I delight in autumn: the myriad of colors, a chill in the air mixed with faint traces of woodsmoke, the Pleiades rising, and holidays like Halloween and Thanksgiving. Further, as outdoor activities wind down, I relish the time that can now be spent in theaters; especially ones that play Halloween classics, marathons and double features.
While America doesn't claim to hold exclusive rights to a rousing horror tale, we damn sure perfected the genre with luminaries such as Edgar Allen Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, and Washington Irving to names a few. As a result, is it any wonder when we unleashed talent such as Hitchcock, John Carpenter or Wes Craven?
I digress…
Anyway, while surfing the web at lunch today I ran across a listing that the Portage Theater was running a Hitchcock double feature! Sadly, I already knew that I wasn't going to make it: get home at 6:30, feed and walk dogs, scarf dinner, head back to the city? There'd never be enough time… Thinking quickly, I Googled the "
Portage Theater" and found that it would be running a few classic Halloween movies over the course of the week - and tonight was just the beginning!
Sneaking a peak at tomorrows listings I was stupefied to hit paydirt: they're going to show
John Carpenter's "
They Live!" tomorrow night! If you've never seen it here's the synopsis from wiki (I won't give much away):
George Nada (Roddy Piper) is a homeless laborer who finds work on a Los Angeles construction site. One of the workers, Frank Armitage (Keith David), takes him to a local shantytown. After eating at the soup kitchen and spending the night, he notices odd behavior at the small church across the street. Investigating, he discovers that the church's soup kitchen is a front: inside, the loud "choir practice" is a recording, scientific apparatus fills a back room, and cardboard boxes are stacked everywhere, including some in a secret compartment that he stumbles across.
That night, the police surround the church, forcing the inhabitants to flee. The police then turn on the shantytown, destroying it with bulldozers and beating the blind minister of the church to death. Nada returns to the site the next day and investigates the church again, which has been emptied. He takes one of the boxes from the secret compartment and opens it in an alleyway, finding it full of sunglasses. He keeps one pair and leaves the rest in a garbage can.
When Nada later dons the glasses for the first time, the world appears in shades of grey, with significant differences. He notices that a billboard now simply displays the word "Obey"; without them it advertises that Control Data Corporation is "creating a transparent computing environment." Another billboard (normally displaying "Come to the Caribbean" written above a lovely woman lying on a beach) now displays the text "Marry and Reproduce." He also sees that paper money bears the words "This is your God." All printed matter around him contains subliminal advertising.
Additionally, he soon discovers that many people are actually aliens, who are human-looking except for skull-like faces.
Why is this such a big deal?
While I try to abstain from posting material that is "off topic" from the core idea of firearms legislation, sportsman's rights here at the MCSA, I (and I probably don't speak for all the members) can't help but believe that in some ways we're now witnessing socio-political machinations that won't make their consequences easy to deal with for upcoming generations. I'm not just talking about awarding a
Nobel prize for being in office for 11 days and accomplishing nothing, but, rather overreaching fiscal policy that seems to have many of our investors clamoring for a different reserve currency.
What hammered it home was a lecture by Peter Schiff, a stockbroker and economist that has appeared many a time on the major news stations. He recently gave a lecture in Chicago (I didn't attend due to work), and while I don't agree with everything that he says, his points about the "Cash-for-Clunkers" program at about 6:00 into the video below drove the point home:
Think about the "Cash for Clunkers" program. They want us to spend money.
This is a program that only a politician could come up with. We're in debt. We're in trouble. The last thing we need to do is borrow more money.
What is cash for clunkers? We're going to pay people money to destroy working assets. In fact, We're going to borrow the money from China to pay people to destroy working assets. These are cars that are on the road. People are driving them. Because in order to qualify the car actually had to be in service. You couldn't just pull some clunker out of a junkyard… It actually had to be working.
We don't want to destroy things that don't work - we want to destroy things that do work! [laughter]
And so, here's a car that people own. that they were driving without any payments. They didn't have car loans on these clunkers… They owned them. Let's destroy that! Let's give you 4500 to pour acid on the engine so it'll never work. Then we'll pay money to scrap it and, who knows what it costs to get rid of all these working cars. and lets encourage you to buy a brand new car that you can't afford! And you're going to go into debt to do it! Every month you'll make a car payment that you didn't have before.
This is great - really a way to get out of the recession… Like being shot in the arm and the solution is getting shot in the foot too…
Buy. Consume with Credit. Don't keep your assets. Stay Asleep to the fact that your liberties are being taken.
Starting to see the parallel? Just some frightful Halloween thoughts that you might choose to mull over this coming Holiday season... Maybe it is time we did more kicking ass and less chewing bubblegum.
