Something new on the smoking scene. New to me, at least. On a recent trip to Florida I walked to a nearby supermarket. The temp was in the upper 90’s and some of the employees were taking their cigarette break (just outside the entrance, of course). Rather than stand there puffing in the heat and humidity, someone had pulled their van up and parked it just outside the entrance to the supermarket. The sliding door was open and the AC was blasting. They even had a little cooler for drinks. They seemed to be taking turns crawling into the van to cool off. It was like a little nicotine tail-gate party.
The Torrent
“Picture a very swift torrent, a river rushing down between rocky walls. There is a long, shallow bar of sand and gravel that runs right down the middle of the river. It is under water. You are born and you have to stand on that narrow, submerged bar, where everyone stands. The ones born before you, the ones older than you, are upriver from you. The younger one stand braced on the bar downriver. And the whole long bar is slowly moving down that river of time, washing away at the upstream end and building up downstream.
Your time, the time of all your contemporaries, schoolmates, your loves and your adversaries, is that part of the shifting bar on which you stand. And it is crowded at first. You can see the way it thins out, upstream from you. The old ones are washed away and their bodies go swiftly buy, like logs in the current. Downstream where the younger ones stand thick, you can see them flounder, lose footing, wash away. Always there is more room where you stand, but always the swift water grows deeper, and you feel the shift of the sand and the gravel under your feet as the river wears it away. Someone looking for a safer place to stand can nudge you off balance, and you are gone. Someone who has stood beside you for a long time gives a forlorn cry and you reach to catch their hand, but the fingertips slide away and they are gone. There are the sounds in the rocky gorge, the roar of the water, the shifting, gritty sound of the sand and the gravel underfoot, the forlorn cries of despair as the nearby ones, and the ones upstream, are taken by the current. Some old ones who stand on a good place, well braced, understanding currents and balance, last a long time. Far downstream from you are the thin, startled cries of the ones who never got planted, never got set, never quite understood the message of the torrent.”
–From John D. MacDonald’s Pale Gray for Guilt
Got a light?
I don’t think people rant about smokers the way they used to. I know I don’t. It would be like ragging on crack-heads. I don’t know any former smokers. Banned from their offices, from restaurants, even from bars in some cities… they huddle outside buildings in their shirt-sleeves in February, stamping their feet trying to keep warm. I always wonder what they’re talking about. Are they pissed about being “sent outdoors?” Or are they embarrassed that their addiction has brought them to this sorry state of affairs?
I try not to stare as I walk by. I hate seeing their furtive, defensive glances. They remind me, for all the world, of convicts in some 1940’s movie, milling around The Yard…waiting for the screws to tell them to go back to their cells. Or street bums huddled around a burn-barrel, sucking on a butt in some bombed-out neighborhood. Curious as I am about what drives these lost souls, I never approach them. I came close recently.
I was in the airport, walking past one of those little glass rooms they’ve constructed for smokers. There they were, jammed in, staring at the floor, the smoke so thick you could barely see them. I couldn’t resist. I took a picture. I took a couple. When they finally noticed me, some waved…one guy gave me the finger. I know it was insensitive of me. Like sneaking into the amputee ward at the hospital. But I couldn’t help myself. What –I wondered– could compel someone to sit in that little smoky room?
But that sounds like I have more sympathy than I do. Most of the smokers I know are pretty militant these days. (“Fuck you! I’ll smoke if I want to.”) I mean, where do they think it will all end. What goes through their heads when they see an emphysema sufferer dragging that little oxygen bottle through the mall? “Whoa. That looks like a drag.”
This is a recycled rant from an old Website. I dug it out after noticing that more people seem to be smoking today than ever before. Seems like I see lots of young smokers. I admire their fearlessness in braving what will probably be a long and agonizing death.
DSL at home
Did you know Tim Robbins was in Top Gun? I didn’t and I bet I’ve seen that movie (1986) ten times. I spotted him in a crowd scene on the carrier deck after Tom has spashed the four migs. Internet Movie Database lists his character as Merlin. I just don’t remember that being a speaking part. IMDB lists half a dozen earlier credits, including one of the assasins in Network.
What was I going to say? Oh, I finally got DSL (ADSL to be precise). For the past two years I’ve been paying $100 a month for an ISDN account (128kbps). The DSL is four times as fast for half as much. Life is good at 512kbps. For the last two days my digital life has been flashing through my head. 2400 baud modems. Logging on to my first BBS. 4800 baud modems. CompuServe. 9600 baud modems. Surfing the pre-graphic Web with something called Lynx (?). Mosaic (I thought the grey background was cool). 28.8 modems. Can a Neuromancer be far behind?
Minority Report
I really wanted Minority Report to be a good movie. Directed by Steven Spielberg…based on short story by Philip K. Dick (as was Blade Runner). What I came away with were some very good scenes that –somehow– just didn’t add up to a great movie.
The doctor that replaced John Anderton’s eyes (“Don’t scratch!”). The scene in the green house with the co-creator of Pre-Crime was fine (the actress also played Helen Hunt’s “Aunt Meg” in Twister). Did you recognize Gideon, the wheel-chair bound jailer? Tim Blake Nelson from O’ Brother Where Art Thou?
Just help me with this… after living in the pool for all those years, why weren’t Agatha’s fingers all wrinkled? I’m gonna rent the DVD in hopes it includes the behind-the-scene I really want to see. When they bring in the chair for Tom Cruise to stand on so he can be eye-to-eye with Max Von Sydow (“Somebody give Mr. Curise a boost up there, will you please?”) Surely they didn’t make Max Von Sydow get on his knees or stand in a hole or something.
I think it’s just very hard to make a good science fiction movie which might be why it’s rarely attempted. Go see Minority Report but stop by Block Buster on the way home and pick up 12 Monkeys.