Archive for May, 2011

Dad and I were never what you'd call close. Didn't talk a lot, didn't spend a lot of time together. He wasn't much of a hands-on father, and I was either out with friends or reading in my room or using half the furniture in the house to support my wildly optimistic, rapidly-growing, 300-foot-long Hot Wheels racetrack. He was there for the important stuff. Taught me to drive, was there when I needed him, mostly shook his head at whatever new scheme his son was cooking up next. Virtually all of my memories of him include him sitting in his chair in the living room, smoking, petting the dog, and watching the world go by our window. One of the very few pictures I have of him is this one, from a posed group photo at his job at Coca Cola.

Dad was not very social either, not very talkative or open. But sometimes someone would call up and he'd answer the phone and his face would light up. Soon some other middle-aged guy would stop by and they'd talk for hours. Afterward he'd just say he knew the guy from "the service" and let it go at that.

He never told me war stories. I knew he'd been in the Korean War and I'd heard him mention Pork Chop Hill before, but he never brought the subject up around me. Until one day he heard from a buddy that there was a book on the subject and he was mentioned in it. By that time I was accomplished in hunting down wanted books for myself from the network of bookstores up and down the East Coast — this is very, very pre-Amazon — and we managed to get a copy. And he was, indeed, mentioned.

The Battle of Pork Chop Hill is actually two infantry battles fought while the various aggressors in the Korean War were negotiating an armistice. The U.N. won the first battle, but only after two days of heavy fighting with lots of casualties and an unbelievable amount of firepower thrown around. The Hill was near an outpost near the Main Line of Resistance, but didn't actually have a lot of strategic value. On March 23, 1953, a Chinese battalion took the hill. U.N. forces fought to regain it but lost half their men before pulling back.

Dad was in Company F, 17th Infantry, under Captain Monroe D. King. King Company made it to the trenches on the hill but got shelled in ten-minute blasts off and off. When they got there, well…

From "Pork Chop Hill: The American Fighting Man In Action, Korea, Spring 1953" by S.L.A. Marshall:

First man to enter the Pork Chop works, Cpl. William H. Bridges, saw two Chinese rise from among the rocks beyond the parados and fire directly on First Platoon with submachine guns. He yelled, "Watch out!" and dove for the trench. The burst cut down five men close behind him.

Pvt Rudolph Gordon made the trench almost at the same moment. Turning leftward, he started for the second bunker down the line. Three grenades came at him from behind its far wall. They fell short. He and Bridges grenaded back. But protected by the bunker mass, the Chinese grenadiers played African dodger, revealing head and shoulder just long enough to heave their potato mashers.

Within the perimeter which the group formed on the knob were three small, partly collapsed bunkers. Eight or nine of the worst-spent men took shelter under their sandbag walls. The others moved into nearby shell craters. The holes were not deep enough for good cover. Using spoons, knives and bayonets for the work they lacked the strength to wield the small entrenching tool they tried to widen and deepen them. The only other activity was an endless cleaning of rifles and carbines, done with toothbrushes, the standby equipment of the soldier when nothing else will free his grimed rifle. Kuzmick set the example.

The others followed it, though their response was trancelike. Since early morning they had been without water. Faces caked, tongues thickened by the dust shower which plagued the hill, under lashing by the guns and mortars, they no longer talked to each other. Nor did they move from their places except when shaken loose by an exploding shell. From the foreground, an almost constant bullet fire rained upon the knob. Occasionally, a grenade came sailing in. Yet they saw not a single human target, and therefore made no attempt to return fire. In the end that perhaps mattered very little, since most of them no longer had sufficient strength to raise weapon to shoulder and aim. Than this, there is no more moving entry in the record of King, that young Americans too exhausted to fight may still obey such group discipline as their enfeebled resources permit. It was to be their portion for four hours.

"We lay there and took it," said Corporal Bridges. "There was nothing else to do." To the few who endured it, the earlier trials of the day seemed nothing compared with this final test. Hit and harassed, endlessly cleaning weapons with no valid hope of again using them, they still held ground. The earth and rock banks which they had raised above their small craters were creased and scattered by the bullet storm. The enemy artillery, which had ranged widely over Pork Chop, now concentrated against this one small area of defiance. The embankments caved in. The sandbag walls were flattened. Repeatedly, the men were buried under the dirt shower. Weapons freshly cleaned were refouled. Again the toothbrushes were plied. In this way continued the monotonously deadly round. At the end, fourteen had survived it, sick and shaken but relatively whole-bodied. Seven were Americans, the others ROKs.

