Forrest Ackerman Transcends This Dimension

I was saddened to read in the L.A. Times today of Forrest "Forry" J. Ackerman's death .
The world of science fiction and popular culture has lost one its truest and dearest friends. Forry was one the earliest science fiction fans, became editor of fanzines, and then the "Famous Monster of Filmland." He was also a science fiction writer in his own right and creator of Vampirella. I read that he had also been an author of lesbian romance stories for the magazine "Vice Versa": my respect for him is now near boundless. One of my regrets is that I never toured his mansion to see his collection of horror and science fiction memorabilia. The tour was free, and part of his collection is now now displayed, not for free, in Paul Allen's Science Fiction Museum within the Experience Museum Project. (I hold no regrets for never visiting Allen's Science Fiction Museum.) Forry is the prototype for every fanboy today, and what we all remember about him is that in his magazine, it was always about the monsters.

Captain America Lives

Rather, Joe Simon, the co-creator of Captain America lives and will address the New York Comics Con this weekend (see the NY Times).

I used to love Jack Kirby's color drenched art work because Captain America almost seemed to jump out of the pulp pages. The modern version of Captain America/Steve Rogers was too psychologically self involved for my my pre-teen sensibilities. What I really enjoyed were the stories that had Captain American back in Word War II fighting the Nazis. Notice the cover of the first Captain America: the date is March. March, 1940, and not 1942. In fact, the comic was on sale a year before Pearl Harbor. A case of premature anti-fascism, as the FBI might have put it, but certainly indicative of how pop culture would eventually triumph.

(Image copyright held by Marvel Comics.)

The Cross of Gold

On Good Friday my mind wandered down a trail of word associations. Eventually I found myself thinking about William Jennings Bryan, once a widely respected political figure, who in his three unsuccessful attempts to become president invented the modern presidential campaign. His great tragedy was that he wasn't nominated by the Democrats in 1912 when Teddy Roosevelt transformed himself into an independent progressive and split the Republican party. Woodrow Wilson appointed Bryan Secretary of State, but Bryan later resigned as a means to protest Wilson placing the country on a path to war. Finally Bryan's career and life ended in ignominy in 1925 after he prosecuted John Scopes for teaching evolution. Thanks to the play and movie, "Inherit the Wind," Bryan is remembered, if he is at all, as the archetype of the hide-bound, Bible waving fundamentalist. Such a view is simplistic and does not take into account Bryan's populism, his opposition to war and imperialism, and his undeniable appeal to a mass political party.

I found Bryan's recording of his famous "Cross of Gold" speech, and I can't help but wonder what Bryan would've done with Podcasts and Youtube. I'm sure Bryan would've taken advantage of the new media, but the contents of his speech could well baffle a modern audience accustomed to pop culture references.

The "Cross of Gold" speech rouses the listener to defend the Free Silver Democrats and their bi-metallic monetary system. Essentially Bryan advocated an expansion of the money supply without a national bank through the introduction of more silver. The resulting inflation, as he and the audience full well knew, would favor the farmers holding mortgages. Bryan sang praises to the laborers in factories and farm, and he also expected his listener to know who the players of the French Revolution were and the importance of the Catiline conspiracy. Bryan even defended the income tax. It would be strange today to have a presidential candidate speak in favor of inflation and taxes while assuming his audience had a firm grasp of classical and early-modern history. Bryan framed his speech in Marxist rhetoric and Christian symbolism and concluded it by saying:

"Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests, and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold."

Though undeniably powerful in its emotional eloquence, I still have no idea what in the world Bryan meant, because the supply of silver was still going to be pegged to the supply of gold.

Cause and Effect

NY Times editorial March 10, 2008: "Criminal behavior partly explains the size of the prison population, but incarceration rates have continued to rise while crime rates have fallen. " ("Prison Nation") So if incarceration rates get lower, would crime rates rise?

Here is an item from the West Seattle Blog that would suggest such a likelihood:

"NOT JUST STOLEN - STOLEN FROM POLICE: Just after 8 o’clock last
night, at 10th SW and Trenton, an officer ran a routine check on the license
plate of an SUV. It came back as stolen from the Port of Seattle Police
Department. Needless to say, the officer promptly pulled over the SUV. The
29-year-old driver wouldn’t give his name, but two other officers recognized him
— because they had arrested him within the past two weeks … for auto theft. His
two passengers were allowed to go, but he was taken to the King County Jail. The
jail register shows he’s still there, and it’s his fifth time there in the past
seven months."

Dr. Theodore Dalrymple, a retired prison doctor, has this to say

"I have never understood the liberal assumption that if there
were justice in the world, there would be fewer rather than more prisoners."
("Policeman in
Wonderland")

National Review of Science Fiction

The many obits on William F. Buckley, Jr. fail to mention what his greatest accomplishment might have been: his magazine, the "National Review" had a real column devoted to reviewing recent works of science fiction. The reviewer was no less than Ted Sturgeon. Back then this was amazing and astounding, almost a fantasy fulfillment, almost as if I was transported to a fantastic world of tomorrow.

Science fiction was now acknowledged in the magazine of William F. Buckley, the erudite man of letters and rapier witted host of "Firing Line." I used to search for new copies of the "National Review" every time I visited the school or base library. One thing I noticed: the other articles seemed dull and lifeless in comparison to Sturgeon's column, and the merciless fortnight deadline meant that the "National Review" often resembled a political zine rather than a polished journal (still NR never was never as bad as the "New Republic" in the 1980s). The "National Review" has the proud disintinction of having discovered Philip K. Dick years ahead of the "Rolling Stone."

Thanks to a progressive English teacher, I had been reading Marshall McLuhan, and I understood enough to realize that Buckley's true medium was television. Television captured his wit and patrician graciousness. Only television could capture Buckley's prep tell: he always and unconsciously unfastened his lower coat button when he sat down and immediately re-fastened it when he stood up.

For those who lament that we lost sophisticated discourse and civility on television in the era of Limbaugh and Colbert, I would suggest viewing the debate between Buckley and Gore at the 1968 Democratic Convention. Then as now, there were insulting comparisions to the Third Reich and sexually oriented insults:

Taking No for an Answer

I read Carpe Diem: Put a Little Latin in Your Life by Harry Mount over the weekend and found it fascinating and enjoyable. Especially so since I skipped the declension and conjugation tables, which the author encouraged. Mount, a journalist who majored in classics at Oxford, explains Rome and the Latin language in a breezy and fun manner and confirms suspicions long held about some of the prep-school Latin masters.

Mount and others have said that learning a language is akin to peeking inside a culture's inner thoughts. This may well be true. I was especially struck by how questions in Latin are constructed in two different ways. A question prefaced by "nunc" is asked when the anticipated answer is yes; when prefaced by "num," the answer would be in the negative. Romans, it seems, were adverse to being surprised.

The Van Gods Live Again!

Van art has all but disappeared, but once it was impossible to avoid barbarians and their princesses and Aztecs warriors and their princesses. Perhaps this for the better. It never occurred to me to take pictures of vans in the 1970s. This would've been risky on the free, and I wish there had been some record of the Airborne Infantry tribute panel van I saw in San Jose. Sad to say, this form of pop art went into the crusher two decades ago, but for 30 seconds it comes alive again in, of all things, a Honda Odyssey commercial: