Marvel Zombies-review

<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17785970-marvel-zombies" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Marvel Zombies: The Complete Collection Volume 1" border="0" src="https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1384736825m/17785970.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17785970-marvel-zombies">Marvel Zombies: The Complete Collection Volume 1</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/12736.Mark_Millar">Mark Millar</a><br/>
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The only reaction one can have when reading this is "WHAT THE F---?" Who would possess anyone to do something like this? Through a twisted warped looking glass, indeed. The heroes you all know and love devour the world in the ultimate Zombie Apocalypse scenario. Not surprising perhaps since it sprang from the mind of Robert Kirkman, the same joker who gave us The Walking Dead comic that the TV series is based on. Giant Man himself has gone from a selfless brilliant scientist to a duplicitous back stabbing fiend. And this is only the first series! my favorite part is the panel where Spider-Man finally gets his revenge on J. Jonah Jameson. Just desserts. Surprisingly enjoyable, very warped, very perverse, I leave to the reader whether this is your bag.
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The Challenge of Ideas (1961)

John Wayne actually has only a small part to play in this 30-minute documentary. Host Edward R. Murrow assures us that the threat of Communism is "a conflict unlike any we have ever faced in our history as a nation>" Hmm, that has a familiar ring....These people ought to have realized the American character is too stubborn ie thick to ever willingly put Communists in any position of power in our fair nation. No, we have our own stupid politicians to mislead us.

The Duke joins a short parade of experts designed to sway our opinion about the Communist threat and to remind us of the need for vigilance. Although to suggest as Hanson Baldwin does that we had a "hands-off", benevolent policy towards the uncommitted (or even our committed) countries of the world is disingenious  at best; at worst it's perjury! When it came to thrid-world nations, the Soviet Bloc & us both acted like fish-heads.

Frank McGee narrated the section on Economic 'penetration' by the Communists; & I'm sorry, but just hearing that name reminds me a Jack McGee from the "Incredible Hulk" TV series. To his credit his name-checks the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which will probably be the one & only time where a right-wing documentary portrays anything from the United Nations in a positive light.

Duke shows up five minutes in, and soon offers up what I think may be the best summary of what it means to be an American: "As a people we are often active & noisy...We are industrious, often to the bafflement of ourselves & our friends...We relax as hard as we work. We are proud, we are sentimental. Beauty is of national concern to us. For some of us it's a deadly serious past-time. The rest of us simply enjoy the results." Our greatest value is our freedom,as Duke points out, ;our ability to act as a responsible being; our right to explore the truth & to govern ourselves.

This was beamed into our homes as part of the Big Picture series, & produced by the Department of Defense's Information agency. This doc is no better or worse than other propaganda pieces of the time, or any of the productions the Duke saw fit to shove in our faces during that period.

The Comancheros (1961)

I sincerely hope the Duke had a stunt double for that scene where he & Stuart Whitman were supposed to be hanging by their arms in the desert sun. That'd be a lot to ask of a 54 year old actor. Stuart Whitman & John Wayne made a very odd couple in this flick, but they're an agreeable pairing, given to a lot of verbal sparring. It's a shame they didn't pair up for more films.

It begins with a duel in which Whitman's character Paul Regret wins. Unfortunately he's done so right at the exact tune that dueling became illegal in Louisiana. That puts him in the sights of Texas Ranger Jake Cutter (Duke). I don't know who gave it to him worse on that steamboat; the Duke or Pilar (Ina Balin), the Hispanic lady he tried to hook up with. Sad;y for him, Pilar is a strong-willed woman who regards love as a game of war.

Now the only thing my son Nathan could think of after Regret clocks Cutter with a shovel was that scene from "Blazing Saddles" where Clevon Little does the same to Slim Pickens. Before long Cutter has to recruit his own prisoner Regret in an undercover operation to find the outlaw band of the film title. What they are is a secret society of banditos, a literal army fond of inflicting the cruelest punishments, even on their own members.

Here Regret is reunited with Pilar, the daughter of Graille, the man in charge of this merry band. A frantic wagon chase ensues with both Comancheros and their white bandits brothers in hot pursuit. The Texas Rangers arrive just in time to save our heroes.