The book reads like a love letter. Marshall wrote as if all soldiers were gods, using fiercely overblown prose that raises those men to unmatchable deities. And maybe, for that time, they were. Dad seemed quietly proud that we'd read it, even as he told us to forget about it. I think he was glad we knew, but was even gladder we found out from someone besides him, if that makes sense.

My dad acted bravely, both in actions and in endurance, fighting for his country. But 33 other men in King Company who acted just as bravely never came off the Hill.

To my knowledge, I have not lost any immediate family or friends in combat, and in that I know that I am extremely fortunate. Dad died of lung cancer decades after the war, long after seeing his grandchildren born. But today, for his sake, I honor the brave men who fought shoulder-to-shoulder with him those two days in 1953 and never made it home.

Yes, I'm late to the party. But it's been eating at me.

Actually I stopped watching Smallville somewhere around the 5th season, and only lasted that long out of dogged optimism. There were so many things right about the show, they couldn't blow every opportunity, could they? Well, yes, yes they could.

But I tuned in to the finale just to see the payoff, what we've been waiting for these ten years. Clark, flying, in the suit.

Guess what we didn't really get?

Now, I don't know exactly why. I've heard the suit they used (from Superman Returns) didn't actually fit actor Tom Welling so they couldn't. I've heard that Warner didn't want a full-body shot of Welling in the suit because they had the new guy lined up for the next movie and wanted his to be the face everyone expected. I've heard Welling flat-out refused to be seen in the suit. I have no idea, and frankly I don't care.  Whatever the reason, the fans were cheated.

Everything the finale did to make the ending inspirational and triumphant — and it tried really, really, really hard –was undercut with the awkward direction and bad CG required to show Clark being Superman without really showing it. And it would have been so easy to do so, even within the budget of a cable show. So, let's try this:

EXT. METROPOLIS – DAY

Apokolips is approaching earth, a fiery ball of hate. Citizens of Metropolis GATHER to look up at their doom. Some are crying. Many of them have glowy OMEGA symbols on their foreheads. OLIVER rushes out into the street. People are packed in the windows, watching. The end is very clearly near.

CUT TO:

A terrified WOMAN HOLDING A BABY leans too close to her window and gets jostled; the baby slips, FALLS. The woman screams, the crowd reacts.

And something blurs past the woman. Something red and blue.

CLARK lands gently in the Metropolis street, in full costumed view, holding the baby, moving with calm assurance. The crowd marvels.

MAN IN CROWD
It's the Blur!

People gasp and murmur. Clark HANDS THE BABY to Oliver. Then cue the Superman theme song as he SMILES THE SUPERMAN SMILE for the first time ever, and TAKES OFF into the sky. 

OLIVER
(holding the baby)
Good luck, Clark.

As we cut back and forth between his grim determination and the people we see signs of long-denied hope in the populace. Here and there the Omega symbol blinks out, overwhelmed by emotion. The people of Metropolis CHEER HIM ON.

Clark vanishes into the planet's corona. And Apokolips STARTS TO MOVE AWAY. The crowds go wild, hugging each other and yelling. The last Omega symbols VANISH. The day is saved.

Same scene as before. No fancy special effects the crew hasn't already done a zillion times before, I'm not even suggesting we show him pushing the planet (which would have been nice). But we get two things we were denied: Clark, in the suit, being Superman, in full view. And we get the added benefit of Metropolis realizing their hometown hero is a lot more heroic and inspirational than they imagined, with that holy-crap moment that lifts you up inside. 

How hard would that have been?

According to some enlightened nutbars, the Rapture is due to hit tomorrow and people are panicking. Well, I say panicking. In fact, a very few people are smug and looking skyward, a few thousand more are selling those schnooks post-Rapture insurance and pet-housing, and the rest of us are shaking our heads and cracking Rapture jokes.

