About That Bill Gates Forward...

Mack Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

It’s on the ‘Net; It Must be True

Alexander Graham Bell, a Canadian who was born in Scotland, invented the telephone so that young Americans could use the thing to talk, text, tweet, and twit to each other during high school graduation and thus ignore high school graduation.  Since Mr. Bell never finished school, we may appreciate the layers of irony.

In May of every year, like buzzards returning to wherever it is buzzards return to, tiresome screeds about the ignorance of graduates arrive to roost in one’s in-box. 

One of the most popular is wrongly attributed to Bill Gates, another successful fellow who did not finish school and who does not write silly stuff, and is usually titled “Rules They Didn’t Teach You in School” or some such, and is forwarded by the sort of people who never vote in their local school board elections because they’re too busy complaining.

The idea of hopeless naivete is not true of most high school students, and it’s certainly not true of college students.  Very few graduates ever finish a degree on the mummy-and-daddy nickel, and for those who do, well, good for their mums and dads.

The reality is that most college students work their way through school, usually in minimum-wage jobs and at odd hours.  A student who works the night shift flipping burgers can only wonder about why he is falsely stereotyped as someone who thinks he’s too good to flip burgers.

My daughter spent some college time shoveling (Newark, New Jersey) in a stable.  Hamburgers would have been better.

Any college classroom will feature, yes, a few princesses of both sexes, but they are far outnumbered by folks who know their way around the loading dock, Afghanistan, and hospital wards at 0-Dark-Thirty, and who can wield with great skill an M4, a broom, and a bedpan.

One of my fish English students was a former sergeant who left the Army after sixteen years.  When I asked him why he didn’t finish his twenty he said that after three combat tours in the desert he figured he had pushed his luck enough.

He and his mates studied English literature in a college hydraulics lab because of a shortage of classroom space.  No ivy grew on the equipment.

Two of my students were in their mid-thirties, had been pals from childhood, owned a roofing company, and were nursing students.  In their late thirties, they said they were getting a little old for climbing up on roofs all the year ‘round and were going to sell the company and work in the shade for a while.  I asked them why they didn’t keep the company and spend well-earned time out of the sun by delegating more authority to their employees.  They said that their names were on each roof (metaphorically), and that they would never sign off on a job if they didn’t have first-hand knowledge of each square inch of that roof.

Oh, yeah, some dumb college kids, huh?

Age and experience are good, but they are only predictors: there are adult students who become angry when they are required to show up on time (which, presumably, was required of them on the job) and actually do some work (ditto).  In the same class there can be 18-year-olds demonstrating a far better work ethic (not the one texting behind her Volkswagen-size purse, second seat, second table on the right) than their elders.

In the end, success is almost always the result of an individual’s choice to show up for work, whether on the factory floor or in the classroom, and hit a lick at it.

That is, after the individual takes the tin cricket out of his ear.  In school we were taught that in ye olden days of yore crazy people who stumbled around talking to themselves were kept safely away from others by being chained to a wall somewhere.  We thought that was a bad punishment.  Silly us.

One of life’s lessons – it needn’t come from the classroom – is that stereotyping is wrong.  Just because something’s on the ‘net doesn’t mean it’s true.  Those giddy folks waving their diplomae (“diplomae,” he wrote, for he had been to night school) around and yelling almost surely worked very hard for the moment, both in and out of the classrooms and laboratories.

-30-

Flip This Dancing Storage Unit off Bridezilla Island

Mack Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Flip This Dancing Storage Unit off Bridezilla Island

Viewing reality television is rather like watching Republicans trying to dance to rock music, repulsive and yet somehow fascinating.

A current entertainment is the flatscreening of shaky images of people arguing with each other about other folks’ junk. 

Back in ye olden times television filmmakers hired writers who then generated scripts featuring plot, character, and setting.  Producers then hired actors, cameramen, set designers, electricians, carpenters, and other professionals to put together often-beautiful works of art.

Perhaps the ultimate Hegelian dialectic of television art now would be James Arness, Loretta Young, and Patrick McGoohan shrieking at each other while bidding on a cowboy boot that was once seen in Gilley’s Place, like babushkas squabbling over the last bowl of lentil soup in Petrograd in the winter of 1917.

