IDYLLOPUS PRESS IS A VALIANT LITTLE ROWBOAT

So the veil between the physical world and spirit world thinned for an evening and a jackpot of candy came pouring through, the majority in orange, brown and gold wrappings, which I take it has to do with pumpkins and decaying leaves. Doing his duty in honoring the dead, H.o.p. dressed up as a zombie and returned to the old neighborhood for trick-or-treat as it is there where live the two gay guys who have the Penultimate Halloween House with Frankenstein on the lawn and the huge mechanical spider on the roof and skeletons and ghosts floating about the porch. We’d skipped the old neighborhood last year in favor of trick-or-treating with cousins in the burbs but out in the burbs the decorations were a bit too scary for H.o.p., dismembered limbs dressed up with gore, and one house in particular with a drunken reveller frightening kids had stuck with him through the entire year. Because of this and because he’d already had a nice full day Sunday of visiting with cousins, H.o.p. opted for the old neighborhood because, as he said, he really missed the Frankenstein house, where scary is all in fun and you walk away smiling and happily entertained rather than stumble away with your heart thump-thumping.

Kind of but not expressly Halloween fare, Marty and I watched this past weekend, “Ciao Manhattan” and “Pie in the Sky, the Brigid Berlin Story”. Edie Sedgwick dies and Brigid Berlin survives. What else is there to say about it all? I looked for something of universal merit in the films on these two society girls whose lives are far removed from 99.9% of those who will watch the movies but the point of privilege here is denying the universal for sake of the super exceptional me. Whatever appeal Edie had must have been mostly in person because the charm of Edie was lost to me, and the adulation heaped on her beauty was a puzzle as she seemed no more or less beautiful than millions of other girls in three hours worth of cosmetics–and though I understand she supposedly crafted a unique style I don’t trust that it wasn’t already roaming New York on persons not destined to be known. She was sad, but she was also a human with a lot of money at her disposal who tossed away $80,000 worth of inheritance in three months, which was quite a sum in the 60s, and I’ve some trouble dignifying that as simply tragic rather than grossly irresponsible and as pathetically corrupt as the preceding generation which certainly played its part in destroying her. The supposed moral is that Edie didn’t make it out alive but Edie is now glorified for living fast and beautiful and dying young.

“Ciao Manhattan” was admittedly shocking in its eye on the post-Manhattan Edie whose diet was barrels of prescribed pharmaceuticals and was also on a course of numerous shock treatments because she supposedly liked them so much she didn’t want to give them up after just three. I understand the damage her brain had suffered via the years of drug excess accounts for her being unable to stand up, she wasn’t just acting (she was acting out) but she must have still envisioned herself as being sexually enticing or else Edie wouldn’t have spent the entire film sans top showing off the wonder breast implants. The scene in which she performs her California post-Manhattan dance is about as painfully grotesque as it gets and though I hear she insisted upon the dance I’ve no idea if she really knew what she looked like, if she had seen the footage, and even if she had seen the footage when you consider that she wasn’t in her right mind at the time there’s no telling what she might have been seeing in her own blown-out head. But she had a story she wanted to tell or else she wouldn’t have threatened pulling out of the movie unless a staged version of her shock therapy was included. She probably wasn’t clear on what story she wanted to tell but in the end that doesn’t matter much. The fact she probably wasn’t clear on what story she wanted to tell is a big part of this story of a woman whose two older brothers committed suicide and who understood herself as being not much more than a very wealthy sexual object from Day One. Some have wondered also about the filmmakers and considered that they were only exploiting Edie in her sad state, and it is something I too wondered about briefly but then decided whatever, that Edie too had something she wanted to say and she was a twenty-eight year old woman and not an underage ingenue.

Despite every unvoiced criticism I have of the movie it’s worth viewing for its place in the “how did we get here from there” continuum, the American version of royalty excesses and star-tripping, the contortions of masochistic/sadistic glamor, the hand-in-hand unglued paranoia and self-absorption. It’s worth viewing as a purely American fairy tale in which a young man goes to California looking for the saucer people, happens upon Edie and is talked into babysitting her in her drained swimming pool bedroom papered wall-to-wall with the Edie of yesterday and instructing her on the art of building a flying saucer while her mother devoted herself to making pies. The film is a rambling, largely nonsensical incoherent mess partly because it is two films–the first was black-and-white footage in New York meant to chronicle the amphetamine-powered Beautiful People lifestyle, but the “actors” went AWOL and several years later a desperate attempt to complete the film happened with the California color footage–and still it is worth viewing, in particular as a complimentary piece to Warhol Factory alumnus Paul Morrisey’s “Frankenstein”, a film I saw when about 19 which scared the living daylights out of me. I know that one should be cool and cynical enough that Morrisey’s “Frankenstien” be appreciated for its comic value, but the spiritually-hollow me-me-me of the film was frightening precisely because of its revelry in its portrayal of decadent emptiness. Morrisey’s “Frankenstein” was released in 1973, while “Ciao Manhattan’ was released in 1972 and it seems that “Frankenstein” should have been released first and “Ciao Manhattan” a humanizing response to it. But that’s not how it happened. Instead we have Edie at Ciao’s end hooked up to the shock machine and charged through with electricity in a scene that certainly recalls every Frankenstein movie you’ve ever seen and seems a comment on the time and celebrity and money and exploitation. And I seriously have to wonder if Morrisey sat watching Ciao Manhattan and upon seeing Edie’s grotesque dance and her electric anti-renaissance thought, “Yes, yes, that’s it, my Frankenstein monster. That is my cut-up, pieced together, Beautiful People Warholian Factory Girl”. Though Morrisey’s “Frankenstein” horrifies me, I’ve got to admit that I’ve never seen a movie that quite depicts the pathologically-ill mindset of exploitation as his does. It sticks with you like a memory of your worst case of food poisoning, and if you’ve ever had a bad case of food poisoning then you know how scary that is. “To know Death Otto, you first have to f**k life in the gall bladder ” Frankenstien says, reminding of Warhol’s father dying of gall bladder illness (I believe) and if you know of Warhol’s father’s problems with his gall bladder then it seems a peculiar inside joke. But then Warhol a decade later, after years of amphetamine abuse, dies of a heart attack after gall bladder surgery, a sort-of self prophecy as he was scared he would die in hospital. And that’s sticky. Warhol was like velcro covered with velcro stickies that scared the hell out of him.

Which brings to mind another weirdness of life crazily spinning off on seeming inside jokes and co-operatively creating real puzzles of them. Edie’s mother in “Ciao Manhattan” makes pies, and Brigid Berlin is so obsessed with key lime pie in “Pie in the Sky” that she supposedly eats several in one sitting and states she has on the sly been eating pie after pie throughout the filming, incapable of controlling herself, causing her weight to begin to balloon again, which has been the bane of her existence, her mother’s preoccupation with her weight, her criticisms of it and beginning her daughter on amphetamines in an attempt to control it because she knew Brigid wouldn’t be happy fat, when instead it’s the mother who wasn’t going to be happy with a fat daughter. Which is one thing, but then I look up a published bio of Edie and what does it begin with but talking about the Sedgwick burial plots being called a pie. Very first paragraph. “Have you ever seen he old graveyard up there in Stockbridge? In one corner is the family’s burial place; it’s called the Sedgwick Pie…”

Where I’m going with this is that the Warholian work and Factory-related work seems after a while to make a crazy kind of dream maze. One is challeneged to find in it what is real and what is not, what is art and what is the gimmick that fattens the bank account (Warhol was, after all, first an incredibly successful commercial artist). So everyone debates as to what’s real and what’s not in “Ciao Manhattan” and whether Edie was exploited or not. Was Morrisey’s “Frankenstein” high camp or art? Was Joe Dallesandro acting badly intentional or was his bad acting intentionally used or not? And when I reflect on the pheomenon, that sticky question that is glued on nearly every Factory-related work, as to what’s art and what’s life, what’s vanity as opposed to depiction of the vain, then the art of period is not defined by the individual elements but the whole shebang. I’ve finally decided that I doubt there’s a single piece of “art” in the Factory warehouse that is art in and of itself. The art is the whole of the Factory, every piece referencing another and with such eerie sphinx-like reflections and anticipations that you’re compelled to consider how Oedipus blinded himself in an attempt to escape the machinery of the gods while paying for his part in it (at least so goes one way of looking at it). If Warhol and Edie and Brigid and everyone else happened to be blind to what they were ultimately creating (which I suspect they were in as much as they defined themselves as so part and product that they were incapable of escaping what they were commenting upon) it is still art, art almost in spite of itself, though I suspect too that most onlookers don’t have a clue either as to what makes it so, rambling on about how Warhol showed art is also the everyday everybody’s soup can in which all can participate and hey see too everyone can make art if it’s the humble soup can. No, I think if most people really got the soup cans and Jackie Os and Marilyns they’d angriliy burn them all rather than honoring because it’s hell rather than the sweet ode to mom’s lunch that Warhol stated the soup cans to be. The whole of the Factory’s work condemns everyone for a rat’s maze inescapable exploitative meanness and guile. It’s twentieth century Bosch and a couple hundred years from now, just as many wonder how Bosch got away with his depictions, people are going to look at it the Factory’s Opus and wonder why in the hell those twentieth centuriers made their cathedral of it and bought it as a love poem rather than going out and sitting on the corner and crying.

Edie Sedgwick shocked out of her Frankenstein’s creation gourd, and purportedly wanting it (which means it was better to her than what she already had), acting out convulsions on the shock table, and Morrisey’s exploited, pieced-together Beautiful Frankenstein monsters are a key to the what carries the Factory beyond the self-infatuation and self-hatred of the Factory to the universal. It was Made in U.S. of A. and still is. It’s what’s on the menu. And somewhere deep inside people are indeed perhaps aware of the ferocity of what they were eating and being fed and what it meant, or else Warhol wouldn’t have been giving away as presents the Electric Chair art that just simply wouldn’t sell.