It's a bit of a family affair as far as casting went. Duke's son Patrick Wayne makes his third appearance in one of his father's films, this time in a minor role as rookie Ranger Tobe. Although here he was billed as 'Pat' Also on board was his five-year-old daughter Aissa Wayne in an uncredited part as Bessie Marshall. She was his child, ironically enough, by his wife Pilar, and this would be little Aissa's second time in a Duke film, after the previous year's "The Alamo".

Don't miss Lee Marvin's brief part as the drunken ill-tempered gun-runner Crow. His luck to be just a tad slower on the draw than the Duke. The producer by the way was George Sherman, the director of all the Duke's Three Mesquiteer movies in 1938-39. Sherman would return one last time to direct "Big Jake".

Elmer Bernstein delivers a solid soundtrack that keeps the ball rolling. This movie was everything you would expect from a western, and everyone seemed to enjoy being a part of it, judging by the big grin Duke wore throughout the picture. One last footnote: Cutter is referred to as Big Jake in the end, which would be the same of another John Wayne movie in the future.

Arizona (1931)

   Ever see a movie for which you had low expectations but was actually better than you hoped? This old black-&-whitey looked to be another in a long line of college football flicks the Duke played in during his early career. John Wayne gets second-billed under Laura La Plante as Bob Denton, a West Point-bound ball player for whom she's fallen. The scene in the locker room gives us the chance to see the young Duke's slim & powerful pecs.
   I think they may have used actual footage from an Army-Navy game in the opening sequence. Oldie movies in some ways are like a time machine, where you can glimpse the ways people viewed the world in that time. Those turn of the century football uniforms for instance had none of the padding we've grown accustomed to today; and god, the helmets are no protection at all, just skullcaps fitting close over their head and ears.
   La Plante plays Evelyn Palmer, a lady who's the latest in a long line of lady friends for Denton (Duke). She wants marriage but he's not interested; in fact he tells her, "My women understand me--they take one look and know they can expect nothing." So how does she respond to this rebuff? Well, just as Denton's about to be transferred to Arizona, she romances and marries his mentor, Colonel Frank Bonham, who regards Denton almost as a son.
   The pair were bound to meet again, and for him it's a very stiff and awkward moment. The first thing he tells Evelyn once they're alone is, naturally, "what a rotten thing to do." In a way it's his own damn fault, but he finds a more compatible partner in Evelyn's batty sister Bonnie (June Clyde). You may notice if you ever watch this that the players are all talking a bit too loudly. Film hadn't quite broken from the stage traditions, and besides, it's doubtful that in 1931 they had very good microphones to work with. Still, we have an opportunity to hear Duke sing with Bonnie in his own voice, which wasn't so bad after all; better than the dubs they inflicted on him in his later singing cowboy movies.
   Duke & Bonnie marry in secret. Unfortunately he plays Good Samaritan to a drunken Hispanic girl (yep, it begins that early, the drunken Mexican cliche). Evelyn is right behind him in another car and draws all the wrong conclusions. In an act of spite she rips her own dress and practically accuses Duke of rape in front of his Colonel. He's either too stunned or hurt to defend himself and is forced to resign from the Army.
   I've lost all sympathy for Evelyn at this point; bad enough she drags my mother's name through the dirt. But that conniving wench justifies herself on the grounds that she was protecting sister Bonnie from Duke, totally unaware that they're already married. By the time she realizes this and fesses up to Col. Bonham, he doesn't believe her. The tangled web of lies does fall apart in the end,and the Colonel becomes the better man by forgiving both Duke and his errant wife.
   Good use was made of the play by Augustus E. Thomas that this movie was based on. It's also a pretty good example of  one where the Duke doesn't dominate the film with his sheer presence. At times a heartbreaker, it's not easy to sit through at times but it all works out by the end.
   

