Fiction: The Adventures of Sidekick Carl, part 22!

 It's the start of what I planned as an off-week, and I finally have a new installment of Sidekick Carl, padded out with some material I already had. As usual, here's links for the first and previous installments, also the chapter that introduced most of the characters, and one more that would have had a good part of this if I hadn't cut it down.

As the train came to a stop, John Carter put on his blue uniform. He then broke out a case that held his weapons and armor. “I’d say we gave Carl enough time to break into the site,” he said. “I’m going to go see if he’s found out anything. Want to come along?” He turned to his wife Lauren.

 Lauren just gazed back pensively. “I don’t think so, John,” she said.

John looked back intently. “What is it?” he said. “You know you can talk to me.”

She sighed. “All right,” she said. “Yeah… we need to talk.” As she spoke, she laid a small, slim pistol on the end table.

* * *

Two small vehicles approached the abandoned town. The moon shone as bright as the few long-dead street lamps ever could have, clearly revealing the form of the vehicles and their riders. One was Audrey’s three-wheeled scooter, just large enough for Carl and one of her neomorph followers to ride in the flatbed at the rear. Dana followed in a motorcycle modified for her eight-foot height, mainly with a raised seat and greatly lengthened handlebars. Another of the mutants rode with her, a shaggy, seemingly faceless creature only a little shorter than herself. Dana waved to Carl as they pulled to a stop.

The town was really just a small cluster of buildings, half of them warehouses and more specialized storage buildings. The largest was a spindly outlet mall at the south end, extending the size of the development by almost half again. They had halted in a parking lot at the far end of the building. “My people already knew someone was here,” Audrey said. “It didn’t stand out. The development was never really abandoned, and the people who built it were shady to begin with. My second had ordered that it be left alone.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered,” Carl said. “There’s hundreds of places just like this. If you had told anyone, it would probably have bogged down in an argument over who even had jurisdiction, if they paid attention at all.”

“I know,” Audrey said. She bared her teeth. “Humans love law, as long as it means they do nothing.”

Carl unfolded a map that he could already tell had several inaccuracies. He pointed to the largest of the warehouses on the north side of the mall. “This is probably where the Toxo Warriors are, if they were ever here at all,” he said. “We could go through the mall to keep out of sight, but we can figure they will be prepared for that. It’s better to go through here.” He pointed to a small RV park on the east side of the warehouse, still not quite as large as the mall.

10 minutes later, a single Toxo Warrior looked at a monitor. He typed a command, then used a joystick to zoom in with a camera. The feed showed a woman more than eight feet tall and a man in something between motorcycle gear and a space suit approaching the east side of the warehouse. “Huh,” he said. “They’re early…”

* * *

John Carter examined the weapon before him. It amounted to a double-barreled derringer. He touched it without picking it up. At a light touch, the grip folded inward, changing the profile to a flattened rectangle the size and shape of a cell phone or a pager. “This is polymer and ceramic,” he said. “You could take it through a metal detector. It might get through a scanner, if there’s active sensor baffles.”

“There are,” Lauren said. “I had it with me, the day the Raven took over the office. Of course, I had it a long time before that.”

“I’ve never had anything like this,” John said. “I was two grades below where I am now before I saw specs for anything like this. The only people they would give it to are deep-cover intelligence or… field security auditors.”

“You’re quick, I give you that,” Lauren said. For what it’s worth, it wasn’t a fake-and-bake; you know how well that goes. I didn’t even lie about my age. I just had extra training.”

“We knew,” John said. “At least, we knew there was going to be an audit. Colby thought there was already an auditor in the office. He must have figured out it was you, or guessed. I suppose it was easier, when he was the one you were looking for. It doesn’t matter, now. But if you had a gun… why didn’t you use it?”

“I had my own orders, as soon as I reported the breach,” she said. “I wasn’t to reveal my identity, until and unless I made contact with the Raven or his infiltrator. I just needed to be good bait. Young, pretty, spunky enough to talk back without looking like a threat.”

“It wouldn’t have worked,” John said. “It’s not the right caliber. A full clip from my 10 mm barely put a dent in the Raven’s wingsuit.”

“I’d seen the schematics analysis, there were ways to get through,” Lauren said. “The situation evolved before I had my chance. By the time you got to me, the best chance was to stay behind you while you did your cowboy run and see if that was enough to draw out the real threat.” She gazed back into his eyes. “Here’s the thing, John. I wasn’t looking for Colby. I was there to watch you.”

* * *

Dana stifled a giggle as she and Carl reached the warehouse. It was 50 by 100 feet and 25 tall, including a shallow peaked roof. At a stern glance from Carl, she put on a gas mask. She turned to their only companion, a gray-skinned mutant just under 5 feet tall with gangling ape-like arms. Its nostrils promptly contracted shut with an audible snick.

Carl looked up at a set of windows about 12 feet off the ground. “I need to see inside,” he said. Dana hoisted him onto her shoulders. He climbed high enough to stand, which by then required him to stoop slightly. The visibility was better than it would have been in broad daylight; he could have seen enough even in pitch darkness.

“It’s empty,” he said with finality. He felt Dana’s shoulders sag. “The floor is, anyway. In fact… it’s really emptier than I would have expected. Usually, there’s stuff left behind, trash, unsold goods, empty cartons. Then you get homeless people, kids, animals…”

“Like if somebody cleaned up first and took everything when they were done,” Dana said.

“Right,” Carl said. “Still, there could be something. Only one way to find out…” With that, he smashed the window with his helmet and vaulted through.

* * *

 

John only stared as Lauren continued. “We knew the Raven had someone inside, though we didn’t know what he was planning,” she said. “There were people who thought it was you, others who thought you knew something you weren’t reporting. I had instructions to get close to you. I had approval to seduce you, if it got you to talk.”

 

John finally spoke, his voice coldly neutral. “Had you ever done that before?”

“No,” she said. “That’s not even how it really works, anyway, most of the time. The things that get a guy to drop his pants aren’t the things that will get him to talk about what matters. It’s a lot harder with a bad man than a good one… Well. That’s what the trainers say.”

“What about the rest?” John said. “Going to bed, getting married, having kids… was that their idea of keeping tabs on me?”

Lauren shook her head. “It happens, to a lot of us,” she said. “We call it the retirement plan. We usually only get 18, maybe 24 months in the field before our training and mission intelligence are deemed obsolete. After that, we usually get left to fend for ourselves. Our training is to go to ground before it comes to that. Accept promotions, make friends, make love, get married. Go native, pretty much. When we met, I decided you were my parachute.”

“What if I had been the infiltrator?” John said.

“You weren’t, John,” she said. “I always knew that.”

“I need to leave,” John said. “I won’t say I won’t come back for you, but I need more time than we’ve had before. I suppose you were ready for that, too.”

Lauren gave him a more thoughtful look, her chin resting on her hand. “It’s not like we haven’t done it before,” she said.

John turned back to his gear. “You realize while we’ve been doing this, Carl and Dana have been getting into more trouble,” he said.

