This coming month is packed. The things for WorldCon are ramping up (I’VE GOT SO MUCH TO DO!!!!!) and there’s Westercon. I’ve been putting up Westerconversation with folks who have been to them before and I’ve been workign on getting the Lounge ready (though really, it pretty much sets itself up) and it’s going to be a good ol’ time. Westercon is a favorite con of mine, and I know it’s in decline, but having a mid-summer gathering is something I enjoy. Fourth of July Weekend is a good time to gather with a bunch of con-folk and just party. I had an amazing time at the 2007 Westercon at the Escher Marriott in San Mateo. While I know there were all sorts of problems, but it was such fun, was the birthplace of the Fanzine Lounge as we out here now know it and one of the most fun conventions I’ve ever been to. The 2008 Westercon in Vegas had a lot of problems, was ultra-small, but at the same time I had an absolute blast doing it. It also featured a personal top moment of Bill Mills playing Rocket Man for an audience of two in the Rotunda and I was one of the two. It was also the time that Linda gave blood, was in sight of the open door of the Fanzine Lounge and I almost passed out. I didn’t do the 2009 Westercon in Phoenix, nor the 2010 in LA, but I heard that folks had a good time. Of couse, a San Jose Westercon is a good thing and the location couldn’t be better as far as I’m concerned. I did the Dining Guide, which was a hard-ish task because there are so many places for folks to dine. For my money, Tandoori Oven right across the street with worth multiple trips, and I plan on at least two. There’s OJ’s, Original Joe’s, which is a place I’ve loved since I was a kid. There’s a new Pho place a couple of blocks up that is so new I didn’t get to add it ot the Guide. It’s pretty tasty and the cost is good. I’ll be driving in almost every day because I’ve gotta save money for WorldCon. And I’m psyched for WorldCon. I got my program schedule and I’m on some interesting panels. There’s one about Online Fandom and Fans Loving to Hate It. I’m not sure I agree with that statement, but I’m sure it’ll be well-attended because it’s got Teresa Neilsen Hayden and John Scalzi on it. That always makes for a good turnout. The second panel is one that I’m sure will be at least a little controversial. It’s about the Best SemiProzine and Fanzine Hugos. It’s Steven Segal of Weird Tales, Neil Clarke of Clarkesworld and Dave Hartwell of being Dave Hartwell. fame. We need an- other faned on that panel. There’s a panel on Casino Gambling that has Connie Willis on it. I’ve got a couple of Fanzine panels, a big Match Game, which happens after the Hugo ceremonies. If a miracle happens and I win one, it’ll be the most entertaining edition ever be- cause i”ll be an emotional wreck the entire time! The final one is about the Hugo for Best Re- lated Work. It’s got Michael Swanwick on it, which is good as he’s won at least one of them in the past, and so has Farah Mendelsohn.. Steven Segal, Amy Thomson and Claire are all also on the panel. TO me, this that’s an all-star panel that I just happen to be hanging around on! So, this issue’s got some Taral Wayne and a look at a great Czech film from the 1950s! THere’s LoCs and, as has become habit... A Mo Starkey cov- er! Let’s go! Fan Noir – Blog 3 1 June 2011, words

People who complain about wind farms make me angry. To listen to them bitch, you’d think a windmill was a rusting, creaky contraption that chopped up birds and bats, leaving bloody, mangled remains strewn on the ground like so many meat-acorns around the trunk of a sacrificial oak. If that wasn’t enough, they claim that windmills spread a mysterious influence over the country like the wail of damned souls – withering crops, engen- dering unexplained maladies in livestock, souring toothpaste in the tube and causing schoolchildren to fail their ABCs. The fact is, wind farms have been running successfully in many parts of the world for decades – one enor- mous example, that I was astonished to see for myself, lies along the highway east of San Francisco. It astonished me because I saw it way back in the 1990s. There marched mile after mile of giant turbines, turning silently in the desert wastes, and I knew this to be the look of the future. Another case in point is the North Sea. Many of the countries that share the coastline of that windy body of salt water have built offshore wind farms, including Great Britain, Germany, Denmark and The Netherlands. Clearly wind farms work. Nor are they prohibitively expensive. Yet, after more than 20 years of proven use, this free resource is nowhere nearly as exploited as you might expect. Canada in particular seems to be dragging its heels. But, then, that’s hardly surprising. Since the replacement of a Liberal government with a Conservative one, some years ago, Canada has dragged its heels over many things, reverting from a progressive voice in global affairs to a mugwump nation, determined to bury its head in the tarsands and pursue oil-business as usual. It is singularly ironic that, of all provinces in Canada, Alberta seems to be most interested in wind power, since it is Alberta that is most dedicated to keeping oil the mainspring of the nation’s economy – at the expense of industry, transport, and exports. Meanwhile, the province that would most benefit by a lower-cost energy- regime is Ontario, but the province seems barely conscious of the advantages of wind power. Ontario does produce about a Gigawatt of green energy from a half-dozen wind farms, but that’s only a drop in the bucket compared to Ontario’s thirty-Terrawatt needs. The provincial government perennially promises more Green Power, but nothing happens. More studies are needed. Another target date is set, comfortably far in the future. Why? I figure that part of the blame can be apportioned to those people who complain – the NIMBYs. They come in various colours. One hue of NIMBY are the naturalists, who object to the number of birds that would die when they fly into moving blades. I’m not insensitive to this issue, but at the same time I’m callous enough to feel that the death of a few extra crows and starlings is a small price to