The Lawless Range (1935)

   Good thing this was John Wayne's final outing as a singing cowboy; they'd been turning into a great source of embarrassment to him every time a child asked him to sing at personal appearances. Sorry, kids, he just didn't have the same golden yodel as Jack Kirk, who voice was dubbed in to substitute for the Duke's on this film.
   This time out John Wayne appears as...well, John Middleton; he was so close to playing himself the other players didn't even have to forget his real name. John Middleton's father has sent him to help his old pal Emmett. By the time he reaches the territory he's been cornered first by rustlers, rescued a girl who trains her gun on him at first, then flees the posse that was sent after the rustlers. Well, the posse in its infinite wisdom feel its their duty to bring 'im back to town where they can hang him properly. Luckily the plucky lass he'd rescued before rides into town just into time to vouch for him.
   I had a feeling that banker Cater was behind the whole plot to drive all the ranchers off their land; score one for me. Not a big surprise that in the depths of the Depression, it was easy for filmmakers to pinpoint money-men and lawyers as easy villain material.
   Republic Pictures commits the sin of dubbing the Duke's singing voice twice, and the first time they simply recycled "A Cowboy's Song of Fate" from his first singing cowboy flick Riders of Destiny. Then they repeat the sin by having him serenade lady love Sheila Bromley (credited as Sheila Mannors) in a porch swing. It was kind of a return appearance for her, as she'd already been his lady sidekick in his previous singing oater, Westward Ho (1935), Republic Pictures first motion picture production. From this point on whenever we hear the Duke sing, it'll be in his own voice, and usually in a scene where he's portraying a drunk.

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The Three Mesquiteers

   William Colt McDonald's western novels tracked all the way back to 1929. By far his most famous creations were the Three Mesquiteers, three cowpokes who righted wrongs in the Wild West. Basically it was the Three Musketeers on horseback, although technically there were four Musketeers in Alexander Dumas' novels. Hollywood wasted very little time in adapting his 1934 novels Powdersmoke Range & Law of the Forty-Fives into major motion pictures, with Harry Carey Sr. as 'Tuscon' Smith.
   These first Mesquiteers films arrived in 1935, the same year Republic Pictures was born from a merger of Consolidated Film Laboratories, Monogram Pictures, Mascot Pictures and other odds and ends. It should come as no surprise that John Wayne had worked at Monogram and Mascot in the 30's. One of Republic's money-making ideas was to launch a western series based on McDonald's Three Mesquiteers characters.
   Ironically the Duke was on his last days as a B-Western actor when he took the role of Stoney Brooke, alongside Ray 'Crash' Corrigan as Tuscon Smith & Max Terhune as Lullaby Joslin and his dummy Elmer. I remember Corrigan as the dashing Navy man from the Republic serial "Undersea Kingdom"; I watched that as a kid in the third grade--in re-runs--on TV! Nope, no way was I young enough to have seen those in theaters! Thanks to this, 'The Purple Monster Strikes!', 'Captain America' and others, I grew to love them old-time serials from a young age.
   But I'm forgetting the Duke. Between 1936's The Three Mesquiteers to 1943's Riders of the Rio Grande, Republic released 51 pictures in the series, films usually under an hour long which mixed modern settings and traditional cowboy iconography such as cattle drives, gold strikes and horseback rides. Nine teams of actors filled the three main roles over the years. Since it was the 1930's, bankers & lawyers usually stood in for the villians. As Stoney Brooke, Duke had a woman in every ranch.
   Duke's first Mesquiteer outing was 1938's Pales of the Saddle, which opens, oddly enough on a World War One battlefield. The plot involves foreign agents trying to smuggle chemical agent monium to Mexico for use in making poison gas. Stoney stumbles into the murder of a government agent at his hotel, and finds himself accused of the murder by the dead man's partner Ann (Doreen McKay).
   They say Duke was a natural actor and you can see it written all over his face: "Christ, not another movie where I'm the guy falsely accused of a murder I didn't commit an' someone else has to save my bacon!" It's actually not the first time this has happened in his B-westerns. This time it's his pal Lullaby posing as the sheriff who sneaks him out of the hotel.
   Ann forces Stoney (Duke) to go undercover in a dark jacket and three-day-old beard, which kind of suits him. Be on the alert for the cliche spy with the narrow German face and thick eyeglasses. By the time Ann brings back the 81st Cavalry, the Mesquiteers pretty much had things wrapped up.
   The next film, Overland Stage Raiders (also from 1938) involves bandits holding up gold shipments until our heroes decide to ship the gold out by airplane. When the plane goes missing, it's up to the Mesquiteers to track it down. This was a curious creature involving gangsters, posses, buses, train-robbers, and another good-lookin' dame in Louis Brooks--yeh, the famous silent film starlet in her final picture. She'd traded in her page-boy haircut for shoulder length style, and she's still a knock-out.
   This was basically a cookie-cutter series with recyclable plots, backdrops and cardboard characters, which nonetheless made for an exciting ride. In all fairness, these films were very popular in their day, serving as a considerable career boost thanks to the great exposure on the marquee. Duke starred in eight of these films between 1938 to '39, and after this he never had to work in a B-western again.
 