Lauren smiled. “I’ve been counting on it,” she said.

* * *

 

Dana impatiently shifted from foot to foot. She adjusted a radio receiver they carried. She heard only a growled command from Audrey, which confirmed that she was still circling around the other side of the warehouse. She almost called out, but saw the mutant shake its head. “If he found something, he would have called us, if he could,” she said. “I’m going in.” The mutant shrugged.

She looked up, then to either side. She could see no way up to the window, nor anything that would support her weight to climb up. She considered the options for entry. There was a loading door that was clearly locked and possibly rusted beyond use. She found a conventional door, also locked but made of wood rather than metal. “I can take care of that,” she said. She backed up and prepared for a kick.

That was when an explosion blew the roof off the warehouse.

No Good Very Bad Movies Countdown 7: The one with imaginary Hitler

 

Title: Jojo Rabbit

What Year?: 2019

Classification: Mashup/ Improbable Experiment

Rating: Dear God WHY??!! (1/3)

 

In the course of my reviews and especially this feature, I have become increasingly aware of a paradox when it comes to bad/ “worst” movies: When it comes to actual trends, at a certain point, the label kind of mitigates itself. Whether it’s broad genres like ‘50s B-movies (Robot Monster) or niche categories like Stephen King movies (Sleepwalkers), if you can talk about a movie as the “worst” of something, there is an implied acknowledgement that there are many more that are not fundamentally different. And when you have dozens if not hundreds of creators chasing the same gravy train, many of the mistakes and excesses of individual films start to look excusable or at least comprehensible. My refrain is that the true worst of the worst are the ones that go their own way and get everything completely and uniquely wrong. That brings me right to the present film, a quite recent and outwardly innocuous movie that annoyed me enough to take another look. Here is Jojo Rabbit, a movie about a kid whose imaginary friend is Adolph Hitler, and that doesn’t begin to explain why I find it intolerable.

Our story begins at the tail end of World War 2, in a charming, picturesque German town that miraculously hasn’t been bombed, shelled or tanked into rubble already. Here, we meet Jojo, a 10-year-old boy training to be part of the war effort. He looks completely ineffectual, but he has a secret: His best friend is Adolph Hitler, though he knows nobody else can see the dictator. Adolph encourages him through his trials and tribulation, including his fateful refusal to kill a bunny that gets him the unwanted titular nickname. Things take a turn for the worse when he is crippled by a hand grenade, leaving him at home with his mother. In the spare time, he realizes someone else is in the house. Soon, he discovers that it’s one of the Jews he’s been raised to hate, but on the other hand, it’s an attractive teenage girl who doesn’t look diseased or starving. As the Red Army and the Americans close in, Jojo must make his choice, join his friends in the final battle or keep his new friend safe!

Jojo Rabbit was a 2019 film written and directed by Taika Waititi, a New Zealand filmmaker of Maori descent. The project was reportedly conceived in 2011, based loosely on the 2008 book Caging Skies by Christine Leunens. Filming took place mainly in the Czech Republic, including Prague and the town of Zatec. While the setting was not specified in the film, the events correspond broadly to Erfurt, a town temporarily occupied by US forces before being ceded to the Soviets and the eventual state of East Germany. The film starred Roman Griffin Davis as Jojo and Scarlet Johansson (wait, have I not reviewed Eight Legged Freaks?) as his mother Rosie, with Waititi as Hitler. Other cast included Sam Rockwell (see Galaxy Quest) and Rebel Wilson as the Jungvolk leaders. The movie was commercially and critically successful, earning $90 million against a $14M budget and an Oscar nomination. It is available in digital formats, but has not appeared for free streaming.

For my experiences, my baseline for this movie is that I seem to be one of the very, very few Americans who knows more about the Ostfront than any theater the US was involved in. Needless to say, American films on the subject that are convincing to me are few and far between. The two films of comparative substance to come from the studio system are still Cross of Iron and Enemy At The Gates, both of which put anti-war allegory ahead of history. Other treatments (including some from Russia) have tended to be adventures and sci fi/ horror genre entries that use the front as a background more than a world to explore. The frustrating part is that even the lesser efforts can offer moments of authenticity and depth that have been missing from glossy and sentimental Hollywood offerings. When the present film came out, its overtly surrealist fantasy and mainstream backing offered the clear potential to bridge the gap. When I finally got to it, however, just a few months before the present review, was a film whose history makes Frankenstein’s Army look good.

Moving forward, what I feel the need to clarify is that getting the history “wrong” didn’t have to be a problem. This shows especially with Waititi’s role as Hitler, which could easily have devolved into the director trying to steal his own movie. Instead, we get a surprisingly nuanced performance that creates just a hint of Calvin And Hobbes ambiguity. This isn’t supposed to be the “real” Hitler, or necessarily what Jojo really believes he would be like, but there’s plenty of points where the “make believe” version says things that don’t fit what Jojo knows or believes either. The problem is that the movie keeps departing from reality at its own expense. If this is a child’s view of the war, then the absolute devastation of Germany by its final days should “look” even more complete than it would to a neutral adult. Moreover, we should be seeing the propagandistic view of the Soviets and Slavs in general, which might appear justified if any of the characters have seen the Red Army firsthand. It should be the hard questions that force the indoctrinated youth to consider if his side is in the right, and that’s not what we see.

And that brings me to what I find to be a still bigger problem. For all the talent thrown at the movie, the story centers on the interactions of Jojo with the refugee Elsa, played by Thomasin McKenzie. In my judgment, neither actor was up to material this complex, while the story and script continually undermine them. Among other things, Elsa at face value is an ultra-Zionist as stereotyped as Jojo’s fantasies and even more ahistorical. The more likely reality is that she started out among secularized Jews whose ethnic identity was eroding long before the Nazis set out to annihilate them, which again would have been a far more intriguing angle than what we get. Then, at the core, we have a posited conflict where the story has already copped out. If Jojo was the kind of person who would hand her over to the Nazis, he would have killed the damn rabbit at the beginning. Without that doubt, we’re left with a movie that’s checking off its shopping list of ironies and tragedies before its happy ending, minus the actual fate of the East Germans.

That leaves me with the “one scene”, and I really had to go with Taiti as Hitler. In a still-early scene, Jojo is sitting in the woods after his perceived failure to kill the rabbit. Hitler appears, and makes a comically indifferent effort to comfort him. In my favorite line of the movie, he remarks on how others have insulted him, in the process giving an unsettlingly accurate account of the war: “`This guy’s a lunatic; look at that psycho, he’s gonna get us all killed…’” He then goes into a far more interesting speech praising rabbits, which kind of fits with Hitler’s genuine interest in vegetarianism and animal rights. There’s a fair account of the perilous lives of small mammals, which makes me think of the creation myth of Watership Down. (I’m thinking about it, plus I already reviewed The Plague Dogs.) It culminates in a surreal vision of a world for all animals, including “the mighty rabbit”. It’s all vaguely charming, still not outside the tendencies of Naziism… except, of course, nothing is said about how much of the human population can stay in this multi-species paradise.