pay for a working air condi- tioner when it’s 92 in my apartment, and I can’t get up for a glass of water without breaking out in sweat. Yes, all things have a right to live, but sparrows don’t write Shakespeare or build the Chrysler Building. Also, there are an awful lot of sparrows in the world, for every one of us. It’s not as if there were no solution to the problem either. I’ve read that sound makers can be built into the blades that would warn birds and bats of danger ahead, best to go around. LED’s along the blade edge might do the job just as well, and consume about as much power as a single Christmas tree. If neither of these ideas prove to be 100% effective, then there are legions of little old ladies who enjoy taking in small, injured creatures to look after... It lets them to feel superior to other people. There is an “experimental” wind turbine not too far from where I live, on the Canadian National Exhibi- tion grounds. To tell the truth, I’ve never seen dead or injured birds at the base of it. The other main objection to wind farming is that the moving blades create a sound that only some people seem to be able to hear. They claim that these infra-sounds are below the threshold of conscious awareness, and cause them headaches or other illnesses. As well, these sounds also appear to lie below any level that can be detected by sensitive scientific instruments – so far as I know, none have ever been recorded. This in spite of our ability to capture the radio crepitations of a Voyager spacecraft, billions of miles away, sending a signal weaker than your cell phone’s. In fact, even if such infra-sounds are being produced, it begs the question of how anyone living a half-mile away could possibly hear them. Isn’t the wind produc- ing exactly the same sort of infra-sounds while blowing through every tree, every wire fence and every power line between turbine and ear? I doubt very much that anyone living more than a few hundred yards from a wind farm would hear anything, even if each windmill were running a metal lathe and engraving old water heaters with David Suzuki’s personal phone number. At best, it’s a case where a quarter-mile distance should be kept between wind farms and where people live. Hardly a difficult condition to meet. There is, finally, the aesthetic argument. The nay-sayer objects to regiments of steel and concrete towers whose mechanistic spinning blades ob- scure the horizon. Let’s be honest... how many of us have an ideal view of the horizon to begin with? I see a few hands out there, but not many. As it happens, I’m one of those with my hand up. I have a superlative view from my balcony of a wide stretch of Lake Ontario that takes in the Niagara Peninsula from Toronto’s West End almost to Niagara Falls. And Lake Ontario is a prime location for an offshore wind farm. If anyone had a stake in the view, it’s me. I have no objection, though. For one thing, at a half- mile distance, a wind farm would hardly be an eyesore. The windmills would be no more objectionable than a distant lake freighter or the usual swarm of sailboats that dance on the chop all summer. Judging from my view of a 30- story tower on the other shore of Humber Bay – about a half mile away – a windmill would appear no larger than the end of my pinky at arm’s length. More often than not, the lake is a little misty, as well, and whatever lies on the horizon is a dim grey, ghost. What is it, then, that bothers the NIMBY about the modern windmill? They’ve been building windmills in The Netherlands since at least the 17th century, to provide the muscle to mill grain and pump the North Sea off prime farmland. Those windmills are national treasures now, an attraction to tourists, and in many cases are still pumping the land dry. Who in their right mind would complain? The answer seems to be that modern windmills are modern. It would be alright if they were built 300 years ago, in an antiquated style, and most of them had long since disappeared. But a modern windmill is ugly, utilitarian, inspired by the needs of a consumerist society. The Dutch have a word for it – kletspraat. I believe that means bullshit... though the Babylon translator page gives “claptrap,” “rubbish” and “nonsense.” It would be hard to imagine a more elegant and beautiful shape than a modern windmill. Next to one, the 17th century model resembles an overly ornate beer stein. The design of most modern mills consists of a slender, swooping pillar of dazzling white, atop of which petal-like blades open out like a flower. What could be more compatible with Mother Nature than a giant flower? Of course, many windmills aren’t meant to be seen close-up, and when planted far out into Lake Ontario may be somewhat less attractive. A straight concrete or steel pillar will suffice. From half a mile, who will notice it hasn’t been painted in a while. Nothing but the slim stalk and slowly turning blades in the distance will ever be seen. Nor did the 17th century Dutch regard their windmills as anything but utilitarian and commercial. They didn’t build them to admire, but to create farmland on which they intended to grow tulips – tulips that they didn’t intend to admire either, but to sell on the speculative market and become stinking rich in the process. Meanwhile, at the other end of Toronto, is the Leslie Street Spit. It runs for about a mile, completely blocking the view of the Lake. It was made by dumping garbage, and for many years was a skeletal finger of land, pointing out at nothing. The dumping road is long closed, and the spit has probably grown over with Poplar and Cottonwood brush by now, and the entire length has been made into a bird sanctuary. It’s called an “urban” wilderness. Talk about eyesores... but if there were any complaints, they were ignored. So why is it that the NIMBYS just can’t see the beauty, the elegance, the dignity of a wind farm? Why do they stand in the way of such a progressive technology? Maybe it has nothing to do with them, really, but with the Powers That Be, who choose which complaints to listen to, and which to ignore. They can’t see the beauty of the wind, because they have oil in their eyes! This starts with Eric Mayer!!!!!

