A Brief Rant On Sexism

A little Monday night rant. About sexism. Bear with me.

Years ago, at my first newspaper job, they were to publish a special section called "Women In Business" which spotlighted local female CEOs, business owners and various movers & shakers. They thought that they would utilize my cartooning chops somewhere between its covers, and requested a light-hearted drawing depicting the above. I drew a woman balancing a multitude of hats on her head, representing a woman intimidated by nothing, able to fill any role – among the hats were especially those traditionally (at the time) branded as generally masculine, like a construction hardhat, a soldier's helmet, etc.

The next day at work, I discovered that no one in the office would speak to me. Even discussing assignment instructions, my supervisor would only bark orders at me in single syllables. I finally asked what the matter was – and when someone would finally communicate back, I was informed that I had committed the most brazen act of sexism and gender-phobic puerility (my cartoon).

I made some churlish response to the order of "sorry for depicting a woman as universally capable – what exactly did you want a cartoon for anyway?" followed by "and how long were you mature adults going to pout in moral turpitude instead of communicating?"

Well today, for my current job, I designed an entire section called… wait for it… "Women In Business." In fact, over the past 20 years I have designed several such special sections, entitled… "Women In Business" (every time a paper produces a section like this, it always seems to get the title "Women In Business.") ???

Back on that first time… if I apologized (I don't recall anymore), I hereby take it back. I meant something positive. I rendered a cartoon, as requested. And in the years since, I have dutifully cranked out these dinosaurish "Women In Business" 'special' sections even though they subliminally treat professional women as a special needs group. Like a sub-culture of pretenders who need this annual spotlight to make them 'feel' important. Like say, "Children In Business."

It's never grown beyond this model in 20 years; a special section looking at this interesting oddity among our workforce: "women in business." It is still that in 2015. In my career, I've had 7 female supervisors, 3 female publishers (!) and even a female pastry chef that I reported to. I've had a grand total of only 4 male bosses and 1 male middle-management supervisor that I directly reported to, my entire professional life. All but one job interview I've ever had, was presided over by women.

Dear Newspaper Industry – may I say this is pretty sexist, not to mention gender-phobically puerile, of you. But hey, I'm just a cog performing my job.

A Note To Job Seekers, and the Damn Poetry Corner Returns!

Hint To Job Seekers, from an Old Codger:

Don't waste a résumé on the following type of company – nothing important happens there; they'll pay you a minimally acceptable salary to show up every day and participate in office politics and management-worship. The company is insanely busy, and produces… nothing.

Under "Job Description" they don't detail the position's purpose, but insert a repetitively written "mission statement" about the company as a whole.

Under "Operational Duties" they don't describe any actual tasks, but merely list the other offices over yours, whom you'll report to, and ask permission to take bathroom breaks.

Under "Qualifications" their list of educational and experiential must-haves is the equivalent of a senior employee making at least 5 times what they're willing to pay you.

If you choose to throw your hat in the ring, just keep in mind it's only for a paycheck and whatever medical benefits they offer. You won't be participating in anything tangible, or productive, much less essential.

***

DAMN POETRY CORNER

I fall off ladders
I fall off bikes
I'm off the radar
Everyone yells yikes

When I walk
The Children laugh
But I'm too poor
To hire a staff

___

He hooked up with a drunk whore who smoked in bed.
Put asunder by a sipper who slumbered with a cinder.

That Kid Educated Me

A DIFFERENT WAY TO EMBRACE LIFE, AS TAUGHT ME BY THE SNEAKY KID AT THE BBQ

I was at a restaurant here called Dickey's BBQ. One of their customer enticements is free ice-cream with your meal; they provide the cones, and you help yourself at the soft-serve machine. It's located alongside the beverage fountain.

The kid to who I refer, paid full price for a large cup – the take-along cups at Dickey's are plastic, not paper, and meant to be reusable, in a kind of "permanent" way that makes one a little uneasy about tossing them in the trashcan if one is at all environment-conscious.

The unspoken routine is that you come back when you're finished, and make yourself a quick ice-cream cone on the house, on your way out. Thanks, and have a great day, compliments of your friends at Dickey's BBQ!

The kid marched past the soda fountain, and put his cup under the soft-serve dispenser. He'd paid for it. There was no spoken rule or signage to the affect of "use cups for beverages, cones for ice-cream." He filled it up. An epic serving of ice-cream. There may be a sign like that now, however, but I was taught something important by watching this kid use the rules to his advantage without technically breaking them…

It's not about watching what you eat, or being irresponsible with one's life choices. It's about interpreting life.