I’ve never been to Italy and don’t know the history of the unpitiably blank, suburban residential highrises which appear, for example, in Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita” and with which Vittorio De Sica’s “The Bicycle Thief” opens. I don’t know whether they’re public housing or privately constructed; they appear new on their denuded moonscape grounds but the interiors remind of ancient Roman tenements constructed of little more than the despair of their purgatoried denizens. What is clear is to filmmakers of the time they represented loss of soul and the suffocation of the individual by the bureaucratic hive. And so “The Bicycle Thief” opens with these buildings and men gathering at a government employment office with little hope of being selected for one of the few jobs that would enable a partial escape from years of crushing post WWII poverty. Antonio Ricci (Lamberto Maggiorani) has become one of the lucky ones because he had listed himself as owning a bike, which means transportation, and these are days when one is damn lucky to even have a bike. But Ricci is no longer so fortunate as his bike has been pawned. Thus, his stoic wife (Lianella Carell) bravely strips the sheets off their beds, washes them and takes her dowry of linen to the bureaucratic hell of what appears to be a government-sponsored pawn shop that bears no resemblance to the lending institution of last resort down on 5th Street. No, these are institutions where go all those residing in the barren moonscape to offer, piece by piece, in exchange for cash, every last individualizing possession to huge warehouse-sized offices surreally filled from floor to towering ceiling with bitter misfortune. Then, the couple having successfully haggled for the necessary lira, it’s off to peer through another window on a warehouse of a room filled with bikes and retrieve Antonio’s.

Which is a cause for celebration, because now there’s a job and tomorrow will be just a little better than today, and the day after that just a little bit better than the day before it. Living modestly is on the attainable horizon. Living in society means society having a use for one, which means being valued, sometimes even if all society values you for is pasting Hollywood movie posters to walls, which is to be Antonio’s work, and he no more cares about whether the job is suited to his skills than the next man when for years you have waited an opportunity for any labor at all, just as the 15,000 people who applied for 400 openings at a Wal-Mart in Chicago recently could have probably not cared less if they had skills more exceptional than being able to stock shelves. Being valued means being secure in food on the table and medicine in the spoon and the ability to replace one’s child’s ragged coat, which means being able to plan past the hour, to think of the future, to be able to free the imagination to create even if in a cash-based, wage-earner society one’s ability to engage creatively means simply the ability to engage in commerce. Which is part of the problem, that Antonio has been locked in a situation where he’s unable to provide for himself, much less anyone else, if there hasn’t been the cash to exchange for even the most menial of skills. But it’s the way things are, and it’s ultimately not even his skills but his bike that has returned Antonio to the land of the living, where you do and are paid and take what you are paid and purchase tomorrow.

It’s a terrible deadlock, and ultimately what “The Bicycle Thief” is about, though Antonio’s wife instead believes their luck has rested in god’s hands, had consulted a seer, had been told that her husband would indeed get a job, and her first duty is to go to the seer and pay her for skrying rightly god’s favors. Maria had not told her husband about the consultation, and following her he briefly leaves his bike on the street. Knowing his bike is to be stolen, we worry now will be the time, but it’s not. Antonio derides his wife for her superstition and quickly ushers her back outside.

The next day, Antonio drops his seven-year-old son (Enzo Staiola) off at his job at a gas station then proudly goes off to work. While he’s pasting up one of the posters, a youth grabs the opportunity and seizes the bike. Though one has dreaded the stealing of the bike, there’s a curious sense of relief when it happens; edgy anticipation of this misfortune ended, we can look forward to the odyssey of Antonio’s search for his bike with hope of some reward, whether it be the return of his bike or our possible attainment of knowledge of equivalent or greater value.

Antonio goes to the police which of course can offer no more assistance then an American police officer would offer me if I submitted a complaint of a stolen bike. Find it yourself, they tell Antonio, which he sets out to do with the assistance of a friend and his son.

They go to the huge flea markets of the city to seek the pieces of the bike they suspect will have been broken down into parts, and one feels very little hope for their finding such in the blocks upon blocks of horns and bike frames and tires.

Their journey takes them to a church where individuals even more desperate gather for the peculiar exchange of their worship of the charity’s god in return for church soup, and the church hampers Antonio’s efforts with its demand for worshipful respect of the deity over his efforts to attain justice and retrieve his living.

Eventually, Antonio, who had ridiculed his wife for her consultation with the fortune-teller, resorts to the seer with the hope she may tell him where his bike could be. The message she has for Antonio is if he doesn’t find his bike that morning then he will never see it again, which seems more common sense than a matter of divine inspiration, but is at least more honest than the dime-a-dozen faith healers and televangelists who rake in multi-millions with promises of divine return. But when he returns to the street Antonio happens upon the youth who stole the bike and pursues him. A mob intervenes demanding proof of Antonio’s accusation. Police arrive and escort Antonio to the home of the youth which seems even more dismal than Antonio’s own. The bike is not found and because Antonio has no witnesses to the theft the police are unable to do anything much but do ask him if he wants to press charges. Frustrated, he flees the mob. Every last hope and trust of his has been obliterated, any faith he may have had in the justice system, any faith he might have had in humanity and himself. If he held any belief in a divine prosecutor, even that judge seems to have turned against him, which for Antonio means fate has also set itself against his family.

Along the way we’ve had glimpses of the better off. Antonio was better off than the youth who stole the bike. Now he is as the youth and faces a sea of bikes possessed by those better off than him. Desperate, he steals a bike. But Antonio is caught and a pack of witnesses convenes against him.

There is however much more to the story than Antonio’s search for his bike, because the film is also about his relationship with the son who follows the father through his trial of injustices, who becomes aware of the great gulf that exists between those who have and those who don’t, and has his own struggles with his father’s despair and what it means to him.

Some appreciators of the film make much of the person from whom Antonio stole the bike determining not to press charges, as if the film’s message resides vaguely in an act of superior good will which should somehow restore Antonio’s confidence, which in essense passes judgment on Antonio’s pursuit of his bike. But the man who asks that Antonio be released still possesses his bike; friends, strangers and police came to his rescue. Had he not his bike he might be just as emphatic on pressing charges against the suspected thief as people seem to remember Antonio as being, when instead Antonio’s concern was the retrieval of the bike, and it seems to be neglected that Antonio too ended in not pressing charges. Yes, the circumstances under which Antonio didn’t pursue his complaint are different, but it still bears noting that people fix on the act of pity extended Antonio and seem to forget that his concern over his own bike was ultimately its retrieval rather than retribution, despite the fact he’s observed time and time again simply pleading for the return of his bike. Of course, people focus on the pity extended by Antonio’s would-be prosecutor because of the role Bruno, Antonio’s son, plays in his release.

No matter any weaknesses Antonio has exhibited under his stresses, we’ve never been given cause to believe he is anything other than a decent individual. Whether or not Antonio is arrested, he is utterly humiliated. He was broken before he stole the bike, his cares having stolen from him his pride, driving him briefly mad. Because it was clear Antonio had no hope of getting away with the theft. He hadn’t the guile. The theft wasn’t even the matter of the opportunity of the moment if he had no hope of getting away with it. And had he gotten away with the theft? Then despite the viewer’s awareness of Antonio’s situation, his story would be remembered with much less compassion. Despite the fact that the viewer agrees with the pity extended Antonio and supposedly has empathized (or sympathized) with Antonio’s grief, had he not been caught then the viewer would likely rise from their seat feeling cheated, that disorder has entirely undone justice. Despite the viewer having been made aware of the viciousness of the cycle in which Antonio is trapped, the audience will only be inclined to absolve him of guilt if he is caught. Though much is made of this not being a feel-good movie and that the audience is burdened with the film’s anti-resolution finish, the audience would have it end no other way than with Antonio’s humiliation. Numerous choices made with the plot make this a far more complex movie than it appears to be, Vittorio De Sica in some respects managing to relate a story that is a bit different from what some viewers will believe they’ve seen, and it doesn’t matter as the desired effect is the same. The audience absorbs something of the enormity of the vicious cycle of poverty and despair and has been challenged to consider that the popular ideas of justice may have very little to do with fortune at all.

Now rewind to the scene in which Antonio’s bike is stolen. What is he doing? Putting up movie posters. Glamorous posters of Hollywood fantasy. Distracted by his work, he doesn’t see the youth making off with the bike until too late. As this is a film from the neorealist movement (and the lead actors were not professionals, having no former experience) one should pay attention to what Antonio is doing when the bike is stolen as it is a commentary on cinema.

How might such a story be filmed in Hollywood? Perhaps the father would be a race-car driver. His car stolen, he teams up with his wise-cracking, precociously mature son to find it. As there must be some tear-jerking sentimental moments that provide a showplace for the film’s song, at one point the child is also lost and the father wanders briefly looking for him, assuring us that his heart is in the right place and that his boy matters more than the car which by now has little more meaning than the song’s placement in the movie. Eventually, the child taking matters into his own hands upon seeing the stolen car, steals one himself and pursues the race-car with a frightened father clinging to the dashboard. The thief is caught. With a wink, the father says to his child, “Yeah, but you know you really shouldn’t have stolen that car, two wrongs don’t make a right,” and puts him on probation for an evening. Seems a tad outside-the-system subversive but it’s not. No one is called upon to really consider the long string of cause and effect; all that’s really demanded of one is to respond emotionally to push-button prompts and go home satisfied with having been entertained if your pulse rate was at any time elevated. The end scene shows the father winning his race then making a victory lap with his son at the wheel. On Monday, one returns to one’s job satisfied one could too have an adventure if one was driving race cars rather than working.

And no one, curiously, will give a damn about the car that is stolen by Hollywood’s equivalent of Antonio. No one will feel a need to condemn him, no one will feel for his absolution, because their characters are cartoons which have no soul, though not very many will intuit this. As long as it’s felt their emotions have been exercised, a majority of individuals will feel they’ve made contact with something which has meaning.

Around here, Bush is synonymous with Mega Evil Fucking Bad. H.o.p. has grown up hearing it…is well aware. Y’know the old cartoon where Gallant is Good and Goofus is Bad, in simplifying ethics for H.o.p. Bush has pretty much stood for All Things Bad. “Would Bush do it? Well then that’s just what you don’t want to be.”

Whenever a picture of Bush comes up, H.o.p. reflexively comments, “I don’t like Bush.”

And no it’s not brainwashing when you’re trying to bring up a child to be able to recognize rabid dogs and what has not a shred of respect for what isn’t the color of money. No, it’s like training the baby penguin that the leopard seal will eat your hide the first chance it gets. It’s part of raising your child to be able to survive in the world and is my duty as a parent.

Monday, H.o.p. sees a pic of Bush and comments, “I need to learn how to write and read well so that when I’m an adult I can vote Bush out of office.”

Now, I hadn’t told H.o.p. that he needed to read and write for that, but I didn’t remark anything otherwise. He was aware that a voting day was upon us and being eight years of age had the idea that Bush was being voted on as well and that hopefully Bush might be voted out but as Bush is everlasting ever-ready evil he assumes that Bush will still be the foe when he’s old enough to vote, thus the wish to one day vote him out of office. We spent a good part of the day discussing voting and I didn’t say to H.o.p., “Well, let’s just hope your vote will count one day, because not everyone gets to vote and not every vote counts because there’s rigging and voter intimidation and difficulties intentionally put in the way of people being able to vote.” I didn’t tell him about black boxes…though I have before, and I have talked about all this with him before, but when the child pipes up and in hopeful voice exclaims he will vote Bush out of office and must learn to read and write to do so, then I’m just going to say, “Good for you.”