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Red River (1948)

   John Ford was as famous for abusing his actors as much as for his brilliance as a director. So it must have come as quite a compliment when he commented on John  Wayne's performance in 'Red River', "I didn't know the big son of a bitch could act." And to think, the Duke had only been in 10 Ford movies before that...
   This movie was based on a Saturday Evening Post story by Borden Chase, who along with screenwriter Charles Schnee adopted it for the screen. Might explain the diary entries that pop up onscreen at various times as the story progresses. Duke takes a dark turn in his first pairing with director Howard Hawks. His role is Tom Dunson, a stubborn man who won't mind ya for nuthin', not even for the love of his woman. An Indian raid takes her, and all he gets for his troubles as he crosses into Texas is a young boy he finds with a cow. That boy, Matthew Garth, will be like a son to Dunson. Walter Brennan is there as Groot, the first of many old coots to appear alongside the Duke in years to come.
   The pair turn out to be two sides of the same stubborn coin, the main difference being Matt hasn't entirely lost his heart. For Dunson, that's a sign of weakness. 14 years pass and Dunson has the biggest damn ranch in all of Texas, which pretty much counts for squat unless he can get over 900 head of cattle to market in Missouri. The make-up effects on the Duke as he transitions to an older man are extraordinary. His change from a stern taskmaster goes from bad to worse as the cattle drive progresses. Word comes to them of a quicker route to Abilene, but Dunson is too dense to chance it.
   It's a bit like those wildebeest migrations you see on National Geographic, with cattle substituted, jostling across rivers and prairies. The inevitable stampede is brought on by a klutz who's fond of stealing sugar from the grub wagon. At one point Dunson is about to hang two deserters, and that's when Matt is forced to take charge. He leaves Dunson, his mentor and father-figure, with a shot-up hand and Dunson's promise that he's gonna kill him.
   Of course thee's the circle of wagons surrounded by Indians, where Matt meets his lady love Tess Millay after he rides into the wagon train. She's a plucky young lass with a bad shot. She's still joking with him, even after she gets an arrow in the shoulder. Like Dunson before him Matt can't stay, but he leaves her with the bracelet Dunson had given him, the one that had belonged to his dead lover.
   The shadow of Dunson is never far from anyone's mind. In fact he's only ten days behind Matt's drive when he encounters the wagon train. Tess matches wits with Dunson, persuading him to bring her with the gang of desperadoes he's rounded up to deal with Matt.
   After last minute doubts and foreboding, the cattle drive crosses the tracks into Abilene, and boy is that conductor glad to see them, or at least their beef. Western hero Harry Carey Sr. greets them in Abilene as Melville, the man about to buy their cattle. This would be the veteran's fourth and final time to appear alongside the Duke in film.
   The fateful confrontation with Dunson arrives, for which I have only one gripe. We know he's brought about a dozen hired killers with him to Abilene, but--they don't DO anything! They don't even follow Dunson as he tramples into town. They simply disappear, out of sight and mind. It's like he doesn't even need them, which leads to the inevitable question: why the hell did he hired them in the first place?
   Even the cattle know to get out of his way. Now granted John Wayne isn't the best actor in the world, but once he fixes that dark, angry glare on you, even the strongest man wants to run away. He has that scowl on every step he takes toward Matt, firing left and right while Matt never flinches. Just when you think he's gonna beat the crap out of him--WHOMP! Matt comes to life and meets him blow for blow.
   The only thing that stops them is Tess coming in with a few well-placed shots. She then treats both men to the tongue-lashing they've both had coming, verbally unloading on them with both barrels. She leaves them both tongue-tied; I guess it takes a woman all fired up to effect a reconciliation between two such hard nuts.
   Speaking of which, this was Montgomery Clift's film debut, a great source of discomfort for the Duke not only because their political views didn't square, but on account of Cleft's homosexuality. Everyone agreed to put politics aside, which made shooting that much easier, but the OTHER thing...Nobody gives a lick about that nowadays--everybody knows there's a large contingent of gay actors in Hollywood. In 1948, in fact until very recently, nobody talked about it at all. John Ireland (Cherry Valance), another gay co-star, was Clift's emm, buddy at the time, shall we say. Not that there's anything wrong about that...
   Yeh, I've run on and on too much about this film, but that's because it's that good, livid with breath-taking scenery, unconvincing backdrops, a tense drama and one of the darkest performances of Duke's career. Expertly recommended.