What might the obsession with abandoned storage units symbolize?

“Look at this, dude – rare monaural recordings of Duke Ellington’s early work!”

“Who’s Duke Ellington?”

“I dunno; I guess we could get something for these old records from the recyclers.  But, hey, look at this old book. Nice leather.  Must be worth something.”

“That’s a Bible; someone will want that for a dashboard decoration, you know, along with fuzzy dice.”

“Okay, we’ll keep that.  Oh, hey, look at all this metal junk.”

“Oh, I know what those are – that’s a hammer, that’s a saw, that’s a folding carpenter’s rule, and those pointy things in that bucket are nails.  I’ve seen pictures of such things on my laptop.”

“But what are they for?”

“Oh, back in the Dark Ages, y’know, in the 1980s, people used them to, like, cut wood, and, like, build and repair their own stuff.”

“Freakin’ primitive, dude!  But how do you plug them in?  Or do they have batteries?”

“No, the cavemen used these things by hand.”

“So did they get to sue someone for that?”

“No, I think I remember being told that they felt fulfilled or something by work and sweat and creativity – totally old school.”

“Wow, that’s like, you know, existential and stuff.  People were, like, so spiritual back in the day when they did stuff with hammers and read books and stuff.”

“What does ‘Made in USA’ mean?”

“Back during the Civil War in the 1930s people used to make their own stuff in this country, polluting the rivers and killing the striped owls or something.”

“That was dumb.  Stuff comes from the mall, and doesn’t pollute.”

“Hey, what’s that covered by dust?”

“This?  Oh, it’s the soul of a civilization.”

“What’s civilization?”

“Oh, art, music, literature, faith – you could look ‘em up on Wonkiepedia.”

“Can we get any money out of it?”

“No.  Old stuff.  Forget it.”

“So the meaning of life is outbidding other people for old golf clubs and record players in an abandoned storage shed?”

“Gosh, dude, you make it sound so inadequate.”

-30-

The Class of 2012

The Class of 2012

On graduation night you’ll sit among
Your friends, a make-the-sponsors-flustered crowd
Of the alphabetized, well-rehearsed young,
Well-shepherded, well-chaperoned - still loud!

And yet, somehow, surprisingly alone
You’ll be, your thoughts spinning wildly, your heart
Aflutter as you stifle a nervous yawn,
Yes, one among many, but still apart.

For this brief hour is when your childhood ends,
An awkward, happy, frightening, joyful truth,
And you must make your way without those friends
Who with your loving family blessed your youth.

But, oh! It’s here, it’s here – up stands your row;
Adjust your cap – it’s time for you to go.

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

James Bond is Assigned a Chaperone

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

James Bond’s Chaperone

The Secret Service is so secret that they’ve got their own web site:

http://www.secretservice.gov/join/index.shtml.  One wonders if they’ve also got their own lingerie catalogue.

The matter of the lads in the Preobrazhensky Regiment doing a geriatric spring break in Bogota, the capital of Colombia, is no secret, either, and like Fyodor Karamazov making goo-goo eyes at a tired waitress at closing time, the matter simply won’t go away.

One of the many problems with the Victoria’s Secret…um…Secret Service is that not even they seem to know their purpose.  An American might infer that the boys in buzz-do’s are assigned to guard the President, but consider these two paragraphs from the SS’s own site:

The United States Secret Service culture is represented through the agency’s five core values: justice, duty, courage, honesty and loyalty. These values, and the Secret Service adage “Worthy of Trust and Confidence,” resonate with each man and woman who has sworn to uphold these principles. Not only do these values foster a culture of success, but they also hold each person to the highest standards of personal and professional integrity.

Because our highly-trained workforce is one of our greatest assets, we empower each individual to realize their full potential and more. The Secret Service offers career growth and opportunities to make your future as dynamic and rewarding as it can be. Those who are dedicated, driven by integrity and welcome unique challenges often find that the Secret Service is a perfect match.

And let The People say: Huh?

The SS has cores that resonate with dynamic thing-ness fostering assets whose potential is dedicated and unique, and, like stuff.

Who wrote this obtuse, cliché’-sodden, Mission Statement drivel?