So, Tuesday we talked a lot about voting and politics and war. We did our spelling (the AVKO is really working and I fill up his spelling page with happy stars) and we did multiplication and I was otherwise preoccupied with thinking about the polls and waiting to hear what kind of bullshit was being pulled across the country to skew votes and prevent people from voting. When I read the exit polls I wanted to go, “Hell, yes!” and felt an adrenaline flush of excitement. When I read of people at one precinct spontaneously breaking out into a burst of song (”Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, hey, hey, good-bye”) I felt the same flush of adrenaline and allowed myself to enjoy it a minute before switching it off….because I was expecting shit. All kinds of it. And I’m cynical.

Of course Earthlink DSL was out most of the day and is still out and right now (I’m only online via dial-up currently working but intermittently at 26 kbps) which means I didn’t get to track some of the news I wanted to tonight (we don’t have cable and our television reception is poor). So we watched a rental movie, “Pirates of the Caribbean”, which was entertaining, and then when the dial-up began working I scouted around the online news and read some commentary.

Is nice be able to tell H.o.p. that, thankfully, the GOP no longer controls the House at least.

After everything the Dems have given Bush it’s not like I’m a fawning fan and it’s not like I trust them…but they’re not Republican. It’s enough to make me feel well maybe, eventually, perhaps, if things change a lot, I might concede, may acquiesce to a bit of hope. We still live in a fucking insane country and no telling what Bush has up his sleeve that he could pull ten days from now or in two years (impeach the bastard, please) but hey the citizens took back the House and maybe if they’re mad enough then who knows maybe they’ll decide rioting in the streets is an option if Bush pulls out all the stops and announces he’s king for life.

I’m not holding my breath but I’m putting on my imaginary polka-dotted party hat and tooting my imaginary horn for two seconds and now that that’s done I’m taking off the hat and tucking it away with the horn on the shelf to the left of me, behind too many other hopes and dreams, but this is a hat I in particular hope I’ll be able to pull out one day and wear a little longer for sake of my son. The other congratulatory party hats will never be worn. But the hat that celebrates a measure of national sanity is the one I’m hoping will get another airing some day soon, for sake of the future of my son and the kids of today.

Oh, and of course, Marty and H.o.p. soundly sleeping, I’m sitting here trying not to think about Montana and Virginia. I very successfully avoided thinking about the Senate races all evening. Was all set for the Senate to be lost. But now that it’s down to Montana and Virginia I’m suddenly obsessed by them now that there is a slim hope of the Dem’s winning, which means I gave up long ago trying to sleep and am sitting here worrying about what the GOP is up to this very moment. As I know I won’t likely be able to sleep I pulled out some art to work on then settled instead on some writing, and I’ll probably sit here all night pretending to try to do something vaguely but not very constructive (considering my zero career track, I’d be more constructive shredding paper for cat boxes) while worrying what the GOP is up to right now.

Oh, it’s already nearly morning, the upstairs neighbor up and walking around. Seems early for her. I don’t think she’s obsessive like me and up worrying about Montana and Virginia and the GOP, visions of Bush in his White House domain floating in my head, wondering if he’s in conference right now or still passed out on whatever he nightly takes to help him sleep. Probably sleeping. But Laura may be lying awake in bed wondering what she’s going to wear today. Perhaps something sunny yellow.

Ok, ok. A little happy dance today. Some people who used to vote repub proved themselves not quite so insane by voting, at least, against a portion of the insanity that’s been ruling America. That’s a cause to celebrate a little, no matter what happens next. I’m telling myself right now we won the Senate and in a month we will have been proven to have won the Senate, but still no matter what happens next some people who had been voting repub proved themselves not quite so insane and gave us a dem House. Some people are changing their minds. And actually if you were a fly on the wall here this morning you’d hear a couple occasoinal Whoo-whoos! slipping through our cynicism, because more than a few people gave me cause yesterday to not be quite so cynical and I’m a person who can be handed a simple good cookie and eat it and feel right with the world for the time that I’m munching on the cookie no matter how screwed up I think things are overall.

And having a bit of that good cookie this morning, I remembered, oh right, got to mail in H.o.p’s attendance record for October (Georgia demands an attendance record) and I felt somewhat a little more chipper than usual printing that out and stuffing the envelope, because a few enlightened minds had made the world a little less of a dark place. You have to realize I’m just somehow genetically inclined against things like attendance records, they make me anxious, my natural inclination is to dig in my heels to most anything hmmm well the hive mind seems to expect of me. In this respect I’m every bit like H.o.p. so I really have no call to complain about his digging in his heels and only wanting to do what means something to him because I’m no different.

People voted for minimum wage increase and that made me feel a little better about people. A lot of states said no to same-sex unions and that made me feel like they were backwards dimwits but people did vote for minimum wage increase and voted down the South Dakota abortion ban and Arizona rejected the marriage amendment. I’m a bit confused that Britney Spears getting a divorce made big headlines right up there with everything else and find it peculiar that so many people seem to really care who in the hell she’s married to…but whatever.

I’m happy that my DSL is working again today because that means I’ve got C-Span on. And I’m looking forward to watching the Bush news conference today. I mean I’m really really looking forward to watching that. I’m not interested in anyone talking “working with” Bush, like I’m hearing this morning, because I want that criminal impeached, and I’m hoping it’s just morning-after words, I want his presidential portrait pulled off the wall or supplemented on right and left with bronze plaques recording his crimes against the people and war crimes. I don’t want to listen to “working with” but I’m keeping on C-Span and will be watching Bush at 1:00 p.m.

I’m hearing now on C-Span Sen. Schumer saying there will likely be no Montana recount, that it will be Democrat in a couple of days, and he’s talking now about Virginia and that the odds are unlikely a recount there will overturn the election. (Yes!)

When Bush’s 1:00 p.m. press conference comes on the screen, I will be smiling and hissing. Bush could declare himself king for life at the press conference and I’d still be smiling because the world now knows that the majority of the American people don’t want him for king, they want to scrape the floor with him.

Schumer is saying now that Americans have made themselves heard that they want to work with Bush in a bipartisan way for solutions, and I’m thinking, “Not me, not with Bush and his cohorts”. But whatever. For the moment I’m happy with the bit of sweet cookie I’ve been given this morning.

My ISP hates me. I’d been watching C-Span, waiting for Bush to come on. Right at 1:00 p.m. my DSL stopped working, so I couldn’t watch C-Span (which I only get online) or follow any commentary elsewhere. So I watched on Fox news television which was the only channel coming in decently. When he was done I went back to check the DSL and it was still not working and then after another five minutes finally returned so I was able to read a few threads here and there on the press conference.

A never-mind-for-now-what-may-come-let’s-just-enjoy-this-moment celebration demanded that I make brownies. H.o.p. licked the bowl clean. We’re waiting for them to finish baking.

Update: They’re done. They’re chocolate-sugar-buzz fiiiiiine.

We just spent $700 on eyeglasses (and exams) for the adults at “America’s Best” and I’m still happy, at least for the moment. I’m the super easy consumer who tries to never buy anything but when I do I always expect incompetence and no accountability and as long as you are friendly and smile and express any measure of competence then I figure that we have a contract where I treat you like you know something of what the hell you’re doing as long as you treat me like I’m human. The few times in my life I’ve gone for the “better” whatever (very few, considering I rarely buy anything) I’ve still experienced incompetence and no accountability so I prefer to go the cheaper route. Like with an eye exam. The last time I had an eye exam was six years ago and I went to an honest-to-god eye doctor in an honest-to-god office and I was treated like shit and had a surprise price tag of $250. Before that my last eye exam had been like fifteen years previous and it had been an honest-to-god eye doctor who I ended up wanting to slap.

You see, one day when I was in sixth grade the PTA eye crew showed up and gave us all an eye exam. They gasped when they did me and scolded me, “You’re legally blind,” like I was a bad person. This puzzled me as I wasn’t a bad person (that’s the bane of my life that I get puzzled by people who treat me like hell when I think hey wait I’m not a bad person here) and I also thought I could see, though my eyes had begun hurting and I was starting to experience occasional tunnel vision and my vision would sometimes black out completely and I would walk into people in front of me. Turned out I had an inherited muscular condition with the eyes (no, not lazy eye) and mine was especially severe and quickly began to degenerate. For the next four years I went to the Medical College and other specialists and did all kinds of vision therapy and prisms and glasses and the headaches became so bad I eventually couldn’t read and I lost all depth perception. I for years didn’t look at anything straight on and held my hand up between my two eyes continually as some kind of reflexive attempt at adjustment. Finally a surgeon said, “Nothing is working and her case is such that she will go blind in that eye if she doesn’t have surgery”. So for several months in my junior year of high school I didn’t read at all because by then I was unable to read, and then I had the eye surgery and voila it was the one thing in my life that worked exactly as they said it possibly could if everything went right and when they had me look at the many pictures of the depth perception test bee with its wings I suddenly had perfect depth perception whereas before I had zero. Now, the thing is that previously when I looked at the 3-d of the bee and its wings, I had no idea of course that I had no depth perception as what I could see was simply what I could see. After the surgery, when they presented me with the bee and its wings, I was very nervous about it and scared to do the test because I had the underlying fear that I might show no difference whatsoever, which would somehow prove that it had all been in my mind (despite the lack of depth perception). So it was quite something to me when they said I got a perfect score. Results! And the headaches stopped and I could read again.

The only good thing the eye problem did for me was I hated sports in school and as they were always ball sports I ended up being exempted from all PE for several years because they were ball sports, volleyball and baseball and basketball. With no depth perception well…one can imagine. I was the kid always beaned between the eyes with the ball and no one in their right mind wanted me on their team so it was a relief to everyone that I was sidelined to the bleachers. I still sucked at sports afterwards but had righteous depth perception and won the egg toss at an employee picnic for the office-supply-store-from-hell where I briefly worked when I was about 24.

Anyway, I didn’t bother going for another eye exam until my late 20s and went to a doctor who was recommended to me but whose testing procedures were primitive by comparison to what I’d experienced in my teen years. He wanted an eye history and when I told him mine he scoffed outright and said the surgeon just wanted to make a buck because no one ever went blind from something like that and I’d just needed glasses as a kid. He was pretty rude to me which I always think is odd when you’re paying someone for a service. I didn’t go back to an eye doctor until I was 43 and age had decided 20/15 vision was something I could do without.

