The Topaz Internment Camp

One of the less wholesome legacies of the Second World War in Utah is the memory of the Topaz Internment Camp, where more than eight thousand people of Japanese descent, many of them United States citizens who had lived in the country all their lives, were taken and held for three and a half years. They were placed behind barbed wire fences surrounded by guard towers manned by soldiers with guns. All Japanese, even those with just one-sixteenth blood, were considered potentially hostile.

Today, I went to a presentation by a survivor of that camp, a tiny woman with fluffy white hair, and a man whose parents had been in another camp. He introduced a number of black and white photographs taken from the National Archives, most of them about Topaz, as he told the story. At times, he would prompt the lady to tell a little of her own story. At the beginning, I had tears in my eyes, but I pulled it together before long and listened intently.

She had been seventeen and in high school when Pearl Harbor happened. She said she remembered going to school that next Monday and sitting in the back shivering, afraid of what might happen to her. Her teacher took her aside to tell her everything would be all right. Later, when they got the order to "evacuate" to the holding area they would stay while the camps were built, some of her friends from school came to see her off. As she described that to the audience, it was one of the moments she was genuinely touched with emotion.

She said they were first kept at a former racetrack in a stable with no windows that still reeked of animals. Later, they were moved by train to Utah. She had grown up in the San Fransisco area, so both the snow and the heat were new to her, and they were particularly bad because heating was by one stove. They lived in military-style barracks, with communal bathrooms, cafeterias, and laundry rooms. At first, there were no dividers between the bathroom stalls. She laughed when she said that they finally built shoulder-high dividers with curtains; it was a very sociable experience to use the bathroom. He told the story of one elderly woman who was so ashamed to be seen using the bathroom that she put a brown paper bag over her head with holes cut for eyes.

Many of the fathers were separated from their families. Because her father was a businessman who sold miso soup, he was taken away by the FBI to another facility.

Throughout the presentation, I was struck by her good humor and good will. She didn't express any bitterness toward the government, which, as the gentleman pointed out, she had every right to feel. Many of the stories he and she told were heartbreaking. High school and college students volunteered to teach elementary school. People of Japanese descent were called on to enlist in the Armed Forces to serve in the European theater; when they returned on leave, they had to visit their families behind barbed wire.

Topaz is now mostly abandoned, with just trash, foundations, and one re-built barrack at the site. There are plans for a permanent museum in the nearby town of Delta, though, and I do hope those plans come to fruition.

In the late eighties, the government offered formal letter of apology signed by the President to all survivors, along with twenty thousand dollars. As the gentleman pointed out, however, I doubt anyone would agree to live behind barbed wire under constant guard for three and a half years for twenty thousand dollars more than forty years later.

So often I forget that the past isn't just something in books and in videos. For someone, that was their present day, their experience in the passing moment, and they had to live with it. And they still do.

My Random Bathroom

I'm convinced my bathroom has a link somewhere to another dimension, or perhaps just Narnia. It seems it has a random scent every day (and not the scents you'd think, either). Today, it was incense. Maybe I'll keep you updated about what it smells like (no, I won't mention the scents you'd think, either).

Of course, I'm aware that the bathroom fan probably just links to another apartment through the ducts, but there's more magic to it this way!

Gene Generation

It had some interesting visual elements. Few and far between, especially buried under a combination of Blade Runner, The Matrix, and Dungeons and Dragons ripoffs. But it had some interesting visual elements.

The above is the only praise I can imagine for The Gene Generation. I have been following the progress of this film for a few years (has it been so long?) now, ever since I watched a trailer for it and was fascinated by the cyberpunk feel of it. The premise is really kind of awesome: there is a society in which one's worth is measured by the value of one's genes (a bit like Gattaca, but what's original these days?). There is a generation of criminals called "DNA hackers" who can alter a person's genes. There is, in turn, a group of assassins whose job it is to kill these DNA hackers because of the threat they represent to the delicate balance of society.

I found this quote about the film on another website: "In the dark decadent world of our future, Mankind has found themselves close to the extinction with the last city on Earth. Forced to implement a controversial Natural Selection process, the government built a wall surrounding the last city named Olympia. By a careful selection process using our genes and DNA, the Kalafkan Government chose only the best and most promising to survive the destruction of Olympia, before building a new city where it once was. This process led to a crime known as DNA Hacking, where people steal genes and DNA in hopes of entering Demeter. The government started hiring assassins, to take out and kill these hackers who have polluted the system. In exchange, the Assassins are granted entry to Demeter. Michelle (Bai Ling) is one of those Assassins. Forced to render her services to the government by any means necessary, Michelle can only hope that death wouldn’t take her soul down like Olympia would. The Gene Generation is a science fiction movie about romance, revenge and redemption" source

Holy shit, I say to myself. This sounds like a damn good movie. Apart from that incomprehensible line about death taking her soul down. That's a warning sign. ((Edit: And I also noticed later: how can the government implement a "Natural Selection" process? If the government is doing it, how is it natural? Isn't that the exact opposite of natural? Like this movie is the opposite of good?))