My I offer to you, that the old clichéd adages, "Live life to its fullest," "Live each day like it's your last," and "Seize the day," et al… are a big crock o' horsecrap. Seriously.

How exactly can you be sure what your personal "fullest" day would be like? Are you sure yesterday was "full" enough to qualify? There's no mean measurement to refer against, when judging a given day's "full" mark.

When you pretend today is your "last," and proceed to live it accordingly, it's kind of self-aggrandizing. You do that knowing in the back of your mind, that it's likely not your last – unless you habitually run across open freeways, flagpole sit or poke grizzly bears for fun. So you're really living today like it's your last day of messing around, not necessarily your last day of being alive.

Seize the day? You do that all the time, or at least attempt it – getting chores done, paying bills, tending to your family, resting, vacationing, working, figuring out random day-to-day stuff. "Seize the day" is a pretty damn vague task, subject to a million different interpretations, and just as many grey areas of criteria. It's a faux-erudite spin of "get off your ass," actually. A cowboy would say, "make hay while the sun shines." Confucious might say something like, "wait not on the morrow," in Chinese, of course. Yoda would be all "all hesitation, end you must."

Sometimes you have no other choice but to seize the day. "What do you mean the offer expires at midnight?" Enlightenment cannot be forced on you – if it is, it's usually a penalty, not an epiphany. You got it wrong! What have we learned today?

So what do I offer in place of those wise old nuggets of self-helptardism?

How about this… think back to that kid and his cup. At some point he put the concepts together: I paid for this big cup. There's an ice-cream machine next to the soda fountain. Why did I assume the cones were exclusive, because they're free like the ice-cream?

Don't live like today is your last. Live like YESTERDAY was your last… and you somehow landed a bonus one. Don't worry how "full" it is, just regard every day you wake up as another one you're "getting away with."

Occasionally I ponder all the things I've been through, the turns life has taken, the obstacles, failures and triumphs I've had… and I ponder sometimes, "maybe I was supposed to be gone by now." Today is a gift. It's that jackpot you won by following that whim to pull the handle when the machine's regular player who "owned" it, took a bathroom break.

Wake up, thinking, "I'm getting ONE MORE." Don't worry if it isn't outwardly miraculous, or perfect to the last minute. There's one more cookie in the jar, after you thought it empty. There's an ice-cream machine… and you've paid for that big cup anyway – why was I settling for soda before?

Begin tomorrow with an accurate assessment of it: "I wasn't promised this, but here it is."

Default To Dickery!

Incredible But Wow, presents:
DEFAULT TO DICKERY!

Is everyone like this now?

So… we pitch in to buy an employee a birthday cake. We sing Happy Birthday. Then we say to the celebrated person, "it's your birthday, so you make the initial slice of the cake." Right? Right?? I've known this tradition for years and years. Why is it that the person whose birthday it is, always claims to have "never heard of it?" Like cutting the cake will ruin their life… Finally they say "alright, whatever…" They proceed to cut only themselves a slice and walk away. "… You're welcome, happy birthday ya P.O.S!"

Then… THEN, the next person comes up and says "Oh, oh I'm on a diet this week so I'll only take a tiny piece." They scoop the largest icing flower off the top of the cake, onto their plate, and leave the actual cake behind, now with a big ugly golf divot on it. Oh swell. Dick move!! "Well I left more cake for someone else…" Yeah, I'm sure half the people in line are going to go all Deathmatch for that chunk of cake with all the icing scraped OFF. Thanks a mil, Mr. Magnanimous. Mr. Pay-It-Forward!

THEN… the third person decides to show off how skilled they are with the serving knife… lops off a big square from the complete opposite side of the cake from where the initial slicing is happening, and attempts to juggle-flip the slab of cake onto there plate… held about 15 inches away. Guess how splendid that works out. And they shift the entire cake off the platter doing it. Beautimus. Now we have a cake half mutilated, and the half that was still pristine is now resting on the bare table. Such talent on display. And the person acts like… "oh well, looks like you guys have a mess to clean up" and walks away. W. T. F.

The people who pitched in, form a brief huddle: "Do you realize that the first three people who got near the cake (including the birthday person) colluded to ruin the cake for everyone coming after them, and indirectly gave us the big Middle Finger of Hope, doing it?" Three sheepish yet angry nods yes.

