The bodies floated.

They were part of the aftermath of last month's Cyclone Nargis that cut across the Irrawdy Delta of Myanmar. The sawing vortex of wind and rain, and the storm surge that followed killed 23,000 people and left a million homeless. Nature's worst is child's play compared to the atrocities committed by the government.

Myanmar used to be called Burma when it was a British colony. Independence came in 1947. A leftist military coup in 1962 instigated "The Burmese Way of Socialism," kicking off more than 40 years of steady economic decline and periodic outbursts of ethnic cleansing. In 1989 the ruling generals changed the name of their killing fields to Myanmar. The current strong man is General Than Shwe.

After refusing foreign aid to victims of Cyclone Nargis, Shwe's State Peace and Development Council allowed show displays of humanitarianism. Among them was a tent city put up and supplied by the United Nations. When the reporters left with their sound bites and footage, the refuges were sent packing and the food distributed to Shwe's soldiers.

I know two people whose names I can't mention because they are returning to Myammar to continue whatever they can do. In the past they set up home churches and brought money to buy food and medical supplies from the regional thugs. Bringing material directly into the country is vorboten because there is less chance for profiteering.

The churches they help shepherd no longer exist. The people fled to a town above water. There the military conscripted males over the age 12, and put the elderly, women and children into boats. They boats, they were told, would take them to a refugee center.

None arrived. 

I'm a Christian fundamentalist sadly aware the label makes many people think I'm anti-science, condemn them to Hell, want to police what goes on their bedrooms, and am filled with prejudicial hatred that come out in jokes like, You know why Osama bin Laden and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad don't eat with their left hands?  Because they're afraid of licking off their brains.  

The list of negatives goes on and on.  In the interest of understanding and brotherhood, I would like to clear up the grosser of these misunderstandings and so offer this irregular series to give Bible-based, Spirit-filled insights of what it means to have God smile on me and not you. 

Let's examine the most important issue.  I do not want to be in your bedroom.  Honest to God, unless you lead with a 36 double D rack, own a chain of liquor stores, can yodel and have invited me with a fetching jingle of your handcuffs, I don't even want to be in your house.  

I'm not asking what you do in your bedroom, so please don't tell me.  Don't tell my children.  Don't bring a cucumber to elementary school as part of the syllabus for an anti-pregnancy prevention program.  In case you haven't notice, in spite of increasingly detailed sex education, illegitimate babies are on the rise while the age of unwed mothers is spiraling downward. 

I'm sorry.  I take that back.  There are no illegitimate children in God's eyes.  But I think that fathers who abandon their children and girls who keep having babies to get more welfare are on the road to Hell. 

In fact, I think most people I know are on a superhighway to Hell.  H-80 I call it, and good riddance I say.  If you had my neighbors, friends and family members, the point would not have to be discussed.  As it is...and here's the rub...if I get the chance, I'm supposed to talk them out of it.   I'm not supposed to nudge them there in any way. 

For some people there is confusion on this point.  Christian fundamentalists are lumped in with Islamic fundamentalists. Islamists think most people are going to Hell too, and if you lived in their countries, you could understand it.  But the worst you'll get from a Christian is some foamer on a street corner giving you a little comic book.  For the Moslem, it's strap explosives to a kid and send him into the local pizza parlor.

For you seekers after Truth, look here again for when I give more apologies.   My wife says that should be apologetics, but what does she know?  She's Catholic.    

Confession: I have not seen Al Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth. People say I shouldn't have an opinion about the environmental issues raised until I have. Their logic suggests I cannot have knowledge of syphilis until I catch it in a Mexican whorehouse. In both cases, I would rather avoid the spirochetes.

Contention: There are people who want you to be afraid. They will hold a gun or some such to your head. In your fear, you are apt to believe you will survive only because of their good pleasure. That's the power they want over you.

We call them extortionists, kidnappers, armed robbers, rapists. They are schoolyard bullies. They are certain politicians.

Never for a moment think they are aware of being wicked or bad. To their minds their good is everyone's good. Your undoing is hardly the issue.

For example, yesterday Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) kicked off a Senate debate on global warming. He believes greenhouse gasses will fry us all. Mr. Reid says Science backs him up. So do famous actors. A former Vice President says we're goners too.

So, we the people need to be punitively taxed on energy use, and in some instances prosecuted and jailed.

This will boost the cost of everything, will kill a lot of jobs and force you, if you haven't already, to use mass transit. Then there will be pressure on government to fix food prices, extend jobless benefits, and expand public transportation and continue to subsidize traveling graffiti shows. That's the short list. All of these cost money, and will require increasing taxation and very tight bureaucratic controls to bring about.

The restrictions, however, will be for our own good. We won't survive without them.

But suppose we can't do anything about the gun at our heads. Two weeks ago I saw an astronomer with a telescope and heard him tiredly explain to concerned civilian who was passing by: "Yes. Climate change. Cause by the Sun. Comes in cycles."

Or suppose the gun isn't loaded. Or what if there isn't a gun at all?

A large body of expertise on global warming is contrary to the consensus Mr. Reid so comfortably assumes. In a May 19th WoldNetDaily story, reporter Bob Unruh takes on one of the more famous Greenies for being full of the ol' Shinola. I have excerpted the article below, but it deserves full read.

More than 31,000 scientists across the United States, including more than 9,000 Ph.D.s in fields including atmospheric science, climatology, Earth science, environment and dozens of other specialties, have signed a petition rejecting the assumption that the human production of greenhouse gases is damaging Earth's climate.

"There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate," the petition states. "Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth."

The Petition Project actually was launched nearly 10 years ago, when the first few thousand signatures were assembled. Then between 1999 and 2007, the list of signatures grew gradually without any special effort or campaign. Now a new effort has been conducted because of an "escalation of the claims of consensus."