Shocked, shocked that there are hormones (and possum-poor English usage) going on in here, our otherwise let-it-all-Bill-Clinton-out government is suffering its quadrennial election-year spasm of Puritanism and has promulgated a Willy Wonka list for the superannuated frat boys who trifle with girls’ hearts while carrying weapons.

The first rule is that on overseas trips the SS agents must not have foreigners in their rooms.

You see, there’s already a problem here.  If you are a Yank visiting, say, Liechtenstein, you are the foreigner.  One is reminded of the Bill Mauldin cartoon of Willie and Joe on pass in Paris and remarking “Did you ever see so many foreigners in all your life?”

The second rule is that SS agents may not patronize “non-reputable” (minus two points for not writing “disreputable”) establishments.  Y’know, back in the day that would have pretty much put all of San Diego’s Lower Broadway off limits.

The next three rules detail drinking.  Excuse me, ma’am, but shouldn’t a forty-year-old SS agent pretty much know how to order a single glass of wine with dinner, go to bed early (and alone), and behave himself?  And if not, why have you given a drunk guy weapons and turned him loose among our nation’s friends?

Another new rule advises the Boys Gone Wild that from now on they will be accompanied by a chaperone.  This leads one to consider whether our we’re-a-world-power government is clear on the distinction between the Praetorian Guard and a high school marching band trip to Waco:

“Okay, kids, ten more minutes in the pool and then room check and weapons check.”

“Jimmy, you left your shoulder-held, gas-operated, fully automatic M4 in the lobby again!  I am so tired of picking up after you!”

“No, Billy, you won’t need your concussion grenades at breakfast.”

“You forgot your shoulder holster, Bobby?  But all the other agents remembered their shoulder holsters.”

“No, Timmy, filling the French president’s office with clown balloons would not be funny.”

“Biff, you were told very clearly to bring along tear gas, not poison gas.  And you think you lost those canisters where?”

In all seriousness, any nation’s leader is a target for evil.  The President should be protected.  To this end he should reassign his current Streltsy to parking-lot duty and hire some old-fashioned street cops for the White House grounds and a couple of no-b…um…no-nonsense Army or Marine sergeants for his trips.

-30-

Courthouse Square, Jasper

Verizon: Massive FAIL

A lovely photograph of a foggy street scene in Jasper should be here; I suppose, as the Chorus in Henry V says, you can picture it in your imagination.

And picture this: Verizon lies. 

Alyssa

Verizon Spent Some Ten Minutes of the Customer's Time...

...scrolled a green bar bar back and forth, and STILL did not paste a really nice picture. 

Thanks for nothin', Verizon.

"Sam" at the Verizon kiosk at the mall lies.

Jasper, Texas

Scripture and Marlboros

English Ivy

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

English Ivy

Why do some call this vine an English ivy?

Does it wear tweeds, call for a cup of tea,
And tut-tut over a pipe and The Times?
But far away from England climbs this vine,
Far up the bark and branches of an oak
Wanting to see, perhaps, the spring-blue sky,
A squirrel’s nest, the perfect leaf, a bird
Spying on the curious cats below,
On pups in happy repose, tummies up
To the dog-friendly sun. 

                                       O peaceful vine!

Your contract is renewed each day without
An interview, evaluation, or
The filing of an annual report.
You play your days in leafy-green ascent,
Dependant on your sturdy tree, yourself
A pastoral road for ladybugs and ants,
The occasional ceremonial worm
Or caterpillar; an auditor of
The coos and whos and cawks and squawks and trills
There cooed and who’d and cawk’d and squawked and trilled
By merry jays and robins, mockingbirds,
And silly, so-sad-seeming whippoorwills.
Oh, ivy, glad indeed, to celebrate
Your liturgical seasons dutifully!

Easter Vigil, Sort Of

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

Easter Vigil, Sort Of 

A vigil, no, simply quiet reflection

Minutes before midnight, with all asleep
Little Liesl-Dog perhaps dreams of squirrels,
For she has chased and barked them all the day;
The kittens are disposed with their mother
After an hour of kitty-baby-talk,
Adored by all, except by Calvin-Cat,
That venerable, cranky old orange hair-ball,
Who resents youthful intrusion upon
His proper role as object of worship.
All the house settles in for the spring night,
Anticipating Easter, early Mass,
And then the appropriately pagan
Merriments of chocolates and colored eggs
And children with baskets squealing for more
As children should, in the springtime of life.