The first problem is what the film means by "altering genes." When I read the synopsis, I assumed that altering one's genes would, for instance, change eye color, hair color, possibly some physical features, depending on how implausible the show decided to be about the capacity of a device the size of a person's hand that jabs needles into your arm. I was wrong. Very wrong. Wrong like losing my glasses and mistaking an angry Doberman that's just been kicked in the nuts for kindly aunt Gretchen whose only happiness in life is a kiss on the cheek.

As it turns out, changing someone's genes can, in fact, do one of only two things in this film. The first is to close up wounds and heal disease (something shown in the show's intro and only mentioned later, never to play a part again). The second is to make a person sprout a mass of tentacles, writhe around, and die.

Re-read that last sentence. I should probably stop writing right there and let you fill in the rest of the movie for yourself. It probably wouldn't be far off the mark, and certainly won't be much worse than what I had to endure. The suck is endemic in this movie, like it was shot in Sucknicolor. There's a large middle-aged villain with long blonde hair and a deep voice; I'm convinced I've seen this exact character in another movie, possibly several others. There's a goateed mafia boss with a comically incompetent but seemingly limitless supply of leather-clad goons who spends most of the movie bitching about people not taking him seriously enough. There's a bunch of midgets wearing leather who show up just to have midgets wearing leather in the movie. Oh, hell. I'm sick of even thinking about this movie. Let's move on.

Bai Ling appears in a different outfit in every scene, and I have a sneaking suspicion the film's entire raison d'etre is for the producer/director to see her in these various skimpy leathery getups (not to mention out of them: there are two random shower scenes and an almost equally random sex scene). She wears so many different scandalous outfits, in fact, that in one scene where a character actually gives her clothes and says, "I brought you some clothes," I just about did myself in laughing. If there's one thing this chick has in abundance, it's clothes, although she appears to be hard up for cash in every other way.

She has a brother who is constantly getting into trouble for gambling and getting involved in crime. At one point, the mob boss I mentioned above pees on him. I stress, for reasons that will soon be apparent: he got peed on. Later in the film, he complains about having shit in his hair and smelling like shit. Another character comments that he smells like shit. Later, the mob boss laughs about having shat on this character. I'm not sure whether nobody on the set knows the basic but fundamental difference between the two bodily wastes, or whether they changed the one scene without bothering to change every bit of dialogue referring to it.

Speaking of bad changes: at one point, a character gets thrown through a window. I suppose they couldn't find a cheap graphics program that would simulate cracking glass and movement at the same time: the movie freezes for several seconds while cracks spread across the glass, the guy suspended in mid-air, and then the guy falls through. I was flabbergasted. In another part, during a hastily-cut fight scene, a still frame is shown for a full second. A small nitpick, perhaps; I guess nobody caught that nothing was happening in that clip. Was this thing edited in iMovie? The 3D effects are laughable, including 1990's style fire effects and unconvincing but repetitive shots of the city with a flying ship circling overhead. Oh, and apparently, in the future, cities exist in stone basins flanked by huge walls. And those stone walls have giant demons carved in them. Yeah.

But I've saved the worst for last. Faye Dunaway inexplicably appears in this movie... for about one minute. She gets a couple of lines, then suffers a catastrophic accident that leaves "her" a hanging torso prop covered in CG tentacles for the rest of the movie, never once moving from one tiny but oft-reused set. Her voice is also mushy, which I assume is because she got one look at the movie, called her agent, and finished the rest of her contract recording her lines over the phone from as far from the set as she could get.

Now, there's some leeway I could give this movie. It's apparently based on a comic, but since I have no knowledge or interest in it, I'll leave it at that. Also, the concept of "hacking" one's own genes is interesting. This movie, though? Come on.

Final Word: This film might have been just kind of bad with some redeeming qualities if it weren't for the tentacles, which feel like an afterthought added in post to spice things up. Cut out the writhing tentacles on the gene-altered people and just let them flop around and die instead; maybe their eyes go all black or something to show they're afflicted. Imagine watching a tender death scene where the main character watches the man she loves die... as his tentacles flop around. Mmmhmm. That's one of the last scenes of the movie.