Cake anyone? Well I did a shitload of work today. Someone needs to buy me a *@$*@^% cake. Gee-dee it!

Just Lay There Beneath That Stone. See If I Care!

I really miss someone, and there is nothing I can do about it. 20 years ago there was already nothing that I or anyone else could do.

There are no words – none that satisfy, anyway – when it comes to that barrier between me and the time I want so much to roll back, regarding someone whose life slipped away.

I sit and gaze in solitude, in silent frustration, at the computer screen. The name typed into the search engine stares back, like a tiny padlock on an invisible door of innocent yet forbidden knowledge.

What happened to you!?

That's all I want, and need desperately to know. Why did you have to die before they began storing stuff – like your obituary – digitally all over the web? You slipped between the very two cracks in the pavement of the information superhighway that were prone to slam closed again.

Why did our final conversation – 30 years ago – have to be so sour and alienating? Well… I know why, I admit. It did, because I was a relentless dick. I was the reason it wasn't nice, or even civil.

You'd had it with me. No formal warning – you let me find out the hard way that I was a bad chapter, now over. I figured it out, after a long interval of denial.

I never dreamed that wondering about you three decades later, and hoping you were well, was too much. Looking you up online, hoping to discover your life in full bloom of happiness and success, I instead found out you'd died when we were in our 30s (I'm in my 50s now).

Not you. That could not have been you, I kept whispering. What little there was to find online provided all the clues of the very thing I dreaded. Your father's obituary stated plainly that you preceded him in death.

All the death notices simply say that you died. Of what? Did you become ill? Did you lose a deathmatch? Were you lost in an airline disaster? Swept away by tsunami? What? And nobody to this day seems to possess your photograph. The only picture online, is your headstone – your now 20-year old headstone which already looks ancient, like it belongs so forlornly to the past that it might was well be that of an early pioneer homesteader.

What am I supposed to do, suffice with the ever fading image I have of you in my head?

This is really unfair, I ponder, staring at your name in the search bar. It dares me to strike the 'enter' key one more time, as if it will suddenly find that one quirky webpage where all is explained, and where resides a last perfect photo that I can download as a keepsake.

If you are looking down in bemusement at my helpless plodding, it serves me right. All I can do, or hope, is that all was somehow forgiven long ago. And all you need whisper, is "there there, now."

I Watched These For You. You're Welcomed.

I'll never do it again. I thought it was a swell idea at the time. It turned out to be eight hours I'd never get back.

There are so many old nobody-wants-them-anymore b-horror and sci-fi films on the internet, it makes me cry. Especially when I look at my DVD collection and realize that I paid actual money to own a number of them. If I had known that one day they'd all be free to watch online, I'd have made a down payment on that house in Malibu I'd always dreamt about.

On this poorly judged day, however, I decided not to leave my bed, and point my tablet at some of the once-upon-a-more-innocent-time futuristic cinematic gems I'd always meant to catch, but had continually been distracted from. I now know that perhaps a divine hand had guided the distraction.

In hope of gaining something positive from my wasted day at the mooveys, my fevered brain has decided that an exorcism is in order, in the form of the following soul-cleansing rant about what I have endured. Consider this the instruction of a legless soldier after stepping on a landmine, who points the way for those following, to advance further than he could. Watch your step, or you'll be the next sacrifice for the survival of the squad.

Space Probe Taurus (1965)

Ohgawd.

It almost sounds like the nickname of a sex toy. If only it were that exciting.

On Wikipedia, the description of this movie states only that it "is a 1965 film." Period. Done. Nobody was willing to touch it any further. It's hard to imagine how Ed Wood's Plan 9 From Outer Space is regarded as the "worst of all time" when this flying streamer of jet-trash exists.

Produced by Burt Topper and penned by none other than Samuel Katzman, Space Probe Taurus is quite a study in amazing contrasts. Beautifully photographed. Epically scored. A main plot that is perhaps 75 years ahead of its time: In the year 2000 (which was 35 years in the future when the film was made), an intrepid team of space travelers venture into the vast galactic unknown in search of an Earthlike planet upon which humanity can begin colonization, as our home planet comes near depletion of its natural resources. That, by the way, is also basically the plot of Interstellar (2014), but who's noticed?

Pretty high-minded for a low-budget 60s sci-fi yarn. Sounds great so far.

Then, unfortunately, the opening credits end, and the film commences. Your dog shits things more interesting than what follows.