In closing, the real question that remains is, why is this the film I’ve given the lowest rating to? I’ve used the countdown so far to cover some of the worst kaka to come out in the last decade, yet I’ve shown enough mercy to let the likes of The Space Between Us and The Happytime Murders get by on a 2. As usual, the difference comes down to simple, subjective hate. By comparison, those egregious offenses amounted to one movie that willfully stayed within mainstream sensibilities, and another that deliberately crossed the line without knowing where to go from there. This is a movie that is far more frustrating, not only because it shows more objective talent but because its failures are far more difficult to explain. I freely admit that I am all the more irritated by the fact that this movie was praised and accepted in the same circles where their failings were dissected to death. The one common denominator to them all is loyalty to the Hollywood happy ending, which from a film as otherwise ambitious as this feels like the unkindest cut of all. With that, I can call it a day.

Image credit EclairPlay.

Fiction: The Adventures of Chelsea the Social Worker, Part 5!

 Getting toward the end of the week, again filling things out with more of Chelsea. I swear I will get back to Sidekick Carl next week. This would have been two chapters, but one of the characters I was writing for was just too much. As usual, here's links for the first and previous installments.

Two days later, Chelsea and Shad returned for their compatibility assessment, still delivered by Diane. “We took a little longer than usual with the assessment, to ensure that you had full data,” Diane said. She held out a sheaf of papers. “Here’s the report.”

Shad took a look, and promptly pointed. “This is the compatibility score? The real one?”

“Yes,” Chelsea said. Her tone was clearly disappointed if not troubled.

“What’s a good score?”

“.61 would be good enough for a state assignment,” Chelsea said with forced cheer.

“So… .57,” Shad said.

“Yes, the score is somewhat low,” Diane said. “It’s the detailed analysis I would like to discuss. Now, if you turn to the first page, you will see an analysis of your personalities…” Chelsea did look optimistic as she examined the numbers, and Shad soon smiled.

“The personality score is really the main reason you scored as well as you did,” Diane said. “As you can see, you have significant differences, but they’re the kind that are complimentary. Then there are underlying similarities, enough that you should probably have both been diagnosed autistic. We still see this all the time. Men get flagged early, women slip through the cracks.”

“I knew,” Chelsea said. “At least, we were pretty sure.”

Shad was already turning to the next page. “Next, you will see your physical compatibility,” Diane said. It took him only a few moments to work it out.

“Wow,” Shad said. “I would have thought we’d be a lot better. I mean, well, you always tell me…”

Chelsea patted his hand. “Of course,” she said. “I’d never lie to you.”

Diane cut in pointedly, “Now, if you look at the third page, you will see an assessment of what we call Goals And Values. What you believe is right or wrong. What you think is important. What you want for your future. These are the results that are… odd.”

They looked at the third page. Chelsea frowned. After a moment, Shad got a pensive look. “So, as you can see, the major results are favorable,” Diane said. “For example, you both want children, though not a large family. Shad, you actually show higher aptitude for childcare than Chelsea does. But there are significant differences. Your religious beliefs aren’t that different, though you value religious observance more than she does. The biggest deviations are in your career goals. Chelsea, you value your career, and you place a very high value on recognition and achievement. Shad, as much as he values his art, doesn’t have a need for further affirmation. If anything, he should be trying a little harder to connect with his peers. Nobody is saying your partnership shouldn’t continue, but you have more issues than normal.”

Chelsea looked thoughtfully at Shad. He was growing visibly troubled. She flinched instinctively when he spoke. “It’s all numbers,” he said. “All my life has been numbers. I’m done with that.” He looked Chelsea in the eye. “I love you, Blue Bell. That’s enough.”

Chelsea took his hand with a smile. “There is… something else,” she said. “I already made a request for… an instructor. This should make it easier.”

“What do you mean?” Shad said. “We’re doing fine, aren’t we?”

“Yes, of course,” Chelsea said. “There’s just… things I’d like to change up a bit.”

Diane sighed. “I looked into that,” she said. “I can get you in with Kloe.”

Chelsea said instinctively, “Oh, dear God.” After a moment, she nodded.

* * *

 

Weeks, and then months went by. They had their sessions with Kloe, which ended with Shad being offered an entry into a program for training as an physical therapy instructor. Meanwhile, Chelsea went back to work. In their third month in the module, Shad greeted Chelsea with a kiss as she entered through the rear door that entered into the lower-level den. “So, Kloe says I already have the scores to graduate,” he said. “She wants me to start training for Educational Resources. They’re planning something big. I think I can get some of my old crew on board.”

“That’s nice,” Chelsea said with a smile.

“So,” he said, “I have something to show you. Nobody’s seen it. See, I’ve been making my own stop-motion movie, with the Kong you gave me, and the one I made for you.”

She smiled again. “The one I told you to lock up and never show to anyone and preferably throw in one of the Office’s turbine fans?”

“Yeah… that one. Now she’s in my movie.” He pulled her to him. “A movie that’s never going to be seen by absolutely anyone ever… except you. If you want to see it.”

She pressed a finger to his breastbone. “Only… only… if you give me the best therapy I have ever had.”

“Okay,” he said. “Can we… watch the movie first?”

“Now that,” Chelsea said, “is blackmail… And I like it.”

They descended to his workroom, where he had already set up a bedsheet screen. He moved her portrait to one side to make room for a beanbag chair. “It’s actual film?” she mused

“I had to do it like Obie,” he said.

“I hate that I know who that is,” she said. He was winding the projector when a knock came at the door.

“I’ll get it,” Shad said. Suddenly, Chelsea grabbed his arm.

“Shad,” she said, “I don’t know how I know, but I’m sure… It’s him.”

And that was when Tilly called down from above: “Shad, what the Hell did you do???”

* * *

 

They cautiously ascended to the main living area of the split-level module. They approached the door cautiously. Beyond it was a raised porch. “What do you want?” Chelsea called out. She pushed open the door, to reveal an android with a visor in place of eyes.

“I notice,” Percy said, “you didn’t ask who I was.” He waved a hand vaguely. “They sent me. This time, I’m not alone.” Behind him were several more cops on the porch, a squad of court personnel on the steps, and beyond, her best friend Diane, and an old woman flanked by a pair of lawyers. At the sight of the last,  Shad’s grip tightened.

“Blue Bell,” he said, “that’s Maimeo. We can’t win. Nobody can. Just let me go, and I’ll make sure you’re okay.”

Chelsea pulled free. Then, after a moment’s thought, she took a step back. “This is a private residence,” she said. “You can’t come in without a warrant, or an order for my arrest.”

“I don’t have to come in,” Percy said. “I don’t have to do anything. I’m just here to witness that you hear what they have to say.”  Chelsea moved to slam the door, but Shad blocked her. The clearly senior court officer stepped forward.