Aloisius's New Teeth

Aloisius Dell, a kindly old Southern gentleman, sat in his rocking chair on the porch of his charming mansion, watching the young people going up and down the road he rememebered when it was just a muddy cart path. He squinted his old eyes as he watched the old country doctor stop his new automobile next to Aloisius's buggy and then walk up the path carrying his black leather bag.

"What can I do for you, doctor?" said Aloisius with a smile.

"Just coming by to check up on you, Mr. Dell. Sure is a lovely little garden you have here." The doctor pushed his glasses further up his nose. "How have things been?"

"Oh, just about as fine as ever. Enjoying a beautiful day," said Aloisius, adjusting his monocle.

"I'm mighty glad to hear that, Mr. Dell," said the doctor. "You know, I have something here, just for you."

Aloisius narrowed his eyes. His eyesight wasn't as good as it used to be. "And what would that be, doctor?"

"Well, I've heard it through the grapevine that you've been having a bit of trouble chewing your food, Mr. Dell. So I thought I'd get you fixed up with some new teeth."

Aloisius stood up so quickly he almost knocked his rocking chair over. Keeping one hand on the chair's arm for balance, he shook the other at the doctor. "Now listen here! Aloisius Dell, Esquire does not need no false teeth! I'm still hale and hearty, and don't you forget it!"

"But they'll be just like your own teeth! It'll make a world of difference," insisted the doctor.

Aloisius put his hands on the hips of his waistcoat. "Don't you start that with me! They still call me 'Colonel Dell' in town. Go ahead, ask me which war I fought in!"

The doctor mopped his brow with his handkerchief. He could see this was going to take a while. He rested on Aloisius's veranda and said, "What war were you in, Mr. Dell."

"Just about all of them!" said Aloisius fiercely. "I stormed Omaha Beach more times than you've had warm meals! Just you ask anyone in town."

The doctor smiled gently. "And when's the last time you've been to town, Mr. Dell?"

Aloisius scratched his head, sighed, and sat back down heavily in his chair. "Been a while, I reckon. Oh, all right. Just leave them teeth on the step."

The doctor smiled and nodded. "Of course, Mr. Dell. You just let me know if they cause you any trouble."

After the doctor's car drove out of sight, Aloisius rose and went to the strange object on his porch. He tried them in. They didn't feel so bad at all.

"Hmm," he said, scratching his white goatee. "Maybe it's time me and Jenny went to the town again. And who knows, maybe it's time I got some new spectacles, too. But first I'll see how them teeth work out."

Of course, Mr. Aloisius Dell, Esq. was a lifelong bachelor.

Jenny was the name of his rocket launcher.


*** In completely unrelated news, I bought 2 gigs of RAM for my Dell computer to bring the total up to 3. It seems to work well so far. Maybe eventually I'll get a new graphics card, too. But first, I'll see how them RAM work out.

Putin, Say It Ain't So!

Vladimir Putin. The name alone inspires fear and awe in mortal men. He shoots down rampaging tigers with tranquilizers and goes fishing without his shirt on. He knows judo. And, apparently, he likes dancing to ABBA songs.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7875372.stm

What's particularly mystifying about this is that the Kremlin has denied it even happened. Oh, Putin. Whatever happened to your old hobbies, such as skydiving out of a fighter plane over the ocean without a parachute to punch a shark in the face? All I can imagine is that he was hanging out with someone much less manly, such as his wife, who wanted to hear some ABBA, and he, being the caring leader of men that he is, decided to humor her.

Christian Bale

I don't usually talk about real life on this blog, let alone make my own comments about a celebrity incident, but I feel valid talking about the infamous Christian Bale outburst because it's been made into so many remixes on YouTube, and that makes it part of cyberculture. What is it about the event that I find so compelling (and that causes so many people to put time and effort into remixing it)? I think it's two things. The first is meanspirited: we like to see people on pedestals brought low and shamed. The second is more sympathetic: we understand what it's like to lose control, and in many ways, we idenify with Christian. Like the infamous Bus Uncle becoming a quirky sort of hero in Hong Kong, we all live in a very high-stress corporate world, one that's only gotten worse since the recession. And I think that we all, deep down, also feel like just exploding at people and letting them know just how we're feeling.

I like Christian Bale. I like his movies, and he's always seemed like a decent guy in his interviews. I have a terrible temper myself, and I know the struggle of having that deep inside. What he said was stupid, crude, and inexcusable. And the thing I like best about this regrettable situation is that Christian himself admits that. He didn't make excuses or try to defend what he did; he said that he acted like a punk, and he regrets it.

We all have terrible moments, Christian Bale, when we become our own worst enemies. I can only imagine what it would be like to have my own worst moments ridiculed by thousands of people. You're you did right sucking it up and admitting you were at fault. Good on you, mate.


News story of his apology