Project spokesman and founder Art Robinson Petition explained, "Mr. Gore's movie asserting 'settled science' conveyed the claims about human-caused global warming to ordinary movie goers and to public school children, to whom the film was widely distributed. Unfortunately, Mr. Gore's movie contains many very serious incorrect claims which no informed, honest scientist could endorse."

WND submitted a request to Al Gore's office for comment, but did not get a response.

Robinson said the dire warnings about "global warming" have gone far beyond semantics or scientific discussion to the point they are actually endangering people.

"The campaign to severely ration hydrocarbon energy technology has now been markedly expanded," he said. "In the course of this campaign, many scientifically invalid claims about impending climate emergencies are being made. Simultaneously, proposed political actions to severely reduce hydrocarbon use now threaten the prosperity of Americans and the very existence of hundreds of millions of people in poorer countries," said Robinson.

The late Professor Frederick Seitz, the past president of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and winner of the National Medal of Science, wrote in a letter promoting the petition, "The United States is very close to adopting an international agreement that would ration the use of energy and of technologies that depend upon coal, oil, and natural gas and some other organic compounds."

"This treaty is, in our opinion, based upon flawed ideas. Research data on climate change do not show that human use of hydrocarbons is harmful. To the contrary, there is good evidence that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is environmentally helpful," he wrote.

Accompanying the letter sent to scientists was a 12-page summary and review of research on "global warming."

Steitz wrote, "The proposed agreement would have very negative effects upon the technology of nations throughout the world, especially those that are currently attempting to lift from poverty and provide opportunities to the over 4 billion people in technologically underdeveloped countries."

Robinson said the project targets scientists because, "It is especially important for America to hear from its citizens who have the training necessary to evaluate the relevant data and offer sound advice."

But you can bet not one of them will be invited by Senator Reid to testify before his Congressional cronies.

Poor George Bush.   Betrayal doesn't count unless it comes from someone you believe is your friend.  

No doubt, the President is isolated, as is claimed in the tell-all of his former Press Secretary Scott McClellan.  Not many since Lincoln have chosen rivals as advisers.  

Equally certain is McClellan's oh-so-delicate ego.  When he voiced doubts about the Iraq War, they were pooh-poohed.  How crushing!

Then there is his present courage in irrevocably expressing his concerns.  He no longer has to asscreep for a paycheck.    He can wag his finger at an Administration that isn't well liked.  He doesn't have to engage in the cross fire of debate.

Although his betrayal won't change any of the people McClellan wishes would come to their senses, his opinions do have affect in other quarters.   

They embolden our country's enemies.  They ennoble those within who would have liked to let it all slide, the terror and subjugation of Iraqis by Saddam and his gang of thugs. 

Of course, there were citizens who had conscionable objections to the war from the beginning.  They have  been doing all they can to end or ameliorate the conflict.  But unlike them, McClellan's criticisms of the policies of his former boss won't come across as clean and clear if they ever have to be explained on Judgment Day.  

Poor poor Scott McClellan.

 

MoveForwardAmerica.com displays a couple of video segments of- and about- the City Council of Berkeley, California, discussing the demand of the anti-war group, Code Pink, to kick out the Marine Corps Recruiting Center from the city.  The councilmen unanimously believe that the Marines are “unwanted, unwelcome intruders;” a private citizen claims the military perpetrates “mass murderer;” and one elected official  proudly pronounces his work with Code Pink. Perhaps he helped to raise the $600,000 that CP has donated to the families of terrorists in Iraq.

What we see behind the earnest bombast are products of Berkeley schools.  From kindergarten to post-graduate level, Berkeley educators are dedicated to propagating leftist dogma.  When they make small efforts to be objective they teach a very narcissistic brand of political correctness. Thus their students come to hate the country so much, they give aid and comfort to our enemies.

         It is wrong, therefore, to contribute to their ease and safety with Federal tax dollars.  I want to kill subsidies for fire, police, sanitation and schools.  Especially schools.  Given the evidence of its parents, Berkeley is a place where every child needs to be left behind.

         I would urge everyone to sign the petition at Move America Forward for cutting off some Federal spending.  The cuts are not nearly as deep as I would wish.  I say this as a former bleeding heart. 

         Six years ago I vowed to no longer do business with the Berkeley. Then I broke the vow for a friend who wanted me to pick up some cupcakes at a bakery.  That may be interpreted as an act of charity, but charity can’t be stretched to cover my stopping to have an egg omelet down the street.  Brown eggs from range free chickens served, God help me, by a hottie in a Che Guevara T-shirt.  The economic effect of my boycott has proved to be about as effective as passing wind in the general direction of the Cuban monument for Julies and Ethel Rosenberg.

         My animosity, strong in spirit but weak in the flesh, had come from the fact that Moslems had attacked us.  We hadn't yet fought back.  Still, Berkeley’s self-righteous city council refused to allow fire trucks to fly the American Flag and show solidarity with New York City's 9/11 firefighters.  At the time I wrote an essay that wished Osama and Berkeley a cold winter. I believe that essay has relevance to more recent events, so I offer it here.

 

DISPATCHES FROM THE HOMEFRONT

       My wife and I were staying in Contra Costa County, making final preparation for our daughter’s wedding.  She has chosen to live in sunny, hilly country where narrow roads wind through groves of trees and open to wide vistas of mountain-fringed sky. At 4 AM there is no traffic, and you can roll into San Francisco off the Oakland-Bay Bridge within twenty minutes.  Even with lots of traffic, it is no longer than that to Berkeley, the university town that lies on the foggy side of the hills that separate Contra Costa County from San Francisco Bay. 

