House of Eratosthenes

I have no idea where it is, although it’s somewhere around here. And I know this makes me sound like an old fart, maybe it should, but I had to cut this lawn before I could earn the money to go see The Empire Strikes Back. That’s how we did it back then. Even though the Mount Baker Theater charged somewhere around $2.50 or so…today, you wouldn’t have to cut someone’s grass to pull that in, you’d scrounge around in your couch cushions to “harvest” that without bothering to help anybody. In my day, at age 14 I had to run a “business” of sorts. I had a piggy bank that was a super-size replica of a Tootsie Roll, with dollar bills and coins in it, along with a piece of ledger paper that tracked where all the money went. Gasoline, lawnmower repairs, etc., that was my “lawn care business” and that is how I saw Star Wars Episode V. On some May day in 1980, someone paid me — I don’t even know. $20. Maybe $10. Or $5.

I envy you young puppies who were born sometime in the 1990’s. I try to show proper respect, restrain myself as my instincts compel me to launch into some lecture, or tirade, about appreciating legacies and so forth. You do know something about Han Solo being frozen, his fate uncertain, some 14 years before you were born. I try to remind myself that that’s like me knowing what’s going on with the real-life Hank Williams Sr. freezing to death in his car. I therefore have to remind myself that your generation, against all odds, is actually more conscientious than my generation.

It was actually well-known far & wide that Han Solo’s uncertain fate at the conclusion of “Episode Five” was reflective of Harrison Ford’s uncertain future with the movie franchise. I look back on my own personal opinions about this as among what might be called the “most-wrong”: My opinion back then, back when I was cutting someone’s grass and scooping it into a big bag, to earn my twenty or ten bones so I could see the first true sequel, was: Harrison Ford is Han Solo, and he doesn’t appreciate or understand this, and he’s a fool. That afternoon and evening, as I absorbed Han Solo’s fate and came to realize what was being tossed into the Realm Of The Uncertain And As Yet Not Quite Settled, my level of disgust multiplied upon itself.

And then, Mr. Ford compounded the “error.” The following year, he kicked off a movie franchise about an archeology professor in the 1930’s or something. I remember watching the trailers and thinking…uh, no. No. Very bad idea. Awful, terrible. DON’T DO THIS.

Fast-forward to today. I’m closing in, now, on my fiftieth birthday, in fifteen months or something? People at work call me “Obi-Wan.” And this awful, terrible idea of a movie back in 1981, I dunno…I was so disgusted with it when the previews came out telling us we should all go see it. All I was thinking was, “Dude, you stopped being Han Solo for this crap?” I thought of it like Sean Connery, Indian Jones’ Dad, stopping his James Bond career to be the Zardoz guy.

Suppose I dropped dead tonight because my heart stopped beating. And suppose my funeral-mourners had 500 years, or a thousand years, or ten thousand years, to figure out what one single movie out of Hollywood might have inspired me to make whatever positive influences on other people that I might have made, with whatever years, months and days the Lord had granted me. Well…if my opinion means anything at all, yes I do think it’s more important than Han Shot First. That, after all, is about next-to-nothing; it’s about shooting first.

Well we don’t need Han Solo for that, we learned that eleven years later.

Here it is, later still. A whole bunch of years. And I’ve heard it said, if my friends are in a hotel, friends who agree with me on a whole lot of political stuff and disagree with Bill Clinton on exactly that same stuff…but former President Clinton is on that hotel, in that bar, getting smashed…they’ll flock to him. And who can blame them? A celebrity is a celebrity.

But I figure Harrison Ford, whose political opinions are not that distant from Mr. Clinton’s, would somehow be at the opposite end of the bar, getting neglected. Would I join Indiana Jones? Maybe buy him a round? And the answer is, Hell yes. I’d have to do it. Even if the lefty-communist Hollywood actor wouldn’t understand why, and he likely wouldn’t. In fact, I’m sure he wouldn’t. But I look at all these people on my resume…they don’t like me personally, in fact some of them despise me, for what reasons I can’t figure. Or, maybe I can. But some of them would HAVE to hire me back again. Or at least, be strongly compelled to do this. There’s something important going on here. There’s a split. Some of us try to remain gainfully employed by being likable, being part of a “family” or some such, some of us go to work to get a job done.