Chris, Another interesting issue, another terrific Mo Starkey cover. She’s great to have around. I’m sad to say that she’s not having the best of times around housing matters. I’m pulling for ‘em! You say, “...sometimes it’s the viewer who puts the meaning into the mix.” Indeed. I’ve always maintained that with respect to writing the reader puts as much or more into a book as the writer. With a book, where read- ers have to produce images in the mind’s eye this contribution may be more pronounced than films. In fact, I’ve wondered if readers saturated with television and movie images of places and actions, don’t call on such images while reading books therefore giving a book from, say 100 years ago, a different “look” than it would have had for its original audience. Totally. It’s interesting that the reviews at teh time had the same view as the critics today, and yet the creators have all debunked it! So I guess the movie an audience sees ten or twenty or fifty years after it was made is a different movie every time. But it never occured to me that the Body Snatchers book and film might be simply of the times and not composed purposefully about the times. I found the Rejection of the Body Snatchers story by Dann Lopez (is that the right spelling?) hilarious. I guess seeing pain inflicted on others is just naturally funny. Another reason we humans ought to be shunned by the universe. I loved that piece and I love Dann’s writing. He’s working on a comic that I’ll be putting out in the world, probably as a Drink Tank Presents, which I haven’t done for ages. Actually I was just casting around for what to read and since I have never read Finney’s Body Snatchers I think I will do so. Best, Eric It’s really worth the effot, because it’s even better than the movie and I NEVER say that! Letter Graded Mail Sent to [email protected] 52 Weeks to Science Fiction Film Literacy The Fabulous World of Jules Verne Ah, Steampunk. It is impossible to put a date on its origin. I know, I’ve tried, but it’s almost certain that the date is after the death of Verne and Wells and before the term was invented. A good point for me is the release of Disney’s 20000 Leagues Under the Sea. While that was certainly the thing that helped best establish the visual vocabulary of the genre, this was hardly the only film that used what we would see as Steampunk concepts in the 1950s. The one that I find most fascinating is a 1958 release from Czechoslovakia called The Fabulous World of Jules Verne. Now, there was a great debate about whether to put 20,000 Leagues or Jules Verne on here. They both do much the same thing, but one is widely-viewed in the US,while the other had a great effect on the filmmaking of the Eastern Bloc. To this day, Czech filmmaking, especially short films, show the effect of TFWoJV. I watched a lot of 1970s and 80s short films from behind what was then an Iron Curtain, and many were fantasies and many of those used the style or techniques of the makers of The Fabulous World of Jules Verne. There was one submitted to Cinequest in 2002 that was the story of a train going to the moon that felt like it could have come straight out of the same studio. Eastern Bloc filmmaking is an important part of the story of film. Russian filmmaking is the best known and most studied of the various nations. There’s the founders like Eisenstein and Vertov and then guys like Tar- kovsky. In the other parts of Easter Europe, the tradition is just as strong, though many of the filmmakers seldom got shown in the US due to a lack of festivals until the 1950s. The works of Hermína Týrlová, one of the best- loved animators in much of Eastern Europe in the 1930s and 40s, was hardly known to the US. It was rare for Eastern European filmmakers to get their films into distribution in the US, but there were a few, certainly by the 1960s. The Fabulous World of Jules Verne was one that got a general release, partly because it was so visually striking. The director was one of the true masters of Easter European cinema. Karel Zeman was in advertising in France. Like many admen, he had an interest in art and was working on commercials for cinemas. One of these was for soup and it required an animated section. That started him down the road to becoming a regular animator. He returned to Czechoslovakia and started at a school for window-dressing. He had served as an art director, which is perhaps the perfect introductory position if you’re looking at going into the world of animation. Unlike film, animation is all about what is set in front of the camera in what position. That’s the basic art director’s job. While teaching at the school, he met another East- ern European film legend, and future Oscar winner, Elmar Klos. He got him a gig at a studio and it was off to the races! He did a lot of shorts, often working with the likes of Týrlová and Klos, but also did many on his own. He quickly grew a reputation for his stylized work and brilliant forms. He won major awards, including the Best Short FIlm prize at Cannes. Inspirance, from 1948, is a classic using glass figures. If you look at the work that came out of Czech film schools’ animation de- partments in the 1960s and 70s, you’ll find that it is one of the most influential pieces of animation of the time. Zeman had made a version of Journey to the Center of the Earth and a series of European paintings called Cesta so Praveku. It was a good bit of work, but it fell a little short. I’ve only seen it in the shortened version, about 25 minutes or so, and it shows a good filmmaker who understands how to fit a visual story together but who doesn’t have a great script to work from. It does show what he would master with The Fabulous World of Jules Verne in 1958. Let’s talk about the actual movie then. It is based, somewhat freely, on Verne’s Facing the Flag, a later Verne work, but still a good one. The