“Mrs. Chelsea Feaghan O’Keefe,” he said, “you are duly notified that the family of your domestic partner, Shad Feaghan, and their counsel have exercised their right to petition for a hearing on your and your partner’s mental competency and fitness. Based on further evidence and substantiated allegations presented by the family, the family has been granted a Class 2 Protective Order against you. You will face no charges or penalties, provided you acknowledge this order and abide by its terms.”

He handed a pad to Percy. “It’s the further order of the court,” he continued, “that the counsel be allowed to examine Mr. Feaghan’s quarters and effects. Their findings will be submitted for review by the court, but will remain otherwise confidential from all parties, including the family. Again, you will face no penalties if you do not interfere.”

For a moment, Chelsea just stared. She almost emerged to challenge the matron, but checked herself. Her eyes locked on her. “That’s it?” she said. “All this time I’ve been holding his hand because he was afraid of you, and you finally come out with this? A protective order to keep me from sleeping with my own husband?”

It was Diane who spoke. “I fought it, Chelsea,” she said. “I had to come clean about a lot of stuff to do it. They hit me with an injunction to stop me from warning you. We’ll keep fighting. We can win. But it’s not going to be today.”

“You know how this works,” Percy said, holding out the pad. “Sign on the line. You can decide who stays and who goes, but you can’t both stay here. Trust me, this could be a lot worse.”

“No,” she said. The look in her eyes would have made Shad curl up and prepare for the inevitable. “I do not acknowledge the order. You can’t make me.”

“You know what happens if you don’t,” Percy said.

“I don’t care,” she said. She tried to slap the pad from his hand. He was mildly impressed that she managed a tenth of the force that would have done it. “He’s mine. I found him. I won him.”

“Yeah,” he said. “You haven’t said you love him.”

And that was when a buzzsaw hit him in the face.

* * *

 

Percy staggered back, his visor flickering and sparking. He toppled as he hit the nearest of two sets of steps, smashing the railing and the stairs. Shad stepped forward, holding up the remnant of the saw, still buzzing and sparking. “You all saw it,” he said. “I hit him. She tried to stop me.”

The rest of the cops promptly came up the main stairs and tackled Shad. As Chelsea reached for him, Percy sat up. She stepped back involuntarily as he rose to his feet. His visor was completely split, along with the front of his helmet-housing and his prosthetic nose. His head twitched side to side as he tried to focus with the damaged sensors. She finally lunged after Shad. She had barely moved before he caught hold of her wrist. He lifted her up with one hand. She didn’t bother to kick. He shook his head. “You really shouldn’t have done that,” he said.

As they dragged Shad to a van, the matron embraced him. “Oh, my pretty boy, we’ll take care of you.” She looked up as Percy followed, still holding up Chelsea by the wrist. The matron leaned in with a smile. “And you, you little trollop… We keep a few clean girls around for what you do. 45 minutes with one of them, and he won’t even remember your name.” She turned to the police and shouted, “Tear the place apart!”

They took Shad away, but Chelsea was still by Percy’s side to watch as they carried out his models, his notebooks, his drawings, his film and her portrait. The police and the court officers peered at the blue-maned Kelsiraptor, and turned their heads sideways on seeing the portrait. She turned to the android and examined the visor. “It’s really just a housing for the sensors,” Percy said. “The saw did some damage, more than I’ve taken in a long time, but I can still see.”

“So you can take it off,” she said.

“You could say that,” Percy said. “Yeah, I could.”

“What’s really going to happen?” Chelsea said.

“Not my department,” Percy said. “But it’s gonna get worse before it gets better.”

Finally, the android turned to her. “You want one thing to make this better?” he said. “What they’ll really remember is this.” He reached up and removed his broken visor… which proved to include his face.

Really Good Movies! The one with cowboys and dinosaurs

 

 Title: Valley of Gwangi

What Year?: 1969

Classification: Mashup/ Anachronistic Outlier

Rating: Awesome!!! (3/3)

 

As I write this, I am just past a significant milestone not related to my movie reviews: I just marked two years of steady output for my paleo feature, The Legion of Silly Awesome Dinosaurs. After posting the celebratory installment as the weekend toy blog as usual, I went back and figured out that the exact anniversary of my first dino post was going to be in the middle of the current week. I debated changing my schedule to do an extra dino post on that date, but decided against it. After further reflection, I decided the next best thing would be a dinosaur movie review, and I knew it was time for one I’ve meant to get to for a long time. In the history of that surprisingly sparse genre, there are three that stand above all others. One is King Kong, the other is Jurassic Park, and the third is the movie under consideration. I present The Valley of Gwangi, and you get to hear me wax on why it is the b

Our story begins with a man found dying in a desert wilderness, carrying a sack with a living creature inside. Skip forward past the epic opening credits, and we learn that this is Mexico ca 1900. In short order, we meet TJ, the star of a struggling Wild West show, her old flame Tuck, a disreputable cowboy and adventurer, and Carlos, a member of the troop whose interest in TJ may or may not be mutual. Tuck soon confirms that Carlos and his now-deceased brother have uncovered a monumental find, a tiny prehistoric Eohippus whose origins are known only to a clan of gypsies. When the gypsies steal the dawn horse, Tuck, TJ and the troop follow the trail to the “forbidden valley” it came from. There, they discover a lost world of dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures, ruled by an allosaur the gypsy matriarch refers to as Gwangi the evil one. The cowboys manage to capture the dino and bring it back to civilization, because this is before anybody saw King Kong. While the group simmer in their frustrated and conflicting ambitions, the seer makes her move- unleashing Gwangi on an unsuspecting city!

The Valley of Gwangi was a 1969 science fantasy/ western film by director Jim O’Connolly, producer Charles H. Schneer and stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen (see Sinbad andthe Eye of the Tiger and First Men in the Moon). The film was based on an unproduced project by effects/ animation pioneer Willis O’Brien titled “Valley of the Mists”; the 1956 film The Beast of Hollow Mountain is believed to have been based on the same proposal. The film starred James Franciscus and Gila Golan, with Laurence Naismith returning after Jason And The Argonauts as the scientist Professor Bromley. Live-action filming took place in Spain in place of Mexico in 1967, with Harryhausen completing the effects and animation entirely in post-production. The movie was released in 1969 by Warner Bros, to limited success. Harryhausen and others complained of poor marketing and possible disinterest from WB, as well as problems with O’Connolly. The movie also receive mixed reviews from genre critics, with a more positive consensus emerging by the time of his death in 2013.

For my experiences, this is a film I didn’t get to until college. What stands out in hindsight is that I went in with caution after seeing it criticized in most of the reference works that mentioned it at all. Once I saw it, it immediately emerged as an all-time favorite. In the course of my reviews, I occasionally gave thought to reviewing it, but for the most part, it was one of the films that stayed above my radar, as well as a bit early for the timeframe of my existing features. When I decided to review it, it still came to a choice between here or Featured Creature. What settled the matter in my mind was the considerable improvement in its reputation, especially among self-described Harryhausen fans. Before, it was a neglected film worth defending; now, it’s an accepted classic, and it’s on those terms that I am prepared to take up its case.