So, I get my prescription from the expensive doctor when I was 43 and I went to Pearle for the glasses and I didn’t like much of what they had and the service sucked and the glasses I ended up with always made me crazy. For six years they have made me crazy. My bifocals were OK but I didn’t like the style and they’ve been heavily scratched for a year and two years before that they were closed in a doorway and mutilated so they sit lopsided on my head and the lenses fall out at least once a day. In my sunglasses, everything behind me is reflected and it drives me nuts that I can see everything behind me and they cause me to do things like walk into potholes because I’m so distracted by looking at everything behind me in the corners of my sunglasses. Plus I have very light blue eyes and they make me ultra-sensitive to certain things with light bouncing all around inside them. Because of this I like sunglasses that are pretty dark because sunlight drives my eyes bonkers, it is harsh and blinding (one reason I like cloudy days) and these sunglasses weren’t dark enough and were muddy and reflecting everything behind me even after I tried to have them fixed twice.

Fortunately I didn’t have to use vision correction at the computer until this past year but couldn’t use the bifocals as I had to look at the monitor with my head tilted at an odd angle so I have been for months struggled with using cheap dimestore glasses which sufficed but also drove me nuts because if I’m not sitting at just the precise right distance they are muddy.

We’re getting ready to go on vacation. I was hoping to get eyeglasses before we went on vacation because I knew I needed a new distance prescription in particular. And I wanted too to get out of the dime store glasses because they drive me nuts. So off today we go to America’s Best because Marty had been there twice before and it did just fine by him. “I like America’s Best, they’re just fine,” Marty said. I said, “Sure, why not,” though I wondered how a business can afford a special of 2 for $69 eyeglasses with exam and designer eyeframes without there being some small print that becomes apparent too late for the visually-challenged. But Marty had been there twice.

The consumer a big business can easily take is the one who needs something right that moment

I had been saying for several weeks we needed to get in “now” for an exam and glasses but it didn’t happen and the co-adult in the household kept saying, “We’ll get the glasses in time, don’t worry.” He’s the one who works for money and is respected for skills people want. I’m the one who can make no money after a lifetime of specialization in artistic skills no one wants nor the produce of them. Plus I homeschool the child who would be the circle in the square at regular school, just like his mother was, and who is dyslexic and artistic and I want him to have an education and a chance and to not be boxed in. Anyway, one of the points of homeschooling is it can be bent around other things in life. Making money can’t. So we waited to go until the adults could go on a day when it could be bent around work.

The consumer a big business can easily take is probably one who needs to work and doesn’t have time to argue with you

I opted for the full blown eye test as it had been six years and because I’ve had relatives with glaucoma. This is where an I-Pod comes in handy. Listening to Iggy Pop or Miles Davis would have meant a mostly non-nervous me but I don’t have an I-Pod so I breathed deep and told myself, “Whatever”, and mostly didn’t shake in my boots but still jumped back three feet when they blasted my right eye with the air in the glaucoma test. The second time I was prepared but still jumped back three feet.

So they ran me through the different machines and I did everything they told me to do and I wondered if I was doing OK because they didn’t give me a clue and then they sent me to a waiting room and I waited to see the eye doctor. There were three magazines on a table that were of the sort I wasn’t going to even dignify as reading material. So instead I popped quarters in the Chicklets machine and played with making faces out of Chicklets. And then I made color wheels with them. Then I played at tossing them into a the metal dispenser of the Chicklets machine and was pleased that I did a direct hit with all and none popped back out, but when you’re doing it from a distance of six inches this is nothing to crow about, it’s just what you call trying to pass time and not make a mess while doing it. And I only wanted to appear partially dimwitted to all the twenty-somethings sitting around with their contacts cases on their knees. The partially dimwitted woman making faces with Chicklets and tossing them a full six inches (well, actually it was almost two feet) at a bowl, I’m all right with that assessment. I figure I’ve done my good deed for the day in providing a bit of entertainment perhaps to someone else who appeared to be bored.

Yes, I am indeed an embarrassment, though I attempt to be a wry kind of embarrasssment.

Marty and H.o.p. were ushered back about the time I had started doing the target tossing of Chickets. “You’re all right!” H.o.p. said. Turns out, when mom had gone into the room with the special machines, he had thought they were going to be taking my eyes out of my head to examine them (too many cartoons).

So then the eye doctor saw me. I noticed the pics on display of her dog and looked at them but decided the dog, though cute, didn’t merit my commenting on it. She did a better job I thought than the high-priced eye doctor six years ago (who one week after I visited her sent out a letter that she was quitting practice completely as she needed to do something else with her life). Turns out my prescription hadn’t changed that much at all and she said I had great eye health which was nice to hear, and is the kind of thing you may self-congratulate yourself for when you’re in your twenties but by the time you’re in your forties if you have half a brain you know it’s all a genetic flip of the coin and nothing to self-congratulate yourself on at all. And if there had been bad news I wouldn’t be writing this post because that’s the way I am too.

The co-adult then had his eye appointment and then we were ready to look at the frames.

A man actually stepped out from behind a counter and offered assistance and–gasp–opinions! This pleased me because I am the kind of person who will buy eyeglasses without looking at myself once in a mirror to see what they look like, because I know I won’t have a clue because I’m clueless about glasses and because I think everyone else in the world looks great but I look like my Aunt Thelma and that’s no good. I knew I wanted red glasses because for the past several years I’ve looked at Heaven Davis’ red eyeglasses with a kind of envy. I popped on a pair of red and black eyeglasses and the salesman said they were perfect and so did Marty. When I tried on a pair and Marty said, “OK”, I knew they weren’t the pair to get. So I went with the pairs to which Marty went “Hmm, OK!” and which didn’t look totally lame to me. Though they were all kind of lame to me. I really wanted the kind of eyeglasses you only get on a 60’s retro website. The only time I got excited was over some eyeglasses that had Sylvester the Cat peering back at you from almost cat’s eye rims. “Sylvester!” I said and picked them up and realized they were small, they were too small, looked up at the sign and saw they were for children. Drat. Had they not been for kids, those would have been my selection because I’m a jeans and black henley top and Sylvester the Cat eyeglasses kind of person. A kind of person who sees Jennifer Anniston’s face on a magazine and thinks “No”, and sees pictures of gingerbread and cakes on a magazine and thinks “No” to passing time with that as well, and is relieved to find a Chicklets dispenser which means I can can play making color wheels and clown faces.

So my three pairs (straight vision for computer, bifocal for regular and then straight sunglasses) that were the $49 frames but with special lens coatings on a couple of them were all written up by the really nice guy behind the counter who really seemed to know what he was doing and was much nicer to me than the people at Pearle had ever been.

The co-adult had said America’s Best was good and y’know it had that special and he’d already been buying his glasses from them for years.

The consumer a big business can probably easily take is someone who is with a co-consumer who has had a positive experience and seems to understand better than you that this is how much it was going to cost even though he was touting the special

The man behind the counter said my total alone came to $397. And I even got the cheap cheap frames. But that’s what it came up to.

The consumer a big business can probably easily take is one who figures you’re one of the small cogs in a big business and that it’s the big business who’s taking you and not the nice person behind the counter

By now, after two hours, H.o.p. was getting really antsy. He’d been great but was now saying repeatedly to me, “I’m bored.”

The consumer you can probably easily take is the one with the bored, antsy child

And Marty’s two pairs with special lenses knocked the price up to $700. How exactly this happened I wasn’t sure because I was also tending an increasingly bored H.o.p., but I figured oh well, considering I spent like $250 on just an eye exam 6 years ago I wasn’t going to sweat it. I’m a lousy consumer that way. I think, “Well, that’s what you get for thinking you’re going to be getting something a bit cheaper, but as long as it’s cheaper than what I got six years ago then whatever.”

The consumer the big business can easily take is someone who has had poor experiences elsewhere and is feeling a bit too good about life that day because for the first time in 12 years the govt isn’t completely run by Neocons…maybe by thieves, yes, but not Neocon thieves

And I liked the guy waiting on us. I liked everyone there. I even liked all the customers. No one smelled like a church pew and no one was trying to blind me with their teeth and no one had looked askance at me for my very broad telling of a coyote story to H.o.p., which is what he asked me to tell him to entertain him at one point, and sensing people listening in I’d thought well we ought to do a good job with the story, that a good coyote story is something everyone can occasionally use, and included H.o.p. in the storytelling as well so it became a co-production and left the punch line at the end for him and smiled for him when the punch line was met with an appreciative guffaw from the customer who I’d sensed had been listening in.

I am a very bad consumer. If I get the glasses and put them on and the world looks like hell through them and I can’t see a thing, I’m the bad kind of consumer who will think, “Yeah, well, yet again, that’s the way everything is.” Which is nothing to be proud of. I just figure that it’s all no-accountability mass production and big business idea of fair play and one’s generally stuck with things being the way they are. And I guess that’s part of selecting your battles too. I figure there’s so much else with which we’re struggling that after all the other battles you look at the eyeglasses and say, “What the hell” and sign on the dotted line because it was better than your experience elsewhere.

They say they will put a rush job on the glasses for us and Marty is even less a good consumer than I am because he trusts that and that we’ll have the eyeglasses back in 5 to 7 working days like they said. He believes the glasses will be in our hands next Friday. But then he’s gotten eyeglasses from America’s Best a couple of times before and it’s always been fine for him.

You can do an “I believe in Peter Pan” kind of thing for us if you want and wish upon a star that we will get the eyeglasses in time for our trip and I’ll appreciate it, and if we do then I’ll give you all the credit.

Or you can say, “You should have known better!” I’ll accept that too.

Update: Looking over the bill, which Marty just gave me, and is clearly outlined, I’m satisfied with it all. And like I said I loved the guy who waited on us. He knew his stuff and called no on a couple of frames I was looking at that he said would end up bruising my nose because of the style and bridge width, which I appreciated. And I’m determined to be happy with it no matter what because he was so good.

Here I have in my Netflix-borrowing hands a DVD of “Cat Women of the Moon”, which far surpasses any expectations I had for it, and I’d planned to blog my giddy, glorious wonder of this film on Friday. But then I opened up the Bloglines and what met my eyes but Pharyngula’s “Demand higher standards for homeschooling!” post, filed under creationism and academics.

Said Pharyngula, who’s all hot and bothered by the Creationists,

At my department, we just got the requirements for state licensure of education students, and we’ve been given the task of making sure our course content delivers what future teachers will need. It’s not trivial getting licensed to teach; but any idiot can declare themselves to be a teacher for purposes of homeschooling, and apparently many idiots do.

Please. Can we bring those laws back?

