By the Easy Chair

Every once in a while you hear someone ask the question, "If you were trapped on a deserted island and could only bring one book, what would it be?" And my response would be that I've always been told one should not answer hypothetical questions.

Instead, I thought I'd do a quick review of the books next to my easy chair on this random autumn day.

Fashionable Nonsense, by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont
This is a fascinating read that skewers a lot of pseudo-intellectual babble excreted by postmodernists. The subtitle is Postmodern Intellectuals's Abuse of Science. A New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickel and Dimed) says of it, "A thoroughly hilarious romp through the postmodern academy." Sokal and Bricmont state in the intro, "Our book is not against political radicalism, it is against intellectual confusion."

The Russian Revolution, by Leon Trotsky
I picked this up at the last library sale here in Duluth (I love libraries) for fifty cents. I think it is only the second time nearly all the books were sold and so when I went on the last day (when they sell bags of books for a couple bucks) there was little left to pick from. Of the three or four books on the history shelf, this classic was amongst them. I did a report on Trotsky in junior high school, choosing him from a list because his first name was Leon, as is my own. I am currently on page 69 and plan to write more on this book in the next week or two.

Mexifornia by Victor Davis Hanson
During the year we lived in Mexico (1980-81), working at an orphanage, I had a chance to travel some and stayed several weeks in some of the poorest parts of Mexico City. On one occasion I saw a map of Mexico on the wall. There were three cities on the map: Mexico City, San Antonio, and Los Angeles. This I found interesting. Of migrant workers we also knew a little. The town of San Miguel de Allende, which was a short ways south of Monterrey, had a population of 60,000 or 20,000 depending on the season due to the high percentage of migrant workers. I purchased this book in an attempt to understand some of the problems California has experienced pertaining to immigration.

Milestones by Sayyid Qutb
Supposedly the content of this book was the fuel that fired Osama bin Laden's passions, motivating him to attack the West. I purchased the book used from Amazon.com in an effort to better understand where the terrorists were coming from. Mentioned by Dinesh D'Souza in one of his books or lectures.

What Went Wrong by Bernard Lewis
Many have forgotten, or have not known, that at its zenith the Ottoman Turks ruled large portions of three continents. The Amazon.com review calls Lewis' book "a concise and timely survey of how Islamic civilization fell from worldwide leadership in almost every frontier of human knowledge five or six centuries ago to a 'poor, weak, and ignorant' backwater that is today dominated by 'shabby tyrannies ... modern only in their apparatus of repression and terror.'" I have not yet gone beyond the intro but it is in the pile.

The Mimic Men by V.S. Naipaul
I got this one used at last year's library sale. Naipaul, who won the Nobel Prize for literature, is from Trinidad but with Indian roots. (not to be confused with Native American) I had read, and was moved by, his very powerful A Bend in the River, so I picked this one up for a quarter. I do not know if I will ever get to it because, alas, there are so many books and so little time.

Ideaspotting by Sam Harrison
I picked up this one for Christmas last year, read three-fourths of it in a piecemeal fashion, and continue to pick it up for a few pages every now and then. Stimulating thoughts, but especially interesting layout and design. The book is as interesting to read as it is to look at.

Fateful Triangle by Noam Chomsky
Chomsky is both reasoned and controversial. D'Souza cites Chomsky as one of the liberal voices that is damaging to America. The book is a bit more dense than Lilienthal's The Zionist Connection. Both are Jewish voices expressing concern about current behavior of Israeli leadership and its treatment of Palestinians.

I may never get through the whole stack because I keep adding to it, but I'm making progress and just finished two books which are now shelved. It's mentally stimulating if nothing else.

If you're reading a good book, tell us about it. I just might slip it into my pile.

Favre Helps Monday Night Football Celebrate 40th Year

Well, if you haven't heard, Brett Favre is on the field tonight going against his old teammates on Monday Night Football. Rumor has it that this will be the most watched Monday Night Football game in MNF's 40 year history. We'll find out tomorrow if they surpassed last year's Cowboys-Eagles game of September 15, 2008 which drew a historic (at the time) 13.3 rating and nearly 13 million homes. I read earlier today that people will be watching from 132 countries.

You may know that I have been a lifelong Cleveland Browns fan, but frankly, the Browns have been so disappointing that for the first time in my life I have chosen to switch allegiances and follow, yes, the Vikes who have always been fun to watch anyways.

