Fear and Control

When Heath Ledger died last week, it was unexpected. I remembered him mostly from A Knight's Tale, where he was pretty funny. Everyone remembers that Heath was in Brokeback Mountain. No one I know watched that movie. I didn't even know what it was about. The movie got awards and recognition, so that usually tells you that it's good, but I wasn't about to walk up to the counter at Blockbuster video rental and plop down a "gay flick".

I heard the scenery in the movie was beautiful, but I thought it was a gay romance film. When Heath Ledger died, I decided to rent the movie. My wife and I watched it last night.

Spoiler alert. You may want to skip the next 3 paragraphs if you haven't seen it. It was a good movie. It was sad. I kept thinking that it didn't seem realistic that they were really in love, it seemed just like actors playing a role. That's true for most Hollywood movie romances, as far as I'm concerned. We kept waiting, wondering where the movie was going. I did not know it was set in 1963 up to the late 70s/early 80s. The movie was about suppressed romance. The two characters were gay, but couldn't come out of the closet, or truly express their love for each other or live together.

Then, Jake Gyllenhaal's character Jack Twist dies. When Heath's character Ennis Del Mar contacts Jack's widow and parents you see the true cost of their actions. They denied themselves their whole lives until it was too late.

It wasn't clear to me what happened to Jack. Earlier, Ennis had told a story about some gay ranchers being tortured to death, possibly by his father, that set the tone for the whole movie. Ennis was scared to go public because he had seen clearly what can happen to gay people in his world. I missed a brief part where they showed Jack being beaten by some guys in a field. Before my wife told me that, it was not clear if Jack actually died by accident or was killed for being gay. It seems clear that Jack's parents knew their son was gay and his mother at least was sympathetic about her son's plight and Ennis's grief. I guess that's part of what made it so sad. This guy loses his lover and can't even properly mourn for him. Jack's parents even told Ennis that Jack wanted to live with him on a ranch out there, so they knew that Ennis was Jack's true love. The father wasn't very pleased about it, but he also was not overly hostile toward Ennis.

It's odd that in the movie, Heath lives, and in real life, he died. Some of the tone of the movie, the tragic death of someone before their time, parallels real life. Who knows what Heath Ledger would have been like if he had lived.

Talking about the movie afterwards, I remarked that fear of homosexuality wasn't always around. The Greeks were fairly open about male homosexuality, and there was no stigma about it. My wife pointed out that Christianity imposed the restrictions. It's all about fear and control. You're supposed to be afraid of the consequences, and that's how the church maintains their control over you.

On one hand, things seem to be changing. There seems to be more understanding and a greater tolerance by society at large about homosexuality. However, the church is fighting back, as they see their control slipping. The ability for men to be openly gay gains ground a little bit each year.

I was also thinking about female heterosexual sexuality. Islamic fundamentalism has sought to suppress this aspect of life, with little true success. We in the west don't have much problem seeing this as restrictive, against human nature, and inherently wrong, but we turn around and apply the same restrictions to gays.

I guess we still have some growing up to do.

Amy & Janice

Is it just me, or does Amy Winehouse (self destructive Brit pop star) look suspiciously like Maggie Wheeler (who played Chandler's annoying girlfriend Janice in Friends).

I'm just saying.

Tobacco & Alcohol

In order to buy Tobacco and Alcohol, you have to be 18 & 21 years old. In the grocery store that I went to this morning, there is a litte tear-off calendar that states "You have to have been born after this date..." in order to purchase either tobacco or alcohol. The dates were 1/18/87 and 1/18/90.

The cash register (which nowadays are computers) was being rebooted when I was buying lottery tickets, so I had the tickets in hand, but not the change. So there was this pause where I had to stand there and wait. At first, I didn't realize we were waiting for anything, and I was just standing there spacing off, staring at the date calendar. Then, when the cashier explained what we were waiting for. By then, I had latched onto the dates and was trying to remember what I was doing at the time.

I mentioned it to the cashier, and she said she had gotten married just before the 1990 date. I remembered that sometime around mid December, we had record cold that year. I was driving my brother's old Chevette, and there was snow in the street in front of the Batallion. I thought I was being smart when I drove through the snow, pulled a u-turn, passed the parking spot, pulled another u-turn and parked in the ruts. I saved myself being stuck in the snow, I thought.

I had just gotten back from 3 years in Panama and was not used to the cold yet. I did not have adequate cold weather clothes, and I was wearing an Army uniform, anyway, which wasn't the warmest choice you could make to begin with. The temperature dropped to -25°F with the wind chill below -40°F It was a record cold day. When I left the office to either go home or go out to lunch, the car started, but would not move. I was surprised, because I had specifically planned for this problem and taken actions to prevent it from happening. After digging the area around the tires out, it still wouldn't move. Somehow, I figured out that the brake pads were frozen to the disc. I had to jack up the car, remove the tire, and get a small blowtorch and heat up the pads to get them to release. I had heated up the brakes and packed them with snow with my fancy maneuver, and the melted snow refroze and held the brakes tighter than if I was standing on the brake pedal. I drove home for Chistmas that night and heard on the radio that the U.S. had invaded Panama, just 2 weeks after I left my 3 year tour there.

As for 1987, that was right after I first arrived in Panama, on December 28, 1986. The first thing they did after New Year's and inprocessing was to ship me out on a deployment to the Chirique province of Panama, up on the border with Costa Rica. I spent 45 days there, inspecting construction and flying around in helicopters. It was very cool, except for the fact that I was newly married, and my wife was cooling her heels in Manhattan Kansas, waiting for me to tell her to come down to Panama with me. I stayed in a tent with the aviators, and each night, they would quiz each other about flying helicopters. It was like extended school. They would ask questions like, "do you get more or less lift on a more humid day?" And about 7 variations on that theme. They verbally practiced loss of power, autorotation, and all the other tricks of the trade.

To me, it's not about fretting about how old you are getting, but more about remembering all the things you've done in your life.

So happy birthday, youngsters! Have a beer and a cigarette for me, because I'm staying away. That stuff will kill you.

These Colors Run

I have a visceral aversion to seeing the flag on the ground. My noexistant neighbors can't pay their bills, so I don't know why I would expect them to respect the flag.

This house kind of reminds me of the current fascination with "The World Without Us". A fascination that I will admit that I share, which answers the question, if humans suddenly vanished, what would happen to all our buildings and works? This is the scientific equivalent of the Left Behind series, where people suddenly vanish in the rapture.

The house next door appears to be an experiment trying to figure out what this would look like in my neighborhood. My favorite part of the experiment is when the animals come back. Thank you foolish house flipper for the the deer and wild turkey.

House Next Door - Unplugged

It has seemed that the person that bought the house next door and the strange contractors that worked on it were complete insane, but they talked up a good story about how great! they were doing, and on some level, you want to believe them.

Apparently, they were not doing that great, as evidenced by the fact that last month their water was shut off, and this month, their electricity was cut off.

With the looming housing crisis, you have to wonder what will happen, and just how bad the place will look when it finally gets sold. I had a handyman/contractor come by last week to look at a busted storm window, and he said it would only be worth about $500,000 if it was in perfect shape, but he thinks $350,000 would be more likely, given the amount of work that needs to be done. I wonder if they still want $1,200,000 for it.