Moving forward, the one thing to be said as a qualification is that any skeptics in the studio definitely weren’t wrong about its marketability in its own time. There were enough difficulties with the viability of the dinosaur-movie genre (see Planet of Dinosaurs, etc, etc). It was the western side of the genre mashup that was flat-out dying, both in hindsight and from contemporary accounts. The present film is all too representative example of why audiences had stopped taking the genre seriously, wavering between sincere if admittedly effective cliches and arguable self-parody. Against these problems, I find two things that account for its comparative virtues. First, the setup of the failing Wild West show is a potent metaphor for the media myth-making that created the western in the first place, whether or not anyone thought the analogy entirely through. Second, the solid action sequences and stunt work (which I am inclined to credit to O’Connolly) establish a baseline of believable competence. They may be players in their own legend (shades of Galaxy Quest?), yet in the face of real-life danger, they remain professionals who know what they’re doing.

Naturally, any difficulties with the human story and characters are easily set aside when Harryhausen’s creatures are on-screen. While we don’t get a lost world as rich as Skull Island, we offered a mix of creatures, including a non-threatening ornithomimid and a truly magical Eohippus. The centerpiece remains Gwangi. I could go on for pages about the fine details of the creature (and probably have at one time or another), but I will settle for the absolutely terrifying finale that finds Gwangi inside a cathedral, with no music and often no sound except his footfalls. (And I am not letting go of the similarities to the kitchen scene in Jurassic Park!) What’s just as intriguing is the thematic dissection of the “monster” concept. He is explicitly a living, vulnerable animal, not an unstoppable kaiju, a point reinforced by a mishap with the good guys’ ammunition. The naturalistic take is further developed as the scientist argues with the seer, fatefully commenting, “The only evil thing about him is his jaws.” I find further fascination in the sounds of the creature, more than a decade before Jurassic Park defined convention. The growls show already the questionable influence of the lion. Other sounds, however, seem eerily unconventional, especially the scream that becomes its death cry. It’s not the best science (that distinction probably still goes to the nearly silent meat-eater of Kong), but it’s even more unique now.

One more thing I find worth discussing, as the review is already going long, is the gypsies. It’s clear that the seer Zorinna is meant to take over the role of Noble Johnson in Kong, perhaps in the further hope of losing that film’s racial and colonial baggage. Whatever the intent, the results definitely pose their own problems. To start with, I have never found it necessary to take the gypsy label as anything but a general description of their lifestyle (a non-trivial problem in sorting out the history of the “real” Romani people). Granting that ambiguity, it follows that they could just as well be native Americans, and that is a mush better framework for sorting out their real relationship with the “forbidden valley”. It’s clear from the familiar name and titles that they have dealt with Gwangi or creatures like him at some point in the past, perhaps further back than the arrival of Europeans. With my established penchant for revision, I find myself wishing for a version of the seer who stops muttering about curses and gives a real account of what her ancestors may have experienced facing a carnosaur with only Chalcolithic weaponry. As it is, we at least get a subtext that indigenous voices should not be dismissed lightly. Of course, it’s tangential over-analysis, yet it’s the kind that can tell us most about how we got to where we are.

That still leaves the “one scene”, and with at least two of Harryhausen’s finest creations on the board (see my collectibles post while you’re at it), I find myself coming to a “romantic” bit of dialogue. In the middle of their perilous expedition, Tuck and TJ discuss their futures and quickly agree that it’s time to leave show business. After a buildup that draws cautious interest from TJ,  reveals that he has found a perfect ranch in Wyoming. As he waxes about raising “lots” of cattle and horses, TJ adds, “Kids, maybe?” Tuck merely nods and says, “Yeah…” It’s clearly intentional comedy, even for a film as wonky as this one already is. Even so, it doesn’t really change the tone of the scene, corny, sentimental and ultimately no less charming for it. It’s scenes like this that show just how much trouble westerns were in, with just enough self-awareness to do it better than “straight” material.

In closing, what I come back to is whether this or any other film can be counted the “best” dinosaur movie. In the course of my own inquiries, I’ve seen entries in the genre covering over a century, and if there’s one thing that becomes self-evident, it’s that it was never about technology or even science. If you have a sense of imagination and an eye for detail, the rest will follow well enough to endure, even if the world has moved on. This is above all a movie proven to stand the test of time. I won’t pretend that there haven’t been better movies since, but this remains a benchmark to measure the rest. With that, I am done for the night.

Movie Mania: Harryhausen Monsters!

 

It's the second post of the last full week of the month, and I decided it was time for something new that goes with some other stuff I've had for a very long time. It's time for Harryhausen collectibles, and I have a selection of what we had to work with back in the 2000s. As it happens, they're all from one of Ray's most famous films, The Golden Voyage Of Sinbad. Let's start with the one that's almost generic, the griffin!

For the backstory, this and the other items here ate part of a set of Harryhausen collectibles released by X Plus in 2001. The full set would have included Ymir from 20 Million Miles To Earth, the cyclops and dragon from The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad, Talos from Jason And The Argonauts, and the Minoton from Sinbad And The Eye Of The Tiger. Around 2007, I acquired two of them for a chunk of a gift certificate that I think was about $50. Since then, X Plus seems to have remained the most prolific suppliers of Harryhausen models and collectibles, and the prices of their new and old offerings have gone up accordingly. Here's a couple more pics of the griffin.

Now, if you haven't seen the movie, you might be wondering what the Hell a griffin is doing in a movie about an Arabian sailor. That is, indeed, getting right to a core problem with the movie. This was perhaps the most egregious example of a movie where they clearly started with what Harryhausen could animate and built the story around it, though they at least did a far better job than in The Mysterious Island. In fairness, a good deal of the source mythology and iconography does in fact come from the Arab cultures, as while as the neighboring regions of Persia and Egypt. From there, it found its way into Greek and later European lore, though more as a figure of heraldry than of legend or belief. That really sums up the continuing role of the griffin in modern fantasy, where it usually is second banana to something else. I always wanted to do my own treatment, undoubtedly inspired by the classic Victoria tale "The Griffin and the Minor Canon", but always got bogged down more quickly than usual. Golden Voyage at least gave the creature a fair shake, summoning it as the implied embodiment of good in a losing fight with an evil sorcerer. That brings us to the other side of the fight, the very bestial centaur.

This is the creature that feels most like a Harryhausen monster, surely modeled on the cyclops of 7th Voyage. He looks grisly, and swings a mean club. The toy is a good likeness, complete with the rubbery look of Harryhausen's models. I will admit that at one point, I considered selling off the pair, and finally decided to keep the centaur and trade in the griffin, only to have the latter declined by the store I took it to. In hindsight, it's just as well, as both are definitely worth a lot more than I could ever have gotten for them when I was ready to sell. Unfortunately, that worked directly against me when I went looking for my new acquisition, the dancing/ fighting Kali statue. Here she is, in full glory with the Truckstop Queen. Who, as I've regularly pointed out, is huge herself.