I remember well the old-time Bud Grant Vikings who played outside in weather that even penguins would be unhappy about. Living in Minnesota I can't imagine playing football in twenty below weather, let alone sitting in the stands.

In the mid-eighties I had a chance to interview Vikings guard Wes Hamilton for the magazine Athletes In Action. We shared a testimony about his faith for an article I titled, "It Turned A Light On In My Head." A veteran starter for more than a decade, Wes was a teddy bear off the field, but had to be one tough cookie to go head to head with guys like Lawrence Taylor.

Tonight, the adrenaline is high both on the field and off as these two very serious rivals mix it up, producing high drama at its finest.

Bingo! And he scores. Favre's sixth TD toss of the season, five for five on the drive. Vikings are first to put up the points and looking strong.

I'm sure the Packers will keep it interesting... and sure enough the Green & Gold are already right back in it. 62 yards pitch and run to Finley. It will be an interesting game. Don't touch that dial!

The Nonsense Room

SHORT STORY MONDAY

I wrote this story in 1994, but the house in which it takes place was something we had seen in the vicinity of Stillwater when we were looking for our first place. The story itself drew its inspiration from Borges, the master of magic realism. The story will continue in the weeks ahead.


The Nonsense Room

"Greg, I don't want you going in there tonight."

"Oh?"

"I mean it. It's starting to -"

"It's making me different somehow?"

"I didn't say that."

"But you'd like to say that. The room is changing me and you don't like it, is that it?"

"I'm scared, Greg."

He put his arm over her shoulders. "There, there."

"It's just a room," he wanted to say, but he knew it was more than that. He had discovered a world, a strange world, and he was fascinated by it, wanted to understand what made it work.

"It's not just a room," she said.

"Did I say it was 'just a room'?" he replied, startled.

"You were thinking it."

As he turned away from her and stalked down the hall he had a thought, brief but vivid, that his relationship to this room would lead to a reckoning; but the thought slid away from him and escaped from his consciousness so that he was unable to retrieve it and could only hear in his mind the hollowness of the false comfort he offered while feigning paternalistic concern, saying, "There, there."

"Greg!" his wife cried as he twisted the handle to the Nonsense Room, but he disregarded her and went in. He was not interested in having his life constricted by his wife's fears and he was baffled by their intensity.

Eyes flaming, Leslie fell to the sofa and lit a cigarette.

•

For Greg and Leslie Moore, finding a home in Stillwater was more problematic than originally imagined, but at the last they discovered the Shatterly Place, an enormous hodgepodge of competing architectural motifs ambitiously stapled together with Victorian pretensions. Marketed as a handyman's special, the price was most appealing. Only later did they learn of the strange history of the house. "People get deranged in that house," the grocer told Leslie at Thanksgiving. "The place either finds 'em cracked or leaves 'em that way."

The Nonsense Room wasn't discovered until the following spring. They were rearranging the kitchen and decided to move an old refrigerator that had come with the house out of an alcove which they planned to turn into a pantry. Behind the refrigerator they discovered a door with a hasp, padlocked shut. The door, hinges, hasp and lock had all been painted mint green, a reminder that the fifties had passed this way. The ceiling of the alcove was dingy with cobwebs, and greasy. The floor, too, was rank with grunge. But Greg saw only the door.

"Where do you think it goes?" Greg said.

CONTINUED

Nietzsche’s Criticism of Christianity

I've been listening the past couple weeks to a series of lectures called The Will to Power: The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. It is part of The Great Courses Series produced by The Teaching Company, who's motto is The Joy of Lifelong Learning Every Day. This course is taught by Professors Robert Solomon and his wife Kathleen Higgins who are deeply in love, and have been for some time, with Friedrich Nietzsche. The 24 lectures cover all his major works and address his major themes, thus providing listeners with plenty of challenging mental stimulation.

One of the recurring themes of philosophers is origins. It is fascinating to think about the many things in our world, our lives our cultures that at one time did not exist and then came into existence. I think here of the Internet, the automobile, the airplane. Aristotle pondered how the entirety of creation came into existence, postulating the “unmoved mover” who preceded all and set it in motion. Nietzsche, in his book The Genealogy of Morals, wrestled with and analyzed the origins of our contemporary notions of morality. Darwin’s attempted to explain the origins of species.

