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dead prepared to be handled by the living
Wednesday, May 21 2008
Yesterday afternoon I'd removed the last of the bolts supporting the gutted hatchback's rear suspension, so today, using the reciprocating saw, I cut off a few metal tabs, which allowed me to remove that suspension (including wheel hubs). Once all that was out of the way, I cut the rear third of the car (which was separate from the rest of the car) into two pieces, each small enough for me to lift without assistance. I then cut the front two thirds of the hatchback into pieces, starting with the removal of what remained of the flat floor panels. In the end, I had a heap of pieces, none of which were too large for me to load into the back of the working hatchback. The dead is now prepared to be carried away by the living.
The largest part of the hatchback, with most of the floor removed (though with the center hump still in place).
That part flipped over on its side, revealing the bottom.
The top part of the flipped-over remains cut away.
The bulk of the car, cut into pieces small enough for one man to carry.
This evening Gretchen and I watched the unhelpfully-named motion picture End of the Century, which gets its name from a late-period album by the seminal punk rock band the Ramones. The movie aims to be a documentary of the band's entire career. I use the adjective "unhelpfully," because the names of any band's late-period albums are among the least-remembered and least-distinctive things about them.
Like anyone who has been paying attention, I've been aware of how enormously influential the Ramones were, though until I saw this film I couldn't have put my finger quite on why. It has to do with the enormous accessibility of their style, both in terms of the music and in terms of their celebrity personas. The music itself was so deceptively simple, it gave everyone who saw them the idea that all they had to do was play loud and fast and by sheer force of will the music would trump any shortcomings in terms of talent. One didn't have to be Jimi Hendrix to effectively play a guitar. As for the musicians themselves, they were so clearly society's rejects that they provided accessible models for emulation as well as adulation. (This is the same reason male porn stars tend to be ordinary-looking, at least when fully-clothed.) I'd never really seen much video of the Ramones in performance, and I have to say that watching them made me want to go turn off the movie and immediately start a punk band, and I'm forty years old.
I should say something at this point about Johnny Ramone, the red state sheep of the Ramones family. He's given extensive face time in this documentary, and he comes across as a pathological prick. I've seen his kind before; it's all in an expression frozen on the face that says "I'm the way everyone else should be, and if you're having trouble or are down on your luck, you're weak and it's your own damn fault." Such people are completely lacking in both empathy and a sense of humor, and their effect on society is entirely corrosive. In the Ramones, Johnny served as the guitarist and hard-ass businessman, but he also stole the love of Joey's life (perhaps inspiring the song, "The KKK Took My Baby Away"). When asked how he felt about the Joey's death from brain cancer, all he would do was coldly state that he loved "all the Ramones." Fortunately, such sociopaths are a low proportion of the human population. Unfortunately, the most powerful man in America, Prick Cheney, is one of them.
The documentary seemed to skip over large swaths of the Ramone's career, particularly the middle part circa Rock and Roll High School. It also barely touched on the bandmembers' private lives.
Weird light at around sunset tonight, looking northwest from the laboratory deck.
Weird light at around sunset tonight, looking east from the laboratory deck.
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