But the fact remains that someday all hell will break loose. If not Rapture, then nuclear war or asteroid attack or zombie outbreak or giant mutated lizard or just plain economic collapse. There's no way to know for sure what will happen before, what will happen then, and what will happen after, but things will change and you will change with them or you will most surely die. Are you up to the challenge? Are you ready to face directly into either the confirmation or utter denial of everything you've ever believed in?

If you're the person I think you are, you're not only ready but eager, and you've got front-row tickets as well as back-stage passes to the cast party after the invasion. But there will be strange and trying times, so here's some tips on how to spend your last days on Oith.

1 ) If you have warning, max out all of your credit cards and sell your stocks short. Buy everything you've ever wanted, pick up a complete collection of all the movies produced between 1953 and 1986, buy a car with your Discover Card. Why not? Borrow stuff from everybody you know, just so you can roll on it. Or stock up on ammo, non-perishable food items, chlorine tablets, and hand-cranks to recharge your iPod, just in case.

2 ) Or take your newly-gotten gain and buy a lot of land. Fence it in, a real fence, the kind that'll bring a tear to the eye of an Arizona lawman. Build two entrances, one heavily guarded main gate and a small, hidden, back gate. Build a huge, well-lit, well-guarded, luxurious-looking house in the middle. Build a small, comfortable, hidden house by the back entrance. Live in the small house. Mount three fully automatic machine guns facing the big entrance. During the riots and insurrections of the End Days you'll be able to sit back, free from worry, and spend your time idly gunning down the rampaging crowds that try to break in. Guaranteed hours of fun for the whole family!

3 ) If you need to go out for supplies during the violent times, wear a Kevlar suit and cover it with wiring. Put some highway flares on your chest and back with duct tape and run wires from them to an old garage door opener. Keep that in your hand at all times. Keep your eyes wide and glaring. Go about your business, no one will bother you.

4 ) Learn to give really good oral sex. Whether you're male or female, if there's the slightest chance that you won't be the local tribal chieftain then you'd better learn to dive down there with a smile. There won't be many renewable commodities that you can lay hands on in a hurry, but if you follow my advice you'll always be welcomed.

5 ) When the sun goes nova do not look at it directly. This can cause irreparable damage to your eyes. Take two pieces of cardboard, 8" by 8", and paint them black. Using a needle (ask your parents for help) make a pinhole in the center of one of the pieces. Now hold them up so that the sun's explosive force will go through the hole onto the center of the other card. In the split picosecond before you burn away screaming into a puff of greasy ash you'll be able to see the image reproduced perfectly on the second piece of cardboard. Do not use smoked glass.

6 ) Take the time now to learn how to tell groceries by touch alone. You may have to spend quite a few months scuba-diving in supermarkets for sustenance, and this will let you scoop out the good stuff before everybody else. Lock yourself in your closet and memorize the feel of fruit juice cans, the distinctive shape of packaged ham, and discover the foolproof way to distinguish tuna fish from cat food.

7 ) Just for fun, get three friends and four different colored horses and ride through the streets in flowing robes and serious expressions.

8 ) If things threaten to get nuclear you have two choices: A. Move to where the bombs won't hit, or B. Move to where they will. Your preference would depend on your attitudes towards Armageddon, post-holocaust living and the afterlife, and are entirely up to you. If you move to where the bombs are sure to hit, try to go with style. Move to ground zero. Paint an X spreading out from your house. Invite friends over for the Big Blowout. If you know the bombs are coming, go out there with a bat and see if you can set one off before it hits. Take some friends and a blanket and try to catch one.

9 ) Plan for your food supply. Watching for good sales at Publix won't cut it in an aftermath situation. Instead, raise bunnies; they're fairly cheap to feed, don't take up much space, breed like, well, rabbits, and they make good eatin'. Leave the eyes in, though. Best part, man, really.
Also, and I'm just saying, you might want to look up which parts of your neighbors are edible.

10 ) As much as circumstances will allow, nail anything you can get it up for. Since radiation of all wavelengths will be thrown around like hairspray when the End happens, fertility might be an iffy thing and generations of the future may depend on whomever had the forethought to spread his seed from here to Tierra del Fuego. Think of it! Legions of your sons and daughters, marching under your guidance and tutelage! Your features will become the standard of beauty, you will rule as the literal father of the country. Hey, if nothing else it's a good line to use tonight.