Fritz Lang's "Metropolis"

From the IMDB synopsis:

"In a futuristic city sharply divided between the working class and the city planners, the son of the city's mastermind falls in love with a working class prophet who predicts the coming of a savior to mediate their differences."

If you've never seen this 1927 silent movie classic, sign up for Hulu Plus and watch it now. Every single science fiction movie of the last 90 years owes a debt to Metropolis. Indeed, you can see very clear thematic and visual elements of Metropolis in Star Wars, Blade Runner, Frankenstein, Forbidden Planet, a LOT of the original Star Trek episodes, Total Recall, The Time Machine, The Matrix, the list goes on and on.

Previous versions of the film had huge chunks missing footage and the editing of the restorations was mostly guess work. The movie was clearly visionary, but it didn't make a hell of a lot of sense. Kind of like your first (and maybe even second) viewing of Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey".

But in 2008 a complete, 16mm duplicate negative of the film was discovered in Buenos Aires. It included about 25 minutes of "lost footage". About a fifth of the film that had not been seen since it debuted in Berlin in 1927! And the duplicate negative gave a clear picture of the original cut of the film.

So the original editing, the balance between the characters and all of the subplots are now complete and to as great a degree possible, digitally remastered. This new version also has the original film score composed by Gottfried Huppertz and performed by the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Frank Strobe. The less said about Giorgio Moroder's 1984, incomplete, colorized, rock-fueled abomination of Metropolis, the better. No, this new, true version of the film is the one you want to see. Here is the trailer. Watch it now.

Our Future Began 43 Years Ago

On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 landed on the moon. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first human beings to ever set foot anywhere other than Mother Earth. I was 13 years old and watched it happen. This is what it looked like.



Four decades later, we have an International Space Station. I want to go to there.



In the next year or two, Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic will start carrying well heeled cash customers on sub-orbital joy rides like this.



This is the future of near-earth orbital transportation of people and cargo..



These audacious bastards plan to land their spacecraft on a landing pad using their own rockets! Like God intended.



This should be their theme song and this video should be played before every launch.



Elon Musk will be to Space Exploration what Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were to personal computing. Oh, and he will also be what Thomas Edison was to electricity and Henry Ford was to transportation.



A newly formed company called Planetary Resources has announced plans to start mining asteroids for natural resources.



All of these commercial for profit efforts will allow NASA to push the envelope and extend our presence in our Solar System.



Our future, our only hope for survival and purpose, is Out There. If we stay here, we will all die and become a meaningless biological blip unworthy of notice.

All of your petty arguments about religion, abortion, state's rights, limited government, tax policy, Gaza settlements. Iranian nukes, Afghan instability, China's pending world domination and climate change are meaningless.

The single most important goal of the human race is to extend ourselves as far as we possibly can beyond Earth.

We need to be so ubiquitous throughout our solar system that no war, no idealogy, no plague, no genetic mutation can destroy us all.

That would be a good start.

Anybody Know Anything About Jewelry?

So, when my daughter, young Galadriel Tanqueray Onassis, graduated from High School, my mother presented her with a ring.

It looks kind of like a spiral galaxy with one arm of diamonds and one arm of rubys.

At least my mom says they are diamonds and rubys. But she also told me we are related to Jesse James. Her proof? Because so many men in the family had the first name "James". Yeah.

So I suspect the whole ring is just cheap costume jewelry. Anyway, my mom is convinced that the rubys are some sort of rare "dark rubys" that are incredibly valuable.

So here is one crappy picture and two better pictures of the ring. Anyone have any idea what we are looking at here?

What Is Your Life Story?

So, I was at Price Chopper this afternoon and there was a gaggle of people that reminded me of one of those "which of these is not like the other ones?" puzzles.

There were maybe a dozen of them They clearly weren't actual Amish, but they had an Amishish vibe to them.

I also detected a hint of Mormonism. They were all dressed in old-timey clothes. Farm dresses and straw hats for the women and girls, ill-fitting black suits and white shirts for the boys, while the obvious Patriarch seemed to have a bit more leeway in his sartorial choices.

They were huddled together in the baked goods section at first, then they seemed to be all over the store. They didn't seem to be overtly proselytizing. They seemed to be shopping in an environment to which they were unaccustomed. I overheard one of them saying something about "you're going to get us lost".

At Price Chopper.

Somewhere between the meat and dairy section, a young, maybe 5 or 6 year, old little girl spotted me, made eye contact, clearly saw the godlessness in my eyes and eagerly and sincerely approached me with a religious tract in her outstretched hand.

Had it been one of the adults, I would have given them a scornful "Um, no thanks."

But the little girl was clearly concerned about my Eternal Soul and was cuter than a speckled pup in a red wagon so I took the tract. This was my favorite page because it seemed to capture all of my favorite things that make life worth living.

But according to the tract, I'm wrong about all of that fun shit. Here is how I am supposed to be living my life.

And here is how you achieve such an incredibly drab, boring and suicide inducing lifestyle.

Yeah, fuck all that hocus pocus.

I still don't know what religious cult these folks belong to, but their tract was published by an outfit called Operation Somebody Cares. You can read the entire tract here.

Enjoy and may God have Mercy on your Eternal Soul.

My Father's WWII Diary: Shore Leave

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. So here are 9,000 words about what sailors do after their ship breaks in two in the North Pacific.