         On September 11th the quiet suburban communities east of Berkeley looked and felt planets away from what I saw on television that Tuesday morning in late summer.  Terrorists attacked New York City and Washington, DC. They massacred nationals from 66 foreign countries and slaughtered almost as many Americans in one hour than the number who died in our eight-year War of Independence against Britain more than two centuries ago. 

         Then almost everywhere I looked in the Bay Area, the connection was made with our countrymen a continent away.  American Flags sprouted from the front porches of homes, waved from cars and trucks and appeared in full page renditions in The Contra Costa Times and in the two dailies from San Francisco, suitable for taping to an apartment window or in an office cubicle.  Those flags said we sympathized with the families of people who were murdered going about their daily work. They said we loved our country and agonized over her wounds.  They spoke of quiet awe and pride in the all-American firemen and cops who had laid down their lives trying to save others.   

         The exception was Berkeley where the city council banned fire trucks from flying the National Colors.

Winter for Osama and Berkeley

         Berkeley is frozen in its past, the Vietnam War never ending its protests, so it offers perpetual sanctuary to privileged revolutionaries attending the University of California from overseas.  They are embraced by homegrown radicals tenured in university departments, in residence throughout the city and in control of the municipal government.  These citizens think they are politically enlightened and morally superior to the rest of us.  Therefore anything they want justifies any means they choose to get it. 

         Ironically, they are radicals in name only.  They are in fact reactionaries, frightened of change taking place all around them.  This results in self-centered or infantile behavior.  With Free Love they were like children discovering their genitals and playing with them in public.  With its Sixties companion, the Free Speech Movement, they wanted everyone to listen to their tantrums.  No fair if you had an opposing point of view; they’d throw a rock at you.   Unable to adapt (or grow up), they have had to expand their enemies’ list.  Presidents Johnson and Nixon can no longer top it, but big oil, big tobacco, the military and the National Rifle Association are still up there, with newer suspects ranging from meat eaters and white heterosexual males to anyone who believes that a few values are absolute   

         Berkeleyites are not heartless.  Few children are.  They were as repelled as any by what terrorists had been planning to do to for ten years and finally carried off—namely, the killing of Republicans, Democrats, Independents, socialists, communists, pacifists, soldiers, atheists, gays, radical feminists, pro-lifers, Moslems, Hindus, Buddhists, Zionists, members of the Christian right, left and center, and any person of color who was in the vicinity of the World Trade Center or the Pentagon.  

         But as of yet, Berkeleyites cannot shake the belief that Osama bin Ladin and his cohorts throughout the Islamic world have been somehow forced into committing atrocities by the United States.  Wanting to see a lot more us dead, the terrorists actively pursue plans for more destruction while the people of Berkeley murmur that we should have listened to their grievances.  We should not have taken positions that irritated them.  And we should not wave flags lest their sympathizers round about think we are intolerant.  

         This kind of thinking gives Berkeleyites a warm feeling of gratitude because it allows them to hold onto what amounts to a religious conviction: the United States is was, is and always will be the greatest threat to peace the world has ever known.  The people of Berkeley represent a small minority of Americans, but they are not alone, and their influence is far wider than their numbers.   America-haters are among the elite in college towns across the land.  They fill the National Educational Association, and have flooded into secondary and primary classrooms where American History, if it is taught at all, is given less important than teaching kids how to use condoms.  They own the National Council of Churches.  They are politicians and bureaucrats at all levels of government who could not remain in power without a clientele of perpetual victims and malcontents.  They control much of the mainstream media and include Hollywood celebrities who, until September 11th, have been quick to express their anti-American sentiments.

         Thank God, many of these people are experiencing the angst of getting their heads screwed on right.   They intuitively understand the terrorists’ point of view: one dead New Yorker at Ground Zero is just the start for dancing in the blood of some New Age relativist enjoying a joint in Malibu.  It has been said how remarkably focused the mind becomes when you’re being shot at.  I heard it put another way by a wonderful black woman stopped in a Manhattan street a day or so after the attacks. 

         “What would you tell people in Islamic countries who sympathize with the terrorists?” she was asked.

         “Nothing,” she said.  “They believe one thing.  And I now I know what I believe.  We have nothing to say to each other.”

Hallelujah!  A Just War 

         I drove back to Los Angeles heartened by remarks like that, as well as by Billy Graham’s in the National Cathedral and of President George Bush to the Congress, the nation and the enemies of the United States.  I was saddened too by all the wanton death and destruction.  And I was very, very angry.   

         I’m angry at the terrorists and those who harbor them.  I want to go to war against the peoples and the countries that want to kill my neighbors and me.  I want to do whatever it takes to win the war so that America’s enemies cannot destroy my country and trample on her ideals.   I do not want to waste my anger on places like Berkeley, where the people must feel so ashamed of their unearned rights and creature comforts that they loath themselves.   How else can I explain why they hate our country so?

         Jesus tells me that I must turn the other cheek to hate so that I may love my neighbor as myself.  He also tells me to carry a sword and be ready to use it.   In the first instance the context is about irksome family members, overbearing bosses, back stabbing co-workers and strangers who cut you off in traffic or demand a buck for a pint of wine.  Refraining from acting in kind doesn’t require that you let everyone get away with nonsense.  Love demands that you tell the truth, correct when you can and always want the good for people even if they have no idea what good means. So I’m turning my cheeks to the citizens of Berkeley, and they can kiss my butt as I walk away and never do business there until they wake up the second instance of Jesus’ teaching.