A Night of Fallen Nothingness

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

A Night of Fallen Nothingness

The Altar stripped, the candles dark, the Cross

Concealed behind a purple shroud, the sun
Mere slantings through an afternoon of grief
While all the world is emptied of all hope.
The dead remain, the failing light withdraws
As do the broken faithful, silently,
Into a night of fallen nothingness.

Roadside Detractions

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

Roadside Detractions

An empty cigarette packet smokeless
An empty chewing gum wrapper gumless
An empty soda bottle sodaless
An empty chicken basket chickenless
An empty shell casing, yes, bulletless
And this is the road America walks
To its vague YouTubeifest destiny

20 September 1870

20 September 1870

Like vultures hovering over the faithful dead

The rank red rags of base repression hung
Upon the blast-breeched walls of captive Rome;
The smoke of conquest fouled the ancient streets
While mocking conquerors marched their betters
At the point of enlightened bayonets
To the scientific future, murdering those
Who bore themselves with quiet dignity.

False, sinister Savoy sneered in disdain

At ancient truths, this costumed reprobate
Who played at soldier once the firing ceased,
And claimed Saint Peter’s patrimony on
The corpses of the merely useful who
With this day’s slogans fresh upon their lips
At dawn advanced upon the remnant walls
So thinly held by so few Papal Zouaves

And thus befeathered fat Vittorio

Was given his victory by better men
On both sides there, their corpses looted by
The pallid inheritors of Progress.
The son of a Sardinian spurred his horse
Along the streets of now obedient Rome,
And to the Quirinal by a passage broad,¹
And finally to the Ardeatine Caves.

¹Paradise Lost X.404

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

The Campaigning Season

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

The Campaigning Season

Beowulf dripped with his enemies’ blood

Montgomery learned of war in Flanders’ mud

Young Davy Crockett grinned down a big bear

Orville and Wilbur conquered the air

Horatius defied Lars Porsena, thus saving Rome

Kit Carson called the wild prairies his home

Wolfe and Montcalm died ‘neath the walls of Quebec

Lewis and Clark made their continental trek

At Monmouth Molly Pitcher crewed a cannon

Goliad echoes the death of Fannin

Brave men and women we well remember,

And from cold March until hot September

On fields of struggle (like Abraham’s plain)

New leaders conquer despite fear and pain

While facing Mad Momma and her (reproach) --

God have mercy on a Little League coach!

Of Biblical Proportions

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

Of Biblical Proportions

“This contest is the game of the century!!!”

The announcer gasped almost breathlessly,
“A slug-fest of biblical proportions!!!”
He yelped in haste, his excitement inspired
(perhaps)
By the team mothers sharpening their claws
Upon the tattered reputation of
The umpire (who, in his innocent hours,
Filled prescriptions down at his pharmacy.
Please know, before you leave: his name was Steve).
And every pitch and hit and bounce and catch
Was then remarked with apocalyptic praise
Employing multiples and multiples
Of exclamation marks (though one would do)
To set the sports fans’ faithful hearts ablaze
With love transcendent for Our Team so true,
And Dante-esque hatred for The Other,
Words well-worn in canonical cliches’
Calling down thundering Truth from Horeb
Parting the seas, purifying the Temple
(or at least the plywood concession stand)

All this hyperbole was merely to frame

A middle-school girls’ scrimmage softball game

The Aging Iconoclast on the Late Show

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

The Aging Iconoclast on the Late Show

His long career enriched with icons smashed,

An existential poet, heavy with age,
Was preening in the green room of fashion
Awaiting his at-last adoration
Upon the glowing boxes of the world.

“I smashed the vain icon of privilege,”

He trilled to all, while a thin girl in tats
Powdered his nose. “With just my vengeful pen,
“I broke the icon of capitalism!”
A singer-stripper sipped her soda, and sighed.

“I then exposed the icon of the news,

And held it up for the people to scorn.”
He did not see the makeup artist roll
Her eyes.  A desperate young comedienne
Pretended to be busy with her skull.