Christianity has had many critics over the years. Nietzsche was neither the first nor the last. Many of those critics have made valid points, and instead of being defensive about it, Christians might benefit from adopting Churchill’s attitude that criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. Churchill also once said that whenever he hears a criticism, he attempts to find the kernel of truth that might have been behind it.

The idea of Heaven has a great appeal for Christians because life is hard and we live in a broken world. For people outside the faith for whom this world is all that is, heaven is a pie in the sky concept with which the masses delude themselves, believing lies in order to feel better. Marx called religion an opiate. Others have called it worse.

Nietzsche’s criticism, however, was not along these lines. Rather he zeroed in on the manner in which Christians achieved this eternal life. It was prevalent in his day and is no less so today.

A brief backgrounder on where Nietzsche was coming from. In addition to his harsh assessment of the church, he was equally vociferous against the Enlightenment scholars who elevated Reason to godlike stature. Nietzsche drew upon Dionysus for his inspiration, rooting his philosophy in the passions. Embrace life. Become fully human by stretching yourself to become all you were meant to be. Make a difference in the world. It is life affirmation, not stale analysis of it, that gives it meaning.

Turning to Christianity, his primary complaint was that he saw a shriveled representation of what Jesus intended. The message coming out of the church, instead of striving to make a difference in the world, was more focused on not doing anything bad. Goodness was not measured by the good deeds done, as Jesus would indicate in His parable of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25:31-46 but rather by what you did not do. You don’t cuss, don’t dance, don’t lust, don’t drink… and in many minds this adds up to a “good person” who is going to heaven. For Nietzsche this was odious. The focus was all wrong. When prohibitions become the church's most important message, it is no wonder that those outside the faith are not attracted.

According to Profs Solomon and Higgins, Nietzsche was not opposed to morality, only the unhealthy morality that he saw being played out in his day.

Ten Minutes with George Barris: King of Kustomizers

I remember the first car show I went to here in Duluth back in the 80's. One of the featured specialty cars was the Batmobile. Last year, at the 2008 SEMA Show I got to spend a little time with the creator of that car, George Barris, a guy who has lived his dream, building custom cars and making them stars for six decades.

What I mean here by making stars is this: Barris didn’t approach his job of creating a vehicle as just making a vehicle. He imagined and saw it as an actual character in the TV show or film for which it was designed. His work to this day is intended to make whatever he is working on have a life and personality of its own.

The annual SEMA Show has become the mecca of car shows, with nearly ten miles of aisles and the ultimate show cars of every stripe imaginable, with companies showcasing anything and everything car related. More than 130,000 people from all over the world fly in to drink it in.

I met Mr. Barris at a ceremony where a painting commemorating the passing of celebrated builder Boyd Coddington was being given to Jo, Mr. Coddington's wife and business partner of many years and co-star of the cable show American Hot Rod. Jo introduced me to George, who graciously accepted when I asked if he could find time to be interviewed for this blog.

The interview was conducted 25 February 2009. He generously gave me more material than I have room for here... and he loved talking about that Batmobile.

Ennyman: In what ways has Hollywood changed since you were first breaking in?
GB: When I first started in the film industry in the Fifties it was a very creative period. They allowed us to do the street racing, Hot Rod Gang, Hot Rod Hullabaloo, all those kinds of exciting things that brought the young into the film industry and the big screen.

In the Sixties came TV. From being in the big screen in the theaters, it’s the little screen… all over the world. Now we’ve got a bigger audience and a bigger volume of people. It started out with the Beverly Hillbillies, the Munsters, then Batman, the Monkees, the Green Hornet, Flintstones, Dukes of Hazzard… I found out we were pioneering from the film industry into TV… creativity and fun and enjoyment in the TV shows. There were no gory things. A show like the Munsters was entertaining and funny, and the car was part of it. That was a major thing we contributed where they allowed us to put what we wanted to put into the film. As opposed to the producer and director, what they wanted. Good example: when I went in to do the Batman with [William] Dozier, Dozier said, “I want a 20th century Batmobile crime fighter in 1966. So I went in to look at the script. And what was the script? It was “Pow! Bang! Wow!” so immediately I said I’ll make the car become an actor like you are. When it went “Pow!” out came a chain slider; when it went "Bang" up went the rocket tubes. I made the car become an actor. The people loved it.

