Back In The USA

I hope readers of Podunk Pundit will forgive the rather long hiatis. I am now back and jet-lagged and will begin scribbling opinions again. I wasn’t completely out of touch with the news on a journey that hopscotched through southeast asia and ended with several stops in Japan, but I had less access than usual to wifi. 

This made inescapably clear that it is now an indispensible part of our everyday lives. But what I missed in daily headlines was made up for by in person immersion in the remains of ancient civilizations and a reminder of more recent events of a less civilized nature. 

The high water mark was a chance to cross Cambodia for a visit with an excellent guide to Angkor Wat. The world heritage site is more remarkable than words or pictures can capture. It includes many structures and provides a glimpse of the civilization that created them. One unexpected structure from a different historical period celebrates the victory of a powerful ruler over his foes with a huge depiction of the winning battle on land and sea. It shows hundreds of warriors from either side in bas relief carving as if an Asian Iliad had come to life in stone.

In addition to an appreciation for the arts and history of the region, one can’t escape the endless rise and fall of dynasties, tyrants and patriarchs, golden ages and dark ages. To their credit, local guides in Thailand, Vietnam, and other stops shared their regional treasures but also detailed some of the evils brought about by cruel leaders, civil wars, and, in too many cases, the exploitation of indiginous people by colonial invaders. In addition to places of great beauty, we visited places of horror including torture chambers and the gaudy throne rooms where vicious dictators ruled.

Also eye-opening, especially in Japan, was the endless production of manufactured goods. Every time our ship reached a busy city the first thing we saw was its bustling industrial port’s factories, warehouses, and acres of shipping containers stacked high and awaiting their next voyage.

I was reminded of the Great Lakes ports of my youth when ships from the iron range brought raw materials to the steel mills of Cleveland’s flats and Akron produced tires for the nation’s autos were made in Ford assembly and Chevy engine plants that our neighbors worked at. Eventually many of the factory jobs moved from the Rust Belt to non-union states and then to even less expensive factories abroad.

Then veterans of World War II reacted with outrage when American customers began to buy automobiles made in enemy countries instead of at home: first German Volkswagons followed by an avalanch of Japanese Toyotas, Datsuns, and Nissans. Even worse was their kids riding Honda and Suzuki motor bikes.

It was the beginning of the great internationalization of commerce that we now experience every day and that was on display in every port we visited. The chips of California’s silicon valley are now made in Taiwan. Teslas roll off the assemply line in Xi Jinping’s China. Whether this is progress or perilous remains to be seen, but seeing Asia’s present was just as eye-opening as the chance to experience immersion in it’s storied past. 

Outward Bound

H. Ryder Haggard’s Ayesha, a powerful African queen with supernatural powers, appeared in his best selling novel of 1887 “She.” Ayesha was also known to those she ruled as She Who Must Be Obeyed. Almost a hundred years later Rumple of the Bailey, the British TV barrister, used the She Who Must Be Obeyed sobriquet for his wife Hilda. 

My version of she who must be obeyed has decided to spend the rest of her life playing bridge and booking trips to faraway places. Most recently she decided to spend a lot of loot and a month or more visiting Southeast Asia, including Singapore, Hong Kong, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, South Korea, and Japan, with our daughter and me.

Reservations were made before I got a vote, but since she must be obeyed, unless I can conquer technology and post news from several thousand miles away, Podunk Pundit is likely to fall silent for the duration. In addition to missing writing to you, the timing of this trip means I’m probably going to miss the Super Bowl, the beginning of the Republican primary season, and several of the endless court appearances of America’s most indicted ex-president.

It is also possible that this voyage will cause me to miss good health and a few more years alive. You might regard this as geriatric hypochondria, but I did a little research and have concluded this junket might be a tad perilous. I went to the indispensable source of the CDC. It has travel advisories online for stops all around the world. In this case, I found the results remarkably alarming. 

The list of possible tropical diseases I will encounter, while cruising Southeast Asia include: Typhoid, Paratyphoid (whatever that is), Coronavirus, of course, in its latest incarnation, Tuberculosis, Leptospirosis, Schistomiasis, Liver flukes, Malaria, Zika, Chikungunya, Dengue Fever, Cholera, Yellow Fever, Plague (really! actual plague). Hantavirus, Avian Influenza, and Tick Borne Encephalitis. 

As you might deduce from that last entry, many of these maladies are transmitted not just by our fellow humans but by ticks and other bugs, especially mosquitos, mice, birds, dogs, cattle but also by water, food, and soil. So, though rabies and other old favorites have been stamped out in many places around the world, they are apparently still thriving in places on our itinerary. 

