Not Your Parents' Halloween

It's almost a cliche that Halloween is no longer a trick or treat holiday for kids but has been hijacked by grownups.

I guess I saw some strong evidence for that Saturday night when I went to downtown Champaign to pick up a couple of customized thin-crust pizzas to go from Jupiters. Turns out that the Highdive night club next door was holding a Halloween Pimp & Ho Costume party. I saw several costumed pimps and hos strutting their stuff up and down the street out front while waiting for my pizzas.

Not much like any Samhain I've done, either. Sometimes we do Samhain skyclad (whcih is witch talk for nude), and with some of our body types, sometimes it's hard to tell the pimps from the hos.

Eating Cake with Kirsten Dunst

The French Revolution was never my favorite period of history. I think a lot of it stems from all of these right-wing ideologues over the decades holding the French Revolution up as the Horrible Example of what happens when you overthrow the government. Why, you automatically get the Reign of Terror and Robespierre putting all his opponents to the guillotine and why, out and out anarchy!

These ideologues ought to check their terminology. The last time this anarchist checked, anarchism did not involve the sitting government, however "revolutionary" it styles itself, executing all of its opponents. That's not anarchism. That's Dick Cheney having a wet dream. No one ever mistook Dick Cheney for an anarchist.

The right-wing argument against revolution goes somewhat like this. If you loosen the restraints of law against dissidents, however oppressive the law, idealists who want to establish a freer society will never be able to stand up to nihilistic power-hungry thugs. That's because idealists have scruples while power-hungry thugs have none, and therefore will employ ruthless means to gain power that idealists will never use.

There is at least some truth to that, at least with regard to the French Revolution. But only some. After the Estates General threw out the power of the monarchy, the militant Jacobists gradually amassed power through their own ruthless means and instigated the "Reign of Terror." But these purported historians usually neglect to tell you that the actual Reign of Terror from the execution of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette to its bloody end lasted all of three months. Compare that to how many centuries the House of Bourbon and its predecessors conducted their own Reign of Terror against their subjects.

Not that I approve of cutting the heads off dissidents, even if it only lasts for three months; quite the opposite. But we need to keep these things in perspective. And we need to think about all of the revolutions that didn't follow the Robespierre model.

Starting with the American Revolution, you know, the one that gave us the United States of America. We've had our Reigns of Terror over the decades, including the present one, but the United States came out of its Revolution a free country, more or less. Whatever else you can say about George Washington and Co., they weren't Napoleon Bonaparte.

Now the same right-wingers who criticize the French Revolution will argue that the American Revolution wasn't really a revolution; unlike the French, they didn't overthrow the British government. Yeah, well, they were a little busy 3,000 miles and an ocean away from London. The ideologues will say the colonists were merely struggling for their established rights as Englishmen. So, explain why we aren't still sending taxes to London and singing the British National Anthem. "We don't need no education..."

Considering the current illegal Nazis for Jeezus administration in Washington, we might have been better off staying with the Crown.

Beyond that, it's hard for me to comment on the American Revolution, since I wasn't around to see it, even if only via mass media. So I will comment on some revolutions I did see.

Back in the 1980s, the revolution that overthrew the government of Czechoslovakia was pretty peaceful, and it resulted in a freer country, at least on the "Czecho" side of the Carpathian foothills. So did the one about the same time in the Philippines -- not only did they get a freer country, but they also got a bunch of shoes from Imelda Marcos. The revolution in Romania was quite a bit more violent and bloodier than either the Czech or the Philippine revolutions, but that also resulted in a much freer country -- well, just about anything after the Ceaucescu's would be freer, including my dogs' kennel.

So overthrowing the government is not always a bad thing, and sometimes it is a very, very good thing. The Nazi regime in Washington would do well to keep that in mind.

Which brings us in a roundabout way to Marie Antoinette, which Penny and I saw Friday night. Overall, director Sofia Coppela's effort was not bad, if a little distorted.

It was very pretty to look at, at least. Somehow Ms. Coppola persuaded the French government to give her free reign of the Palace at Versailles, which is like traveling back 200 years in a time machine, if you could take an unlimited budget back with you as well. It really was shot there -- I've been there, and these were no computer-generated scenes. The decor seemed pretty accurate to me, and Penny is an experienced costumer, and she thought the custumes were pretty good. At least they didnt stick poor Louis in any pink satin pants.

Coppola made some interesting choices. The film focuses entirely on the experiences of Marie Antoinette as the Dauphine and then the Queen of France, and unlike most films set in that era, you only see the grounds at Versailles, and no attempt is made to depict the squallor of 18th century Paris or the hardships of the general populace of the time. That gave the film a very skewed and removed-from-reality sense. There is almost no scene showing Louis XVI performing his duties as king (except his hit or miss "duties" to produce an heir with Kirsten Dunst -- and I can honestly say that she woulnd't have nearly as hard getting a " royal rise" out of me!). There are a couple of scenes showing Louis with his advisors discussing French aid to the American revolution, more or less showing Louis meekly submitting to the advice of his favorite advisors.

