Let it a lone. Please

Dear sweet baby Jesus—I just watched last year’s The Lone Ranger on cable TV.

Thirty years ago a friend of mine described 1981’s The Legend of the Lone Ranger thusly: “In which Klinton Spilsbury proves that Clayton Moore was not the world’s worst actor.”

Well, I can say with absolute confidence that Armie Hammer proves that Klinton Spilsbury was not the world’s worst actor.

And Justin Haythe, Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio prove that Ivan Goff, Ben Roberts, Michael Kane and William Roberts weren’t the world’s worst screenwriters.

And it was hard to tell whether Johnny Depp did a worse job of acting than the dead crow on his head.

I absolutely stand in shock and awe at the unremitting dreadfulness of this endeavor. And I hope to God that no one attempts another reboot of this franchise in my lifetime.

Pardon my ashes

I was rather nonplussed the other day to receive a solicitation from The Trident Society; even more so to realize that the California Department of Motor Vehicles had sold them my demographic details.

Seriously, DMV—you bastards!

There’s nothing like being invited to pre-pay your cremation expenses to remind you that you’re not getting any younger. Or healthier.

And it creeps me out that the DMV is making money by doing this.

I’m even more creeped out because I’m listed in their database as an organ donor. Clearly, they’ve shown that they’ll pretty much do anything for a little expanded revenue stream. And clearly my organs aren’t getting any younger.

Zulu plus 50

It has come to my attention that it is the 50^th anniversary of Zulu, the iconic film made about the battle of Rorke’s Drift in 1879. They are celebrating the event by issuing a digitally remastered, wide-screen version, which premiered Tuesday evening raising money for charities focused on helping wounded soldiers and African children.

Prince Harry, a career soldier, was there, along with several people connected with the original, including Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi. Buthelezi, a colleague of Nelson Mandela in the fight against Apartheid, is the great-grandson of the Zulu leader Cetshwayo, whom he played in the movie.

(The film actually turned 50 in January, having premiered 85 years to the day after the actual battle.)

If you’ve not yet seen Zulu yet—step away from the blog now and stream it from somewhere. Seriously. Do not wait for the new version, just watch it.

It portrays the defense of a small outpost in South Africa by 140 British soldiers against a force of more than 4000 Zulu warriors, fresh from a major victory against a British army at Islandlhwana. Yes, the war was provoked by boneheaded, arrogant and imperialist British politicians, but the destruction of the 1300 well-armed troops at Islandlhwana was shocking to the British public and the repulse at Rorke’s Drift was a massive sop to national and imperial pride.

Plus—you know, a pretty amazing military feat.

As for the movie, Zulu has, without question, the single best battle scene ever filmed. It is all filth, blood, fury, fear, chaos, luck and some degree of strategy and tactics. The camera focuses in on the three lines of riflemen formed by the two commanders as they alternate firing—front rank, fire; second rank, fire; third rank, fire. Then fire, fire, fire, fire. Close-ups on the faces and the gunpowder smoke. When the shooting finally stops, the camera slowly pulls back to reveal the pile of twitching bodies mere steps from the firing lines.

During the aftermath, Colour-Sergeant Bourne whispers, “It’s a miracle!” To which one of the commanders replies, “If it's a miracle, Colour-Sergeant, it's a short-chamber Boxer Henry point 45 caliber miracle.”

(Something I discovered only recently was that Colour-Sergeant Frank Bourne, the actual Colour-Sergeant Bourne, was 25 at the time of the battle. Gesu.)

There are those who pooh-pooh the valor of Rorke’s Drift—because it was an imperialist action, and the British had no business being there. As I’ve said before, soldiers pretty much never vote on where they’re going to be deployed, so you only show your own pathetic pig-ignorance by declaring that Battalion X fighting to the last man was somehow less noble performing the same feats than Battalion Y because of the intentions of their political masters.

Fish story

I am not exactly sure what’s going on in the world of little wriggling fish, but anchovies are disappearing from the supermarket shelves in Northern California.

Actually—make that they have already disappeared. Not one single Trader Joe’s in Cupertino, Mountain View, Sunnyvale or Los Altos has so much as a tin, and they’ve taken to spreading out the smoked trout and sardines to cover up the major gap.

And Whole Foods had only a few cans, when there was space for two suppliers. Great, gaping space.

The manager at the Mountain View TJ told me that it’s a system thing—no anchovies in the pipeline anywhere. Although he didn’t know what the problem is.

There was apparently a mass anchovy suicide last month in Marina del Rey—thousands of the little silver buggers washed up on the beaches there. But the supermarkets have been bereft of them for longer than that. And most of the suppliers for the canned variety are in Europe, apparently.

Whatever. What this means for me is that there’s no Salad Niçoise for the foreseeable future, because you can’t have that without anchovies, you just can’t.

Which means—a whole lot more pasta primavera salads. Dang.

Gratitude Monday: Safe at home

As follow-on to last week’s Gratitude Monday post, today I am relieved and grateful that Dick and Carolyn have returned safely home after their adventures in Dresden.

They did move on to Berlin, although Dick’s activities were limited, and they flew back to Northern Virginia on Thursday.

(Once back on US soil, Carolun reverted to Carolyn, and stuff Nanny Autocorrect. But I’m still hoping to get Saint Virus on the fast-track to canonization.)

There was a bit of a kerfuffle over which local medical provider would step up to the plate for post-op care, but I do not doubt that it will get sorted. Because there are about 30 people on an email list who will make certain physicians’ lives pretty miserable if it doesn’t.

I would pass on Dick’s extremely vivid description of his symptoms, but I’ve already had to bleach my brain once to get that image out, and I don’t want to have to do it again.

Meanwhile, my gratitude really does overflow.