Author Archives: Tom Crippen

1959: Year of Little Rationale

Posted on by

My mother did the index for the new book 1959: The Year Everything Changed and thought it was a bit lacking in purpose. The author gives his mission statement in the form of a Slate column and does a good job reminding us that the years just before “the Sixties” were indeed full of change and portent. He doesn’t get into why 1959 should be his focus, as opposed to 1958 or 1961 or any other year out of that batch. Maybe they also had some amazing did-you-know firsts and breakthroughs, maybe they didn’t; he doesn’t realize the question might be relevant.

He does spend a lot of energy explaining why we should care about this long-ago time of change and portent and breakthroughs. The reason is that it’s just like our current time of change, portent, etc. I find it discouraging that he would think the question was necessary, and discouraging that he would answer it the way he did. All in all, he provides a disincentive for checking out his book, especially since some of it appears to be about jazz.

The author’s name is Fred Kaplan and he covers defense issues for Slate. He screwed up very badly on Colin Powell’s UN speech but wrote some good columns explaining why the occupation of Iraq would probably be very difficult and not a good idea.

Too good to be true

Posted on by


Les sextraordinaires aventures de Zizi et Peter Panpan

That’s the title of a ’60s bande dessinée erotique created by Gérard Lauzier. Taken all in all, the French are admirably dedicated to giving other nations a laugh. “Panpan” — huh.

I was looking for something about Petit Con, a movie Lauzier based on one of his cartoon series, but all Wiki could offer was the same New York Times review I read back in 1985. The reviewer didn’t like the film, whereas I did. The piece does salvage a very good line: “Not a hint of rebellion in their frozen calf eyes!” That’s the thought on the moody young hero’s mind as his family eats its dinner.

Very skeptical about the Comedian

Posted on by

Now that I think about it, I don’t believe the Comedian would be so shocked by Veidt’s master plan. Kill 5 million people to scam the world into a new era of peace? The Comedian didn’t mind Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden or the bombing of Vietnam, all mass killings of innocents for higher goals. In fact most people don’t mind those deaths, not unless they’re forcefully reminded and hectored a bit, and even then …

Of course Veidt’s body count is higher, but the Comedian doesn’t mind shooting a woman pregnant with his own child if she gets in his face. If the ordinary person is, at most, regretful and occasionally troubled by politically motivated aerial slaughter, then I would expect the Comedian could keep his soul together in the face of even an extra-size jumbo slaying like that engineered by Veidt. At least I don’t see any reason to assume otherwise unless you feel like doing Alan Moore and his script a favor. It’s quite a big gimme at the heart of a classic.

UPDATE: Another note of disgruntlement about the Comedian. His keynote line goes as follows:

“What happened to the American dream? You’re looking at it — it came true.”

I guess the idea is that America’s all about kicking ass when the other guy can’t kick back, and a case could be made highlighting that particular strain of the American experience. But I’ve always seen the phrase itself, “American dream,” used this way: In America you can work in a factory and earn enough to raise your kids in a house and then send them to college so they can become middle class. The idea managed to be true for a couple of decades but has since hit the wobbles. Still, nothing to do with shooting protesters.

Inadequate instructions from an omnipresent authority

Posted on by

On the Greyhound coming down from Montreal, I sat next to a window with an emergency exit. The little message read:

EMERGENCY EXIT
LIFT this bar, PUSH window OPEN

But what bar? If you looked, there was a lever a couple of inches to the right of the little message. But that’s not a bar, and I would think you pulled it up instead of pushing it.

This kind of thing used to drive me crazy when I was a kid.