This went right on into when we did the Munsters. I looked at the script and they had the funniest guys in the world… They took a Frankenstein and a vampire and made them a wonderful funny family. Everybody loved it.

I immediately got rid of the hearse and drew up a design with three Model T’s in one…. and put coffin handles, and spider webs on it and all kinds of ghoulish touches on it that were funny. And put a little kick up thing on the back for Butch Patrick to sit in, and then also Pat Priest sat in the back by herself because they thought something was wrong with her. So we followed the script on what they were creating, but making the car become a star.

Of course, right from there on the Green Hornet and the Monkees and every one of those shows all fell right there into the trim. So that’s what made the pioneering of Hollywood at that period of time.

Ennyman: How have things changed since those early days?
GB: They totally went away from putting the character together with the car, it’s now product placement…. Instead of making the car become a star like we did in the 60s, they’ve now taken it and done product placement and done whatever other ways they had to do things to follow up on it. So that was not a good thing, because even to the point where they did Fast and Furious, it was something that was supposed to relate to the young 18-35, but it was whoever brought what car for what kind of money. It wasn’t what can we do to meet that creative edge, and that was what we called product placement. So that made a lot of difference because we lost a lot of that creativity that you want,

Ennyman: You’ve been part of the scene for a long time. Who would you say are some of the nicest people in Hollywood?
GB: There was a young man that I was doing a car for, and he came in here and he’d walk to my paint man, Mr. Tubbs, who has been with me for 35 years and he said, “Mr. Tubbs, how you feeling today? I heard you were sick last week?” Then he’d go to my metal man, “Mr. Tony, your 14 year old boy is really growing now isn’t he?” He went to every man that worked on his car, called him Mr. and extended his courtesy. And that young man was Elvis Presley. He was a kind of a man, a young person that respected people and would meet and greet people. And today, that world is with guys like Jay Leno, John Schneider, Bo Derek, Nancy Sinatra. They come to all our functions and meet and greet people, and that’s what’s good about it. They are the kind of people that everyone respects and loves to come and see them.

Ennyman: What are some of the projects you worked on that became household names?
GB: Of course the most popular one was the Batmobile. That one seems to live and be forever as well as the Munsters Koach, and the rest of them all fell in line pretty much with what we did. There’s so many great shows, My Mother the Car, and Magnum and all those shows.

Ennyman: What matters to George Barris?
GB: The thing that I really think the most of is to meet and greet people. Our family and staff thanks them for coming and communicating with us and being a part of our car culture world.

Ennyman: How did you get started in the car customizing?
GB: When I was a 13-year-old boy, my parents had a hotel and a restaurant. I didn’t like dishes. I said if it was gonna be round, they have to be wheels. And they were very nice to me. They supported me. They gave my brother and I their 1925 Buick. I proceeded to go to the hardware store and get some house paint and painted scallops on the fenders. Then I went to Woolworths five-and-dime store and got some foxtail antennas. Then I went to the kitchen store and got some pots and pans and made some hubcaps. From there, I went to my mother’s cabinets and I took the gold knobs out of the door knobs that open the cabinet doors and I put them in my grill. Which made the car look great, and immediately everyone called me the King of the Customizers and because I’m Greek, I changed the name from a C to a K. But the finale of the whole thing, here was a 13-year-old kid starting a craft, and a business, that nobody did, or that ever was done. And I was able to make it successful. You can only do that in America. That’s what I have to say. I contributed to our USA and what we’ve done in our country that made a 13-year-old boy become successful enough to where the world may know him.

PHOTO CREDITS

Photos of George Barris, with Jo Coddington (left) and Ennyman (top right) courtesy Christina Bergstrom, Bergstrom's Photography. The Munster Koach was shot by yours truly in broad daylight at SEMA 2008. Klick on images to enlarge.

Slow News Day

I hit a kid on a bike once. About fifteen years ago, while driving my car. It was a hot summer day, the sun shining bright as I inched my car's nose out into the road so I could see both ways on Grand Avenue in Spirit Valley here in Duluth. Not a car in sight. As I accelerated out of the K-Mart parking lot I continued to look both ways and still no cars. As I crossed the middle of the road, making a left, he was right there, my left front bumper striking the side of the bicycle. In slow motion the kid and bike went down.