         It is about God’s wider, all-inclusive love. The kind that will not turn its back on evil.  Christians aren’t supposed to sit around and pray when they see someone climbing over the balcony to rape the neighbor lady.  Love in this instance wants the best for the most.   It shoots to kill.  If it can’t do that, it calls the cops.  If it can’t do that, it supports politicians and judges who understand executing a criminal will make sure that he can’t hurt anyone ever again, including fellow prisoners.   It underlies the concept of a just war that St. Thomas Aquinas wrote about under the heading of Charity.  At Pearl Harbor it said, “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.”  It reduced nearly every city in Third Reich to rubble so that whoever crawled out of the ashes was saved from the evil of Nazism.  Its atomic bomb killed 100,000 civilians in Nagasaki so that a million American men-at-arms would not have to die trying to invade Imperial Japan.  Thus it made sure Japan’s Greater Asia Co-prosperity Sphere did no more harm.

         This kind of love is about the severe mercy of God.  Applied through human instruments, it is fraught with human failing.  Until the Second Coming of Christ, evil is here to stay, and good guys will sometimes do horrific things.  But it would be far, far worse, if the good guys sat around and did nothing. 

Judgment

         I’m disconcerted by the outcry against Jerry Fallwell’s suggesting that the United States is under God’s judgment.  Of course we’re under judgment.  If we weren’t, thousands more people would have died at Ground Zero and more targets hit.  That’s the good side of having a sovereign God looking after us.  The bad side is that, if we’re going to act stupid and tie ourselves up in knots about things that never mattered, like banning law abiding citizens from owning firearms, we’ll get distracted from the important things, like foreigners who are deadly serious with their box cutters.   

         God seldom takes by force what He has given by grace.  That means we have to live with the consequences of our free will.  There are plenty of instructions in the Bible and lessons from our secular history about how to exercise our will responsibly.  There are also warnings about giving into momentary fads and fashion, and having our ears tickled with crises that aren’t real, from agar on apples to disturbing the habitats of garter snakes and snail darters.  Fill your mind with those things, and you won't be thinking much about national security.

         Most Americans have an intuitive understanding of judgment although we get twitchy when religion is brought in.  In our daily lives we hope for judgment when are qualified for a job and want to be hired.  Every time we vote, we cast judgments for or against candidates running for office.  We exercise judgment when we look to see what was lacking in our national security and intelligence, and seek to improve them.  We stand as judges when we laud the heroics of firemen, police and passengers.  We even bring the Lord into it when we stand in the middle of a bombed out square--a neo natal intensive care unit three blocks down, an abortion clinic two streets over--and cry out,  “God bless America!”

         But which America?

 

For three decades Bob Christiansen and Rick Rosenberg produced award-winning television. The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Queen of the Stardust Ballroom, Red Earth White Earth and Gore Vidal’s Lincoln tip an iceberg of prestigious credits.

Then there was an early piece of flotsam called Gargoyles.

In ancient times gargoyles, sometime called chimera, served as drainage spouts for Egyptian and Greek temples built by pagans who apparently had never seen a rain gutter. After the rise of Christianity in Europe, gargoyles evolved from carved animal heads to more grotesque creatures.

Originating in idol worship was not good for their reputation, but the 7th Century Bishop of Rouen, later canonized as St. Romaine, reputedly believed that there is some good in every one of God’s creatures, including a forest dragon that terrorized folks who wandered too far beyond the city walls. Beguiled by the Bishop’s tenderness, the dragon turned to helping the citizens of Rouen, and in honor of him they carved the dragon’s likeness to adorn the cathedral and let water off the roof.

That’s the horse whisperer version.

The one I like has the Bishop hooking up with a condemned prisoner to subdue the monster. It was called Gargouille, a derivative of the French word for gullet and progenitor of our modern word gargoyle. Gargouille thrashed around in the Sien, was part human, part demon, and had a tendency to spew water all over the countryside, causing vast flooding.

That’s why the aforesaid mentioned Bishop and his faithful convicted companion went after him. The Bishop used the con as bait to lure Gargouille out of the river. That was not so cold blooded as you might think. It was like the Lone Ranger’s sending Tonto into town to scout out the situation. Tonto always come back to camp, sometimes blooded, once with rope burns around his neck, but with vital signs almost as good as Kimosabe’s and full useful intel.

So, as the felon showed himself to be as quick on the get away as Tonto would have to be, the Bishop formed his fingers in the sign of the Cross. Gargouille cowered like Christopher Lee in Dracula. Or like Christopher Lee in Dracula: Prince of Darkness and again in Dracula Has Risen From The Grave. Ditto for Scars Of Dracula, Taste The Blood of Dracula and Dracula A.D. 1972.

It’s clear that a crucifix couldn’t kill Dracula, but in the Bishop’s day there was no profit to be made from a sequel. Besides, no one knew what a sequel was. Thus Gargouille sheepishly followed the Bishop back to town where the monster was summarily burned to death. Gargouille then inspired likenesses that were sweat hog ugly, carved in stone and stuck on the roofs of medieval cathedrals to show evil spirits what fate would befall them if they wandered too close.

In modern times sleeker gargoyles in stainless steel were placed atop the Chrysler Building in New York City to ward off Ford motorcars.

Mix the gargoyles of yesteryear with New Age thinking, and in their post-modern stories they become misunderstood, sort of like King Kong, or downright heroic, like Mighty Joe Young. Disney produced a kids’ animation series followed by a knock-off, direct-to-video movie in the mid-Nineties that made gargoyles superheroes lazing about an ancient Scottish castle. An American tycoon buys the castle and has it moved to New York City. Feeling needed again, the gargoyles ward of “modern threats to humanity”— judges who let murderers walk free, black pimps who beat up their ho’s, greasy white tweakers, a couple of U.S. Senators.

Don’t you wish? Don’t you wish Disney could imagine some real and present evil, like media companies that flirt with the occult and then sell it to the kiddies?