“And I alone broke all the icons of

Hypocrisy in Wall Street.  Death to debt!
My icon-smashing verses smashed the world
Of formulaic poetry forever!”
A sex-change surgeon sharpened his pink tongue.

“In my day we smashed icons in the war
Against shopworn bourgeois complacency!”
The arbiters of this week’s taste and thought
Waited, in sequence obedient, their turns.
And then a voice, uncertain, asked at last:

“What’s an icon?”

Kittens in a Basket

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

Kittens in a Basket

For Sarah

Three kittens in a basket squirm and mew,
Small carnivores in training ‘gainst the day
When they’ll stalk crickets through the morning dew,
Progressing thence to mice and larger prey

For now they attack the basket and each other,

Patrol the jungle of an old bath towel,
Torment the dachshund and their own poor mother,
And, being cats, rehearse a high-pitched yowl

Their eyes are wide, their teeth are sharp, their fur

Is softer than a dream of Eden’s dawn
They signal naptime with a three-cats purr,
And so dismiss me with a gentle yawn

Someday wild hunting will be their great art;

The only thing they capture now is my heart.

Literary Woes

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

Literary Woes

“Well, she was like ‘Whoa!’ and I was like ‘Whoa!’

And so, like, ‘Whoa!’ You know, I was all ‘Whoa!’
And so we were both all ‘Whoa!’ Like, totally ‘Whoa!’
And so like when we were all totally ‘Whoa!’
Then they were like all ‘Whoa!’ Like, you know,
And so like everyone was totally ‘Whoa!’
Not just fractionally ‘Whoa!’ but wholly ‘Whoa!’
And, like, you know, it was cosmically ‘Whoa!’”

The Dress Code Uniform Sensitivity Ribbon of the Day

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

The Dress Code Uniform Sensitivity Ribbon of the Day

The ribbon of the day is purple, so

Wear one because it’s for – hmmm…we forget,
But wear it anyway; people will know
That you’re for something, or, oh, maybe yet,
That you’re against something of evil bent;
Green for the planet, blue against depression
You must prove to others your good intent
Brown is Fair Trade for your coffee session
At PlanetCluck’s, for some farmers somewhere
All-natural bare feet through coffee beans
But not Americans; they pollute the air
Chartreuse is for cancer (not in our spleens)
Red is for, oh, something really way cool
Yellow is for kidney failure, I mean,
It’s so like a sensitivity rule
Like, you know
And stuff

The Luna Moth

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

The Luna Moth

The moon does not in fact wax anything,

She does not wane; she simply ever-is;
She rules the softly-sung, soft-summer nights,
A willing queen, and willingly obeyed.
The luna moth, her winged votary,
Clings to indulgent oaks of their kindness,
Their moon-sent goddess from another world,
And strangely robed and crowned in lunar green,
Pheroming softly for some other moth
To come perform with her those rituals
Of love illogical, of sacrifice;
For all a luna moth can do is live
A summer week or so, but in those hours

She loves

In lunar beauty, strangely eternal
Who needs a dying luna moth?

                                                We do.

War Porn

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

War Porn

A teacher reads the Band of Brothers speech

With feeling, raw, and real – his students yawn.
Olivier orates among the fields of Eire
In paint-sloshed war-time Technicolour streaks
The same desperate speech; the students ask
“What’s with that funny haircut?  That’s so weird.”
Branagh, in subtler shades, appeals to youth,
The youth who slyly check their glowing boxes:
Agincourt is not on their calendars,
Not today. 
                  Maybe when they’re middle-aged,
After they’ve slogged through blasted fields of souls
Disposed for purposes best known to those
Who sip their single-malt, count their medals,
And send America’s children to die
In some corner of an international field
That is forever sand.

Books, Not Yet Catalogued

And Blogspot's eccentricities -- not yet understood


Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

Books, Not Yet Catalogued

One’s books are comforting: those untidy
Shelves, stacks, piles, heaps of books extend one’s soul
Beyond the self-absorption of the now
That never existed and never will.
Poor books!  They are but paper, glue, and ink,
Transient carriers of transcendence,
Small mortal things that burn, decay, and fall
Into disuse, and are seemingly lost,
Poor beasts of burden, but -- so too are men,
Both bearing messages and messengers,
Both crying, “Look!  Life is a pilgrimage
Beyond the stars within a silver cup
This side of summer leaves that sing the dawn
Even before midnight lightens the seas,
So travel light, you won’t be here for long;
You must arise, you must pull on your boots
And sling your pack, and oh! be on your way!”

