GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #701: THE NOT-SEE PARTY

 Ever see Tusk? A lot of people hate it, but I fucking loved it. I love a lot of Kevin Smith's more unusual movies. I even loved Yoga Hosers. What, I hear you ask, about Jersey Girl? Eh, let's not get too crazy. Besides, I said "unusual."

(Stop before you bring up Cop Out. See previous answer.)

Anyway, in Tusk, Justin Long and Haley Joel Osment play podcasters, and their show is the Not-See Party Podcast. Which, naturally, gets Long in trouble when he tries to get into Canada. "What do you mean, the Nazi Party?" Guess it's not so funny now, eh?

When I first started taking calls at my job, I had to find my voice, my script, my style. When someone calls in wanting their windshield repaired over replaced, I have to qualify them. Depending on whether it's a chip or a crack, I would ask them, "Would you be able to put a quarter/credit card over it and not see the damage?"

I didn't really think about it until I realized how it sounded to others, and then I wondered how the hell no one ever stepped in and said, hey, don't ask the question that way.

I finally figured it out. Now I ask, "Would you be able to put a quarter/credit card over it and not be able to see the damage?" It sounds a lot better and not very likely to get me into trouble. Holy fuck, what if someone thought I was speaking in code? "The way he said 'not see' implies that this company is a safe place for Nazis." Kind of like the Klan used to speak in code to assure each other that they were in like-minded company.

Honestly it still feels weird when I say it, but that's only because I know how I got to that place and why. Just thought it was a strange thing that a lot of people don't really think about otherwise. Your mileage may vary.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #618: NAZI PUNKS (AND ALL NAZIS, REALLY) FUCK OFF

American Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden circa WWII

 

Did you know that a significant amount of Americans supported Hitler during the WWII era? They kind of leave that out of schoolbooks because, and I know this sounds strange, but once upon a time almost everyone agreed that Nazis are bad, and they didn't want kids reading about how a lot of the US actually supported Hitler back then. It really shouldn't come as a surprise, considering two of the most famous Americans at the time, Walt Disney and Henry Ford, were not just fans of Hitler but were also his friends.

A while back I used to work at the Elmhurst Public Library, and I did something there that I used to think about often because I acted against my ethics this one time. I believe that people should read whatever they want to because I used to think that people who read were smarter than most. I never had any illusions about Nazis disappearing. My illusion was that they were a fringe society far from the mainstream.

Here's what I did. I was working the drive thru window late on a Friday night when I heard someone shove a bunch of books into the book drop. It was my duty to check those in, so I went into that room and discovered that they weren't library books. They were propaganda pamphlets, some book-sized. And there were a lot of them. A sticky note said they were a donation.

I didn't know what they were yet, so I eagerly took them back to my desk to look them over. Once I saw that they were celebrations of Nazism and denigrations of who they deemed as inferior people, my enthusiasm deflated. Ordinarily I would put these by the donations shelf, but I took them home instead. I doubted that they would have wound up in circulation. We have Mein Kampf in the collection, but that's an historical document. These pamphlets were attempts to convince people that Hitler had it right. Still, I didn't want to risk it.

Why did I take them home instead of throwing them out? I thought I'd read them to maybe understand the kind of horseshit these dickheads have in their heads to be spouting such garbage. I never got around to it, though. I put them in my closet, and there they stayed until recently, while I was packing up my things.

I decided then that I didn't need to understand them. Fuck 'em.

I'd taken it upon myself to make sure those books didn't wind up in the hands of impressionable readers, which kind of sounds like banning books, something I'm absolutely against. That's why it bothered me over the years. It no longer bothers me, though. And maybe that makes me a hypocrite, but fuck Nazis.

Because since I took those books I've learned that Nazis aren't just fringe. They're mainstream. Back when Trump was running in 2016 and all these cocksuckers came pouring out of the woodwork? That was a surprise. And guess what: it's no longer obvious to society as a whole that Nazis are bad.

I threw out those shit rags on a rainy day, and I'm certain that they've reverted to the cheap pulp they were made from. I'm glad no one else got to read them because people are stupider than even I thought, and that is saying a fucking lot. If I stopped even one person from nodding along while reading this tripe from saying, "Huh, Hitler isn't so bad after all," then it was worth it. Because I made the world a better place.

A lot of book banners seem to be of the same frame of mind. "I'm making the world a better place by making sure children don't read whatever the fuck I don't want them to read." Here's the difference: the books they're after aren't promoting the idea of killing "inferior" people en masse. To Kill a Mockingbird dares to suggest that maybe, just maybe, a Black man is a person, too. For example. Or The Great Gatsby hints that rich people are decadent and depraved and might just be horrible and untrustworthy people. Don't get me started on One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

So yeah. I did the right thing. I will sleep like a baby tonight. And one more thing: Nazis (punks, surfers, whatever their flavor) need to fuck off.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #311: THE THREE GARTH ENNIS BOOKS I MISSED

 Earlier today I talked about how difficult it was for an author I love to publish something and get past me. I remember earlier this year finally having money again after not working since Jan. 3, so I went to get my comics from my guy. Garth Ennis is my favorite comics writer of all time. So I figured I'd have a few new books from him.

Nope. But I did have the new series about The Boys, which was called Dear Becky. It's fucking great. Read it, even if you're not into the Prime series. It's the perfect level of insanity and melancholy.