…

I’m serious. We need to stop this. I think any politician who professed to be concerned about educating the children of this country, by supporting the NCLB, for instance, ought to be required to support increasing the qualifications and standards for homeschooling…and if a district doesn’t have the resources to monitor the competence of homeschool teachers, they ought to simply refuse to allow the kids to be pulled out of school.

Then I began to read the comments, which were about what I expected.

As I’m not a Creationist, one might think this wouldn’t concern me too much. I do homeschool, and one might say well if you’re doing the job you ought to be doing then you won’t mind stricter standards (which vary by state), and if you don’t have a degree (I don’t) then you must certainly understand, as a reasonable progressive, our concerns. But I’m not going there folks because that’s not what it’s all about. If you know how to cut through the fat then it’s not too difficult to see this hasn’t much to do with Creationism at all, and doesn’t even have a thing to do with a desire to edcuate–at least not outside of what is required for maintaining a certain world of status-quo prejudices.

I have mellowed some over the years. Used to be I had almost no use whatsoever for academics, to the extent that if I showed up at a party of a one-time friend who lacked the instrument but could play the hell out of an air guitar (that’s one way of putting it) and I smelled a nest of his co-worker academics in the vicinity then I’d promptly leave. I was almost kind of fine with them as long as they stuck to the dining room table gossiping about department politics and left the rest of us alone to pursue some bonafide conversation–and they’d almost 100 percent comply as they certainly didn’t want to mingle outside their clique, because, after all, what was the use in their mingling when, as far as they were concerned, they had nothing to learn or gain? Yeah, there are academic bloggers now who let it be known how cool they are, really really how cool they and their musical tastes are as well (come sit at my feet my fellow academic bum-licking friends so we may self-congratulate ourselves on our corporate but oh so individual coolness) and love to blog-party and toy with tittilating the whatnot; and what can I say but hey, things sure haven’t changed, because they’ve always been around. But in pre-blog days my experience was that they tended to get too drunk too fast and were really happy with sitting around and bitching about everything and assessing where they were on the king of the hill playground slide between the persons on their left and right.

In the above instance, the number of academics at the parties grew and as they grew they began to feel more secure with elbowing for the respectful distance due them so the numbers of the rest of us dwindled. The third year I dropped by it was almost all academics (though sometimes not immediately distinguishable individually, this is not the case en masse). Eventually the parties were probabaly all composed of academics. They were happy to have the room to themselves and I was happy to not bother them.

Again, used to be I had almost no use for academics, but I like people and I like to find things to like about people, at least when they’re cut off from their herd, though if you’re not secure enough to stand alone then I’ll give you that chance in your preferred environment. I like to give people a chance, a second and a third, even to the point of shutting my voice off and politely, gamely listening and nodding my head after I’ve fully sized the situation up–which is usually just a matter of mapping out someone’s narrow-minded halls and figuring out the concretized (pro or con) conversational points they’re programmed to run. As all that some prefer for a conversation is a party of one then I don’t mind too much sitting back and simply watching the show and experiencing your world and enjoying you, your face, how you move, how you speak, the stories you’ve accumulated. Indeed, most everyone wants others to experience their world, though some people want only that ultimately. Not too many people are that interested in experiencing another person’s world outside of what the price of a shot glass of cappucino demands of them. Even if they imagine they do, they show up at the table with a bag of regimented prescriptions and run through the doctor’s recommendations twenty times before the bladder asks for a break. And they’ll not have a clue. I know that and it doesn’t bother me as long as you’re not abusive. I can look at a good many people, apart from the herd by which they may define themselves, and find much to marvel about in the individual. One thing you learn from listening to many different people’s stories and asking them about things so they tell you even more, enough to give some idea of landscape or what they see the landscape to be, is, of course, how much people are the same and, of course, how different they are. There’s a lot to be learned from really listening rather than just seeing the world and every encounter in terms of scoring points.

Blogworld, and most worlds of conversation, discussion and debate, are not where you can begin to change the regimented prescription and doctor’s recommendations. Nah, you show up to pat on the back, share a tidy story and sometimes play a regimented role of rebuttal, preferably in the matter of a very few one-liners as that’s about as much time readers and commentors can commit to from their work place seat, which we all know as most people play 9 to 5 and blogworld shuts down on the weekend. Most people who comment at blogs don’t even take the time to read the thread of comments preceding their own, much less the comments that follow. When I first began blogging I’d hoped it might be otherwise but learned quickly enough those were the rules and that blogworld is stranded in a world of prejudices and the exact same power jockeyings that rule the real world. Doesn’t mean the internet isn’t a grand tool for disseminating information. No, making information available, the good and the trash, is where the internet excels. But it’s not much of a place for changing opinion through dialogue, just as in real world conversation.

I thought several times about posting a comment at Pharyngula and politely running through some of my views, but anticipating how the comment thread would run I held back. Well before the thread reached 338 comments, I was glad I’d gone with the judgment of not participating.

Nor am I participating by commenting on the post here. I’m not doing a trackback. I don’t want anyone from there to come over here and read and comment. No, I’m instead remarking on why I chose not to particpate, which is the same reason I don’t want anyone from there to come over here and read and comment.

There, that’s all the thought I want to waste on this right now. I’ve got “Cat Women of the Moon” to possibly blog before returning it to Netflix. But all my browser windows are open to slips of documents concerning Sac and Fox mixed bloods that I want to copy into a database and there are 10,000 other things I need to be doing right now so I might not get around to it. But I will certainly try.

“The eternal wonders of space and time, the far away dreams and mysteries of other worlds, other life, the stars, the planets. Man has been face to face with this for centuries and barely able to penetrate the unknown secrets. Some time, some way, the secrets will be pierced. Why must we wait? Why not now?”

WHAP! Flaming phallic rockets, Lois, cut the talk and get to the point!

In which the person who hates their office job is given the resources to imagine they’re a daring space adventurer for the next month

And “Cat Women of the Moon” does. Kind of. From the vistas of starry space to a shot of a toy rocket to…uh…well, I’m telling you what I need is to post an image that would speak the thousand words I can’t quite get in my grip, sitting here staring at the television set now for five minutes and counting, wondering just where to begin. The man lying strapped into the lawn chair? The office chairs on rollers at desks? The computer as conceptual art that is one tape reel on the wall above a small bank of lights? The strange suspended kind of hammocks to left and right that you don’t even notice at first because of the guy strapped Frankenstein monster like to the prominent front lawn chair on the floor? Any minute I expect a bolt of lighting to thwack him zap, the man to rip the bindings from his wrists with super strength and uhm…I dunno…proceed directly into office chair space sex with a cabin mate babe, because that’s just how astonishingly grab bag, “no one will care, they’re just here for the flesh”, bad this set is. And praise the Hollywood film overlords for it! When the sets are this bad and there’s no promise of skin, the next hour of entertainment is going to be watching the actors struggle to convince themselves that content resides in the thespian’s craft.

Cut to Sonny Tufts (playing Laird Grainger) searching for an expression. Cut next to Victor Jory (playing Kip Resissner) who hears “Action!” and kind of heaves his chest. Cut to the rocket ship’s viewing screen which shows something zipping past, establishing for us the ferocious velocity that appears to have no effect on the valiant quonset hut that could. Cut to Marie Windsor (playing Helen Salinger) who hears “Action!” and breathes. Cut to Douglas Fowley as the devil with delicately-penciled power mustache and male’s version of widow’s peak, grimacing, managing to flubadubdub his cheeks supposedly simulating gravity fighting to drag your ass back to reality (or in this case a trace sensibility as in, “Don’t make this film!”). Cut to…oh…oh…now this actor, William Phipps, he had come up with the brilliant idea that withdrawing from Earth would be best representing by The Shakes and is watching hordes of spiders crawling up and down the walls.

“White Sands calling Moon Rocket 4 Code 63…Can you hear us?”

Cut again to the blondish older guy Sonny Tufts, who’s not Lloyd Bridges, trying to break a sweat. Kip and Helen appear to relax, yet Diablo still struggles because no three actors are ever on the same page in this film. Begging response, White Sands gets panicky. Meanwhile, ascension apparently accomplished (what happens to an actor when his career dies even as you are watching a film, and I’m being lamely facetious there as Victor Jory served a long time in Hollywood), Kip opens his eyes, rubs them, removes his hands from their straps, his fingers curled into arthritic claws, and massages them too. Looking at the rocket’s viewer he grunts, “What’da you know.” Helen removes her hands as well from their restraints and taking Kip’s cue does a screen test as a pain relief hand model. Kip attempts to give the appearance of a fifty-year-old energetically leaping from his cot above Helen’s and would have done a good job of it except he knocks his foot on a supposed control box that is sitting right on the cot at his feet, its electrical cord dangling down! He glances back at the box to let it know he’s aware it tried to trip him up but he won that round (you go, Kip!), and informs Laird the telephone’s on the burner.

Assistance is provided outlining your co-workers roles in your secret space fantasy

“All right you sleeping beauties, hit the deck!” Kip orders “Every man a tiger! Let’s go!”

Tiger. OK, the movie’s about Moon Cat Women so this mention of every man a tiger must mean something. An anticipation of the troubles to come but that tigers have it all over cats and the men will win in the end?

By the way, Victor Jory narrated “Tubby the Tuba”, his version of which wins hands down over Danny Kaye’s. I adore Victor Jory because of this. He can do no wrong. There is no mocking this man, I’m incapable.

Kip checks on Helen. Is she all right? Yes. She stands and fails to convincingly stretch her muscles, which almost distracts us from getting a really good look at that control box sitting on the cot behind. Then, rubbing your face in the preposterousness of it all, she advances a foot to her secretarial office desk, slides open a drawer, takes out a compact and comb and touches up her hair. Yes, she touches up her hair! as the Shakes Guy, soaked with sweat, manages to drag himself up and exclaim, “In space, we made it.”

“Oh brother, am I going to collect some bets,” says Diablo, grinning and leaping down from his cot, rubbing his tortured elderly limbs as well. Laird, having taken the command seat that he will have a hard time filling, even while spilling out all over it, protests talking to White Sands just yet; no, he wants his crew instead to prepare their reports because this is, after all a science expedition, not just a stunt! That’s right, leave ‘em hanging in White Sands wondering if the rocket’s turned into a space coffin. Typical passive-aggressive.

“Are we on course, Helen?” Laird asks.

Helen puts up her compact and without looking at her instruments, replies, “On course.”

“Are you sure?”

“Quite. You know, Laird, I’ve the strangest feeling, as though all this has happened before.”

I’ve the sneaking suspicion it wasn’t in rehearsal.

At a loss with how to cope (and they haven’t even hit the requisite meteor shower yet), Laird opts for ignoring his navigator, answering White Sands. They’ve passed the 2000 mile mark and are traveling at 7 miles a second. “Motor’s smooth, fuel consumption point 865, temperature density of atom chamber unchanged, nitrate pictate acid secure. We will report again at 1400. Over and out.”