story is pretty simple, almost James Bond Villain-type simple. Really, that might not be the story at all. As happened with many of the films of Eastern Europe that were visually interesting over the middle decades of the twentieth century, it was over-dubbed with new dialogue that may or may not have been anything close to what they had done in the original versions. This was not particularly well-dubbed, but what are you gonna do. The villain, Count Artigas, kidnaps Professor Roche, who has developed a new energy form, and his assistant, the at-least somewhat virtuous Simon. They do stuff. They travel. There’s a girl. OK, let’s face it, almost none of that matters. The real deal here is that the visuals are some of the most stunning in the history of film. Zeman was, in many ways, the follow-on to Melies, using many of his techniques, including ones that were years out of use in mainstream cinema. At times, Zeman seemed to be making a Trick Film like Melies or Smith & Blackton had at the turn of the Century, and at other times, he’s working with intense backgrounds and brilliant use of double-exposures. And the Matte Painting! The sets and the matte paintings and the props are all amazing! It’s incredible how well Zeman works with all the pieces and still manages to tell a story. One trick that I thought was amazing was a water scene where they shot actual water, but there was an etching lion to it. I couldn’t tell wether it was a double-exposure, or if they put actual fabric in the water and wavered it. Either way, it was a beautiful look. It is often said that Zeman was hugely influenced by the work of Melies (whose La Voyage dans Lune was the first of our 52 Weeks pieces), but he was certainly working very hard to recreate many of the illustrations in Verne’s books. The submarine that tows the ship above it with a long cable, looks much like the submarines in many of the images drawn by artists like Léon Benett who had illustrated the original Verne novels. This is very much a film of lines. Think of the SF films you’ve seen over the last several decades: are they etched and lined or are they smooth? The Fabulous World of Jules Verne is lined, etched, defined. This texture must be impressive when shown on a large screen. on DVD, it still seems impressive. Two things that should not be over-looked is the amount of stop-motion that Zamen used in the film. It is so impressive and beautiful. There’s a great series of lingering images of turbines powering and I watched it twice. They’re entirely stop-motion. There are other characters in the shot. Humans. Moving. Actors. It’s an incredible kind of shot to combine with the moving actors. IT’s just an incredibly time-consuming process and the result is spectacular. If there is a failing of the film, it is that the imagery is so lovingly photographed that the story movement seems to bog down. It’s not like you’ll notice, but the editing is of a style that had gone out of fashion in the US where long, single-set scenes play out. It wouldn’t be until Jim Jarmusch came around that tableau filmmaking came back into something of vogue, but there is a good reason here for largely using that technique. When you’ve got to do so much cross-matching, double exposure, matte work and so on, it’s so much easier if your camera is locked down. This is the finest example of Eastern European animation you’ll find from the 1950s. It’s obvious that Za- men influenced not only a couple of generations of European animators, but filmmakers like Tim Burton (Corpse Bride and The Nightmare Before Christmas both have that line concept) and even guys like The Brother Quay. II’ve gotta say that if you get a chance to see The Fabulous World of Jules Verne (and you can find it at specialty video dealers and on eBay) you should do it. Bring some popcorn. You won’t need your mind much, but your eyes will be very busy. Ringside by Taral Wayne I blinked in the harsh electric light and threw off an old wool army blanket, whose holes alone were twenty-five years old. The phone was ringing. Or buzzing. Pulsating? Susurrating? Tintinnabulat- ing? What exactly is that sound made by these new-fangled $8 electronic phones? In any case, it’s irritating, which is why people answer the phone when they were trying to sleep. If they really want- ed to sleep, they’d turn the ringer off... as I should have. “Hello, Taral?” “Yeah?” “I didn’t wake you, did I? Want me to phone back?” It was Robert Myre, also known as Robert the Red, or just Red, a kid who got swept up in the gay, social whirl of Toronto fandom. Robert is thin, has flaming red hair that he keeps short, wears tight black pants and matching leather jacket, and gets pissed off whenever gays on Yonge Street seem dis- agreeably attracted to him. Six months ago, he was convinced that Pi- casso had nothing on The Swamp Thing, the X-Men or Dr. Strange. I showed him some Freak Brothers and other undergrounds, and the next time I saw Robert he was more of an expert on undergrounds than I ever was. Next, he became a collector of William Hope Hodgson, H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard first editions... he was even reading some of them. He became a fanatic collector of Frank Frazetta covers, as well. Having a good eye for talent, I recommended him as head of the dealer’s room at the last Torque He did a grand job. In fact, we discovered that sev-