Listen to Your Starets

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

Listen to Your Starets

Each follows a starets: books, music, art,

News, living in the past, forming committees
For the regulation of one’s neighbors,
Manufactured anger and resentment,
A centering prayer centered on one’s self.

But

A starets true would lash with whips of words

These idle idols and idler idylls
Out of the Temples given each of us,
Lives not to grasp, rather to give away,
Sunflowers harvested in September.

China Blocked the Titanic's Marconi Signals

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

News Gumbo

Here, then, is a summary of this week’s news:

The Titanic sank after hitting iceberg lettuce because of global warming which was caused by evil Americans plowing their fields with oxen that were too big and that ate too much grain and then morphed into the Kardashians.  The captain fired distress rockets while checking his MySpace friending status but because the rockets were made in North Korea they simply fizzled and fell into the ocean, taking out some vegetarian porpoises.  Wireless operator McBride’s calls for help were not heard because China killed all Morse signals, suspicious that Marconi operators were saying bad things about the government in Peking / Beijing / Peiping.   In the meantime, ship security officers, supervised by The Three Stooges, were cavorting in their rooms with killer clowns and would not pay them, which embarrassed President Teddy Roosevelt who was hunting moose with the French prime minister, and this was difficult because they were both riding bicycles in knee-pants (and bicycles look goofy in knee-pants) and wearing those silly plastic-pimple helmets.

Back in Las Vegas, the Taliban were dancing the night away with the Castro brothers in a fund-raiser for Hugo Chavez.  You ain’t seen nothin’ until you’ve seen an octogenarian Cuban minister for socialist culture shakin’ it to the new fusion hit, “Rock me Like a Byzantine Princess of the Ikonoclast Persuasion.”  The Taliban accused stay-at-home mothers of not knowing enough about beheading infidels,  and Fox News’ John Stossel aired a one-hour report detailing how World War II could have been won three years earlier if it had been run by small business internet start-ups free of IRS regulations.

Canada urged the United Nations to send in monitors to oversee Bill Clinton and Lady Gaga because of their proximity to a Tim Horton’s just across the border, and the NRA (National Rifle Association) considered the possibility of funding laboratory experiments on solar-powered green firearms whose on-board computers would disable the firing mechanism when the scope senses a vegetarian target species.  Greece is considering issuing bonds to bail out the city government of Branson, Missouri, and Congress is pondering legislation to limit the height of beauty pageant crowns because of their menace to low-flying aircraft. 

Harry Potter appeared with Jerry Springer to reveal that one of his ancestors may have done something naughty, and Britain’s Daily Mail website featured previously unknown pictures of New Jersey’s Governor Christie dieting.  The Principality of Liechtenstein launched drones to spy on Monaco, and Britain’s parliament and the Archbishop of Canterbury assured Prince Harry that there was no canonical impediment to his forthcoming marriage to Snooky in an outdoor barefoot ceremony with a Titanic theme on the beach in Labrador, which would be a hairy marry Snooky shipwreck.

You say this news roundup doesn’t make sense?  Do you think the news as reported this week makes any more sense?

-30-

The Ship Sank -- My Pancreas Will Go On

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

My Pancreas Will Go On

The 15^th of April is the 100^th anniversary of, well, the ship sank.

In books and films the facts of the Titanic are posthumously cluttered with all sorts of interpretations about the symbolism: the Titanic represents the collapse of Edwardian England, the Titanic is an indictment of technology, the Titanic is a religious lesson about man’s hubris, the Titanic is about the evil of Big Business / Wall Street / The City, and, in a 1943 Nazi propaganda movie, the Titanic is all of the above.

And all that is just too much interpretation.  The Titanic was a really large motorized thingie that someone was driving too fast, at night, and without any headlights.  There’s just not a whole lot of cultural significance in that.

You might as well say that you realized that your life was an existential lie when you bent the shaft in your lawnmower by carelessly mowing into a chunk of wood obscured by weeds.

