Stray Shot

I’ve been watching the debate develop around the Muslim community center in New York.  It’s two blocks from where the towers went down, and so, because the guys who did it were Muslim, there’s an argument that to build it that close is sacrilege or an insult to the dead.  Besides the obvious contradiction around insulting the dead, there’s the usual battle between religious and secular forces.

We have freedom of religion, the property is private and for sale.  If some Muslims want to buy it they can buy it.  To argue against that on the grounds that the terrorists who hit the towers were Muslim puts every Starbucks and McDonald’s in Japan in jeopardy because Curtis LeMay was Christian.  A quote from LeMay:  ”I think there are many times when it would be most efficient to use nuclear weapons. However, the public opinion in this country and throughout the world throw up their hands in horror when you mention nuclear weapons, just because of the propaganda that’s been fed to them.”

I remember taking a class in civics in my first semester at college, and reading that most people have a tough time aligning an abstract belief — even one they profess to hold dear —  to an actual event.  So you can ask somebody if they believe in freedom of the press and they say they do.  But  ask them if they agree with the statement that a book which is evil should be banned, and they will most likely agree.  They have learned that they believe in freedom of the press like they’ve learned that we probably shouldn’t have killed all the buffalo and carrier pigeons.  But the application of the abstract eludes them and they escape to the safety of conformity.

“I’m with you fellers, and I don’t like evil books.”

“You’ll join us at the bonfire, then, brother?”

The Bill of Rights specified freedom of religion only because it was big enough to specify that.  If any religion had been bigger than the Bill of Rights we would not have a Bill of Rights, we would have dietary restrictions and special underwear.

The radical Muslims scare me.  But so does Utah, Israel, and the Texas School Board.  The Bill of Rights is bigger than the lot of them, and that’s a good thing.

Saw the headline on People Magazine in the Google accumulator.  It was on top, asking who could play Steven Slater in a movie.   Well, Steven Slater’s out of work, and, according to all reports, he has a flair for the dramatic.   How much more drama could he generate than by going on the airplane’s radio station to bid passengers a big fuck you farewell, and then grabbing a couple of beers and disappearing down the emergency slide?  Oh, I forgot.  With an army of armed men surrounding his house, he was having sex.

So People asks the question of who can play him in a movie.   First of all they have to shorten Steven to Steve, so the action hero can star as,  ”Steve Slater, Flight Attendant.”  From there the story consultants need to define him.  The cerebral ones can mull over the fact that he’s Puer, and like Peter Pan, flies away when he has to do battle with Captain Hook.  He can be found at home with one of the lost boys, as the Senex extracts him from his hideout and deposits him in jail.

“It wasn’t me!  It was Hook!”

“Sure kid.  It was the one-armed man.”

The more businesslike reject that kind of egghead shit and go for the action.  ”Now, Steve, when the broad tells you to go fuck yourself, you tell her that’s the advantage of being gay, then let the suitcase go … that’s right, say oops or something.   Now, when you realize you’ve killed her …”

“She’s dead?  Because a suitcase fell out of the overhead?”

“It’s a movie, Steve.  Suspend disbelief.   Do you know that Marty Robbins song, El Paso?   You’re stunned by the foul evil deed you’ve done, and then you realize you have to get out of there so you grab two beers and break them over the edge of the cart so you have weapons.”

“It’s in cans.  And why would I need weapons anyway?”

“You have to kill the Air Marshall because he’s between you and the slide, your only avenue of escape.   You have to make it to your car.   After the high speed chase you hole up at your house with your arsenal.   The cops fire tear gas canisters that accidentally set the place on fire.”

“I don’t like where this is going.”

If they do it on the Sundance Channel it will be more character driven and the abuse will be subtle, like, “Here comes the trash lady,” to signify the lack of respect the flyers have for the flight attendants.  Between trips down the aisle, where there is discrimination and abuse, there will be a second story line about him and his lover wanting to walk down the aisle at the Lutheran Church, where they are blocked by a local farmers’ collective.  There will be a catharsis for all when the farmers realize they are socialists, in a sense, and in another sense, capitalists, which suddenly confronts them with their own ambiguity.   They relent, but  Steve realizes he actually wants to be married in jail, for personal reasons.

On Hallmark — well I never actually watched anything on Hallmark — but I’m sure it would be life affirming and heart warming.  There’s an angle with Steve’s mom, who insists she would have done the same thing under the same circumstances.  It’s always good to have a story about a boy and his mother, especially if he has an older brother named Chip who has become a Mexican, and is being tracked through Maricopa County  by Joe Arpaio.

One thing’s for sure:  A scene does not a movie make.  There has to be a series of scenes which have some underlying unifying pattern.  Of course it could be a pornographic movie, “Snakes On A Plane, Two.”  The important thing is to cash in on the fifteen minutes of fame before it slips away, like two beers and a bad day, down the emergency slide.