enteen dealers in a rather small space is too much of a good thing. The dealers’ room was crowded with tables, each filled to the ceiling with piles of books. Desperate dealers scrambled to sell overpriced copies of Skull Face and Others and The Outsider over the competition. Red was pleased to call this chaos the best dealers’ room at a Toronto convention since Torcon II. In a mater of months, he went from this triumph to managing his own bookstore in the east end. At his age, I was still learning to scrub mimeo ink out from under my fingernails. It was my guess that, in another six months, Red would mastermind a stock raid on Del Rey Books, and re-issue the complete Manly Wade Wellman in a gilt-edge edition. That may be only somewhat of an exaggeration, for the only ambition Red admits to is that he wants to run his own World Fantasy Con before 1990. Dave Hartwell and Kirby McCauley should take warning. “Naw,” I said. “I was just getting up anyway.” What time was it, I wondered? Was the sun up or down? “I thought you slept during the day, so I waited until evening before calling.” “I do. You can phone between 7 and 10 pm and usually catch me up. But I was taking a short nap.” It was evening, then. Time to start another day. Should I work on my fan writing, or finish the portrait of Rocky the Flying Squirrel posed against a World War II Mustang? Or, I could go back to bed and finish an intriguing dream. This was always the worst moment of the day – steeling myself to advance any of a number of open-ended projects toward their eventual abandonment. Then perhaps facing pork chops and wax beans for breakfast. A telephone conversation was actually a welcome distraction. People like Red were capable of wasting a huge chunk of the day – several hours’ worth – during which I might accomplish nothing at all except to bring the hour in which I could return to seductive sleep that much closer. Normally, Red wanted to talk about Cabbages and Kings. He had a nearly insatiable curiosity to know why Lincoln wasn’t Jewish if his name was Abraham, whether Indians took the hair with the scalp or shaved it first, and why everyone but him seemed to know who Jerry Mathers was. Red has asked me every one of those questions, in perfect seriousness. Instead of peppering me with questions tonight, though, Red came directly to the point. “Have you watched wrestling on television, lately?” “No. I have to admit that I’ve wasted too many years of watching TV to watch anything more demanding these days than The Smurfs.. So, you’ve discovered programming for fashionable intellectu- als, have you?” “Seriously, Taral, I’ve just been watching a wrestling show, and was it ever strange! If I hadn’t seen it myself, I wouldn’t have believed the ridicu- lous things they did. If you haven’t seen it, you won’t believe what I tell you!” “Oh, well... it’s always been ridiculous. When I was a kid, I watched the Saturday morning cartoons until about one, then all the junky sports came on – golf, bowling, sulky racing, tennis and even wrestling. Sometimes I was exposed to a bit of pro wrestling before I forced myself to get up to turn the TV off. That was long before remotes. So, I can personally guarantee that wrestling has been mind-numbingly silly since at least as long ago as 1960. It was probably silly long before there was even television for it to be on.” “Yeah,” said Red, “but now they have all these fake-sounding characters... like The Iron Sheikh, and another guy who says he comes from the Soviet Union.” “I grant you that the politics are new,” I said, “In my day, the performers had names like Gorgeous George or Whipper Billy Watson, and they just grappled with each other. They were kind of tubby and even a little fop- pish, with sequined shorts and permed hair-dos. A big joke.” I yawned, and pulled on some pants. With these new phones there’s a bit of a trick to holding the receiver on your shoulder without punching a number with your chin. “There was none of theatrics of the kind you see now. Cage matches and talking trash were unheard of when wrestling was pretending to be a sport.” “Yeah, but now even the managers get into the act. They climb into the ring and swear at the referee. Sometimes, when the referee isn’t looking, they trip the other guy’s wrestler . There’s this one manager with rings on all his fingers and safety pins in his ears, who talks even worse English than the wresters from foreign countries – he must be even more stupid than they are! When he’s interviewed between rounds, he gets mad and threatens to beat up the other manager.” “Bouts.” “What?” “I believe they’re called bouts. Just so that you don’t confuse wrestling with boxing, which has matches.” “That’s another thing. They keep punching each other, and don’t get any penalties or punishments.” “They’re not called penalties,” I said. “They’re called... I don’t remember what they’re called. Time-outs? But the punching is all faked, too. It’s supposed to be a special kind of blow with the open hand, or something, that the rules allow. What they really do is slap each other on the cheeks or shoulder or somewhere else that’s harmless, and it makes a lot of noise. Like Moe slapping Curly. I know how to kill a man with a blow of the open palm, but who ever heard of a wrestler getting seriously hurt? On purpose, I mean.” That, more than anything, seemed to have Robert stumped. “Yeah... I don’t know how come. They jump on each other’s necks, and some of those guys are big, fat elephants who have to weigh 300 pounds. Can you imagine all that weight falling on just your neck? It ought to break your head off. And then they pick the other guy up, sometimes, and throw him on the ground!” “Throw him on the mat. It’s made of rubber, so you can’t get hurt on it any more than you could on a trampoline. It’s all fake-o. Always has been.” “Well, what’s the point of faking? Why not really punch the other guy, or break his arm, and win right away?” At that point, a little thought balloon with a light bulb appeared over my head. I must have looked like an ass, with my pants half pulled on backwards and this expository device hanging over me, but it meant that I had finally twigged to something that I’d been missing until this moment. Red wasn’t even aware that pro wrestling wasn’t a sport. He thought the wrestlers were actually com- peting to win, and that the outcome