I'd been going very slowly and stopped in an instant. To my surprise, the very first thing I heard was laughter, two 12 or 13 year old boys pointing at the kid whom I had just hit and roaring with glee, their backs arched. Hahahaha. I'd just hit a kid on a bike and the only two witnesses here thought it was funny.

"Go inside and call the police," I shouted to the boys, pointing to the K-Mart.

The kid on the bike was wearing shorts, and the accident was so mild that though his knee seemed to have a slight abrasion even that was hard to tell. There was no blood. His first reaction was to pick up the bike and start leaving.

"Wait a minute, what's you're name? We have to stay here till the police arrive."

The bike had a few bent parts so he couldn't ride it, thus he pushed and dragged it away around the corner and up an alley. I pulled my car out of the road and waited for the police.

The boy did in fact return and the officer called for us to sit in his car and explain what happened.

Essentially, the boy would not let the policeman see the bike, and he himself was so lacking in injury that there was little the officer could say. The kid was thirteen, mouthy and uncooperative.

A firetruck arrived with five or six firemen there to assist with the accident. "Is this where the kid on a bike was hit by a car?" The policeman said all was under control and they left.

The officer then interviewed the two witnesses. Afterwards he and I walked over to my car to see what damage had been done there. None that either of us could see. He explained to be the strange behavior of the boy, who had been told by his parents, after five times being caught riding in the street, that if he ever rode that bike on the road again they would take it away from him.

He had been on the sidewalk across from the store, looked both ways just like me, and shot out from the shadows into the bright empty street, which a moment later was not empty because he had not looked across the street, just as I had not.

As the officer was explaining all this, we both looked up and saw a TV news crew across the street, its lens pointed directly at the two of us discussing the accident. At this point he cracked, "Must be a slow news day."

This was back in the days when we got out news the old fashioned way. Today, with Internet, we can get news feeds from all over the world. Not only CNN and the network news teams, but Jeruslaem Times and Lahore, Pakistan to Rio in Brazil. (Top story in Rio: can they acquire to 2016 Olympics? Obama is pulling for Chicago.)

There are no slow news days any more with events happening everywhere and reporters reporting about them, whether tragedies or political shenanigans. Sports is also 24/7 activity with teams of sports journalists covering that, too, from Tokyo to Tunis.

At the top of the international news this week were earthquakes in Indonesia again and there is much suffering there along with loss of life. In contrast, hopefully in your corner of the world it's a slow news day.

The Journey

When we walk through the world with our eyes open we never know what we'll stumble upon next, but for sure there are just so many interesting people in the world doing so many interesting things that we know we'll not be bored.

While in San Francisco two years ago, we (my family and I) found ourselves in a little store that had some really interesting art with little stories accompanying. Turns out, they had cards made by this artist, and books, too.

His name was Brian Andreas, and the company this very original man created was called StoryPeople. About a year ago, after I had been receiving his daily StoryPeople email drawing and story for a while, I attempted to interview Brian for Ennyman's Territory. He expressed interest, but it was not to be at that time because his wife, Ellen Rockne, was in the midst of a battle with cancer.

One evening this past month, while randomly visiting other blogs I stumbled upon Ellen's blog, Unexpected Songs: The Writings and Music of Ellen Rockne. I loved the title so I had to take a bit of it in. It was like finding a piece of hand-crafted jewelry in a field. Knowing that Ellen had been through the cancer ward, this poem especially moved me.


Friday, June 5, 2009 at 6:05PM
(What is the loss that you carry, like an anchor, weighting you to the past?
Sometimes we must be willing to embark before we are certain we are ready).

The Journey
I row my boat over the open sea, no land in sight,
Longing for home. The current carries me awhile,
Then settles to rest alongside my resolve.

Many shores have come and gone in my time on the ocean.
Many dreams have faded to nothing, not
For lack of wishing, but for lack of will.

I sleep a bit, respite from the wonderings
That wash like waves across my tidy craft: Where am I going?
What guiding star have I missed, under cover of cloud?

The night is long (as nights can be).

Then at last, and as always, the sun rises,
Sometimes in mist, sometimes calling to the huge blue sky
Saying, I am come. I am here, the light you waited for in the dark.

Then I take my oars, and breathe the deep salt air,
And begin to row.