Nitrate pictate acid? Is that what he said? Did he mean to say nitrate picrate acid? “Come again?” the folks at White Sands should be saying, but what they want is a word from the crew for the waiting world. Though the request doesn’t sit well with Laird, because this is, after all, a real science expedition, he permits the crew to take their turns giving their regards to Earth.

“All I’ve got to say is watch out for that first step, it’s a pip,” Kip jokes.

And merry prankster Helen? “Hello Alpha, we’re on our way.”

Kip and Laird again glance at Helen like what kind of drugs are you on, woman. Doug Smith, the radio operator, promises to bring Earth some green cheese. Walter Walters, the engineer, says, “We’re humming along folks, that new lubrication by the Del 5 Oil Company sure turned the trick.” Then aside to Doug, “That plug ought to make a couple of grand, huh.”

Phipps appears to have not competely grasped, at the time the movie was made, that cheese was what it was all about. An interview has him reminiscing on certain ludicrous aspects of the film and how he’d moaned they would ruin it.

How to successfully imagine a meteor strike without killing your fantasy right off

White Sands turning communication over to the brass in DC, the crew is congratulated and informed, if they didn’t know, that they’ve embarked on a space journey of over 200,000 miles (cut to the rocket ship exterior and a subliminal quarter second’s worth of I guess earth terrain before returning to the crew–what happened in the editing room there?) at 25,000 miles per hour with 10 hours of flight ahead of them. (Cut to a bottle rocket whirring outside the ship.) The engineer asks the radio operator if he has any gum and is shushed by the radio operator who wants to hear what the brass is saying about skill and courage, and something about prayer, there’s another shot of the bottle rocket and SLAM!, Laird identifying, “Something’s embedded in our rear section!” In the atom chamber! The heat radiation is going up fast.

Helen’s studied all the previous sci fi movies of the decade. “Must be a meteor!” Can they shake it?

“Maybe centrifugal force will dislodge it…”

Cut to the exterior of the rocket, which shows no sign of injury, now slowly turning very slowly turning slow slow toy rocket turning, back inside to the crew waiting and then yes, they’ve dumped the rock.

“If we’d been paying more attention to our work this might not have happened!” Laird scolds, asking the radio operator if he’d seen the meteor on the view screen.

“No sir, I was listening to the…”

“Exactly!”

No need to listen to the brass in Washington.

“For the rest of this journey we operate strictly by the book,” Laird says. “The planners of this journey have foreseen all contingencies.”

“We hope,” Kip sneers.

“We do more than hope! We work with confidence!”

M’thinks Laird protests too much.

Who’s running this ship anyway? Which is a concern that has been at the forefront of Laird’s mind and was what distracted him, one assumes, from observing the meteor himself.

Now the radio operator is unable to bring up White Sands and the Sector 5 light is flashing! The atom chamber! One of the containers of nitric acid must have broken and if it reaches the fuel it will explode! Turning on the water line doesn’t neutralize it and Laird is near panic with things not going by the book, yelling at Kip as he gets up from his seat, “What are you doing?” Yelling at him to “Come back!” as Kip, a man of action, grabs some white protection utility suit and prepares to go check the water line. “Kip!”

Alrighty then, Doug and Walter rush to help Kip on with his fire suit…in front of a set of metal lockers, those lockers for some reason leaving me about as speechless as the desks and office chairs. The thunk that’s made as they bump into the lockers, dressing Kip, resounds quite loudly, as you’re sitting there thinking you’ve never seen metal lockers used on a rocket ship set before.

Kip climbs down into the atom chamber. Way too much time is spent with Kip wandering around looking for the hatchet with which he could, as an actor or–with some radical suspension of disbelief–as an astronaut, put himself out of his misery. There is no hatchet, fortunately–fortunately, for this is Victor Jory and I love Tubby the Tuba Victor Jory with all my aching heart and soul. Locating a fire extinguisher, Kip gamely waves it around, and if this was any actor other than Victor Jory than he’d be inwardly griping about how acting in a cover-all isn’t acting all, deprived of communicating emotion, but not Tubby the Tuba who being fiercely dedicated to song and symphony will blow oom-pah-looh up until his lovely brass heart bursts a valve and off he floats to Marching Band Heaven, where he will never feel lonely again, his wind supplying the wings on the breeze upon which all the ghosts of Macy’s Thanksgiving balloons bob and bounce.

Cut to outside of rocket.

In which you have a fantasy chance to profess your undying love to your favorite office co-worker, while I instead meditate on the marvelous Tubby pining for his own pretty melody

Cut to Kip resting on Laird’s bunk, coming to, Helen seated at his feet. “Every man a tiger, let’s go!” she jokes. Kip notices the white gauze band aid on his thumb. “You must have skin like a rhinoceros, it didn’t even blister,” Helen remarks, resting her hand on his, and he rests his other hand on hers (and she rests her hand resting his hand on hers and so on and forth), replying, “We can’t all be beautiful.” A meaningful exchange of looks. (Oh, but Tubby! We are each beautiful in our own way! Isn’t that so, Tubby?!) Kip asks if Laird is sore after what he did and Helen answers that he did give them another lecture on discipline. Kip rolls on his side toward the camera.

“He’s right, you know,” Helen says. “We came only this far because we did it by the book.”

“Some things aren’t in the book,” Kip replies, leaning in to her, then back. “I’m OK, go and talk to Laird. After all, you are his girl.”

Oh, so that’s what’s going on here. But we’d suspected as much. The Tuba’s in love with the trombone’s squeeze.

“For the duration of the trip the only relation I have with Laird is a scientific one. This is no time to tamper with emotions,” Helen defends her right to be on the ship as a professional navigator who guides by intuition.

“Bet you got that from him.”

“It’s true.”

“It’s hooey!” Ferocious tiger Kip flings caution to the wind, going face to face with Helen. “You can’t turn love on and off like a faucet! Believe me baby, if I ever fell in love with you I’d chase you across the world, around the moon and through all the way stations inbetween!” That confession out of the way–now that they’re all stuck in space in one room, everyone forced to confront Tuby’s angst, full-throttle–unwrapping his thumb, Kip leans back. “Go on, beat it.”

Oh, said Tubby, every time we do a new piece, you get such pretty melodies to play, and I?–never a pretty melody.

And then reclining on his side, facing the camera, resting on his elbow, shoulders hunched, Kip turns his attention to his thumb and decides to put it in his mouth and sucks it for one-thousand, two-thousand, three-thousand, four-thousand beats, nursing that thumb in his mouth…

Which is one of the most peculiar bits of film I’ve ever seen in my life, that one right there.

It may be the most peculiar bit of film I’ve ever seen.

Which, for the sake of Tubby the Tuba, I would have to forget, except that Tubby and Victor Jory can do no wrong, no. I’m sure Victor knew exactly what he was doing and I will therefore embrace that action. Man, he’s wonderful. Digs down into the heart of the role and pulls out of a character the most extraordinary…character notes. Yeah. Character notes.

“All right hero, I’ll go talk to Laird,” Helen sniffs, “but if you don’t mind it will only be about our landing.”

Laird’s had his back turned throughout, this exchange has supposedly been between Helen and Tubby alone. But Helen now walks the four feet over to Laird and huffs, “You two make a great team, strong mind and strong back!” Laird chuckles, “I suppose.”

And the whole orchestra laughed.

Which means, I take it, that Laird is well aware of Kip’s crush on Helen and has dreamed of the moon trip as an opportunity to rub it in that Kip’s not leading man material?

The viewer screen now fixed, through the next bit of dialogue we watch the moon meander drunkenly back and forth.

The boss surrounds him or herself with people of questionable skills in case of the need for responsibility-avoiding excuses later

Laird asks Helen who Alpha is. Helen says she doesn’t remember saying anything about Alpha. Laird says it was then probably just a touch of space madness and seems not to be very worried about this. “Better pick your landing spot and start figuring.”

“I already have. We’re on course.”

Good for the captain’s girl! He knew she’d pull it together. “That’s what I call a navigator!”

“It’s a valley on the dark side of the moon.”

Yes, that kind of relationship, each one ever hoping the other will one day measure up to the most modest of expectations.

“On the dark side!? How could you possibly know anything about the dark side. All we’ve ever seen is the bright side.”

“Well the bright side just cuts across part of this valley, you can barely see it…”

“Why there? We plan to study the bright side and circle to the dark side.”

Why? Because the navigator knows best, that’s why! “Please! This is the perfect landing place. Believe me. I don’t know why I know it but I know it for sure.”

Well, whatever.

“You’re the navigator. Take a look at it anyway.”

So they land.

“I knew it was the right place!”

“Some day I’m going to ask you how,” Laird doesn’t really threaten, he and Helen knowing that their thin excuse for a relationship wouldn’t tolerate it.

“What do we do first Laird?” Kip Strong Back asks, stretching (and flexing) his muscles in Laird’s face. “Want to check the ship and do a repair job if necessary?”

“Let’s make some findings first. We’re on the moon, not in a machine shop,” Helen protests, Laird agreeing.
Kip concedes but says he’d feel better if he knew they could take off at a moment’s notice.

“Why?” Helen asks.

“My Navy background. Men in engagement, be prepared to disengaged,” or something like that, I’m not sure I’m quoting that line exactly right, not even after rewinding and listening three times. And, as it flusters me a little, I think we’ll just move along.

“Well this isn’t the Navy! Come on, Doug, help me into my suit!”

That’s odd, don’t you think, that Helen, when she’s mad at Kip, gets back at him by demanding Doug, not Laird, help her into her suit. A therapist would have something enlightening to remark on it, but I’m not a therapist. No, I’m just thinking that the script writer must have had his nose pulled through it by a fairly twisted relationship.

Next we have everyone suited up in astronaut gear, but seems they pulled from two ready-made sources as three wear matching clear bubble helmets and two others are stuck with metal cylindrical helmets. Laird tells them that once they’re out there to remember to stay in the dark side. Helen pocketing a pack of cigarettes, Kip asks her what she wants with them when there’s no oxygen, to which she replies that she feels more at home. Laughing in reply, Kip pulls out his gun. Laird, not without some extinct for self-preservation, says the gun is just as silly as there’s no life on the moon. (Ha! Not until you take your first step on it, Laird!) Kip laughs he’s just like Helen and feels more at home with it.

“Tell him not to, Laird!” One’s Great Aunt Millie is suddenly channeled now by Helen and Laird winces inward as it’s the same plaintive whine Helen uses when frustrated at him for picking up a bag of kitty litter at the corner market rather than waiting to buy it cheaper by the truckload at Costco. “Either we’re on a scientific expedition or we’re a bunch of boy scouts on an outing.”