But folks do enjoying fooling around with the Titanic, and even now a new television film is in release. 

The ship sinks.

The 1997 version of Titanic is unlike other films about the tragedy in that it features a happy ending -- only a very grim man could find himself unable to shed tears of joy when Jack, long, tedious hours into the plot, finally disappears beneath the surface of the Atlantic, leaving only a floating sheen of cliches’. 

Mr. Cameron’s film is excellent in its use of decidedly post-1912 technology – the computerized ship is the star, and it works; the intrusion of the stereotype-sodden fictional lovers pinched from Romeo and Juliet is not only unnecessary but at times annoying.  The depictions of historic people, such as Mr. and Mrs. Isidor Straus, are much more interesting, even when they are cruelly wrong, as with Lightoller and Boxhall.

The best Titanic film is A Night to Remember, based on Walter Lord’s book.  Filmed in 1958 on a budget of mere thousands of dollars, the producers took care to avoid fiction altogether: every character in the film is grounded – or watered – in a real person, and every bit of dialogue is sourced and verified.  A browse through the ever-useful IMDB reveals a treasure of anecdotes, such as the matter of the Lucky Pig.

The hypercritical might at this point protest the historicity because in the end the ship sinks intact, which, as we now know, didn’t happen.  The producers researched survivors and found that although some reported that the ship broke in two, far more said that it remained intact, and the producers went with the majority opinion of people who were there.

Does this mean that the majority of the survivors were liars?  Not at all.  Witness narratives are unreliable because even when folks are doing their best to get the facts right they still perceive through a filter of upbringing, ideology, and wish-fulfillment.  The rivets and welds of the Titanic were asked to carry too much weight, both physical and cultural, when the bow submerged.

The underrated 1953 version with Clifton Webb and Barbara Stanwyck is no more accurate than John Wayne’s The Alamo, but is a hanky-twister because of the excellent ensemble acting.  Still, the ship sinks.

Another underrated ship of soaps is 1979’s SOS Titanic, with George C. Scott.  Surprisingly, the ship sinks. 

The documentaries, with their hours of filler and wild speculation can be dismissed.  Some say that the Titanic was ahead of its time, which it wasn’t.  Its time was 1912, and there it was.  You might as well say that you are ahead of your time because today is Wednesday and you really want to be in Friday.

One of the most interesting Titanics is a Teutonic one, the 1943 German production filmed in the North Sea aboard the SS Cap Arcona, whose own end in 1945 was a horror. 

As with all Titanic productions the film is very loose with the facts; as a Nazi propaganda film it could hardly be otherwise.  The plot features an unlikely romance between starfish-crossed lovers, a valuable jewel, an unsubtle contrast between the first-class fops and the humble but sturdy, clean, and honest volk in steerage, and dramatic scenes on the first-class staircase.  Sound familiar?

But, again, the ship sinks.

This film, the biggest-budgeted film in German cinema to that time, is very well made, and some of the scenes were appropriated for the 1953 and 1958 films without attribution. 

The director was 38-year-old Herbert Selpin, a biggie in the film industry who had directed musicals, light romance, and action flicks.  Mr. Selpin was not a happy Nazi, and for reasons never quite made clear was pulled from the production, arrested, and found (cough) hanged in his cell, a reported (cough) suicide.  Some have alleged that Mr. Selpin was open in his criticism of Nazism, which seems unlikely, and others that the anti-British sentiment is so cloddishly heavy that the film was meant by the director in a sort of double-irony to be a criticism of Nazism.

For whatever reason, Josef Goebbels, the supreme arbiter of film, found enough annoyance in Herbert Selpin to make him disappear into night and fog.  We should remember Mr. Selpin not only as a filmmaker but for annoying the Nazis and dying for it.

The Titanic will go on because, as with The Canterbury Tales, placing all sorts of different folks within a story creates its own sort of dynamic, and is worth hearing and watching again and again.

One wonders if future Titanic films will feature passengers being interrogated and strip-searched by their own countrymen.

Only one question remains unanswered: when the Titanic sailed, did the crew require all the passengers to close their books and newspapers while leaving port so that the ink wouldn’t interfere with the navigational charts?

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