Now this character has my longest backstory, as I remember seeing the sequence in 8th grade with no idea what it was from. I also swear, it was supposed to be to teach us about Hinduism, which I'll get back to. It was probably about a decade before I finally saw the movie, but I'm sure I thought about it in the meantime. I believe in junior high or high school, I had already thought of my own version, just featured in the adventures of Chelsea the (bad) social worker, of the Shiva/ Kali statue as a bureaucrat wielding DENIED stamps instead of swords. As for the movie itself, the scene is easily Harryhausen's best straight-up monster fight. The moments that fascinate me the most are the buildup, which starts with the dance as the sorcerer played by Tom Baker brings the idol to life. To me, the truly freaky part is when the sorcerer throws a scimitar to the statue, after a hilariously ill-advised gesture of fair play from Sinbad, and five identical swords seem to sprout from each hand. It's utterly uncanny, and there's absolutely no internal explanation for it. My fan theory is definitely that the statue has life and power independent of the sorcerer, perhaps from sources he hasn't counted on. At any rate, here's more pics, and one thing that will be self-evident is that this thing does not want to stand up.

And here's a couple closeups of that tag, which I don't think is even a major factor in the balancing issues. The other two must have come with their own, but even I don't remember them.

And here's one more pic I took with a phone before the pics for this post, I swear of this thing standing completely on its own. Clearly, it can stand up; it just didn't want to in front of my good camera.

This leaves me with one more thing: Was this movie disrespectful or even sacrilegious toward Hinduism? It was definitely a product of a different time and very different attitudes, already in evidence in the treatment of the Arab main characters. If there's a defense for the film, it's that the story already puts any fault on the villain. He invades a native people's place of worship, brings their sacred object to life to trick and frighten them into tolerating his presence, and then tries to use it as a murder weapon. It all goes along with a further thought of mine, that magic is fundamentally different from religion. Religious worship, even at its most self-serving, is about convincing your God or gods to do what you want. Magic treats the supernatural realm as subject to impersonal, even mechanical cause and effect, and it all presupposes that whatever spirits or forces you draw upon have to obey you. It's the "magical" view that drives the villain's actions, and a big part of what makes the character one of the most memorable and disturbing in the Harryhausen canon. And with that, I'm calling it quits for another day. That's all for now, more to come!

No Good Very Bad Movies Countdown 6: The one that's the worst Muppet movie

 

 

Title: The Happytime Murders

What Year?: 2018

Classification: Parody/ Mashup

Rating: Who Cares??? (2/3)

 

As I write this, I’m fresh off a string of reviews of good or at least entertaining movies, including a couple that found their way into this feature. Just in case you were wondering if this means I’m going soft, my projected lineup will be going back to the baddies, especially from the modern era. As it happens, I have one particular film I had thought about on and off that definitely fits the bill as a representation of the worst modern trends while falling into its own very odd subniche. I present The Happytime Murders, an adult Muppet parody from none other than the Jim Henson crew.

Our story begins with a quick introduction to a society where humans coexist with sentient puppets with stuffing in place of guts. But the puppets aren’t happy, marginalized and plagued by crime, substance abuse and intra-ethnic violence. In the midst of it, we meet Phil Phillips, an ex-cop turned private eye based on a single failure we’re going to hear far too much about. When he’s hired for a routine blackmail case, his investigation takes him to the scene of a multiple Muppetcide whose victims include one of the cast of an in-universe Sesame Street/ minstrel show analog called The Happytime Gang. The detective soon realizes that someone is out to wipe out the whole cast of the show, including his own brother. It’s up to him to find the surviving cast before the killer does, and figure out who’s trying to set him up. But to succeed, he’s going to need help from his human ex-partner.

The Happytime Murders was a 2018 film by STX and Henson Alternative, directed by Brian Henson , the son of the late Jim Henson (see The Dark Crystal). The film had reportedly been in development for at least a decade prior to release, with its eventual script credited to Todd Berger. The film starred Bill Barretta performing and voicing Phil and Melissa McCarthy as Connie Edwards, with Elizabeth Banks as Jenny, the Happytime Gang’s only human cast member. Other crew for the puppets included Kevin Clash and Drew Massey, performing as Bumblypants and Vinny in a porn shop sequence. The film was a commercial failure, earning an estimated world-wide box office of $27.5 million against a budget of at least $40M, and received very poorly by critics, several of whom described it as the worst film of the year. At the Razzie Awards, it “lost” that distinction to Holmes and Watson, while earning a Worst Actress award for McCarthy. It remains available on disc and streaming.

For my experiences, this film always stood out as an example of the same trends driving adult-oriented animation, taking traditionally “family friendly” genres and sources and turning it dark, subversive or entirely crude. What came to my mind in the course of this review is that this very mixed trend overlaps closely overlaps with what is called “over the top”, and the epiphany that led me to is that many of the most insightful examples came significantly earlier in live-action media. The paradox that becomes evident is that this can work independent of rating and content. You can find it in clever PG/ PG-13 films like Killer Klowns From Outer Space, in R-rated gore fests like Dead Alive and From Dusk Till Dawn, and in foreign films like House that never got anywhere near the Western mainstream. The chronic problem is that people who set out to do it are usually not the ones who succeed, and this is the archetypal example.

That brings us right to the first and foremost reality of the film, it’s one of the most egregious cases I’ve encountered of “too much and not enough”. This shows obviously in the rating. Anything that gets developed in a worthwhile way could have remained intact at PG-13, perhaps with some invented puppet slang in place of profanity, while anything that would have justified the R rating, especially the flying-fluff violence, isn’t pursued nearly far enough for a payoff. The mismatch shows even more in the story and above all the so-called mystery. The problem here is that great lengths are taken to create deeper motivation for the killer(s) where more clever takes, both comedic and “straight”, have long since deconstructed such things as unnecessary. In reality, there’s just two quite obvious scenarios: Either the killer is a member of the cast, with some ultimately interchangeable grievance, or it’s all the work of some crazed fan whose further motivations would be useless to analyze. Then my big rant is that the latter scenario, not even mentioned on screen, should absolutely have been the one pursued. Heck, now I’m getting a picture of a “collector” with a Muppet version of the Predator’s trophy room…

Even with that dissection out of the way, I freely admit that I haven’t gotten to the core of the story. The mystery genre has always been character-driven, especially the hard-boiled/ noir variety that this movie clearly aims to emulate, and there’s plenty of ways to redeem a “bad” plot. The difficulty here is that we have characters who are mismatched in development as well as personality. By my blunt-instrument assessment, Phil the puppet is a developed character who belongs in this world, as much as we know of it.  His human partner, on the other hand, feels like a man’s idea of Miss McCarthy playing herself. This imbalance is directly compounded by already dodgy worldbuilding when it comes to their backstory. The patently absurd accusation that Phil would refuse to harm another puppet could have worked as an illustration of the self-contradictory nature of prejudice, if the wonky racial metaphors had lasted that long. The implied tension between them, however, is just more contrived drama in an assumed universe where gross-out gags and emotional manipulation have long since displaced any pretense of logic.