And I may hate to admit it, maybe they’d hate to admit it too…but you know why that is? It’s because, if it was my job to steal the Ark of the Covenant back from the Nazis and use a bull-whip to wind my way underneath a five-ton truck and make sure the mission got accomplished — I’d fucking do it. Or at least, some stuff like that. That’s actually worth something. Probably worth more to me than to anybody else.

And, maybe movies have nothing to do with this at all, with men being worth more than what the men were as boys. With maturity. But you know…I don’t think so. It’s not that I like admitting to it. I don’t. I think, in adulthood, us men have women and children, sometimes children of us, sometimes children of other men — they count on us to get stuff done. And I think, when people are counting on us to get stuff done, we draw on a bank of resources, which we had been assembling since long before we were men. I think movies do have something to do with this. In a great variety of situations, movies impact us this way, they follow us from boyhood into manhood.

I mean, c’mon, admit it: Shane isn’t really that fun of a movie. It’s not that entertaining. Why then is it so important as a facet of our modern culture? Is it because Shane’s daughter-in-law looked like this…

…I don’t think so. Remember that Shane kicked off, rather than concluded, the era of the Western. It took place roughly around the same time as High Noon. This was not about cattle-rustling. It was about a Great Contrast, straight out of Lord of the Rings, between good and evil.

I think, in this way, movies are still important. They may not teach us about how the world actually works. They can’t. But they do teach us about what’s good, and what is not good. Because they teach us about that, they teach us about why we’re here.

And because of that, if I was trapped in a hotel late at night, with both lefty-lib Bill Clinton and lefty-lib Harrison Ford…I’d make it a point to spend my time around Mr. Ford. Even though he may not appreciate why. I figure I owe him. Just like your Father, stretched out on his deathbed riddled with dementia, unable to recognize you. Maybe Mr. Ford doesn’t understand what sort of a message he sent to an entire generation, or what sort of ramification it had. What does it matter? Bartender! Another round, for me and my dear, dear friend.

It’s not just him. It’s anybody who had anything to say, or to show, about resourcefulness. For real, or for theater. It’s an important concept, an irreplaceable concept. The idea that when the battle ends and it isn’t in your favor, there are always more chapters to be unfolded in the great war — that it’s always worth waking up the next morning to a new day.

This may very well be the world’s oldest problem: How do the elders, lacking the vitality to last indeterminably into the succeeding generations, send their positive messages? Not the negative ones. Negativity is easy. It always has been easy. How do we recharge the batteries? How do we let the younger generation know that, even though the U-boat has vanished with the Ark of the Covenant in its hold, it’s still possible to stow-away? To stage yet another confrontation? Even when all seems lost…

Update: Was thinking some more of the fond memories I have of the years surrounding Ford’s earliest & biggest films. There is a recollection of the summer when I had just finished up middle school, I was out camping with my Boy Scout troop and when we were supposed to be getting to sleep, we were coping with this new idea of “Star Wars” having a sequel. “I heard,” one of the kids said, “By the year Two Thousand you’ll be able to go the movies, drop TWENTY DOLLARS, and see all nine Star Wars movies, one after the other.” Heh…oh boy, so much to revisit with that prediction, where to begin. The twenty-dollar part of it has certainly come true.