Santa Fe Stampede (1938)

   They killed a child. Those fekking schmucks actually killed a child.
   This is a dark chapter in the Duke's tenure in the Three Mesquiteers film series. The American Movie Channel tell us this Hollywood movie has the dubious distinction of being the first where a child is murdered by the villain. At the risk of being sexist, the scriptwriters for this film oddly enough were both women.
   The first thing that happens is the Mequiteers ignore a sign that says Keep Out, and are promptly held up at gunpoint by two children. These youngins' have been chasing everyone off their daddy's gold claim, even the horse thieves trying to take his land.  Well, the Mesquiteers' old friend Carson is giving them a half-share in his claim; unfortunately he hasn't dared leave home to record it, on account of the crooked Mayor of Santa Fe Junction.
   It goes from bad to worse. The people are divided, the Mayor owns the sheriff and his deputies. Only Judge Hixon has any sort of conscience, and he's sorely lacking in backbone. Carson is murdered on his way to the capital to file a petition with the governor, along with his little daughter Julie. When the judge protested that there's a little girl with him, right before the hired thugs rode off, the Mayor snorted, "So what?"
   Naturally John Wayne's character Stoney is falsely accused of the deed. Of course the Mayor's thugs encourage a thick-headed mob to take the law into their own hands. This wasn't the first time the Duke's faced an angry feeble-minded lynch mob, and this one may be the worst of the bunch, taking in not only the 'decent menfolk' of the town but even the town tramps and the old hags. They come damn close to burning Stoney and his girlfriend Nancy alive in the jail. That is one of the most intense cliffhanger scenes I've come across in a Republic picture, especially since this wasn't technically a cliffhanger serial.
   In the end it ends exactly as Adam West would put it: "You poor fools, you can't escape justice," Judge Hixon finally develops enough spine to send a telegraph calling in the US Marshals. The Mayor is exposed and brought down. By and large a very enjoyable outing, although I must caution you, that poor child's cries just before her daddy's wagon is overturned will break your heart.

Cancel My Reservation (1972) --please

   Some movies should not be allowed to exist. With the right source material a movie can be a wonderful experience. In the hands of idiots, an afternoon of water-boarding would be preferable. This turkey was the 50th & last film in the distinguished career of Bob Hope, and plainly he was in no ways ready to transition to the new decade.
   TV personality Dan Bartlett (Hope) is having marriage problems, so he and his wife Sheila (Eva Marie Saint) go for some well-deserved time off at his Arizona ranch. Bodies start turning up in his trunk, Dan comes and goes in and out of jail more times than the Joker out of Arkham. Even given how far off the track they take the book that the basic story was stolen from, there is no excuse for the absence of laughs here. This was Bob-fekking-HOPE!!! We should be rolling in the aisles, not clenching our teeth and staring at our watches.
   That this was based on a Louis L'Amor novel makes it doubly-sinful. The source material, 1966's The Broken Gun, while not a classic at least was a quick read with unexpected turns. The hero, Dan Sheridan finds a journal in a broken gun that leads to a 90-year-old mystery. The rancher and his hair-lipped killer Reese think Dan will be easy to kill, except for the one thing they hadn't counted on: Dan is no greenhorn writer. He was born and raised in Arizona, he knows the land and he is a Korean War veteran.
   Reese is probably the only character from the novel who translates whole to the big screen; but even Forrest Tucker as the evil man can't save this picture.
     Nominally I've been blogging on John Wayne movies, and thankfully he has only a cameo. Sheriff 'Houndtooth' Riley (Keenan Wynn) has just warned Bob Hope that "Mob rule may prevail.", although where they'd get a mob in what is practically a ghost town I'll never know. After that Bob or Dan has a waking nightmare in his jail cell wherein he is the guest at a necktie party. Everyone shows up to watch--Johnny Carson, his old movie partner Bing Crosby & Flip Wilson. Even John Wayne is out there in the crowd laughing it up and he tells Dan, "I'd like to help ya, pilgrim, but it's not my picture!" Amen to that, Duke.