The gargoyles Bob and Rick introduced to television a quarter of century earlier just wanted to be left alone. But when they were disturbed, it was like stepping on green mambas. Makeup artists Del Armstrong, Ellis Burman Jr. and Stan Watson won the Emmy for making them look as gruesome as Gargouille. The monsters lived in the desert, so there wasn’t much water spewing; but they were badass when that used to mean something.

I saw Gargoyles when it first aired in November 1972. It starred Cornell Wilde as a Dr. Somebody and his scientist daughter played by Jennifer Salt. They investigate a huge, just discovered skeleton displayed at a curio shop. As they pack it up for further investigation, they unwittingly disturbed the gargoyle equivalent of an Indian burial ground, and if you ever saw Jeremiah Johnson, you know what that means. They are driving back to a university when monsters dive down off the rocks and give them a bad time, denting their car and such, and clearly wanting to tear the occupants limb from limb before they retrieve the ancestral bones.

I don’t remember what happens after that. A long day at Wolper, a couple of scotches, a pretty good warmed over dinner and I was ready for bed, or more correctly, the snoring nap you take before the wife yells, “Turn off the TV and come to bed!”

But I was impressed by what I saw. I just never associated it with the Bob and Rick I met two years later and worked with off and on for the next fifteen.

The reason is threefold. Al Gore hadn’t invented the internet yet, which meant no International Movie Data Base. Further, although entertainment professionals incorporate socialization in their dealings, and that may include chitchat about past projects or past lives, the work at hand always hangs over them like a Sword of Damocles. Whether there is a lull, a meal or a party, the talk always comes back to the present work. Or to gossip. Finally, when I am socializing, I’d rather fill my mouth with food and drink than my head with the details of other people’s lives. Unless the info is really juicy and destroys a reputation.

The problem is, you just never know what you’re going to get. When I’m in a Greyhound Bus Depot and people find out I’m a famous Hollywood writer, I’m swamped with stories of murder, extramarital affairs, Jesus saved me from drugs, let me show you something in the alley, and you should write the screenplay

No thanks.

OK, let me spend the next hundred miles explaining how I live off coupons from the newspaper.

Neither Bob nor Rick struck me as the kind who cared whether you could get half off on a can of Spaghetti-Os, but you never know when eccentricity will come screaming forth, so its best to keep one’s guard up.

Superficially, I knew Bob and Rick as well-spoken men and well read, both with senses of humor. Bob’s wit was more in your face; Rick’s, more droll. Bob came out of the Marine Corps, and then, I don’t know, he sold space ads for The Hollywood Reporter or Variety. He did something afterwards, that I’m sure.

Meanwhile Rick was the assistant to Jerry Bresler, producer of Major Dundee, a 1965 film starring Charlton Heston and directed by Sam Peckenpa. By 1969 Rick was an associate producer on The Reivers, a film that put Steve McQueen in an adaptation of a William Faulkner novel. McQueen introduced Rick to Bob, or it could have been the other way around. Regardless, secretaries and development assistants over the years led me to believe that Chris-Rose Productions was the result of Steve McQueen suggesting the two should get together and put on their own shows.

Whether that’s true or not, it brings us back to the early piece called Gargoyles. I was at a party at Bob’s house a dozen years after its making. There was either another writer or a director present who knew one of the best inside stories I have ever heard.

First some background.

At the time of Gargoyles making in 1972 the slogan “Black Is Beautiful” had become “Black Power” with a clenched fist. California appellate courts overturned murder and assault conviction against the Maoist leadership of the Black Panther Party, freeing the leaders to fight off kidnapping, embezzlement and more murder charges. For reasons that are an enigma to me, intellectual and media elites began to accept the Panthers in the romantic revolutionary light in which radical leftists bathed them. Co-founder of the Party Huey Newton was in prison for killing a prostitute and addicted to drugs when the University of California, Santa Cruz, awarded him a doctorate. Eldridge Cleaved, the self-confessed rapist of white women who said he practiced on ghetto girls, was lionized for jumping bail and fleeing to Algeria. Angela Davis, a middle class woman turned Communist, feminist, university darling, Panther and owner of the shotgun used to blow off the face of a judge, inspired a worshipful song by John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

In this climate the hero of the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King, Jr., was called an Uncle Tom for his non-violent policies. Few challenged Islamic fascism’s inroads into America in the form of the Black Muslims. Maluena Karenga’s whole cloth invention of Kwanza as a uniquely black holiday, with pseudo roots in African animism, gained wider and wider unquestioning acceptance.

This was not a time for reason, the one thing that has remained constant since. The term “political correctness” wasn’t in usage but “consciousness raising” was. A person who needed his consciousness raised was a racist, patriarchal, probably a Republican or a Christian fundamentalist, in some way spiritually and mentally deformed. Generally speaking, he was white. Blacks on the other hand had “soul” due to centuries of oppression. Therefore they already knew that The Man was the problem and did not need their consciousnesses raised. Except when they held a traditional value or two, went to church or were old-fashioned Democrats. Hence when faced with a radical spewing hate or just a misguided fool spouting nonsense, most blacks and whites kept their opinions to themselves.

Bob wasn’t most people. He and Rick had a movie to get and only twenty-one days to do it. On the second or third day of shooting the lead gargoyle stepped out of a scene and took Bob aside.

“Some of the bros are saying that my dialogue makes me sound like an Uncle Tom.”

“Some of the bros?”

The man nodded solemnly.

“But, Bernie, you are supposed to be a great big f___ing green gargoyle.”

She sings Christian pop and very well, mind you. Let me stress: she is extremely talented. But even as I praise her, my guess is she would not be thrilled if I used her real name. Her husband/manger/lead guitarist probably would come looking for me.

