2013 – Page 6 – The Constant Harper

Make My Millennium

Okay, so here’s my guilty secret. I like movies where things explode.

Not all movies where things explode. But when Bruce Willis, or someone of his stripe, sets off to save the planet with a quip and a smirk, I enjoy the payoff as much as any backyard commando. Maybe more, since I have no personal illusions about being able to pull off anything remotely qualified to feature in an action flick. When I take action these days it’s usually in the kitchen, or, if I’m lucky, in the garden.

Yet much as I like action movies where things explode and steely-eyed heroes step in and light the match, I recognize these stories as fiction.

Fiction is something I understand. Reality, not so much. Perhaps that’s why it simply blows my mind that there are actually people in the “real” world who think it’s a swell idea for the United States at this point in the progress of the civilized world to build a so-called “Death Star” to protect us from anticipated alien attacks.

And here I thought I was delusional.

Well, it’s possible, I suppose, that the paranoid legions will have the last laugh when the aliens start bombing and scorching us with their death rays, but I feel fairly confident that at the rate we’re killing each other off down here on Earth there won’t be much for aliens to conquer, when and if they ever arrive.

I was comforted to read in The Washington Post today that the Obama administration “does not support blowing up planets.” Good to know.

In the meantime, that estimated $850 quadrillion which the proposed “Death Star” would cost (and you know how it is with estimates – nothing comes in under the estimate) could come in handy as we try to pay down the national debt, solve the problems in our education, health care and aging infrastructure.

And after we end hunger, poverty and injustice, then we can get that Death Star project up and running. Sure we can.

Coming soon to a theatre near you.

Pix Elated

Pop-eyes-2 — Lichtenstein's pop eyes speak volumes.

Perspective is everything.

The first time I ever read Moby Dick it was a Classic Comic. It cost ten cents. I thought it was a fairly gripping yarn, but it lacked the love interest which, at the time, I felt was an essential element to any story.

Years later in high school, when I was compelled to read the actual unabridged novel, I realized that there was much to be said for the comic book format. So much less blubber, for one thing.

Suffice it to say, the appeal of Moby Dick remained an enigma to me until I read it again in college, guided by an inspired professor who confessed that it was Melville’s sense of humor which really got to him.

This was news to me. Yet as I voyaged once again into Melville’s foaming prose, I found not only amusement, but moments of transcendent wonder. Go figure.

No doubt the passage of time had changed my perspective on whales, men, and the heartless workings of Fate. And, as time went on and I revisited other great works of literature such as A Tale of Two Cities and Les Miserables which I had first read in comics form, I came to appreciate the pleasures of the long slow read.

However, while my admiration for comics has held steady, in the last few decades graphic comics have sparked a kind of cultural renaissance of their own, with highbrow artists producing a whole new world of thoughtful, groundbreaking works suffused with drama, humor and the whole existential enchilada that is modern life.

On a recent trip to the East Wing of the National Gallery we took in a retrospective of works by Roy Lichtenstein. His brilliant conceit, to put comic style art on the wall, large and in-your-face, challenged centuries of traditions built on classification and exclusion. Seen larger than life and bolder than Iron Man, the artful appeal of this comic art is irresistible.

To me, anyway. But then, I’m a sucker for Melville, so perhaps not the most reliable source.