But here's the thing: Ennis had three other books that came out this year. It slipped past me and my guy. In total, we're talking about 15 single issues that none of us knew about. I picked up the trades, and on Wednesday, I'm going to tell my guy about them. He loves Ennis, but his brother really, really loves Ennis's war books. They're all great, but I suspect I know why no one knows about them.

They are not technically part of War Stories. But they are war stories. I want to talk about them, but there are spoilers. So don't read this unless you already read the three books in question: The Stringbags, Out of the Blue and Sara.

I didn't expect much from The Stringbags, but I think this one made me cry the most. I know a lot about WWII, but I never heard about these guys. The technical name for their planes were Swordfish. They were all UK pilots, navigators and rear gunners. The problem is, they were stuck with these antique planes that were made more from cloth than anything else. They were just heavy enough to haul whatever they had to haul. In this case, it was torpedoes. You had to be either very brave or very insane to fly these fucking things. And here we have Archie, Ollie and Pops, the crew of their Swordfish. Archie is very serious and very good at his job. Ollie is certifiably insane and brave and relies on humor to get through the overwhelming violence they have to deal with. Pops is the vet who is equal measures of courage and humor but is also the guy who tries to talk sense into everyone else, even when they are on the ground. (And yes, he usually buys the drinks.) While these guys are fictional, they have very real counterparts, and for some crazy reason, the UK threw these lunatics at the fucking Bismarck. For real. The fiction story is told here, but it essentially really happened.

And then there was their last mission. The UK, knowing fully that any Swordfish they sent against the Germans in this situation would absolutely 100% die, sent them against the Germans. And all of them except for 5 died. They literally flew into Nazi guns just to drop their torpedoes and die. The UK fighters that backed them up later talked about the horror of having to watch these men literally and horribly die slow fiery deaths. For nothing. Hitler's stupid plan of running his battleships through the English Channel to German ports actually succeeded. But fuck him. The real men of the German army were shocked by the sheer bravery of these Englishmen. And they would give them praise long after these Englishmen died at their hands.

The last scene of the book is when Archie suddenly wakes up after being brutally shot. He keeps talking to Ollie and Pops as he tries to finish his mission before he dies. He says, "Chaps, we're almost there." Having no idea that Ollie and Pops are riddled with bullets and dead behind him.

I have tears running down my cheeks right now.

Out of the Blue. While not a War Story, it takes a character from the Avatar War Story books. Coincidentally named Archie, he's a UK pilot who was shot down in Russia and told his mates that he would go through Hell because there is a woman back home. Now he is married to that woman, and he's coming back to the UK but because of some cock up, while landing he accidentally crashes into two other British fighters and kills them all. It is absolutely not his fault, but the CO (do the UK call their commanding officers COs?) 100% blames him and sticks him with the worst ship in the fleet, the Bitch with a T. No matter how well planned things are with this plane, it always fucks up at least something vital during a mission. No one's fault. Sometimes tech just does that to you. Archie is also stuck with this navigator who is supposed to suck, but it turns out that he's from India, and the CO doesn't like him because he's not white. Naturally, Archie and Ranjaram make good friends and good shipmates. But the CO still wants to make things difficult for Archie, so he does his level best to fuck Archie's wife. And Archie, not being confident in his social skills (but being a ruthless fucking captain when he's going after Nazis to the point where Ranjaram suggests he might be schizo) almost fucks his marriage up.

But because it's an Ennis story, and I highly suspect that Ennis is a secret not-so-secret romantic, he figures it out. Just in time, as it turns out, since she's "up the duff" with his child.

Don't get high hopes. Remember, Ennis is great at war tragedy stories. This ends no differently than you expect. There is some hope, but chances are, Archie might have survived. Ranjaram . . . maybe not so much. You'll have to look at that last panel and decide for yourself.

Of all three books, I felt I was most prepared for Sara. Ennis is a huge fan of the female Russian participation in WWII. If you doubt me, read his story about the Night Witches. It's more or less true, and it's a great fucking story. This time he highlights the great female Russian snipers. I love reading their stories. Look this shit up. Don't just trust me. If you don't read about this, you might not believe it.

Sara is about a group of Russian female snipers after a Nazi supersniper. Of all three, I thought I knew how this would go best. I was fucking wrong. This might be the most tragic, yet the most heroic of the bunch. Because Sara is the Russian version of the supersniper. And she goes off on her own to get this fucking guy, mostly to save her sisters from having to do it themselves.

And there's the tragic ending. She finds him, but she only gets his second. And the actual guy shoots her mortally. And as she's dying, she has this vision of her sisters getting old and having families and knowing it's all just bullshit. But! She knows this guy will want to see the Russian woman who bagged 300 of his Nazi brothers. So as she's dying, she turns over and puts a live grenade under her, knowing that this guy will turn her onto her back. And there he is, approaching in the background in the final panel of the book,

WWII stories have a special place in my heart. Everyone seems to believe that this was the one good war in the scope of the world. And obviously I hate Nazis almost as much as Indiana Jones. I look back on stories I wrote as a kid, some when I was as young as five years old, and some of them had Nazis as the worst villains ever, so this concept is nothing new to me.

But goddammit,. Garth Ennis writes the best war stories. Dear Billy is probably my favorite (it's a Battlefields arc), but he never fails to nail me through the fucking heart.