With a gun.

And a love triangle.

“I agree with you Helen, but I guess it won’t do any harm.” If the gun accidentally fires and he is shot, well, no worries, centrifugal force can play the great surgeon. “There’s too much infantile romanticism in this crew,” Laird pouts.

Doug holds up a Los Angeles City Limits sign. “Then I guess I better leave this behind.”

“I was going to do this outside but I guess it can wait,” Walter says, taking out a box filled with letters that he’d planned to stamp on the moon, figuring they’d be worth a couple hundred dollars a piece. Oooh, that devilish, greedy Walter, always thinking about money, money, money.

In which Laird wastes one of Helen’s precious cigarettes and considering the nearest Gas ‘N Go is thousands of miles away, he deserves to die

Laird descends first to the moon set. “It works, come ahead!” he yells up.

What works? The set? His helmet? Did he imagine if it didn’t that he’d have time to yell for duct tape?

“Think of it Helen, 200,000 miles away we were, yet we knew it would be like this!” Laird tells his woman as she takes her place at his side, sweeping his arm in a broad appreciative display of the valleys of the moon.

This being my second viewing of the film, knowing what’s coming up, I’m thinking what’s up with that statement? Has he entered some strange mental symbiosis with her? Or is he trying to reassure himself that the moon goes by the book (please god, let it go by the book) and as the moon does so will Helen get her act together, decide to be satisfied with the way things are, realize that they are meant to be together as the moon is exactly as it was supposed to be–you can see how that makes sense, Helen, can’t you?–and (please, god, please) stop reminding him he’d only be a whole man if he had heroic Kip’s strong back, especially as his brain, though it’s his strong point, isn’t all that or else she wouldn’t always be lording female intuition over him.

“We’ll head that way,” Helen says.

“Any particular reason?”

“There’s a cave in the side of the crater over there. I noticed it when we were settling in.”

Kip quips there must be buried treasure there, perhaps, to which an indignant Laird replies, “Kip, would you mind it very much if we did operate by the book for a while?”

Hello? What book? A science book? “Here we are at the dividing line,” Laird points out where shadow and light meet on the moon with no shade of gray between. “May not seem like much to us but if Helen will fish me out one of those silly cigarettes, I’ll show you something.” Laird takes one of Helen’s cigarettes and carefully tosses it across the “dividing line” to the light side, where the cigarette promptly explodes in flames.

Wow!

Yeah, no kidding, wow! That’s some pretty startling stuff. I’m surprised!

And, look, there’s Helen’s cave!

“I wonder if the commander would permit an observation,” Kip approaches Laird. No need to be so formal says Laird–which Kip wasn’t being, but Laird missed it. “I only wanted to point out that from the angle the ship entered the crater it would have been impossible for Miss Salinger to spot the cave.”

“You mean she just guessed it was there.”

“If she can guess a landing spot on the dark side of the moon, I suppose she can guess a cave.”

“What are you driving at?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll guarantee you it isn’t in the book.”

Oooh, yeah, rub it in, rub it in. One dig deserving another, when Kip asks if someone shouldn’t stay behind and guard the rocket, Laird takes the opportunity to scoff that he doesn’t think anyone will take it–because, after all, the moon is uninhabited after all, right Laird?

“Exactly as I dreamt it,” Helen marvels at the cave. “Or did I? Maybe this is the dream.”

“Pretty weird,” Laird says and asks if she’s had enough, because if she’s tired they can go back. (Please?)

“No! We go on this way!”

Kip ain’t so happy with things either but everyone trots dutifully along behind Navigator Helen through the cave.

Noticing stalagmites and stalactites are everywhere, you laugh.

“Look, there’s moisture!” crew says, reading your mind. Which is too much for Laird who says it’s impossible, it only looks like water. “A scientist that doesn’t know enough to come in out of the rain,” Kip retorts and points out where there’s atmosphere there’s got to be gravity to hold it. Well, then, Laird suggests they go back and get their instruments to check (and get out of that damn cave before giant spiders appear and attempt to eat them) but Kip instead grabs Helen’s matches and lights one. Fire! Oxygen! “It’s air all right,” Doug says, pulling off his helmet. Walter speculates on how they can bottle it as Moon Mist for chronic coughs and asthma, and Laird mulls over how free and confident Kip’s hands were fetching the matches from Helen’s person.

“Well, Laird, that wasn’t in the book,” Kip digs it in. “How do you figure it?”

“That makes you very happy, I suppose.”

“Just curious.”

“The magnetic field on the dark side could exhibit a gravitational pull, a special one.” Laird coughs. “Of course, we’d have to verify it.”

“And this is a natural decompression chamber,” Walter adds.

“We’re almost at the end,” Helen informs them.

“How do you know?”

Damn men always asking her to explain things. “Well, it stands to reason. The air’s not stuffy so there must be an opening nearby.”

In case you were wondering, moon cheeze > curds and whey > Little Miss Muffett–such was the line of reasoning

They strip out of their suits but Kip resolves to bring along his gun as where there’s oxygen there’s life and where there’s life there’s death.

“There you go again, Kip,” Helen complains. “Why is it the unknown always frightens people? Why can’t we expect love and friendship instead of death?”

On cue, Helen becomes spider bait. (I was wondering when the spiders from “Queen of Outer Space” would happen by. Oh, wait, “Queen of Outer Space” came out in 1958, Cat Women preceding by five years. So from where were borrowed the spider props because you know Cat Woman’s budget didn’t allow for them.) It’s big and hairy and has a horn on top of its head. The men attack, stabbing it repeatedly, then Kip thinks to shoot it to death. But there’s more time to be wasted. Another spider pounces on hapless Helen and is again shot to death by Kip, who again misses doing away with Laird.

Helen shaken, resting for a moment after her ordeal, Kip goes back with Walter to get the space suits, and for some reason Laird and Doug advance ahead, leaving the hapless Helen alone, an arm covering her eyes so she will be unable to see if any other spiders should advance upon her. Cut to the shadow of a woman’s head against the cave wall. Behind Helen, on the rock she’s leaning against, there step into view…feet in black tights shod in a pair of scuffed, black ballet slippers. With straps. A moon dancer? Helen doesn’t notice the dancer climbing down next to her and passing her hand over the length of Helen’s arm. Moon Dancer quickly makes a circle on Helen’s palm causing an illuminated dot to appear. Helen exhibiting some sense of awareness and screaming, the mysterious dancer in scuffed ballet slippers scurries away.

“What happened?” Laird asks, racing to answer Helen’s distress.

“Oh, nothing. I just opened my eyes and missed you.”

Like if you had a woman or man friend who screamed bloody murder every time you wandered around the bend away from them, you’d imagine this was a good thing?

Laird again suggests it’s time to return to the ship. Helen balks, arguing Laird’s been listening to Kip, who’s just afraid. Ignoring the allusion to Laird’s being a coward, Doug says he doesn’t believe Kip’s afraid, instead they just don’t know what’s ahead.

“I’ll tell you then! Adventure, discovery and knowledge, isn’t that why we came?” Helen yells she will go on alone, that Laird isn’t her commander. She knows where she wants to go and she’s going there. On the verge of not telling Helen to go bake, Laird is relieved that Kip and Walter return as he may continue to practice avoidance of his avoidance. But, oh no, Kip and Walter reveal the space suits are gone! “You seem very proud of yourself Helen,” Laird says to Helen, concealing his relief that he doesn’t have to worry about arguing with her over pressing forward, which she’s demanding they do seeing as hah hah they have no other option.

“I am.”

A woman who says what’s on some other woman’s mind (as we shall soon learn) means we really shouldn’t take too much glee in Helen voicing her supposed thoughts, because as a weak-willed Earth Woman she hasn’t any, and the fact that the theater is filled with Earth Women going, “Yes!” despite the fact Helen is speaking for someone else, well, it’s kind of interesting.

In which Helen is completely taken over by the dark side and no longer responsible for any of her actions, which excites the men in the theater as a woman who will do anything for sake of manipulating them, cut free from conscience, is somehow a pleasurable fantasy

Next scene they are stepping out of a cave into an open moon valley, a small ancient city beyond resting beneath moon clouds. Helen leads them confidently on and into an open air plaza of black and white checkerboard floor, boarded right and left with tall Greco-roman style columns topped with statues of some being (couldn’t begin to tell you what). Over the plaza gazes a statue of Buddha, or so it seems, which could merit some discussion on America’s mid-twentieth century views on any religion that wasn’t Christian, which were just plain very confused views. Laird notes the bowls filled with ashes in which torches may have once burned and that the ashes are cold. “I’d say there hasn’t been a fire lit in this place in many years, perhaps centuries. An extinct civilization.”

I’d say that Laird presumes a lot upon meeting a bowl of ash, but since the crew’s space suits are stolen I’ll just ask how in the hell did he come to be chosen to lead this mission, which is the same thing on the rest of the crew’s mind.

“Took some form of intelligence to steal those space suits.”

“Course it did,” Helen says, “and a very high one to build a place like this.”

Kip observes she seems to know all about it. “What do they look like?” he demands, but Doug interrupts, calling them over to a torch which seems to have a piece of charcoal. Helen’s matches, the ones she said she didn’t feel at home without, spark the flame.

“Helen, I asked you a question. You seemed to know this place was here. What else do you know?”

Helen argues that she knows nothing and must have dreamt it, to which Kip effectively says posh. Laird argues for Helen’s honor–and despite Lair arguing for Helen, when she’s peeved what does she do again but shun Laird and go for the radio operator. “Come on, Doug, let’s look around,” Helen says, surly, and he happily follows. At the plaza’s edge she steps back against a pillar and watches as a woman in black leotard and ballet slippers, dark hair pulled back in a low bun, leaps upon Doug. They struggle. Helen takes the chance to sneak away. “Ow!” Doug yells, Cat Woman going for his neck, and she flees as the rest of the men run over. Doug says he didn’t see what jumped him but he did see Helen just stand against the pillar watching.

Bad Helen.

Oh, very bad Helen.

The flame left unattended, a figure advances to the bowl, crosses its hands in the flame and causes it to disappear, the figure then also going poof. The men run to see and are tackled by women who fail to get the gun from Kip and run off. Doug restrains one, but as the men gather around to ogle her, she too disappears. Kip says they’ll give Helen one hour to return then leave without her.

Laird challenges, “I’m still in command here, Kip.”

“That’s right, Laird, if you order us to separate and go searching for Helen, we will,” Kip challenges back.

“No, we’ll wait,” Laird demures.