In fact, you don't get any real world sense at all until the end, when a howling mob is depicted waving scythes and pitchforks outside the palace, and even then, you mostly see shadows and never any individual faces.

Coppola chose to depict the title character and her retinue as a bunch of Valley Girls, except instead of credit cards, they had the French national budget. I'm not sure how historically accurate this is, but I'm pretty sure the MTV soundtrack wasn't, and that was the only part of the movie that royally sucked.

There is not sense in not talking about what happened in the movie, since this is mainly a matter of historical record. Coppola chose to end the film not with the royal couple's inevitable end but with their fleeing Versailles. "I felt as though I were saying goodbye for the last time," Marie is quoted as saying, in one of the most laughibly ineffective lines in the film. I think Coppola were too fond of her characters to depict their ending. (Louis and Marie were stopped trying to cross the French border, taken back to Paris, tried for treason [then as today, the crime of losing at politics], and guillotined, thus giving right-wing ideologues two centuries worth of tut, tuts.)

Overall, I thought the film was okay overall, interesting for the calculated risks Coppola took, and very pretty to look at. And all of that food makes me wish very hard that Penny weren't a vegetarian doing Weight Watchers.

But then, I think cake is OK for vegetarians, isn't it? Let her eat cake.

A Shot at Redemption

Penny and I ate more Chinese food and watched shortstop David Eckstein put the St. Louis Cardinals up 5-4 in the eighth inning. The Cardinals now lead the Detroit Tigers 3-1 in the World Series. I won't give much more of a summary of the game than that. Either you saw the game or you didn't, and it will be reported in all of the newspapers and all of the sports shows, and I won't do a better job than that.

I've been a Cardinals fan since 1985, when they gave me the experience of a hometown team going to the World Series, something I'd never expected to happen in my lifetime, and the Redbirds have had my loyalty in gratitude ever since. That may sound a little odd, but I grew up in Cleveland, where I spent the first 18 years of my life.

Baseball is the first sport to which I was able to learn the rules, perhaps because the game is slow enough for a 5-year-old to pick up the rules, if not the subtleties of the game. My father was never all that patient about much with me, but he was patient about explaining that game to me. He was a lifelong Cleveland Indians fan, and year after year, they broke his heart. We went down to Memorial Stadium on the lakefront (which is no more) on many a weekend afternoon, back when general admission was $3 and a bargain even in 1960s dollars, and mostly, we watched the Indians lose. Most years, the Indians ended the season in the cellar of the American League or very close to it.

My dad was an eternal pessimist about the Indians. Whenever Rocky Colavito or some other Indian slugger came to bat, he was always going to strike out, or maybe if we're lucky, we'd get to watch the poor bastard lob a long one into left field and into the waiting glove of an opposing left fielder. Then, if the guy actually singled or even knocked it over the fence, my father would act more surprised than the Polish Army in 1939. I didn't care. As a kid, I especially liked the fireworks they shot off whenver the Indians scored a home run.

But I always experienced baseball from the perspective of an eternal loser. Then, in 1984, after seven years of newspapering in Michigan, I moved to St. Louis to take a job with a public relations firm, flacking for Monsanto's Lasso herbicide and Ford mid-sized trucks. Mostly I hung out with the local science fiction club, and most of them had a secondary passion for Cardinals baseball.

And lo and behold, the very next year, the Cardinals went to the World Series.

Not that I actually went to Busch Stadium. Then as now, World Series tickets were next to impossible to get. You either had to be a celebrity, or you had to grab a sleeping bag and camp out next to the stadium from the moment they announced the winner in the National League Championship Series, along with 10,000 other people who had the same idea that you did. I had no desire to do that -- true, I'd grown up with the Cleveland Indians, but I wasn't that much of a glutton for punishment.

But my friends and I laid in a very large supply of beer and soda and heinous snack foods and held game watching parties every night of that series. And we watched the Cardinals run up a 3-1 game lead over the Kansas City Royals, just like they hold a 3-1 lead over the Tigers tonight.

Then something weird happened. The Royals woke up from a state of zombiehood and won their second game. Then, in game six, the Cardinals were set to clinch the Series with two out in the bottom of the ninth, when a bad call at first base kept the Royals in the game when they should have been sent packing. Safe instead of out. We knew it was a bad call, because the network showed replays of the incident over and over, and the announcers all said the umpire had made a bad call. The Royals went on to win the game and tie the series up 3-3.