That leaves the “one scene”, and there is truly just one sequence I can accept as justifying the very existence of this misbegotten experiment, and it’s dug in enough that I can reconstruct it from a viewing a few days before this review. About 15 minutes in, Phil has found his way to a puppet porn shop, owned by Vinny, a scuzzy buzzard introduced in voice-over as “not really a friend, more of a disgusting acquaintance”. Vinny and his shop more than justify the description, complete with the agitated rabbit Bumblypants. While Phil is looking around a backroom that somehow doesn’t contain a well-prepared ambush, an armed black-clad intruder enters, who is never really identified. It seems to be a human, though there’s so little that’s on the puppets’ scale that we can’t really tell. Vinny promptly announces, “We’re having a sale, anything you want,” while the rabbit freezes in place, and the skill of both performers is clearly evident. The intruder is distracted by the bystander, long enough for Vinny to draw. There’s a veritable spray of stuffing in the exchange of fire. The killer turns back to the rabbit, whose reaction is shown with two plastic Easter eggs, then the camera zooms in on the shotgun muzzle. Per my usually refrain, it’s a good scene that delivers on the potential of the premise, honestly a major reason I saw fit to look at the movie again. But in light of what follows, it’s a true bait and switch. If the rest of the movie was like this, it would be From Dusk Till Dawn with fluff instead of vampire guts. (How did I use that one as a “good” example twice???) Instead, we get a feature-length TV animation pilot for a show that isn’t animated and also isn’t funny.

In closing, I’m left not just with the rating, but with the tagline. Of course, this isn’t technically a Muppet movie, and considering that the franchise and its offshoots have been around on every media platform for over 60 years, there’s undoubtedly “real” Muppet offerings that are worse. But this is a full-length movie from the same company and crew, with the specific intention of appealing to “mature” audiences. In those terms, I can’t say I actively hate it, if only because of the fine work of Barretta and the supporting crew. For sheer disappointment, however, this is possibly the lowest they’ve come since “Trek 1”. With that, I shake my head and keep walking. And I’m definitely scraping my shoes when I get to the welcome mat.

Fiction: The Adventures of Chelsea the Social Worker, Part 4!

 It's the weekend of the off-week and I didn't have anything, so I'm posting another installment of Chelsea the social worker, with a guest appearance by a Harryhausen monster. By the way, the name is a Hindi plural form, which is apparently the only way to do gender neutral in the language. As usual, here's links for the first and previous installments.

Chelsea woke up alone in her bed. She promptly got up, and emerged into the main living area of her apartment. It was small but costly, on an upper floor of one of the tallest buildings in the section. As she looked out from what was a partition rather than a room, it seemed that the apartment was unadorned. She looked at the only real decoration, a photo of her at her graduation ceremony and a framed certificate celebrating her annual performance review. Then her eyes settled on the convertible dinette, where a red-headed man a few years younger than herself sprawled on the couch. She walked over, and woke him with a kiss. “Wake up, sleepy head,” she said. “It’s noon.”

 He sat up with a start. “Damn,” he said. “I was going to try to get some work done today. I need to get back home…”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll drive you back. In fact…” She took another look around the apartment. “I just might be looking to move in.”

 

A month later, they were settled into the lower level of a split level housing module shared with Tilly and John. About half the space was configured as a den, with an adjoining washroom and what had been a bedroom, long since converted to a workshop. On a certain day neither of them would remember, Shad called out, “Hey, Blue, I’ve got a surprise…”

 She entered the workshop. It was a worktable and a set of display shelves, where the 46 cm Kong puppet she had given him on the night of their meeting held pride of place. On the table was another model of similar size, covered by a towel. In fact, she had seen it before, but had lost interest in it while it was still clearly incomplete. She brushed past a portrait that she had begged him to make, which now just made her turn her head sideways. Now, he delayed the reveal. “See, it started out as a calibration armature,” he said. “We use it for camera tests, framing, that sort of thing. We just got another one, so they let me take it home. Then I built it up from there. Otherwise, it would have taken a lot more to design one from scratch…”

 “Show it to me or I’m going to bite you,” Chelsea said. Shad unveiled his creation in sheepish silence. She immediately stifled a screech.

“I call it the Kelsiraptor,” Shad said. “I know, it’s dumb…” Chelsea covered her mouth tightly, shaking her head. Finally, she picked it up, and immediately dropped it. “Ooh, you need to be careful, it’s not as sturdy as the ones we use at work…” He stood it upright again.

 The model was of a sauravian, covered in downy pink fuzz. Its proportions were a strange caricature, with long, spindly legs, a protruding pelvis, and an outlandishly oversized keeled breastbone that protruded nearly as far as its arms could reach. The tail was stiff and lined with bristly feathers. The arms ended in three-fingered hands and overly slender claws, one of which was much longer than necessary.  Then there was the head, sculpted with large eyes and a long snout that bore both teeth and a hooked beak. The last straw was a sort of crest that drooped over one eye, the exact same color as Chelsea’s hair. “What do you think, Blue Bell?” Shad asked plaintively.

 “Oh dear Logos,” Chelsea finally said, “it’s hideous and I hate it. I mean, this is not even okay. This is how you think about women? About me? And… and…” A niggling suspicion finally reared up. She ran a finger along one arm, carefully measuring the proportions. Finally, she moved the arm. Sure enough, the oversized claws were just the right length to reach one place. She covered her mouth, stifling a screech.

 Shad put an arm around her waist. She slapped his hand, but did not withdraw. “Come on, it’s funny,” he pressed. “She’s you, just, you more you than you. She’s, like, the ultimate boss chick.”

“Did you show this to anyone?” Chelsea said.

“Just John, Tilly and Frank,” he said. “I didn’t show them this, though, just my sketches and schematics. Tilly said she thought it was cute.”

 Chelsea wiggled the claw, feeling carefully for the ratchet pops that measured its intended motion. “This is how you look at me,” she said. “This is how you look at everything. Tiny details to study and play back… and you’re good at it.”

 Shad rested his chin on her shoulder. “Do you want me to give you therapy now?” he said. She pulled his hand to her lips, and bit into the flesh between his thumb and fingers. “I mean, do you to give me therapy?” She bit harder. “I mean, I want you to give me therapy right now!”

She bit him anyway.

* * *

 

It was that same week that she was summoned to the office of the Office’s head administrator, a strange entity that only answered to the name Deve (pronounced “Deh-vey”). All that was known of him, her, or it was that it had been found a world where human civilization had either never passed the Chalcolithic or fallen back to it. It was human in form, slightly larger than normal human size, and had 8 arms. In place of flesh, it was made of gray material believed to be either mineral or metal. Almost all details were androgynous or asexual, except a noticeable chest. The office dwellers still usually referred to the being as “he”, without any protest. Many a tale told of his speed stamping forms, usually “denied”. Chelsea felt a twinge as he smiled. “Welcome, Ms. Feaghan O’Keefe,” he said, in a voice as asexual as his features. “Congratulations on your partnership.”

