GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #988: THE BIG MOVE (the eye of the tornado)

 Today was my day off, so I got used to driving from my new home to Elmhurst for my usual medical appointments. It was a rough drive, so I can only assume my trip to work tomorrow will suck badly. I got a few things done while I was up there, but it was nice to come back to a place where I could relax a bit. I ate lunch and watched the end of Route 66. You'd think a show named after Route 66 would happen, more or less, on Route 66, but the show ended in Florida. There was a moment where Tod and Linc are doing what feels like a Dwight Schrute bit, dressed in disguise. It's ridiculous. But it's a show I started watching to help get through the early days of a lack of booze. It felt good to finish it.

On the way back to Joliet, I drove to my new home by memory for the first time. I did pretty well, I think. The trick will be getting back to I-55 tomorrow morning.

I got to sort through some of my stuff, trying to figure out what I need and what I can store for now. I think I'm going to just get paper plates and Solo cups and pack my dishes and glasses for now. I might pack up my pans and stuff, too. The books stay for now. Later the rest of my books are going to be in the garage here, but that's for much later, when I'm no longer in the eye of the tornado. So I'll need a bunch of books to keep me company for the near future.

I had to figure out which of my clothes were dirty and clean so I can figure out laundry for Sunday. This is a fun Goodnight, Fuckers. I think I may be boring the shit out of myself for now. But I needed the moment to calm my mind. My life has been in utter chaos for a while now, and I'm glad I can catch my breath for a bit.

Plus: I got to get through a few days without hearing jack shit about Trump or Musk or any of the usual gang of idiots. That was good for my soul. Tomorrow I'm sure I'll be inundated again, and regular programing will resume. Oh, and since I missed a night this week due to illness, I'll do one on Saturday.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #970: INSPIRATIONAL FLAMES

 A while back I watched an episode of Route 66 in which one of the characters, not the boys but one of the guest stars, is talking about art and what it's like to create.

I tried my best to find which episode it was, but I'd watched it a while ago (Buz was still on the show!). I really hoped to get a clip from this one, but I just can't find it, and while I used to be good at Google, Google is no longer good at Google. Lost, it shall remain. I really hope I'm remembering the episode well enough, because the scrawl in my notebook doesn't have a lot of info.

Anyway, the character compares art to Moses seeing the burning bush in the Bible. At first I took it to mean that, once you experience a work of art that thrills you, whether it's a novel or a painting or a song or whatever, it gives you much the same sensation a prophet seeing a miracle would feel. And it's true. I usually liken it to my head blooming like a rose, but this is a pretty good analogy. Think about all the great art you've experienced and how it was so powerful it changed you, maybe even changed your perception of the world around you. Art is powerful stuff. No wonder the MAGAs are doing their best to destroy it.

But the more I thought about it, the more I think she meant the creation of art, and that analogy is even better. What does a prophet who has seen a burning bush do? They tell everyone about it. Artists have seen the burning bush. Now they must create work that expresses that feeling.

I've had revelatory ideas that stunned me many times over the course of my life. Believe it or not, Dong of Frankenstein was one of those ideas. (Don't judge my muse!) It makes a current run through my body, and I stiffen as the idea works its way through my brain. And then, unfortunately for a lot of people, I write about my vision until I have a book.

Writing is my only talent. The other artforms elude me. My drawings suck, I can't play any instrument more complicated than the mouth harp or cowbell (and I still have trouble with the cowbell), I'm no painter, don't even ask me about sculpting, etc. But my experience as a writer with the burning bush matches up easily with the character's statement. I have no choice but to believe that all the other arts and artists are the same way. It doesn't make sense otherwise.

And that brings me to AI. I used to say that, sure, AI can make art just like the Infinite Monkey Theorem can produce the complete works of Shakespeare. Now I'm not so sure. Can AI ever experience the burning bush?

Exactly.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #845: IMMORTALITY

"Most Vanquished, Most Victorious"

 

I got to have a day off of work today thanks to the holiday. So I got to experience a weekend again. Time off without needing to go to the ER. Etc. It means I also got to watch Route 66 two days in a row.

I have no kids. Probably. Every once in a while someone asks me about how I'm going to achieve immortality. "I won't?" I usually say. Because there is no such thing. But people seem to be insistent that reproduction is a means of immortality. It doesn't make sense to me, but okay.

It wasn't until I watched this episode of Route 66 with Royal Dano on it that I finally felt vindicated. Finally! Someone else who thinks the same thing!

There's this guy whose son has died. But his son impregnated a Native American woman before he died. This guy hates his son's wife simply because of her race, which makes things a little weird when he gets super protective about the child she's going to birth. He couldn't possibly care less about her, but his grandchild? That kid is going to be raised as one of his family because family is more important than anything else. (Unless one marries into the family, I guess.)

Royal Dano plays a doctor who finally gets sick of the whole fucking thing. He shouts at the guy, "You think that's your immortality? Generations forget!"

