim said.
Because he was a refined man, a gentleman, and because he knew the kitchens like no one else, Mr. Jim made sure not toss that meat. He trimmed it, sliced it and served it, and he made sure every plate he used it on was beautiful.
Tommy marveled at his prowess.
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