Katzman revives every bad plot device he likely first explored in high school creative writing class, and tacks them onto the story at random – as if to show up all those teachers who suggested he become an aluminum siding salesman. The film seems written to be cut into half-hour segments, which makes sense when one learns that Katzman did that on purpose. This movie was originally envisioned as episodes of a series, for the burgeoning TV market. But the tropes used seem a little Flash Gordonish, just slightly updated to reflect the then-current state of (bad) scientific knowledge.

In real life, the first moon landing was still four years away, and such marvelous technological concepts as atomic power and computers were still mysterious enough to reference in vague terms and lend a crude credibility to films like this. Katzman drives them into the ground here, while short-order cooking up subplots that leave the audience wondering why, when he abruptly abandons each to advance the script to the next one.

In the first half-hour, they encounter an alien spaceship, and board it to learn its origins. They meet the alien pilot, who promptly attacks – being a classic bug-eyed creature from beyond – and is stopped by a bullet from a revolver. Yes, of course. All Earthmen who explore the cosmos carry standard b-movie private-eye type black metal pistols, that work no matter what the physics. They then plant a bomb (more standard issue space exploration equipment) aboard the alien craft and blow it to smithereens.

Well, that's only logical. Isn't it?

Afterward, the crew's elder science officer laments what a shame it is to discover a new life form in the galaxy, and have to kill it. Oh well… that's done, let's be on our way. Let us never speak of it again.

And... they don't. We still have an hour of movie to go. That Katzman sure can pack his scripts!

The bluntly episodic nature of the screenplay, with each plot-point taking a path of least resistance to an unsatisfying "resolution," is testimony enough to what a pathetic, short-lived TV series Space Probe Taurus might have been. Pieced together into a feature film, the "adventures" of our heroic crew make a baffling, disconnected and rather unscientific narrative, about a bunch of space-faring self-important pricks.

Still to come in the film's drab 60 minutes, the lone female onboard keeps the 50s-style pent-up testosterone hopping, as the crew encounters deadly flaming meteor storms, giant sea crabs, and a low-rent underwater creature-man. All of them are brushed off as incidental sidebar material – until it's time to say "mission accomplished, let's head for home." Cue dramatic outro music. We can't wait for the pulse-pounding thrills of the next incredible mission.

The shit you say.

Target Earth (1954)

This one actually starts out well.

Hopes rise in the opening credits, where it's revealed that the script was based on a classic pulp sci-fi story. One envisions a well-constructed – albeit low budget – take on something akin to Harry Bates's Farewell To The Master which was filmed as The Day The Earth Stood Still.

No such friggin' luck.

The first half-hour shows some promise… opening with (dare I say) an artistically staged tableau of a young woman's attempted suicide. She lays on her bed passed out amid spilled pill bottles, sprawled in her undies, posed with self-abandon, in a visual worthy of a lurid pulp-novel cover. The camera rears away to reveal it all still just a reflection in a dresser mirror. It pans further to take a close-up inventory of the sorrowful scene, coming to rest upon the closed eyes of the poor self-destructive lass, which suddenly pop open. Suicide: Fail.

That one-take moment of cinema-noir is nearly worthy of Orson Welles.

Or was it? As she rises and stirs about to survey the extent of her prolonged misery, she discovers the entire city's populace beyond her door has been evacuated. The film is still mildly flirting with epicness at this point – the desolate cityscape portrayed is definitely not a studio set, but an actual portion of… Chicago? San Diego? Duluth? – devoid of life. Just the rope required alone must've driven the production to near bankruptcy.

When she finally ventures outside, stricken with epic curiosity, the plot nosedives quickly into cliché and contrivance. It gets worse from there, only not without a last spit wad of near-quality – to remind us what nuance we're leaving behind, in order for Target Earth's paltry tale to unfold.

She encounters the body of a nearly identical woman, laying on the sidewalk, propped grotesquely, having befallen whatever horror has laid waste to the unfortunate rest of humanity. The corpse stares tensely out, at something. No mere "dead body pose," this. The actress portraying the deceased is apparently following astute direction, to make this shot a stunning visage worthy of a much better film.

It's when our heroine runs into the first living character, that things slow to a dead crawl.

Richard Denning has just awoken from either a hangover, or a missed lunchbreak on the set of a neighboring noir film, cigarette butt firmly in his lips, and coat heroically over his shoulder. He now casually strolls the apocalypse. He does what any red-blooded he-man would do, upon discovering the only buxom dame at the end of the world… he intentionally nudges right into her from behind, scaring the crap out of her. Then he chases her down for the wonderful opportunity to slap her back to rational behavior.

