LILEKS (James) :: The Bleat 2014

I have two big pieces upon which to labor in the next two evenings, so we’ll have to wait until Friday for substantial bleatage. However, I’ve stuff. I always have stuff.

Drove up and down University Avenue this afternoon, researching one of the pieces. Of course I can say nothing about that, lest I waste words here that can be applied to the job, but I did stop to take a shot of one of my favorite buildings. Whatever original purpose it had is long forgotten; whatever civic pride its owner and builder felt when they saw the spire rise in the sky, and whatever small remorse they felt when they pushed away nagging feelings that the clock was too small, and whatever sudden surge of resentment they pushed down when thinking about people who complained about the size of the clock when it wasn’t like the complainers ever put up a clock anywhere, are forgotten, as is the original intention of this sentence. Anyway:

You get the mood of the day there too. Horrible first half of May; it feels wasted. This is the point where people just wish all the things we loved about this place could be picked up and transplanted many hundreds of miles to the south. It’s green now but it doesn’t mean anything.

The sun came out later, like a drunk leaving a bar at 6 PM.

Here’s a destruction update: all gone.

And here’s the video: 2:50 of stuff being taken apart.

Freeman Demolition from James Lileks on Vimeo.

I was looking at Fayette, Alabama the other day, searching for another Main Street entry. Found the mother of all boarded-up-windows buildings:

Spied a mural on the wall, and took a look:

"Folk Artist," it says. Well, let us Google that.

He was honored with the Alabama Arts Award in 1995 and served as an artist-in-residence at the New Orleans Museum of Art. His work is featured in many collections, including the Smithsonian Institution, the High Museum of Art, the Corcoran Gallery, the Birmingham Museum of Art and the House of Blues.

He was one of the early masters of southern self-taught art.

Hmm. Well. And . . . well. Err . . . I don't . . . no. But your opinion may vary.

Want to catch up? Here's last week's. Otherwise, onward:

As usual, a re-Cap! Hah! Get it? Sorry.

Mind you, Cap fell down a mineshaft, apparently striking his head several times on the way down, but he has the presence of mind to roll out of the way, and the strength to shimmy up the rope.

Tough customer, that non-scientifically-enhanced Captain America who is the District Attorney.

And also the stupidest DA ever, we learn: the ransom money, which the Scarab’s crew got away with, was easily traceable. All the bills were numbered. So, sit back and wait for the gang to reveal themselves, eh?

Oh no.

Yes, they put that in the paper. Knowing the henchmen are avid newspaper consumers.

Mind you, no one’s sitting around talking about how dead Cap is. The thugs are quite uninterested and Malador doesn’t seem curious. No one hoists a glass and toasts the guy who flattened him, slaps him on the back, gets him a hooker, nothing.

Anyway, , the District Attorney, who has nothing better to do, personally investigates a name on a card found on a guy in the mile that Captain America punched half to death. He goes here:

Nice sign. (Real guy; the Internet says John C. Mehan was one of the first to import MGs into the US.) Once the DA shows the general manager a picture of the henchman, the manager - who remembers all these things - says he sold a truck to that guy, and it was towed to Martin’s Garage for “repairs.”

Yeah, “repairs.” They’re filling it with the deadliest gas known to man! The truck drives away, and the District Attorney, of course, goes right to the garage without police backup. The moment he turns his back:

That won’t end well. Not when the DA can hide behind a barrel, the bullet-deflecting powers of which are legendary.

That qualifies as the car going off the cliff, doesn't it? Tick off that box.

And so the crusading District Attorney adds two more bodies to his personal count, after which he runs out without alerting the police, and runs into his secretary, who happens to be walking around the garage. That’s the ting about serials: usually about 15 people in the world, total.

Well, Cap drives off to the gas facility where the henchmen are plotting nefariousness, and that means the serial will probably end as they all do: a plot is interrupted, there’s a fistfight, and the hero faces certain death. You know it’s tense because there’s a gauge:

Boy, I'll bet something happens when it reaches 351!

Then the fight. You have to ask yourself: so our hero just plain shoots people when he’s in street clothes, but when he puts on his crime-fighting uniform he jumps on them from a staircase, instead of holding them at gunpoint? Is he trying to get himself killed? Is this entire persona a desperate attempt to end a life he feels has become nothing but the empty pursuit of thrills?

It’s another good fight. Remember, if you’re battling a costumed crusader, always look to your right for a weapon.