of the match was unknown. It was hard not to laugh. As it happened, I wasn’t quite as completely out of touch with the vital contribution that WWF wrestling makes to our culture as I had led Robert to believe. A few years before, Cheryl Cline had written in The Wretch Takes to Writing about the newest, fashionable in-joke that professional wrestling had become, and had clued fandom into the gag. Since then, I’d witnessed the rise of Mr. T from the ring to prime-time TV action hero, and his apotheosis into a sugary breakfast cereal. I was there to see the fall of Cyndi Lauper from frivo- lous, but spunky, pop-singer to ringside camp follower. All the same, I hadn’t actually watched wrestling in more than twenty years. Why would I? Why does anyone? Why did Robert, for that mater? Our conversation stayed on the topic for only another half-hour or so, but long enough for me to as- sure Red that though wrestling might be more baroque these days, it had never been a serious contest, and could not have changed in any fundamental way. He resisted the truth. Could anything as outrageously fraudulent as I claimed be put on the air, he challenged. I told him about the Strategic Defense Initiative, another Reagan-era con job. Bringing up SDI allowed me to change the subject. Even so, the conversation wandered from topic to topic until nearly midnight. When I finally hung up the phone, I knew that I’d put in a good several hours’ worth of pro- crastination. Having only a few hours to go until dawn, I knocked off for the night to re-read some Asimov. * * * Little did I know that I would be compelled to watch a complete hour of professional wrestling on TV, within the week. It came about when I mentioned my conversation with Red Myre to Bob Wilson. I’ve been calling Bob about once a week for what amounts to a lifetime, it seems. Bob is something of a connoisseur of junk-culture, when he isn’t an audiophile or Big-Time Writer of Sci- Fi. (His first novel, A Hidden Place, is scheduled for release by Bantam in November this year.) Bob claimed to prefer boxing to wrestling, nevertheless, he was unable to ignore any gaudy and revealing cultural trend without giving it a look. Or two looks. He rarely needed more than a dozen. Of course, now he insists he never sat through to the end of a single bout. Perhaps that’s true. I make a point of trying to believe my friends... as well as garnish my stories. Unexpectedly, Bob sided with Red on the subject of modern professional wrestling. It really was a Big Deal now, not just a clown-show for bloodthirsty old ladies and dumpy men wearing East European suits. The audiences were filled with artistes and intellectuals these days. I had such trouble imaging this that he invited me over that night to see for myself. In fact, I doubted I had a choice. There was a note in his voice that was sugges- tive of the fox asking the rabbit over for dinner. I suspected that he’d been looking forward to WWF’s The Main Event all afternoon, and I’d delivered myself right into his plans. I none-too-graciously resigned myself to watching an hour of tubby hams grunting and posturing for the camera... and had my eyes rudely opened! Much about modern wrestling is the same as it’s always been, make no mistake. Bouncing off the ropes accomplished no more in the middle 1980s than it ever did. Mild rope burns, perhaps? Wrestlers led each other around in head-ocks that a ten-year old break. They threw themselves on each other with enough force to snap backs... if ever the blow fell on the body instead of the mat. I saw them pin each other down by grabbing a leg and twisting it in a parody of a hold, just like in the old days. Did they worry about getting pins-and-needles? About the only thing that wresters didn’t do today – that they didn’t do very much of in the old days either – was genuinely wrestle. It was an astonishment to me how few of the performances were actually delivered in the ring. Most of the acting was ringside, in the aisles or in the commentator’s box. Most of the match time had been pre-empted by comedy skits and stand-up routines, as well. Cyndi Lauper appeared early in the proceedings, and interfered with the wrestlers so often that the other manager called for a recess. One referee read from a stagey-looking document – supposedly from the Wrestling Commission – to officially ban Ms. Lauper from the ring. The bout resumed, while an army of officials in striped shirts and whistles escorted the fuming pop-singer out of the arena. During the interview session right after this escapade, Cyndi Lauper spoke more lines from a previously-prepared script in one minute than she sang on her first two albums. \ The entertainment was never spontaneous. In one supposedly last-ditch effort to conciliate two tradi- tional rivals, the violent outcome was as predictable as your taxes coming due on April 15th. It was as tightly scripted as a thirty-second, late-night, TV advertisement for vegetable dicers. To begin with, referees placed folding metal chairs facing each other in the middle of the ring. Next, Rowdy Roddy Piper and Junk Yard Dog entered, and sat themselves down in them. The two muscle-bound hams glared at each other, hands on fleshy thighs, showing the occasional glint of teeth being ground to powder, waiting for the moment to begin a reasoned discussion of their mutual grievances. Of course, from the first bell, the two were shouting back and forth in an enraged frenzy. After a little of this, one pushed the other over in his chair... as any two angry toddlers would be- have. The one with the scuffed knee from the tumble chased the other around the ring, wielding his broken chair like a club. It was all the referees could do to be restrain the two rivals from actually wrestling in the ring! The feature entertainment will surprise you. You knew it was an important occasion. Although he had to