The reason is that people have a tendency to mistake my tastes as an insult when I refer to anything seemingly outside the bounds of those preferences. I know “Back In The Saddle Again” by heart, believe that Elvis could beat the Three Tenors all to heck, and think the best film music ever is a toss up between “Men of Harlech” from Zulu and Frankie Lane singing the theme from Gunfight At The O.K. Corral. As far as hymnity is concerned, if a church spent a whole year repeating “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” for the processional, offering and recessional, I’d be warming a pew more frequently than at Easter, and I’d put a damn sight more than a dollar in the collection plate too.

That I can prefer all the above yet find this singer extremely talented is true musical appreciation, a rare and wonderful thing, but as with so many treasures in this fallen world, expansiveness of taste is often overlooked or totally misunderstood.

Suppose for a moment that I am a student of human anatomy, and that my double-wide is packed with works by Doctors Galen and Gray, paintings by Rubens, L’trec and Vargas, every DVD Kyla Cole ever appeared in, plus a collection of almost new Hustler magazines published before Larry Flynn was confined to a wheelchair. Then suppose I am heard shouting something nice about the neighbor lady, the sweetness of her nature, the kindness of her spirit, that sort of thing. Just possibly I would be misunderstood. That’s why her hubby would barge in and pound the snot of me.

So here I am with Kip Attaway playing in the background, trying to keep everyone off my tail by calling this real life songstress.... Mary Melody? Lucy Tunes?

When Linda L’stesso and I were freeway close in L.A.’s biological sink, a songwriter and mutual acquaintance kept telling me how funny Linda was, and vice verse, each of us being assured how much chuckling, thigh-slapping amusement would come from meeting the other.

Expectations like that are usually doomed.

It didn’t help that I had heard Linda on both stage and CD and, frankly, didn’t like her style. It was hard to follow the bouncing ball, if you know what I mean, until it suddenly hit me. You weren’t supposed to. No one sang like her. Her range was like the distances between stars. She was part Charlotte Church, part Janis Joplin. An angelic, Celtic, chain-smoking, country (youcan’tsaybitchonTownhall) is what she sounded like.

As far as I’m concerned, that’s good in a gospel artist, so as I got to know more about her, I have to admit to some disappointment. Everyone said she didn’t smoke and wasn’t a (youcan’tsaybitchonTownhall). Her husband, because of troublesome gig in Branson, Missouri, would have filed for divorced if ever a country tune passed her lips. She was wryly sarcastic, but humble and sweet. I’m sure a degree of her humility came from the heady early potential of a major record deal that fell apart as the ink was drying. Thus began a plummet into a long period of obscurity and poverty.

In that respect we were soul mates. But we were only nodding acquaintances until a week after the death of my third father-in-law. This sad event took my current wife out of the country, depleted our bank account and forced an abrupt cut in telephone service just hours before an expected phone call from a producer. The latter, I dearly hoped, would have me galloping off on the Comeback Trail.

I hopped my third hand ten-speed, wobbled and squeaked to the nearest pay phone, fed it coins and exchanged pleasantries with the producer’s secretary.

Sorry, I wasn’t on his call list. No, she couldn’t put me through because he was in a meeting. What was my number again so that he could get back to me at some other time?

Actually, I was doing lunch with someone, was already late and would be in meetings the rest of the afternoon. Would it be OK if I tried calling him from one of the studios? It’s a little hit and miss, I know, but—

“Don’t you have a cell phone? You could give us that number.”

Every drug dealer in Los Angeles had a cell phone, so they were catching on fast with the Hollywood crowd. Soon Mall of the Americas and Duckberg, Nevada, would be inundated. I got a cell phone seven years after these events. What did I know? I thought technology had run its course with the fax machine.

“It’s in the shop,” I said.

I peddled to the nearest gas station, filled the tires and used the ARCO courtesy phone just outside the executive dinning room of AM-PM Entertainment.

I called again from Ralph’s Supermarket Studios.

And again from Circle K Media and once more from 7-11 Pictures Corporation.

By now I was down to my last dollar, hungry from all the cycling and pretty well convinced that the producer and I would never connect.

Stomach growling, I suddenly remembered an invitation I received in the mail. By mistake, I was sure, but in spite of throwing it away, I remembered the gist. Some artsy Christian good works group was meeting for the first time that night in Malibu. Food was on the agenda because people whose last names started with A through E were supposed to bring drinks.

Usually such affairs—save the whales for Christ, feed the hungry for Christ, teach ghetto children to put some art into their graffiti for Christ—are very much like the secular counterparts from which they copy their concerns. But for Christ, you understand. Therefore you hear a lot of “Jesus Christ”s, first name or last name, but never thrown together as when the secular world wants to introduce a strong, negative opinion or as an exclamation of surprise, like when you accidentally wander into a ladies restroom whistling “In The Navy.” Either way, these occasions are attended by a few of the rich and famous, the odd true believer and a whole mass of folks looking to network their way to a higher place on the socio-economic dung heap.

Of course, the top of the heap doesn’t really want to rub shoulders with anyone on the bottom. There was a story, reputedly about someone the likes of Norman Lear or perhaps the great one himself, the television producer and social activist who founded People for the American Way. He was supposed to have jumped whole hog into environmentalism, but most greens in the Hollywood branch of the movement were a scruffy, unemployed lot. Hence he proposed an executive committee of his peers that would control the whole group but not have meet with them.

Among televangelists and mega churches you see similar inner circles. Getting in costs X amount of money. That makes you a special brother or sister, often called “Prayer Partner,” and puts you on the invite list for an intimate dinner of 100-plus with the pastor, during which he asks you to prayerfully consider giving more money so that you can become a member of Sea Org, the super tight inner inner ring. No, wait. I think Sea Org has to do with Scientology. But it’s almost the same idea.