 Chelsea surveyed the other two people in the office. One was Diane. She recognized the other as a doctor whose name she couldn’t recall. She immediately noted his scowl at the pleasantry. “I’m here, what’s going on?” she said.

 “We are all here for mutual arbitration,” Deve said. “There has been an internal complaint filed by Dr. Charleton, concerning your conduct with his patient and your partner, Shad Feaghan.”

Chelsea openly rolled her eyes. “Look, we’ve been through this,” she said. “We met when I was off duty. I didn’t recognize him, we spent the weekend together. I handed off his case at the next work day. We applied for a domestic partnership, which you approved. Anything that happens from here is our problem, not yours.”

 The doctor leaned forward. “We can dispense with the pleasantries, Ms. O’Keefe,” he said. “You knew exactly who my patient was, and whatever you may have convinced yourself to believe, you used your training to manipulate a disabled man into a legal commitment for your own gain.”

 “My own gain?” Chelsea said. “Why don’t you just call it an-“

“Enough,” Deve said. “Dr. Charleton has submitted a complaint, based on the record of his counseling sessions with Mr. Feaghan. While these statements remain confidential, they may be considered in reviewing your professional competence and ethics. You have been invited to hear and respond to the evidence offered against you. Ms. Clairborne is here to act as counsel, until the Department decides if you require one in an official capacity.”

Chelsea nodded. Diane finally spoke up: “Show us what you’ve got.”

“Most certainly,” the doctor said. “Here is a statement Mr. Feaghan made one week after his first public meeting…”

 Sure enough, Shad’s voice started playing. Chelsea was immediately unsettled by his tone, which she had certainly never heard when he spoke to her. “Look, here’s the real bottom line, this chick is obsessed with me,” Shad said. “I know you don’t believe me, nobody believes me, but it’s true. I mean, she’s practically following me around, she’s that into me. That, or she’d tamped down her sex drive so hard that letting it out was Ground Zero. She says we aren’t `in love’, because of what happened with her ex. I always say, `Sure, sure,’ and then she always looks at me… Frink, any guy would say the world is flat to get what she does to me. And you don’t believe me, I know. But I can prove it, ‘cause I got teeth marks on my-”

 “I’m not questioning your experiences,” the doctor’s voice interrupted. “Now, what can you tell me about your relationship? How she treats you when you aren’t, as you put it, having therapy?”

“The relationship is therapy,” Shad said. “That’s what she says. I mean, we talk, we have fun together, but it’s filling time before we go someplace. Oh, and she takes notes, did I say there’s notebooks? She lets me look at them, if I want to. Ooohh, wow…”

“All right, let’s talk about the physical relationship. How do you show each other you’re interested? Have you established a system for mutual consent?”

“What do you mean, doc?” Shad seemed genuinely puzzled. “If she wants it, she points and she takes. What guy says no to that?”

 At that, Diane put her head in her hands. Deve said, “Doctor, please, you may move forward with your evidence,” he said.

The doctor stopped the recording and selected another file. “This is a recording from a session after the domestic partnership was granted,” he said.  His own voice picked up: “Mr. Feaghan, there’s something important we need to discuss. What can you tell me about your first meeting with Ms. O’Keefe?”

“What, they’re still asking about that? Look, we met in the theater, I came up to her…”

“Actually, I’d like to know about when you met her in the Department office…”

“Okay… That was a bit weird, actually. So the thing about that, she was my case manager, but we only met 2 or 3 times. You know, the very first time, I thought, damn, she’s smoking. Then I thought, wait, is she into me? And trust me, that cooled me right off.”

 “What was it that made you uncomfortable?”

“Now, I wouldn’t say that… but here’s the funny thing. She said, `I see you’re a virgin.’ I said, yes ma’am, it’s there on the form. Then she went on about how she can usually tell, like that is going to turn a guy on, but I was different. And you know, when we went on our date, she said the exact same line. I just wanted to laugh, but I held it in, ‘cause I definitely wasn’t going to risk it. From what I know now, she would have taken me for a ride just the same, just… more teeth.”

 “Doctor, you may stop the tape,” Deve said. “Ms. Clairborne, you are free to advise and clarify, as you witnessed many of the same events. Can either of you explain what you remember about the meeting with Mr. Feaghan?”

 “Of course, I remember it now,” she said. “Well, I remember the day. We were really busy.”

Diane spoke up. “I remember it,” she said. “At lunch, she said, `Hey, who was that cute guy who never got laid?’ I said, you need to go on a date.”

 “Doctor,” Deve said evenly, “do you have any answer to this?”

“Their story is flatly ridiculous, and it should be obvious that Ms. Clairborne is deliberately propping it up,” the doctor said. “Perhaps, perhaps, Ms. Feaghan O’Keefe believes it, now, I can’t speak to that. But Ms. Clairborne’s motives are for more transparent; she failed to intervene, and then she threw herself behind a version of events that mitigates her actions.” Diane stayed pointedly silent.

 “You may be right,” Deve said. “But can you prove it?” The doctor was equally silent. He turned to Chelsea. “Then I find no basis for disciplinary action against you. I do place you under paid leave, as I am told your own supervisors have recommended a number of times. I further advise that you and your partner use the time for counselling, including compatibility testing.”

 Chelsea was silent as they rose to leave. As they passed, the doctor said, “This isn’t over.”

“We don’t care what you say,” Diane said. “Just leave us alone.”

 Later that day, Chelsea met with Daisy, the Siptar girl. “I’m taking leave,” she said calmly. “Diane will take over your case, for now. We found an uncle on your father’s side, he and his wife have agreed to take care of you, at least for a while.”

 The girl looked at her. “It’s about that man, isn’t it?” she said. “I know it is.”

“He’s my husband now,” Chelsea said. “We’re going to be spending time together for a while.”

Daisy shook her head. “No,” she said. “They’re going to try to take him away from you. You know it. I don’t want you to go way, Chelsea.”

 “Don’t worry, I won’t be gone long,” Chelsea answered. “By the time I’m back, you’ll be better.” Daisy just shook her head.

 Shad was waiting for Chelsea after work. She smiled at him as she came out of the office. She was still smiling as they got into the van. He gave her a distinctly awkward look. “Um, is something wrong?” he said.

“No,” she said. “Not at all.” As he started the van, she said, “Do I boss you around? You know, in therapy?”

“Okay,” Shad said, “that doesn’t sound like nothing. I guess… a little. A lot, really. But it’s okay. You always know what to do.”

 Chelsea leaned over and kissed him. “That’s what I like about you,” she said. “You’re… enthusiastic.”

Shad smiled back at her. “So, ah, what do you want to do tonight?”

“Why don’t you choose this time?” she said.

“Okay,” Shad said, a little hesitantly. “How about… we go to a concert?”

 It turned out to be a tribute to the Monkees.