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The Navy's Blue Angels have been buzzing the city all day, frightening dogs and children and sane people, what few of us there are. Happy Columbus Day, vrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrooooom!
What do a bunch of testosterone soaked flyboys have to do with Columbus Day anyway? If I remember right, Columbus had three oversized sailboats, not rocket ships, when he dropped anchor someplace that wasn’t at all his destination.
There are people who enjoy seeing these Navy fighters in formation high, high overhead. I might enjoy seeing it myself, but I don’t enjoy hearing it. The mumbling man looked absolutely terrorized in the hall, and I think terrorizing people is part of why they do it. We’re supposed to be afraid, awestruck. I’m guessing they especially love to shake San Francisco because this city is famously liberal, and not as supportive of the military as the military wants us to be. Vrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrooooom again! Thank you sir, may I have another!
And whose damned idea was it to have fighter jets perform stunt flights above the city? There are people here. Quite a lot of us, actually. What happens when a pilot gets the hiccups during one of their intricate formation flights, and his plane’s wings jostle the next jet that's just inches away, and both planes careen into the Transamerica Pyramid, exploding in a ball of smoke and flame and death?
After that, maybe just maybe someone will exercise a smidgen of common sense and figure out that 200 decibel stunt flying ought to not happen above a major metropolitan area. If it belongs anywhere at all, and I'm not sure it does, let ‘em fly over the bay, or over the desert.
Columbus Day isn’t until Monday, which means we gotta endure this eardrum assault for two more days? Jeez, I need more aspirin.
There are many and much better reasons to slash the military budget, so start slashing to stop the bombings and invasions and unnecessary and illegal wars, but please don't stop slashing until the Blue Angels are grounded forever. Dismantle their jets and sell 'em for scrap metal.
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To escape the noise, I hid inside another psychotronic triple feature at the fabulous Roxie, a tribute to schlock director Jack Hill.
The Big Doll House (1971) is your standard women-in-prison picture, where none of the women are older than their early thirties, the warden is a cruel monstress, and there’s talk of escape. Et cetera. You’ve seen it all before, or at least I have, but here it’s done with a certain pinch of panache and bawdy humor. It’s nothing to nominate for an award, but it’s better than dry toast.
And Mr Hill must’ve had fun with it, because the next year he made it again, this time calling it The Big Bird Cage. My favorite performers from the first movie, Pam Grier and Sid Haig, were invited back and given more prominent roles in the remake, and the guards seem more sadistic, the female prisoners more sex-starved, and the story is juiced up and even more ludicrous the second time around, so Bird Cage is better than Doll House.
Switchblade Sisters (1975) shows similar snarling women, but before they get to prison. These are high school girls, in sort of a sorority auxiliary to their boyfriends’ gang of thugs, and eventually the girls figure out that they’re tougher than the boys. I am woman, hear me roar.
It’s campy and lowbrow and brainless, and all three movies include Hill’s heaping helpings of sex, violence, degradation, and some rape scenes I could've done without, so you have been warned. Actually, I'll admit I'm a little embarrassed that I enjoyed these movies. I don't think I'd watch any of them again, but they're a cultural artifact so I had to see 'em once.
From Pathetic Life #5
Saturday, October 8, 1994
Goddamn, I hated when the Blue Angels would buzz SF. I kinda WANTED a crash. Not for the loss of life, but just for the utter shitstorm, and maybe they'd STOP IT.
ReplyDeleteLet people who love that stuff go to an air show.
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