Oh yeah, that “Empire Strikes back”(or maybe the attitude that you actually had to work for something) makes you seem like an old fart….I’m pretty sure it was “Old Yeller” that gave me that slap across my (tear stained) face that sometimes I’d be called upon to do “what just needs doin’ “, no way around it.
Came in handy (I guess) when mom screamed “RUN next door and get your grandmere OUT of the burning house.
After the adrenaline ebbed and the fire trucks pulled up I figured out “HEY! I’m a frikin’ HERO for that!”, but nooooooo, I STILL had to get on the bus for school!*sheesh*
After that, “Don’t just STAND there…” was easy. Alistair MacLean novels helped mold this attitude.
(As well as the “HEY, the MOVIE version of this SUCKS!” concept)
Much later in life, after years of seeing Robert Duvall , and Michael Caine, in other stuff, it was probably seeing them in the untraditional rolls in Secondhand Lions that nudged me into NOT “minding my own business”, and at least giving a shot at “the talk” to 16-20 year olds that seemed destined to
make the same “poor choices” that I made at that age.
No, it wasn’t just the fiction of Hollywood, and adventure novels, that brought me to the comfy chair I sit in today. I suspect growing up in the country, where anonymity, and “free” stuff, is pretty tough to come by, helped.( I’d like to BELIEVE that whole Bell Curve thingy helped too!)
- CaptDMO | 04/17/2015 @ 06:34
+1000, Morgan.

Lots of guys our age are going to have strong feelings on this. For example, the now-well-known tale is that Sir Alec Guinness regretted being Obi-Wan and was mortified at all the folks who came up to him and thanked him for the role.

I get that, because the man had many other worthy roles; and yes, the Star Wars films were goofy space opera. (Ford himself, when faced with Lucas’ horrible dialogue, famously groused, “You can write this s**t, George, but nobody can say it.”) But I’ve long wished Guinness had reconsidered, because that space opera came along at the perfect time to blow away the ennui and despair that was poisoning our culture, and that we were taught was our deserved lot in life. That first fanfare was the herald’s trumpet announcing “ENOUGH WITH THAT CRAP.” It was heroic and romantic and adventurous.

Guinness was a huge part of that. It really could have gone off the rails into camp and hipsterish irony without his gravitas – and especially Obi-Wan’s sacrifice to win the heroes’ freedom. That was serious business, and led to serious business because his wisdom and example was no longer around to inform the heroes, forcing a number of difficulties on them in the next film. Anyone who dismisses SW or the general idea of a good/evil adventure story as “simplistic” isn’t paying attention.

If you see Mr. Ford, buy him a round from me as well. And if I’m there I might tell him the story of how I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark in theaters…
- nightfly | 04/17/2015 @ 09:39
My biological father snuck me out to see “Empire Strikes Back.” My step father and mother were adamant that my brain not be rotted with the evil that got my friends so worked up. I was a bit lost, but it was enjoyable, pumped up even more so by my cousins. It wasn’t until I convinced a friend’s mom to rent “Star Wars” for us that I was truly hooked. I “joined the crowd” and stood for three hours in line for “Return of the Jedi.”
Your story brings up an interesting difference between conservatives and progressives. Does anyone truly believe that a liberal would make the choice to hang out with, say…Clint Eastwood? Or would adherence to the faith prevent them from a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity?
Sev, love to hear your thoughts…
- P_Ang | 04/17/2015 @ 11:06
P_Ang,

the hardcore Kommissar types might refuse to hang out with Clint, I think — if only because they have literal enemies lists, and all their fellow Kommissars do, too, and hanging out with an unperson is one of the worst thoughtcrimes. They’ve always got to watch their backs against the other Red Guards.

As for the rest of ’em… eh, they’re all starfuckers. Barack Obama is proof of that. That dude had a three-line resume and a murkier origin story than a Dominican ballplayer; he couldn’t have gotten elected dogcatcher in a sane polity. But the media anointed him a celebrity, and so they couldn’t wait to vote for him. And they’ll do it again next year. If any one of them had a chance to hang out with Clint Eastwood, they’d do it in a second. They might make stupid faces in all the selfies they take with him — you know, to deflect the inevitable jealous grief they’d get from their friends on Instagram — but oh lord would they take them.

(As further proof, consider Arnold Schwarzenegger. California loves them some Jerry Brown, and they reverted to type the second the Governator left office, but umpteen thousand Golden Gate airheads with clever bumper stickers on their Priuses must’ve voted for him. If they could think through the issues, and/or had principles, they wouldn’t be liberals).
- Severian | 04/19/2015 @ 10:14

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Mason Street, 1980Thursday, April 16th, 2015

Mason Street, 1980
Thursday, April 16th, 2015