Groups that are just staring out can’t afford the snobbery, which is doubtlessly why I got my invitation to the Malibu shindig. Under any other circumstances I would have ignored it. Not that hobnobbing with holy rollers and Jesus freaks puts me off. My faith tradition is as strong as Al Gore’s, and I practice my religion as zealously as Jesse Jackson or Bill Clinton. My sticking point was networking.

Never liked networking. Don’t believe in it. Like, I am going to open my Rolodex and give you the names of people I’ve been cultivating so that you can bamboozled them with your superficial charm and flash-in-the-pan talent, making my (youcan’tsayassontownhall) creeping yesterday’s news. I don’t think so.

Free grub was what attracted me. Getting to it wouldn’t be a problem for Mrs. Blue. That’s what I called my 1988 Buick Century that replaced my almost classic 1976 Caddy. I never had time to cherry out the Caddy, but as our good Lord would have it, I ran out of gas near a family of farm workers needing shelter. I used the cash as a down on a previous owned Century. Friends who weren’t really friends joked that the Century is always driven by an old woman you can barely see except for the blue tint of her hair. Well, yes, maybe 97% of the time. But it is equally true that, if your daytime soaps are interrupted by local coverage of a car chase and the guys with no shirts have been lucky enough to mug an old lady in a Century, you will not cops stopping them on the 405, the 5 or the 14. There will be no jumping out and running through neighborhoods in San Fernando. No, that Century is going to take two bullets through the engine block in Inglewood, shred its tires on spike strips west of Lancaster, blow the radiator at Apple Valley and only stop when it runs out of gas east of Barstow. Mrs. B was a muscle car, and even with only three gallons of hoochy mama in her tank, she could take me to Hell and back.

With a dollar to my name, bringing drinks to Malibu would be a cinch because, praise God, most show biz folks either are strung out on drugs and alcohol or have turned their lives over to the Higher Power of a 12 Step program. If I paid for the 99-cent special for a litter of Ralph’s house brand orange soda—“Get the second one free”— I could bring relief to the reformed drunks who would show up. Then I might be able to scrounge some wine from the delirium tremors crowd. A win-win situation if there ever was one.

Some people think that Christians don’t drink, or if they do, it’s only in the closet. But there is nothing in the closet about Mel Gibson and Gary Bussey, and nothing anywhere that Episcopalians won’t do. Tee totaling cultists like Southern Baptists are no about everything whereas Presbyterians, Methodists and Lutherans let it ride as a matter of personal conscience, which I’ve always found easy to tame. Unless it’s a very small private gathering, you won’t find Ketle One or Glenlivet, but I have seen a lot of Christians on their knees with wine, and that’s what I was willing to settle for in Malibu.

I parked some distance away from hillside address overlooking a color pallet awash with blues and grays, oranges and yellows. The sun setting over the Pacific. The last time I had a view like that was on the beach with Larry Hagman and a former C.I.A. agent, the three of us pretty well plastered. Hagman clapped his hands and said, “Encore! Encore!”

But that’s a different story.

This one took me into a huge foyer from whence a dusky maid led me to a paneled dinning room. As I plunked my orange sodas on a bare buffet table that was about half the size of a tennis court, I gave her a wink and smile, and said:

“Hay muchos guyinas pero pocos huevos.”

Translation: “There are many chickens but few eggs.” The idea was to show my solidarity with the working class. My being a cheapskate would be understood in a Third World Way, as merely the cards I had been dealt by El Señor in the great Lotería of life, and by the way, should remain our little secret.

She threw her hands to her face and ran off.

Sometime later an Hispanic friend pointed out that heuvos can be a colloquialism for testicles, and the way I pronounced his native tongue could make the unwary think I have the balls of a chicken.

But we’ll never know.

There were a few guests milling in the palatial living room, and the event’s host and hostess hadn’t yet appeared on the massive marble staircase. Obviously, I was among early arrivals, losers every one of us, but I didn’t care. I looked forward to grub and grog coming in abundance at any time.

I began to mix to keep my mind off my hunger, find out what all the idealism was about, show some empathy for seal pups for Christ or whatever. As more and more people arrived, it was clear there was general vagueness about what precisely we were doing together. Then the sudden nightmare.

Jumping Jimmy Carter! The organizers were about to ask for volunteers to pound nails in Honduras, work a soup kitchen downtown, pass out tracks on Santa Monica Pier, the possibilities were endlessly horrifying. Any networking to my advantage would be for a lackey position at Trinity Broadcast Network, what I secretly called “The Crying Channel.”

The only thing to do was to eat and run, so I weaved and dodged my way back to the dinning room, muttering, “Praise the Lord, excuse me, bless you, bless you, gimme my resume back.”

O God, please no. That half-a-tennis-court table was loaded with evidence of the non-denomination nature of this hellish confab.

Satan had arranged that only Southern Baptists would be in the A to E group. The majority of their sodas and sparkling waters needed but one thing to make them palatable, which was no where to be seen, and after Jim Jones who in his right mind would touch a punch bowl of Kool-Aid? I wasn’t in my right mind, and the Kool-Aid wasn’t spiked with anything except the block of ice watering it down.

Seventh Day Adventists had been singled out for the main course. So they live a hundred years. Who’d want to with nothing but fresh fruit and carrot sticks and tofu making up your entire diet? There were some apostates among them, judging by the can of Cheese Whiz and empty box of Ritz Crackers.

The dessert people could have been from any denomination. What was clear was that they were at least working professionals because none of them had time to bring anything except bags of stale cookies from the convenience store down the road.

I must have looked like I was drowning in the Slough of Despond. I shook the cracker box to reconfirm that God wanted to turn me to a martyr, suffering deprivation and persecution all the way to sainthood.

