My First Time

All petitions should be hated and loathed.

Except this one.

Of course.

The truth about petitions (for entertainment, anyhow) is that back in 1969, NBC threatened to cancel a rather poorly rated, poorly conceived and poorly acted science fiction show that had a shoestring budget and second-rate actors. Thanks, almost completely, to a letter writing campaign Star Trek was saved for an extra season.

That first successful petition has been the bane of television executives the world over. Much of the funding for current television shows is being siphoned into a time-travel fund in order to go back and brutally beat those Star Trek execs within an inch of their collective lives.

Resistance is futile.

Every week someone waves a petition at me to save, change, bring back, or end a television show, transfer it to DVD, VHS, Pan and Scan, Widescreen or otherwise alter the space-time continuum to change time, speed up the harvest, or teleport them off this rock.

By the way, PAN AND SCAN MUST DIE.

Sorry, just had to get that out of the way.

DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE.

Ok, I’m (DIE) done now.

The truth is that most petitions fail utterly and completely to achieve any of the objectives that they established. They raise false hopes in viewers, and basically waste a lot of time for both the petitioners and the studio execs. Execs are notoriously blind to anything except bigger boobs, bigger pecs and bigger profits.

Come to think of it, I’m pretty centered on those things too!

But when in college I heard the lyric (from some band whom I can’t recall at the moment), “I am what I am/ Just like Kunta Kinte/ Mister Kunta Kinta”. As an English and Speech Communication major at the time, I understood there was an underlying significance to this turn of phrase. But I was at a loss to explain it. My roommate, Win, had to explain just who Kunta Kinte was.

This is, perhaps, forgivable, since I was four when the mini-series Roots was released on television. Though for some reason I can remember Star Wars which was released that same year. Fascinating.

But if you asked me who Pilot-Major John Blackthorne, or Lord Toranaga, or even Omi-san was, I would have been able to tell you in an instant. The mini-series king was, without a doubt, Richard Chamberlain. He starred in Centennial in 1978 and The Thorn Birds in 1983 and even the original The Bourne Identity the first movie to ask, "Who is Keyser Soze?".

Are you Keyser Soze?

That's just what Keyser Soze would say.

But Chamberlain's crowning achievement was his starring role in a classic piece of artistic, acting, directing and storytelling was his 1980 roles in Shogun.

Ooo, just saying the name gives me shivers.

Shogun.

See, there they go again.

Based on the James Clavell novel of the same name, Shogun tells the story, though the eyes of a talented English pilot, of seventeenth century feudal Japan on the brink of one of its greatest civil wars which would ultimately unite it under the Tokogawa Dynasty for the next four-hundred-odd years. It is intrigue, politics, adventure, culture and men with big swords and bigger egos.

Oh, I think there’s a girl in there too.

Maybe a sappy love-story, I don’t really recall.

Transferred to the screen by director Jerry London, and brought to life with the skills of the very talented Toshiro Mifune as Lord Toronaga, Shogun is a masterpiece of nine-hours of the greatest television ever shown.

And yet . . . yet, it has yet to be transferred to DVD.

Can you imagine? I’ve been waiting very, very, very patiently for the past ten years to own this movie, and I refuse to own it on the eighteen VHS tapes that I know I will just wear out after three months.

Alright, it’s only four tapes, but the point is that this movie will still be worn out.

As well it should be.

And so, I write to you today to urge you to start a petition. But this time, a petition that not only has justification, but a moral and spiritual integrity that support it. This is a petition that was called upon not just by me, a mere mortal, but by God on High, Himself. A petition that not only will not fail, but cannot fail.

Please, please, please, please, please!

I’ll stop sending those, "Bring Back Old Trek" petitions.

Personal Note: For those of you Chosen Ones out there who are aware, Shogun is now available on DVD, through no small effort of this very article.

Road Signs of Decadence

Over the years I have developed an appreciation for things which . . . in the past I would have sworn off in the same breath as Satanism: mostly silly, and generally evil.

Things like classical art, the collected works of Dostoyevsky, and (shudder) country music, have all found a place, if not altogether warm then at least temperate, in my heart. But just like some wines, when aged, only get better, others turn to a vile and undrinkable vinegar that is better used for cleaning nuclear waste filters than cooking.

Like cars.

Some of the things that people do to cars simply baffles my artistic and transportation sensibilities. There seems to be no end to the market of silly things people can do to their vehicles. And by “people” I mostly mean about men, though there are women out there equally or more foolish then their automotive counterparts (see the bumper sticker section).

And you know who you are.

For example, changing the height of your vehicle. Now, living in the west, and having traversed some of the rockier parts of the Rocky Mountains, I can understand the desire to raise your truck to a height requiring oxygen tanks to assume the driver seat.

Such heights are dangerous, prompt vehicles to tip over and are excessive, but we’re men: we live for danger, tipping things over and general excess.

To most men, the idea of “less is more” never really made sense. How the hell can “less” be “more”. More is more, and less is less, and too much is never enough unless it’s “just right”.

So while raising a vehicle to Tower of Babel heights does make sense (and has a certain appeal) lowering a vehicle until it would high center on a Shankara Stone does not. Why, in the name of Shiva’s six arms, would you ever want skittles and M&M’s to become potential road hazards?

Of course, while I can understand the raising of a vehicle much more readily than lowering one, I can more sympathize with those in the later category since they generally seem to have better taste in paint jobs. The run-of-the-mill raised vehicle generally comes in two categories: primer grey and camouflage.

I said generally, so as the Yosemite Sam mud flaps advise: BACK OFF!

A wise foreign policy.

Camouflage, unless you’re fighting a jungle engagement against an alien predator who has personal stealth technology and a particle weapon that makes modern smart missles seem remedial, has never really made sense to me. I asked an intrepid soul why his sixteen-foot, rope-ladder accessible behemouth needed camouflage and he wisely pointed out, “So da deer don see mah comin’”. As any third-grader from Mrs. Momson’s class can tell you, most animals are color blind. Thus, you could paint your vehicle an assortment of Kool-Aid flavored colors and the deer would still hear your muffler from a mile off.

Most deer are smart like this. Most people aren’t.

The deer you see on the side of the road are the failed initiates of some deer gang. I just know that right after I miss some deer that has just bolted in front of me, he is being warmly congratulated by his fellows saying, “Alright, Spike’s in the club!”

The next time you see a camouflaged car, press hard on the accelerator, ram into its side, and when the officer asks you what happened, just say, “Man, I didn’t see him. He was camouflaged!”

But more so than the height and/or color of a vehicle that should bother you is the use of said vehicle as a billboard. As my sister-in-law wisely pointed out, “Bumper-stickers are a permanent statement of a temporary belief.” After all, what happens in another year and a half when (God willing) the U.S. has a “regime change”?

Do you still want to say “Dukakis/Bentsen in ‘88”? Shouldn’t you, as a Democratic supporter, be looking for a little stronger of a candidate sixteen years later?

But perhaps the most intelligence-insulting of these automobile-cum-discussion forum messages is the contribution of another 80s icon: Baby on Board. I for one was eminently grateful and to these signs. I quit plowing into any number of vehicles as soon as I saw the little yellow caution. It was a great relief to know that everyone else became much better drives because we all knew that in our general vicinity a baby was “Onboard”.

Now we just need a “Keanu on Board”.

That way we lay out marbles to high-center him, set for ramming speed, and plead ignorance that he was even there, since his camo-Hummer blended into the blacktop.

He was CAMO-FLAUGED!