Who would want to miss a trip that offers so many exotic threats to their survival? I would. I understand that She Who Must Be Obeyed regards such a voyage as a chance to tick several stops off her bucket list, but from my  point of view, this trip could be the last stop on my kick bucket list. 

Of course, it is possible that, like Ayesha, she has discovered the secret of immortality. I, however, am human all too human. She assures me I’ll have a wonderful time — or else. I know I’ll enjoy seeing some of the sights and won’t contract all the diseases available, but also won’t be able to avoid the wear and tear. Though I passed my annual physical, I suffer from several apparently inescapable side effects of aging that make daily life less than a picnic — seasonal allergies that make four seasons a year miserable, and pains in every joint from neck to hands, to knees to toes. As a result, I am less than enthusiastic about enduring several weeks on foot through crowded cities, braving tropical climates, and enduring cramped seats for 12 hour, sleepless, trans-pacific flights. At my age a one hour flight and a thirty minute walk seem sufficient.

I called this little rant Outward Bound because the thought of undertaking this long voyage reminded be of the 1930 film “Outward Bound” adapted from a stage play in the early days of talking pictures. Its cast included Leslie Howard, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and several  other actors now long forgotten. The plot concerns a group of people who don’t know each other and have no memory of how they got aboard a ship that is sailing through foggy seas from who knows where to who knows what destination. 

It’s quite mysterious. Do they have amnesia? Have they been kidnapped? How did they get here? Where is the ship going? There is no one to ask since there seems to be no crew manning the ship. But on it goes until, at the end, they realize that they all have one thing in common. They’re dead and are sailing to oblivion.

I admit that comparing our trip to such a tale may be a trifle extreme. But in addition to subjecting my creaky self to a long flight there’s also the horror of the news lately. I don’t believe I’ll sleep well on such a flight, waiting to see if a door blows off somewhere over the 

Pacific. But I’ll probably will survive. Tech permitted I may try to update Podunk readers from afar. If not, I should be back by late February and posting a thought or two. If not and the rest is silence, check the obituaries. 

Comical Criminals and Cops

I’m hooked on the TV series, “Slow Horses” based on novels by Mick Herron. They concern MI6 workers who have bungled assignments and been banished to the purgatory of Slough House where they can do less harm. 

It’s presided over by Jackson Lamb, their crude, rude, slovenly, but crafty leader played by the chameleon Gary Oldman. His resume includes roles in which he convincingly plays everyone from Sid Vicious to Lee Harvey Oswald, Dracula, Beethoven, Sirius Black, George Smiley, Winston Churchill and Harry Truman.

Part of the pleasure of watching “Slow Horses” is plots which pit spooks trying to redeem themselves, higher ups who treat them with contempt, and criminals who are dangerous but often even less than competent than the slow horses. 

The cast features Jack Lowden as long-suffering River Cartwright. His father and grandfather were both spies before him and he should have had a stellar career before him but made such an egregeous error when attempting to stop a terrorist bombing that it landed him in Slough House. Unlike many of his fellow pariahs he is earnestly trying to redeem himself which means that in almost every episode he takes a beating, is nearly killed, or tortured.

The “Slough House” books that Slow Horses is based on are readable, but the TV version is far more fun since its combination of violence and incompetence means it falls into the often irresistible category of crime comedy. 

There’s a long history of combining suspense with tongue and cheek dialogue and action. Many Hitchcock movie fell into the category. So did several film noir classics including Bogart, as Sam Spade. It is a sub-genre of mystery, detective, and espionage that fills the shelves of book stores. 

Elmore Leonard’s criminals are often hilariously incompetent. They are familiar from tv and film adaptation that include “Get Shorty, “Justified,” “Jackie Brown,” and “Out of Sight.” Donald Westlake’s Dortmunder is a skilled thief whose heists are often ruined by the unexpected as telegraphed by their titles “What’s the Worst That Could Happen? “Why Me?” “Don’t Ask,” and “Drowned Hopes.” Carl Hiaasan’s capers are set in Florida and co-star the state’s weirdness, and the eccentrics who populate it. They are the joke

Such books are echoes of the California Noir tradition which began with the hard boiled detectives and criminal plots gone awry of Sam Spade, Lew Archer, and more recent heirs including Harry Bosch and the corrupt cops of James Elroy. The combination of resourceful gumshoes and tough guys pursuing incompetent criminals, suspense, and black humor figures in such films and tv shows as “The Big Lebowski,”  “A Fish Called Wanda.” “Fargo,” “Devil in a Blue Dress,” “The Grifters,” “Pulp Fiction,” “Chinatown,” and “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.” Obviously, people can’t get enough of criminals screwing up or cops failing to crack the case.” Suspense is exciting, mysteries that get solved are gratifying, but bungling cops and robbers are a hoot.