At that moment his appointed messenger whispered just off my shoulder. “Some dinner, hey?”

I turned to Linda. Her eyes twinkled with humor, but there was deep understanding behind them. It wasn’t a big laugh line, but it doesn’t take much to cheer someone up. I was so grateful I wanted to say something, anything, to repay her kindness and also speak to the situation.

“Hay mucha guyinas pero pocos huevos.”

I expected her to ask, “What does that mean?” so that I could show off my sophisticated wit. Instead, she was way ahead of me.

She snorted and gasped, “You’re kidding!”

Bulls eye, I thought. She started to double over but spun away, coughing back laughter. O it was a joyous sight. I beamed from ear to ear. I had not lost it. I still had the moxie. I was poor, but I rocked. I was the man!

Although we never connected after that, I can happily report that her career was rekindled. By the time I got to Phoenix from the Chicago Fire of my life, she and the Mister had moved to a ranch two thousand miles away. I keep track of her through mutual friends; I sometimes play those CDs I didn’t initially like. Mostly, I vividly remember that whispered question and the ironic smile that lit up the entire night, and how my little joke brightened hers. I still see Linda huddling with another woman, their glancing prettily in my direction and starting a wave of tinkling laughter that rippled around the room.

I didn’t recognize the sender’s name, didn’t see mine in the Send To list, and had no idea who the email’s other recipients were, so presumed my copy was like crossed wires. You know, when you pick up the phone and before you can dial, you hear two strangers plotting a murder, but you can’t get either one to, “Hang up! I’m trying to order pizza!”

The subject line, “Help!” stoked my curiosity to read more, and usually I’m a sucker for a woman, which was what writer was if the sign off, “Wish I had stayed with acting, xoxo, Jasmine,” meant anything. Apparently she was a financial analyst who had an important decision to make for some Daddy Warbucks, and was asking friends, presumably in the money game too, if they would reply to four questions.

1. Should I go short or long on Countrywide Mortgage?
2. When do you think the Fed will decrease interest rates?
3. Is this distressed market a giant opportunity, or am I delusional?
4. Any opinion on small caps?

As I brooded on how unfairly I’d been graded in economics and other college classes, causing my dad to cut off tuition and me to go to work to pay off gambling debts, one thing led to another, and after a cocktail or two, I fired off a reply.

Madame:

I have a unified set theory of the universe that might be helpful to you. I call it “The Krumline Pancake Theory of Knowledge” after W.S. Krumline, Head Hasher 7AM shift, Troy Hall, University of Southern California, 1967.

First, recall all the courses you took in college, and don't worry that most were probably unrelated to each other and had nothing to do with your present career.

Second, think of them as pancakes, some doughy, some overcooked, all plopped willy-nilly onto a cold plate by an individual who resents the fact that you are going through the food line of life while he's stuck behind the counter working for minimum wage.

Third, drop the plate on the sticky linoleum floor of your imagination. Step back because it won't be neat. Some pancakes will be touching; others will not.

Regardless, go to the fourth step, in which you imagine a large turkey baster that you ram through as many pancakes as you can. Squeeze the bulb. Release the pressure. Whatever is sucked up into the baster is the wondrously interrelated core knowledge of everything you learned. That core can be then applied to anything...well, almost anything...that goes on in your life.

You might think that a bit of anthro, econ and chem have nothing to do with each other, but suddenly you're up for some R & R in Bangcock, and it's a big Greek Eureka moment when your loose change comes together with a girl named Suzy and some Tai Stick.

Or Boyle's Law, you say, what's that got to do with Ricardo's Theory of Rent, much less Spanish? Well, if you have ever been freezing cold in a bed-sitter in Earl's Court, the Pakistani landlord is going to explain exactly what that has to do with London power authority, and you’ll undoubtedly find yourself saying, “Hey, Cisco, how about trying that again in español?” Remarkable, really.

I can't tell you how many times I have used the Krumline Pancake Theory of Knowledge to bring grace and order to my life. Your email asking for investment predictions had the turkey baster in my mind gushing forth like Krakatoa on Pompeii, namely—

Should you be long or short on Countrywide? Everybody needs a roof over his head, right? But defaults are at record high, right? Well, two rights don’t make a wrong. I don’t know what that tells you about buying a particular stock, but Krumline told me that his theory can’t cover everything, depending as it does on a single vector unique to etc., etc. Look, I was asleep a lot. Why can't you settle for a little mystery in your life?

When will the Fed decrease rates? When Alan Greenspan wants to. Or is he retired? I know he’s married to Andrea... Wait! It’s Ben Somebody. Ben Stein, Ben Cartwright, who cares? Just picture the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank putting pantyhose on one leg at a time, making him as human as you or I, and that’s how I can offer the second part of my answer. Gold. If nothing else, it’s a great conductor of electricity.

Is the distressed market a giant opportunity or are you delusional? Well, that's easy.

Finally, I know this for sure: small caps don't grab the eye like BIG CAPS. Check it out with The Wall Street Journal. And watch for Mr.Murdoch putting in a Page 3 Investment Vixen feature. There’s going to be nothing small about her assets, believe you me.

Respectfully, etc.

I got a reply just this morning. Miss Jasmine thinks my serendipitous response was as sound as any from her experts, and wants to know where I hang my hat on Wall Street. Maybe we can have lunch.

Far be it from me to burst a lady’s or the market’s bubble, so I won’t explain that I’m “between pictures” as we say here in sunny southern California, and usually don’t offer financial advice unless I’m swearing at my creditors. But it does feel good, knowing I can change careers any time I feel like it, and the sun will still go weaving round the earth just like Gallo said it would.

I met them over a long Saturday barbecue, parents quietly proud of their boy.  It took nearly the whole evening for it to come out.