rush right back to finish his voice-overs, Mr. T had actually been released by Hanna-Barbera to make a guest appearance! A huge cake was wheeled in. The entire ensemble of that night’s wrestlers gathered around Cyndi Lauper – permitted back into the arena without explanation – gave her their best wishes and then sang “Happy Birthday!” All but The Fabulous Moolah, that is. For her, this was the last straw. Moolah was a caicature of a ste- reotype of a working-class, ethnic harri- dan of uncertain origin. She had a Brook- lyn accent so outrageously thick you could wedge it under a door to keep it open. Her vocabulary was colourful, to be sure. Curiously, it lacked any genu- ine expression that anyone could possi- bly take offense to. Perched in front of her squashed, bull-doggish face was a pair of rhinestone-studded wing glasses that were too wild for Elton John. They might have once served as part of an exhibition- istic grill from a ‘50s-era Plymouth. There was no telling what Moolah’s profession had been before turning to the ring. She would have been at home behind the counter in the cigar department of a Moscow GUM store, but she was just as likely to have been someone’s gefilte fish-obsessed grandmother. The Fabulous Moolah, as such, seemed to exist solely as a foil for Cyndi Lauper’s more precocious per- sonality. Moolah’s resentment had been carefully nurtured from the first minute of the night’s program, and had been smoldering all evening. The instant you saw the cake, telegraph keys began clacking out a message in your head. At the end of a final refrain of “Happy Birthday dear Cyn-diiiii...,” Moolah rushed the ebullient pop-star like an enraged rhino. I knew just how she felt. Lauper, of course, side-stepped the clumsy charge easily. Surprise! Moolah did a swan dive right into the cake. Did you see that coming? I didn’t see that coming. No way... Not that any of the wrestlers playing their characters were any sharper, even by the standards of plastic fast food tableware. The Fabulous Moolah was only the norm. That is why it’s so surprising that halfwits and knuckleheads such as Hulk Hogan and Mr. T have become the symbols of all that American manhood represents. All the more so, if you take into account the habitual cheating and foul play of even the “good guys.” Remember “the good guys versus the bad guys?” You knew the good ones from the bad ones not only from the hats they wore – or trunks, as the case may be – you knew who-was-who because the bad guy was a cheater. He drew his gun when the good guy had his back turned. Or gouged eyes when the ref wasn’t looking. In tag-team matches, the bad guys ganged up on the good guys, illegally. No mater. They never won in the end, because cheaters never prospered! Cowboys unconsciously acted out Medieval morality plays for youngsters, and so did wrestlers for an older generation. But not in the Reagan Era. In contemporary WWF wrestling, the good guys cheat too, and sometimes the bad guys win – not that it’s easy to tell which is which, any more. Like villains of old, today’s hero will punch the other wrestler in the kidney when he can get away with it, or will strangle his opponent in the ropes. Yet, despite the moral decay evident in the WWF, the conflict between the Forces of Good and Evil is acted out more intently than ever. What’s wrong with this analysis is that the sides being drawn up are not Good vs. Evil at all. It’s simply Us vs. Them. “We” possess the values of national pride, vigorous manhood and the American Way of Life. “They” revel in the vices of tribalism, animal instincts and alien motives. The moral illustration that is drawn in a wresting match isn’t that We are Better. It’s that We are Tougher. Fair play and clean sport are as obsolete as steam and mainsprings. I’m not reassured by what this tells me about the state of mind of America in the 1980s. The wrestling arena was once a dark, furtive cavern. It drew from the neighborhood a few hundred devoted old ladies, boarding-house transients, traveling salesmen, cigar-chewing bookies, barflies and other such Damon Runyon characters. The modern arena is likely to be standing-room-only for thousands of New York intellectuals and conservative, unemployed steelworkers – rubbing shoulders and sharing a joke for the first time. Miles of red, white and blue bunting is festooned from one well-lit corner of the vast amphitheater to the other. The upper tiers are so high there is a common complaint of nosebleed. A huge American flag has central place in front of the camera box. It no doubt flew over an American supercarrier that only last week was pounding hell out of some turbaned or sandaled rural population in the third world. Wrestling gets prime-time these days, and has to look good. The bad guy, The Iron Sheikh, steps into the ring and begins to bad-mouth the United States. He de- nounces everything it stands for, and humiliates the weakling opponent he boasts he’ll soon crush. His tag-team partner is Nicolai Volkov. If possible, he hates America even more than the Arab wrestler. He brags that he eats little puppies to keep his blood sugar high. He throws a handful of pathetic little bones at the referee’s feet to prove it. After the Enemy has delivered his challenge, the best of all possible good guys step into the ring together, The American Express! While these two muscular exemplars of stalwart American virility let their long blond hair blow in the air-conditioning, the crowd comes to its collective feet for the Unofficial National Anthem. It’s a popular tune adopted to the WWF’s use much to the embarrassment of Bruce Springsteen, the singer-song- writer who intended it to give a different message altogether. Finally, as the last strains of “Born in the U.S.A.” die away, either the Russian or the Iranian begins the bout... with a sneaky punch to the liver. This time, the bad guys