'The War Wagon' (1967) review

By this time we can all agree that in every role he's taken, John Wayne plays himself. This time around he's a bit like the monolith; you know it's there and it kind of dominates the scenery but that's not the most important part of it. The Duke shares co-star status with Kirk Douglas. I like him better here, he's got that devil-may-care personality, and he gets all the best lines of the movie.

Duke plays Taw Jackson, a man wronged by Pierce--just Pierce--, a man who stole Taw's land for the gold stake, framed Taw and sent him to jail. Now that he's on parole, Taw means to get back at Pierce by robbing his money wagon. One problem: this 'wagon' is an armored carriage, with a Gatling gun, which is guarded by 30 men on horseback. No problem.

Basically it's a caper movie with cowboys and Indians. Taw hires for his crew old man Fletcher and his abused teenage wife, the 'smart' Indian Levi Walking Bear, and a drunken explosives expert, Billy Hyatt (Robert Walker Jr.). The last member of the crew is Lomax, played by the irrepresible Kirk Douglas. Pierce has a mind to hire gunslinger and safe-cracker Lomax to kill Taw, except Taw hires him first. Neither man trusts the other, but that's the sparks that keeps things moving.

Told you Kirk gets the best lines? Well, they've gone to find Levi Walking Bear and they find him all right...tied to a rock and used as target practice for a band of drunken Mexican banditos. Lomax takes one look at that and remarks dryly to Taw, "Let me guess which one's your friend."

Naturally we have the stereotypes, the drunken Mexicans and the untrustworthy Indians. Still it's an entertaining outing that never drags. The Duke is straight man to Kirk in their last film together and they milk for laughs. Recommended.

May Your Grandchildren Forgive You

I hope my grandchildren forgive you
for what you brought on our land
for the world we leave to them

Forgive the desert that was once California
the parched land and tongues of ordinary souls
rationed to a few drips a day
or will that be a week, who knows?

Forgive the 30 years wasted in deceit and denial
while simulations became fact
and facts piled on facts
and opportunities to act became wasted in dithering politics

And to the passing of the Floridas
while salt of sea infiltrated our children's drinking supplies
I fear not for New Orleans, she'll adapt
she always does

Forgive us the storms like no other
coming to a landmark near you
New York barraged by tides she'll not soon forget
Lady Liberty will stand as a beacon still
even waist deep in the ocean

I certainly hope they can find it in their hearts
to forgive your cowardice, your avarice,
your blind blinkered stupidity
'Cos God knows I won't

