My WIFE Likes this Movie?

Dear Ed,

I just discovered Flashdance. Never saw it before. Rosie didn't know the name of it but described it to me and after searching a half-hour I finally found it.

Here it is tonight on Bravo (which of course has a googol of commercials and the dialogue bowdlerized by the falsely righteous censors who are cowed by Falwell and Dobson -- no problem, of course, with a scene in which hoods break the standup comic's nose. It's sex, not violence, that's the problem. Violence is AOK. It's America, right? Capital punishment? No problem. "Make-my-day" gun laws for intruders (who are not born-again Christians anyway)? No problem. Film violence by people who have the right political beliefs (think Bruce Willis and Mel Gibson)? No problem. Just no "bad" words. Problem. Why? What would Jesus do? He would send the cussers straight to hell. Also, don't show any children's cartoon characters whose sex-preference is suspect to Jer-Bear and Jimbo, Homophobes for Jesus).

But I digress. Again.

I told Rosie I'd get the movie, our copy, uncensored and uninterrupted. Have a vested interest in it myself, now that I've seen a bit of it. Nothing to do with sex, of course. I like it when hoods break someone's nose to prove a point. There's no other way, right? Movies make that point over and over. Can't reason or plead or reinforce more constructive behavior. Just beat the shit out of 'em. That'll show 'em.

Looks like I'm going to tape a radio show for my favorite station. Don't know when it will air -- program director wants to work that out. But he isn't offended that I want to air "I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow" from O Brother, Where Art Thou? as a selection on a program of film music to be broadcast on a station with a 24-hour "classical" music format. It also includes Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber, which was in Platoon and The Elephant Man. That music, by the bye, gives Rosie cold chills, she says.

Your fellating rag, Ed, had an editorial on the price of gasoline that was halfway sensible (because I had been thinking some of the same things) -- if it had just gone far enough. You pointed out quite correctly that there are too many gas-sucking SUVs and dualies on the road. "Weapons of Mass Deception," as my clever, beloved son has dubbed them. And you observed that driving habits are hardly conducive to gas conservation. True. The tailgating F-350's and Tahoes with drivers pissing their pants to pass me when I myself am exceeding the speed limit by, oh say ten or fifteen miles an hour, prove that point when I meet them a few seconds later while they're still sitting at the stoplight.

But what about mass transit? Even in this modest little city, we have vans that, besides making scheduled runs, operate as virtual taxis, and they are cheap. And we have taxis, for that matter. I doubt they're smoke-free, since things don't progress here all that fast, but I bet you can beat the pump prices by riding in them. What's a little secondhand smoke when you're trying to save your money on fuel? And wouldn't it be neat if people would car-pool? And ride bicycles? And walk? If you live in the same neighborhood and work at the same place, why not share a ride? But, I know, for Yanks to pool anything -- cars, expensive tools -- why, it's communistic! What are we, a bunch of hippies? Everybody wants -- needs -- private, portal-to-portal transportation, on demand, twenty-four hours a day. And, as some of the Freudian persuasion have speculated, people preoccupied with their machismo have to have their automotive prop under them at all times. Someone even postulated an inverse relationship between magnitude of the penis and the size of the vehicle. They call it Hummer's Law. And WTF is this business of raising the speed limit in Indiana? Nixon in the seventies signed an executive order lowering the speed limit to 55. Egads! A Republican actually decreed that Big Oil would lose some opportunities to profit. (Well, at least it seemed that way.) I note that a local car dealer has a revolving platform with a car upon it. No one is paying attention to it. What a silly waste of energy. That worthless contraption runs with electricity, no doubt, which is generated from burning fossil fuels. Near that in perpetuum piece of junk, stores stand open, virtually unoccupied, with God knows how many lights burning round the clock and the a-c blasting away, cooling no one but a handful of clerks? Do we know how to waste energy? Does a cat have an ass?

Enough. Wait 'til you catch me in a bad mood.

Good night, Mrs. Calibash and Scnozzola, and Bud, dear Bud, wherever you are. And Harold, Harold, be at the end of all our remembering. Here's a classical piece for tuba and brass choir. God, I love it! Who wrote the theme for Gunsmoke? A wind choir plays it at the end of the show, with a still shot of the big ole coffeepot. Amen.

JT