win. It’s a little hard to tell which is which without a program, mind you. Eventu- ally, the good guys will win, but not until the end of the season – when the scripts have all been played and casting for next year has begun. Twenty years ago, The Doors and The Stones scandalized everyone over the age of eighteen with unmusi- cal noise and subversive ideas. Ten years ago, Middle America still held out against Pink Floyd and 10cc. In con- servative America , a man with long hair was a dangerous pinko or a faggot.. Today, rock music is for middle-aged men, not just teenagers. A generation of rockers have grown up in factories, warehouses and mills, and made long hair and rock ‘n roll patriotic. With the assimilation of all the old images of protest, we have achieved an illusion of ideological unanimity. In the absence of a dialectic, America is strong again! Well... that’s the idea, anyway. What has really happened is that America’s youth, in rebvellion against the new paradigm, are now cutting their hair short again... or gelling it into spikes. The conservative delusion is laid bare by the scriptwriters of WWF wrestling. The Russian and Arab bring the American partners to the brink of defeat. The Stars and Stripes on their trunks are flat against the mat. Unable to stand by ad watch this treachery, Hulk Hogan tosses down his gauntlet. Even though he is not part of the match, he rushes in and gallantry attacks The Iron Sheikh from the rear. The bad guys, now outnumbered three-to-two, beat a hasty retreat – then call in an illegal ally of their own. In spite of a sneak attack and force majeure, the good guys lose this round, but there will be another time... They shake their fists... there will be another time. We see the philosophy of Rambo, Red Dawn and Clear and Present Danger here, in a language Archie Bunker understands. If, at one time, pro wrestling was a morality play that acted out Right and Wrong, it’s a sign of our times that wrestling has been elevated to Big Bucks and Prime Time on television – not to mention to a vogue among certain pop-intellectuals – at a time when its has just about worn through its moral fabric. Much llike the issues that are crudely caricatured in pro wrestling – indeed like much of the ‘80s themselves – wrestling is all show and no substance. Politicians and wrestlers have become cartoons for adults. Had the match gone on, we might imagine Hogan secretly tying a rope around the Iron Sheikh’s leg. They rush out of their corners with the gong, and – twaaang! – the Sheikh falls flat on his face. Hogan is on him in a flash, tying the arms and legs of his opponent in a big hairy knot. The Sheikh withdraws to his corner by walking on his fingertips, the only part of him he can move. In the next round, the angry Arab pulls Hogan’s tongue about a yard out of his mouth, and wraps a stick of T.N.T in it. The tongue snaps back in Hogan’s mouth, and there is a muffled explosion. Hogan’s cheeks bulge and smoke rises from his ears as his eyes drop out and bounce around the rubber mat. The Iron Sheikh’s next cheat backfires, though. Launching himself from the ropes in a flying as- sault, he misses and bounces back and forth, back and forth. Hogan lifts the ropes so the Sheik shoots out of the ring, colliding with the the Fabulous Moolah’s vast belly, and th... th... th... that’s all folks! Play end music and roll credits. Of course, you’re free to change the channel to Fox or CNN, but is there all that much difference?

* * * “What did you think?” Bob Wilson asked me. The Main Event had left me uncharacteristically speechless. I was finally able to stutter that I thought the doors of the arena should have been locked on the audience, and the building flooded to the ceiling with sewer water. But, at least I knew now why Red had been so incensed, and why he was so skeptical of my assurances that pro wrestling was the same, sad, silly pseudo-sport it had been in my day. It wasn’t. It was still as phoney as ever, but whole new dimensions of dishonesty and delusion had been added. I was dumfounded by the Byzantine decadence of what pro wrestling had become. I was also possessed by a strange impulse, as though a little demon wearing Moolah’s rhinestone glasses had whispered in my ear... Next day, I phoned up Bob Hadji. This Bob was a different Robert, not the writer, and not The Red. But that Robert was too easily misled, and no challenge. Hadji was a connoisseur’s skeptic, and had a sense of hu- mour so much like my own that we could have shared laugh-tracks. It was time to pass the buck. The ringer made its noise a few times, then Hadji answered the phone as usual. “Hello? Accounts.” “Hi. Hadji?” “Oh, Hello, Taral. Just a minute while I put some papers away. Is there something up?” Between issues of Borderland Magazine that he edited, Hadji circulated paperwork for Pilkington-Ford Glass. So vital was his job to the company’s day-to-day operations that I could usually count on a good jaw-ses- sion with him during business hours, any day of the week. Using my most innocent tone of voice, I asked, “Have you seen pro wrestling on TV, lately? It’s rather, oh... odd?” “Wrestling on TV? Can’t say that I have. But the oddest thing about pro wrestling has always been that it’s on TV at all, don’t you think?” “Have I got a story for you, then,” I said, while pulling on my underwear. I spent the next twenty minutes of Pilkington-Ford’s time telling Hadji about The Fabulous Moolah, Bruce Springsteen, Cyndi Lauper’s birthday cake, all of it... Who Hadji would have to tell next, to get the story off his mind, was no concern of mine.

Endnotes 1 - Torque 1 through 4 were small-scale, no-frills SF cons that I chaired in Toronto from 1980 to 1985. 2 - As events proved, He changed his mind well before 1990. He decided to distribute Cliff Yabloski’s quasi-hate literature instead. 3 - April 30th in Canada.