Ain't that the fucking truth. I'm a good case in point because I don't know anything about my family before the lives of my grandparents. I've never met a single great-grandparent, although I came close to meeting Grandma's mom. She died a few months before I was born. My second cousin lucked out and met Grandma and Gramps when they were still alive. He will have memories of his great-grandparents. But in all honesty, can anyone say that they knew anyone beyond their great-grandparents? It would be a very fucked up situation if they did.

Regardless, by that logic, if I had kids, and they had kids, and their kids had kids, would those kids know a single fucking thing about me? I'll bet they would have my brown eyes. Because they were Mom's. And Gramps's before her. All my Illinois siblings have the same eyes. I'll bet they also have a birthmark on the bottom of one of their feet. We all have it. Sometimes it's on the left foot, sometimes the right, but we all have it. They might even have other traits of mine.

But is that immortality? Not just no but fuck no.

There is one exception: celebrities or people who are otherwise famous. I would hesitate to call Abraham Lincoln, for example, a celebrity. But how many people reading this can say that about themselves?

Exactly. I'll bet Brad Pitt's great-great-great grandkids will boast about being his descendants. But my great-great-great grandkids? Right.

It makes a little more sense that one would live as long as the final person who remembers one. I get that. But that's still not immortality. But if I have any advice to give you tonight, it's this: be the reason that someone grows old and rants and raves at the nursing home staff so long that they have to wonder what the fuck made them this way.

Just kidding. Don't do that.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #797: ROUTE 66

 

If you've ever had a conversation with me about David Morrell, you'll know that I just can't be silenced on how awesome an author he is. I literally don't know when to shut up. I've been a fan since I read First Blood in high school. As an author, I found his book, The Successful Novelist, to be indispensable.

In that book he talks about what got him into writing in the first place: an American show from the 'Sixties called Route 66, written by a guy with an odd name: Stirling Silliphant. The stories were so good that Morrell felt inspired to write his own stories.

When my disability began I needed to find something to watch that I was OK with passing out in the middle of because I was on a lot of heavy drugs. I wanted to find Combat! because it sounds like Band of Brothers decades beforehand, and I like that kind of storytelling. PLEX supposedly has Combat!, so I downloaded the app and found the show. Motherfucker, it won't play in my area. Goddammit.

But PLEX also had Route 66. Well. Why not find out if it's that good?

Not every episode is great, but many of them are fantastic. The first episode is the best, though.

The idea is, two young men drive around in an awesome car, seeing America. There's just something kind of iconic about that. The Winchesters in the Impala. Dr. Gonzo and his attorney in the shark. And even, in a much different way, Doc Brown and Marty McFly in the DeLorean.

Tod Stiles is a student at Yale when his dad dies. Tod can't afford tuition anymore, so he drops out. The one thing his dad leaves him is a pretty sweet Corvette. His buddy Buz Murdock is very different from him. He's an orphan who grew up in Hell's Kitchen. Give him a book, and he'd probably use it to bludgeon someone. Together they decide to get in the Corvette and see America. Put down roots if they find a place they like enough. It's episodic, but unlike a lot of shows back then, they do refer back to previous episodes. Also unlike other shows, this one was shot on location, not a set. So you can see their progress as they travel around the country. Although I'm 99% sure that Route 66 doesn't actually go down to Florida . . .

They usually get a job in each new locale to fund their journey to the next stop. Adventures ensue. Like in that first episode. In an attempt to find a shortcut to Biloxi (also not a place Route 66 goes to), the boys find themselves in a backwoods small town where everyone treats them like assholes. Of course the townsfolk are hiding a deadly secret that the boys must discover in order to get out of town alive. And Buz gets to kick the shit out of George Kennedy! He also gets to defenestrate someone else later on!

What I really like about the show is that it *is* shot on location, so you get to see the real America as it was back in 1960, not some set on a studio backlot. I also like seeing a lot of actors from the westerns back then in modern garb and driving cars. The only other show from back then I got that from was The Twilight Zone.

But these are snapshots of an America that no longer exists. The backwoods towns are fewer and fewer as corporate America's reach stretches further and further. The only place I've seen on the show so far that is actually the same is Bourbon Street. Probably smells the same, too.

It's all too horrifying thinking about all those places now sporting a Starbucks or worse, a Chick-fil-A. It's definitely not for the better. Sure, it was a more dangerous America, but great beauty often comes with danger.

It's a good show. I watch it when I eat lunch. It's free on PLEX, but it's with commercials, and they don't put the commercials where they belong. They use a stupid algorithm for that, I guess because no one wanted to actually watch the show. Because of that, sometimes the audio is off, so it gives you the feeling of watching something that was dubbed. But these are minor annoyances. Plus there are great guest stars! Like:

Leslie "Don't Call Me Shirley" Nielsen!

And an occasional movie star like:

Lee "Woody Biggs" Marvin!

So yeah, give it a shot. I'm almost halfway through the first season.