And when he does exactly that, it's apparently just what she'd hoped for. That's a 1950s screenplay at its best, folks!

Together, they haplessly run into another sexually oppressed yet blithely less-than-promiscuous couple enjoying the bohemian freedom of post-invasion America. Mad lovemaking among the statuary in the town square? No, of course not – rather, its playing dinner theater piano and chugging the house champagne at one of the front tables of an abandoned nightclub. That is living, my friend.

The couples join forces for an exploratory double-date to see how well the apocalypse is going, further down the block. They wind up in a hotel to hide out from the shadow of what looks like a man wearing cardboard boxes and shooting randomly about with a death ray. That's always a downer, I admit.

There they meet the obligatory town nerd-psycho, who somehow relishes the arrival of intergalactic liquidators as a gene pool purifier, but who won't follow his cause loyally enough to march out and welcome them personally.

When we meet the invaders at last, we discover just how futuristic those old console TV sets actually were. The aliens are walking RCA Dynavisions. Their metal bodies angular and devoid of such needless things as bendable joints, the robotic aliens menacingly waddle after their prey, and inexplicably navigate such would-be obstacles as stairs, scaffolds and ladders – they just never seem to do it on camera.

Just like in The Day The Earth Stood Still; you never see the mighty robot Gort actually lift Patricia Neal into his arms – she suddenly, magically, is just in them.

Indestructible, save for the fragile toy plastic visors that serve as their faces, the marauding boxy nightmares relentlessly stalk the few remaining humans. Until, that is, scientists in a remote bunker discover that cracking the aliens' plastic visors causes them to shut down and fall over. Of course it does; they conquered the vastness of space and brought fearsome weapons of mass extinction to a neighboring galaxy with plans of planet-wide annihilation, but those darn plastic face visors – they never quite got the hang of those.

Did I spoil it for you? Don't worry, it was already spoiled. I took this one for the team. You're welcomed.

The Earth Dies Screaming (1964)

A more accurate title might be The Afternoon Dies Snoring, but that probably wouldn't have sold many tickets to this British sci-fi fizzler – er, sizzler, I meant.

Another post-apocalypse scenario finds everyone gone, as usual – and more robots roaming about, terminating any left-over squirmy humans who didn't get the hint that they were supposed to die. These stoic automatons-o'-doom happen to look like tall guys in cheap space suits, with light-bulb eyes and huge bong tubes mounted on their shoulders. Oh, they have rayguns, of course… which seems counter-productive since they can apparently kill victims by merely tapping them on the shoulder – a "touch of death."

They don't seem to run much, but merely trudge along with a determined gate, unconcerned that those they pursue can still jog, trot, skip, and haul ass aboard motorized fleeing aids like cars, scooters, etc. Luckily for the aliens, very few of the surviving humans seem to realize their advantage.

One jumps inside his car as protection from the slow marching terrors. He only remembers at the last second that the key is in the ignition. He can start the car, floor it, and beat the on-foot creatures to the end of the block well ahead of them – where he can re-park the vehicle and conveniently wait in horror for the aliens to catch up.

Oh goodie, games?

Speaking of which, not to seem outwardly racist, but just what is it about British protagonists in yarns like this? Heroism always seems to take a backseat to polite decorum and courteous fair-play. Waiting in ambush as one of the galactic goobers waddles by solo, instead of attacking, our gallant leading man patiently allows gentlemanly passage, then avoids direct confrontation, in lieu of fleeing to warn everyone in the alien's path to run away as well.

For the love of Whit Bissell, I thought bravery was a prerequisite for a leading man role.

When subdued by the aliens' terrible power, victims drop, but then awaken later sans eye-pupils, and wander about gazing in far off distraction – which seems to terrify the rest of the cast. They don't seem to possess any life-threatening powers themselves, but merely a tendency to shuffle in the direction of whomever screams the loudest. Seems that merely staying quiet and stepping aside would be all the counteraction needed against them.

So Brits are polite and unobtrusive to the invaders, but scared bladder-dry by their senseless victims. Seems legit.

When nothing proves worth a damn against the lurching, death merchant space-tards, the brave survivors decide that running away is the best option. The end. Cue music.

Huh? No figuring out the aliens' scientific Achilles heel? We didn't want to write a script that deep. We only had $150. Our uncle needed his camera back. Run away.