Jane Fonda was right--and she was wrong

     Jane Fonda was partially right in comparing the Viet Cong to our heroes in the Revolutionary War. She was also catagorically wrong. Excuse me, how was that again? Sorry, I just go off on tangents sometimes. My mind has been on World War I a lot lately, it'll be 100 years ago this year that it started, and nobody seems to give a rip.
   My thinking had gone in this direction: a lot of the battles of WWI came down to a strategy of attrition, which is basically throwing thousands of bodies of good young soldiers at the enemy in the hope that this will somehow wear them down. It never worked, yet we practiced the same 'strategy' in Iraq, and before that in Viet Nam which is where Jane Fonda just popped randomly into my thoughts,
    People my age will remember (some better than me assuredly) that in 1972 or thereabouts Jane Fonda famously compared the Viet Cong fighters to our people fighting in the American Revolution. Let me just say I have no animosity toward Ms. Fonda; I have no bitter hatred toward her for that statement, nor have I ever had. But people tend to get uppity about such cracks, and fail to put them under a metaphorical microscope for analysis.
     Well, yes it is true the Viet Cong were a rag tag army fighting the most powerful nation on Earth, and like our heroes they too were trying to repel a foreign invader. Their nation like colonial America is a strip of coastal land which they shouldn't have had a chance in hell of winning. Its at this point that the similarities end.
     For one, the American colonies were not divided by an arbitrary line drawn in the map, a characteristic this war shared with Korea. For another, our rebels never practiced torture, and we never threw British prisoners into squalid hellholes to rot; there were no 'Hanoi Hiltons' in our Revolution. The 'foreign invaders' in fact were fellow Englishmen the vast majority of us were reluctant to fight, at least until Common Sense ignited our collective ire.
     I suppose the biggest difference was that our leaders did not immediately turn on us once the war was won. The first eight years of our nation was under a weak central government under a weak constitution known as the Articles of Confederation. The states did not contribute their share in  tax revenue, we often did not even have a quorum in Congress to conduct silly business like foreign relations and trade; and the 'President' of Congress had no power to compel Congress to act. Hell, he had to act as his own Secretary, sorting through all correspondence, foreign and domestic, without even the help of a clerk. You can see how our present Constitution is a distinct improvement.
     Anyone who grew up in the 70's knows the united Communist Vietnamese government was no friend of the people. There was the usual war on intellectuals, and re-education camps. You don't think there would be so many 'boat people' risking their lives at sea in dangerously rickety boats if their government was a model of good will and generosity, do ya?
    That's just my thoughts for the day. I would hope in the future some people would think things through before running off at the mouth with the first thing that pops into their heads, but we can;t expect as much from this generation of political hair-lips, can we? Thanks for the listen.

So NOT the Dark Continent

     Every Saturday at 2 p.m. growing up my brother David & I parked our butts in front of the TV for 'Jungle Theater'. We wasted many an afternoon watching the studio jungle-set adventures of Johnny Weissmuller & other Tarzan wannabes. Sundays were reserved for 'Sci-Fi Theater', another arena for bad 1950's films, which often included Godzilla flicks with awful out-of-sync voice-overs.
     There are two points to be made here; (1) 40 years later & there's still nothing worthwhile to be found on Saturday afternoon TV, & (2) Most of what we 'know' about Africa is still wrong.
     It was probably the mix of bad Tarzan reruns & old comic books that led to my choice of Africa as the milleu for most of my fantastic fiction. The thing is, I don't think I chose Africa, it chose ME. The things I've learned in the process of researching my stories have been rewarding in every sense--except the financial one, of course.
     In developing my characters & backdrop for my first novel Butterfly & Serpent, & the short stories leading up to it, I relied heavily on Jomo Kenyatta's autobiography, Facing Mount Kenya which is not a book you tend to find in most public libraries (I found it in my high school library, actually). Locations such as the mighty Lake Turkana, the ancient Christian rock churches of Ethiopia & the ruins of Great Zimbabwe are important characters in the follow-up book which is in progress.
     My biggest fear is someday somebody from Africa is going to read my stuff & he/she will proceed to tell me everything that I got wrong. And all I'm going to be able to do is throw up my hands & howl, "AAAARRRGH! He's right, how could I have been so stoopid?"
     There is a history beyond what you'll learn from any Tarzan flick. Tarzan, by the way, wouldn't last a week in Africa. Or maybe Richard Pryor was right & they'd all think he was just a crazy white man, living in the trees with the baboons. Our schools take great pains to avoid the rich history Africa has to offer us. Oh you'll hear the wonders of ancient Europe--Rome, Greece, maybe the old empires of Japan or China thrown in--that's assuming any of you young whipper-snappers are even paying attention to history class. But Africa? Huh. It might as well not exist, baby.
     Word up, charlie, your ancestors strolled out of Africa many moons ago, so you might as well reconcile yourself to that fact. We've all got a little African in us.