Cut to Helen passing through a curtain and announcing, “I’m here, Alpha.”

Cut to Alpha in dramatic cat’s eye make-up, black leotard and some kind of silvery (in black and white) pectoral necklace. “It’s been a long journey, Helen,” she smiles. “Welcome to the moon.” She introduces Helen to her second-in-command, Beta, and Lambda, each of the women with dark hair in the same style, each clothed in the same outfit of black leotard, tights, ballet slippers and necklace.

Helen rubs her temples. She’s confused (and experiencing nicotine withdrawal). There’s so much she doesn’t understand. As she is now one of them, however, she’s told she can ask any question what she wants.

How does she understand their language? Well, because they don’t need language, they can project their thoughts long distances. Some day they will teach her but in the meanwhile will speak her tongue.

“Why me and not the others?” Helen asks.

Beta scorns, “We have no use for…men.”

A quick bit of damage control in order, Alpha explains, “What Beta means is we have no contact or control over them as we do among ourselves. It seemed rather difficult to get a crew entirely composed of women. We decided to concentrate on you.”

In other words, because you, Earth Woman, have even less will power than By-the-Book Laird, but Helen seems not bothered in the least she’s just been called a hollow shell of a person,

So why didn’t they go to earth, with all their wisdom? Because the ancestors made a fatal error upon discovering the atmosphere on the moon was beginning to disappear. They decided to conserve oxygen. Maximum energy reduction. Planned genocide to reduce population. “Then when we discovered we were only postponing the inevitable, it was too late. Our only hope was that a spaceship would come to us.”

The plan is that the spaceship will take Alpha, Beta and Lambda back to Earth.

“But my knowledge is limited only to navigation,” Helen says, beginning to understand. “We can run a ship without…them?”

“They will teach us how.”

“But you said you had no control over them.”

Beta smiles. “Show us their weak points. We’ll take care of the rest.”

“Strange. I should care what happens to them, and yet I don’t.”

“You see, we don’t care and you are one of us.”

The confused mess of suggestive underpinnings is not so much that the Cat Women are all lesbians but that lesbians have seized control, killed off all the men, and have the psychic will power to seize the minds of all females and absorb them into their vengeful, power hungry, man-loathing sisterhood, and that power hungry, man-loathing lesbians are more than glad to manipulate men sexually in order to dominate them, and having dominated, kill them, because sex is death after all. Your basic women in chains scenario and the moon is a psychic prison planet.

A lotus for every man, except Kip, who brought a pocketful of K-rations (yum)

Back to the men waiting. It’s been one hour, Laird says, and that Kip was wrong. But Kip hears something and leads them into a room in which Helen appears with the Cat Women bearing food. Helen reprimands Kip for his gun, telling him it was the weapon that frightened the Cat Women and that she has promised them he’ll put it away. The weapon representing Kip’s free male will, he argues no, and that if the Cat Women only mean well they’ll return the suits now. The women promise to return the suits, but that it will be in the morning, and Kip storms off, refusing their orgy of food and female wiles.

“Pay no attention to him. He’s only the co-pilot,” Helen says.

Doug, the innocent, is paired off with Lambda, while Diablo gets Beta for his lunchmate. Doug says he wonders what people on Earth would think if they knew he was eating with a beautiful woman.

Lambda asks, “Do you have a special earth girl?”

“No. not special. What about you?” And, by the way, where are the men folk? Lambda reveals he’s the first man she’s seen, that the others died off when she was a child.

“Then it’s a lucky thing we came along. I mean, so that you’d know what a man looks like. I mean, I’m sorry about your men…”

Yes, Doug, we know what you mean.

Over on the sidelines, a disgusted Kip chews his rations meal, looking on, crumbles up the wrapper and tosses it. He’s been around the block and knows better than to partake of the lotus.

Alpha picks Laird’s brain on how you pilot a rocket ship, but Laird isn’t revealing how the automatic pilot is set as it’s confidential information. Laird is curious how Lambda is able to come and go so munchkin quickly and Alpha replies that if he tells her about the automatic pilot then she’ll tell him how they’ve managed full mastery of their bodies and minds. But no deal for Laird, at least not for the moment, so she offers him wine.

And Kip, on the sidelines, looks on.

Walter, the opportunist, asks for the bracelet that Beta wears and observes that at home it’s called a slave bracelet. Having identified Walter’s weak point, Beta tells him gold is considered a common metal on the moon and that there is a cave filled with it nearby. She proposes that she’ll show him the cave and return the space suits if he takes her on the ship. He says he’ll consider it, as long as she tells no one else about the gold.

Meanwhile, Doug is telling his Moon Girl all about Saturday night dating rituals back home. She says she likes best driving down to the beach, stretching out on the sand, “And, maybe, what you call a Coke.” (And that’s what you called a product plug in the 50’s.)

That’s what Doug likes best, too. As long as it’s with the right girl.

“To the everlasting friendship of our peoples,” Alpha toasts, then proposes all part and rest for the night.

In which the office worker is given a guide for imagining a romantic encounter with the office worker who stubbornly resists any notion of a mutual attraction, and he or she plays it out in their head for the next three months, because the Women In Chains scenario is probably most appealing to those who haven’t a chance of scoring

The women leave and Laird scolds Kip for wanting to blunder ahead and start a war. Kip isn’t interested, he just wants to figure out which two of them are going to stand watch first that night. And, by the way, where is Walt? When Doug says he was last seen leaving with Beta, Helen laughs over his being a fast worker, but Kip storms off to look for him saying it’s not funny. A few seconds’ search not unearthing Walt, Kip returns, upset, but Laird says he doesn’t believe Walt is in any danger.

Is he or isn’t he, Kip asks Helen. She retorts Kip’s just looking for an argument, which he says he is and would she like to step into his office. Handing Doug his gun, Kip takes Helen to a spot where he can have it out with her, absent Laird. You and I both know where this heading and if Laird doesn’t, then he deserves what he gets (or doesn’t deserve what he doesn’t get).

Exiting outside, Kip asks Helen which side she’s on, saying he’s convinced she led them deliberately into the situation. He grabs her arms. “Look Helen I have a very high regard for you,” he romances her. “You’re smart, you have courage. And you’re all woman. And if it hadn’t been for Laird I would have tried to make it you and me a long time ago.”

“Flattery will get you no place.”

Kip grasps Helen’s hand, restraining her. She yells for him to take his paws off her. He says not until she levels with him. Helen collapses in tears on his shoulder. “Don’t let go, Kit,” she sobs. “Danger!” They want to kill him and take the spaceship, she tells him, and that they’re able to control her. “Even with Laird, I liked you best but Laird knew more and they wanted me with him.”

“They don’t control you now.”

No.

Hang on, hold on tight talk. Talk of how he’s dog-gone right he will. Big aggressive kiss finally, and it’s obvious that Kip is a one woman man and that when they get home they’ll settle down and raise little Tubbys on a diet of Cream of Mushroom Soup over Cold War. As they embrace, Helen eyes her palm and the white circle of light on it. She asks Kip not to tell Laird, let her be the one to figure out how to tell him as she doesn’t want to hurt Man Brain’s feelings that she’s opted for the Strong Back.

Sure, sure, Kip says, but grasps her as she goes and asks how do the Cat Women intend to play their hand.

Not for a few days.

And Walt? Is Walt all right?

Boys will be boys.

Helen asks to go in, saying she’s exhausted. Kip, so confident that he’s skipped further wooing and honeymoon, moving directly to the “Have a nice day at work, honey” stage, plants a big kiss on her cheek. “Sleep well, Helen.” In truth, he looks at her like, “Must I kiss you again?”, takes a reading and realizes she’s not too hot on the idea either, but feels compelled to cement for the audience that a bond has been made. Helen rushes off leaving him looking kind of meaningfully after her, his hand extended, wistful, holding empty air or maybe a memory, whichever works best for you.

Laird stepping now outside asks, “Well?”

Hem haw. “You were right, Laird. She’s just a fine girl.”

She is, Laird proudly concedes. He does admit there are a lot of things he doesn’t understand, “But you can be sure there’s a perfectly valid, scientific reason for all of them. These people are far ahead of us in many things.”

“Not as far as they think.”

“What do you mean?”

Oh, nothing. Kip suggests they get to sleep.

Which co-worker would you feel good about killing off in your fantasy life? Cat Women of the Moon opt for Diablo just in case (I guess) their plan doesn’t work out as they don’t want hordes of pioneers following Gold Diggers to the moon and consuming all the natural resources which we’ve yet to see

Cut to the spaceship where Walt and Beta, in space suits, huddle talking romance. “In other words,” she says, “this controls this, in a ratio of six to one.” Yes, that controls that. She runs briefly through again what she’s learned. “The speed control retarder. The stabilizer. And the cut-off.”

Walt laughs. “You’re too smart for me, baby. I like ‘em stupid.”

Beta laughs. “Why don’t you stay on the moon and let me do your job?”

Walt says if there’s as much gold as she says there is, he’ll do only one more trip and then she can have his job.

Fade to the…Dance of the Cat Women scene…which I can’t begin to describe but seems to be a fairly new cultural rite for which they’ve failed yet to identify any purpose. Lured by the flute, Doug awakes and goes to see what’s happening.

Kip now wakes up and sees that Doug is gone, hears the flute, and exits.

Doug advances upon the women dancing, upon Lambda. She faces him with pleading eyes. They kiss. Kip comes upon them as they sneak off the porch. He returns to the sleeping quarters and as he and Helen are nice and comfy confidey cozy now, he rouses her to share that he feels like he’s chaperoning a fraternity dance, Doug just having gone off with Lambda.

“Lambda! Well, that’s bad Kip,” Helen says. “She’s the dangerous one. You better go after them, there may have been a change in plan.”

Away goes trusting, trusty Kip.

Left alone with Laird, Helen stands and advances on him, he resting like some Roman Caesar oblivious to slaughter descending. Helen bends down over him…

Cut to Walt in the cave of told. Gold, gold! Beta stabs him in the back. Slowly. Real slow. That must be some powerful sharp knife with which she’s just stabbed him. And yes I know I spoiled things for you by revealing Diablo would be offed, but so did the movie’s original trailer. Everyone entering the theater knew Diablo wouldn’t make it back to Earth and have been waiting for this sorry scene.

Cut to Kip outside looking for Doug and Doug and Lambda looking at the scenery then embracing. Lambda urges Doug to go away quickly, in order to save himself from her, offering him a line that few men could resist. “Because I love you Doug, yet I must kill you.” When he insists he’s not afraid she tells him the survival of her people is at stake and in a few years the underground world will be as dead as the bright side of the moon. Doug promises to return but Lambda asks how can they be s