The Cardinals were completely demoralized. At game 7 the following night in Kansas City, they looked like some sandlot little leaguers. I don't recall if they scored any runs, but the Royals scored 15. At the end of the game, the Cardinals' star pitcher stormed into the locker room and permanently injured his throwing hand by punching out an oscillating fan.

No city had been this devastated since the Christmas bombing of Hanoi. Of course, some local radio talk show host gave out the home phone number of that schmuck of an umpire, and last I heard, he and his family were still in hiding somewhere on the Kamchatka Peninsula. I thought that was overkill myself -- Cardinals fans could have left it at tying firecrackers to the alternator wires of his Ford Pinto.

But as bad as that loss was, the Cardinals gave me the experience of a World Series in my adopted home town (at least until I got laid off later in the fall), and I remained a loyal fan ever since. My dad never could understand how I could change loyalties like that, even if those bums at Memorial Stadium couldn't hit or pitch their way out of a paper sack. (Perhaps he was vindicated when the Indians went to the World Series some years later, for the first time since Christ was a corporal.)

So now, 21 years later, the Cardinals sit 3-1 over the Tigers. They have a shot at redemption, and if they can pull of a win in game 5 tomorrow night, they'll even win a World Series the first year in their nice new stadium. I'll probably break out the merlot for the game.

My father died in March 1997 just short of his 67th birthday. His body wore a Cleveland Indians baseball cap in the casket, and they buried him that way. Some people are just eternal fans, win or lose.

Odd Time

This is an odd time to start a blog, right in the middle of so many things. Penny and I just finished some carryout Chinese food and watched the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Detroit Tigers in Game 3 of the World Series, which made me very happy as a Cardinals fan. We get married in about six months, on a beach at Playa del Carmen by a Mayan shaman. Much more later.

But I'd been thinking about a blog for a long time. I used to do zines, most notably A Prairie Rat-Weasel as part of an APA (that's Amateur Press Association, which is like a collection of blogs using a mimeograph and No. 3400 black paste ink instead of computers, modem, and Internet). That particular zine was in GOLDEN APA, of which I was a founding member back in 1978 or so. My friend, Arthur Hlavaty in New York, started the APA for fans of the writings of Robert Anton Wilson and the late Robert Shea, and my original zine title was The Benton Harbor Rat-Weasel. At the time, I was a general assignment reporter for a newspaper, the Herald-Palladium in Benton Harbor/St. Joseph, MI, and I was spoofing all those hyphenated newspaper names you see like News-Gazette and Times-Picayune. Over time, the Rat-Weasel name stuck. and I first used A Prairie Rat-Weasel during the late 1980s during an 18-month exile in Des Moines, IA. I liked it, and no apologies are offered to Garrison Keillor or Minnesota Public Radio whatsoever.

I left a big round spot of No. 3400 black paste ink on the carpet where my mimeo had sat when I moved out of Des Moines. One thing led to another, and mostly everything led to the Internet. GOLDEN APA folded a few years ago, yet another technology rendered obsolete by the Internet and Arthur's decision that he was tired of it after 25 years.

But I missed self-publishing and was spending too much late night free time sitting around in front of DirecTV and getting fat on pretzels, merlot, and tonic water. If I'm going to sit around and get fat, I might as well do something a little more creative.

So what do you get in A Prairie Rat-Weasel?

Well, the easy answer is a little bit of everything, but you probably want a few more specifics. You'll get a lot of reviews, particularly movies -- I was never that much of a movie buff until recently, and my conversion mainly came about when I hooked up with Penny in 1999. Penny is a serious movie buff, and we now see about three movies a week, when I'm not traveling on business, which is a couple of times a month. Here is a solumn pledge: one type of movie review you will never see on this blog is an "only-an-asshole-would-like-this-movie" review. I despise that kind of review and the kind of reviewers who perpetrate that. (A special place in Potemkin Hell awaits Joe Rosenthal from The Wall Street Journal. When he reviewed V for Vendetta earlier this year, he took the "only-an-asshole-would-like-this-movie" to an entirely new level. He wrote an "only-a-subversive-asshole-who-would-sell-America-out-to-the-terrorists-would-like-this-movie" review.)

About the travel -- I do that a lot, so you'll probably get a lot of travel stories and reviews of some of the places I see, stay in, or have dinner at. Most of my travel is in my beloved Midwest, but not exclusively.

Also, as you probably gathered, I digress a lot. And I sometimes have a tendency to rant, particularly with regard to politics (mine are libertarian, bordering on anarchism) and religion (mine is Wiccan, and I despise all forms of fundamentalism -- even Wiccan fundamentalism). If that offends you, tough. Go read some other blog. Or write me a flaming ranting comment of your own. Or proposition me for a night of wild sex. Or better than any of that, start your own blog. THE BLOGOSPHERE WANTS YOU!

Nighty night! Blessed Be.