What Trump Said When About COVID
Recent Reviews
The Cagneys
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935)
Something to Sing About (1937)
Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)
A Lion Is In the Streets (1953)
Man of a Thousand Faces (1957)
Never Steal Anything Small (1959)
Shake Hands With the Devil (1959)
General posts
Wednesday January 17, 2024
Where in the World is Daniel Davenport?
Hi Daniel. If you're still reading this blog, drop me a line. Much appreciated.
Saturday December 31, 2016
Goodbye to All That
I planned on leaving 2016 on a high note—or highish note—by hiking this morning with my friends Andy and Erika and one of Erika's friends. We planned on meeting at the trailhead to Poo Poo Point (yes, that's the name) at 7:30 AM.
Andy let me know around 6 AM that he had a cold and couldn't make it. I got everything ready—backpack, food, layers of clothes—and headed out to get the car at the new parking garage we use since there's so much construction in our First Hill neighborhood. But I stopped short when I saw the garage gates closed and locked. I read the sign: closed until 6 AM on weekdays and 8 AM on weekends. I stared a good long while, then called Erika and let her know I wouldn't make it, either; then, since I was primed to move, I walked through downtown Seattle to the Sculpture Garden. It wasn't bad but it was hardly a mountain.
A fitting end to this shitty year. It wouldn't even let me get to Poo Poo Point.
See you on the other side.
Tuesday June 17, 2014
Breaking Away for a Bit
I'll be taking a break from the blog for a bit to recharge my batteries. Ciao, bellissima! See you on the other side.
Thursday June 20, 2013
James Gandolfini (1961-2013)
The video below has been making the rounds since the news came of James Gandolfini's death in Rome, Italy, yesterday, at the age of 51. Patricia and I watched a bit of it last night. One of my favorite parts, for obvious reasons, comes at 19:20:
Lipton: When you're choosing film projects what are the most important factors for you, Jim? What comes first?
Gandoflini: The writing the writing the writing the writing the writing the writing the writing.
Even better is Gandolfini on why Tony Soprano is an everyman:
Lipton: How did you see Tony in the beginning? What did you see in Tony that you could identify with, that you felt you could play?
Gandolfini: It says a lot about a lot of people. It's man's struggle. He doesn't have a religion, he doesn't believe in the government, he doesn't believe in anything except his code of honor, and his code of honor is all going to shit. So he has nothing left. He's got nothing left. And he's looking around. And it was that searching that I think a lot of America does half the time. You know. You can go buy things, you can do whatever, but it's that he has no center left. I really identified with that.
I remember that lost look. I also remember the small, malicious smile that implied he was about to do harm to someone and enjoy it. Scared the shit out of me.
It's fascinating how uncomfortable he is onstage as himself. At the same time, as much as to Lipton, he talks to the students in the audience, telling them what they need to do to make it worth it.
Some links:
- The New York Times: Mr. Chase, in a statement, called Mr. Gandolfini “one of the greatest actors of this or any time,” and said, “A great deal of that genius resided in those sad eyes.” He added: “I remember telling him many times: ‘You don’t get it. You’re like Mozart.’ There would be silence at the other end of the phone.”
- Jeffrey Wells: Gandolfini knew from anger. As one who has fed at the trough of my own anger for decades, I don’t believe he ever lost that basic fuel for his Tony arias. But he was mainly a sensitive X-factor guy, I felt. Rivers of sadness and aloneness within. He spoke with such elegance ... and seemed so perceptive and gentle and (from what I’ve been told by friends and colleagues) so gracious and kind.
- David Remnick: He played within a certain range. Like Jackie Gleason, he’ll be remembered for a particular role, and a particular kind of role, but there is no underestimating his devotion to the part of a lifetime that was given to him. In the dozens of hours he had on the screen, he made Tony Soprano—lovable, repulsive, cunning, ignorant, brutal—more ruthlessly alive than any character we’ve ever encountered in television.
Feel free to add links and thoughts below.
Thursday February 14, 2013
The Valentine's Day Posts
- It's a Twitter meme right now: #CandyHeartRejects. I came up with my own last year: the less-romantic movie-themed candy hearts. For the rest of us.
- Dramatically speaking, the point of the story isn't to bring the lovers together but to keep them apart. We need to stretch this out to two hours, after all. Or two seasons. Or 10. If the couple gets together? Nobody cares. So find some way to keep them apart. Which means if you're alone on V Day, you're the point of the story.
- A poem from Leigh Hunt.
- Have you gone to Google's Valentine's Day Images page? Prepare to be blinded by red and crap.
- Seven years ago, for MSNBC, I wrote a piece sorting Hollywood kisses into several categories: the desperate kiss, in the rain, the manhandle, the woman takes charge, and the wow kiss. It's still not bad. Not wow but not bad.
- ABC News picked up on this piece a few years ago but ... Well, here. With a little Elvis Costello thrown in.
- For all the marshmallow valentines out there:
Sorry for the denture smell.
Monday December 31, 2012
2012
The final sunset of 2012 over Puget Sound, as viewed from Evan's office in lower Queen Anne. I'd say “Auf wiedersehen” to the year but I've just seen "Django Unchained' and know better.
Tuesday August 28, 2012
Movie Review: Ghost Rider 2: Spirit of Vengeance (2012)
WARNING: SPOILERS
I wonder if it’s more fun making these things than watching them. I hope so.
Roarke, AKA the Devil, bestrides the Earth again in the guise of another actor (Ciarán Hinds, replacing Peter Fonda), and he wants his son, Danny (Fergus Riordan, the best thing in the movie), back from his mama, Nadya (Violante Placido), and thus sends a team or mercenaries, led by pretty-boy Ray Carrigan (Johnny Whitworth), to retrieve him.
In their way? Moreau (Idris Elba), a French, motorcycle-riding priest with a taste for wine, who, as the film opens, warns priests that Danny isn’t safe at their monastery. They dismiss his fears. They’re wrong, of course, get theirs, but Nadya and Danny, distrusting Moreau all the while, make their escape. Moreau decides he needs more help. He needs the Rider.
They always call him “The Rider” in these things. Is “Ghost” too silly? Did it not sample well? Is the term too associated with a ridiculous 1970s-era Marvel Comics character with a flaming skull and a flaming motorcycle who sells his soul to the Devil, then fights the Devil, even as he eats souls ostensibly for the Devil? I never did get this guy.
And where is the Rider, Johnny Blaze (Nicolas Cage), these days? The All-American white-trash hero is holed up in Europe, lingering in the shadows, and clutching his right hand to let us know he’s tortured. He offers lines like the following in tortured, sotto voce narration: “It likes the dark places. The Rider.”
When Moreau shows up, he and Johnny have the following conversation:
Moreau: You will save [Danny].
Johnny B: I don’t ... save ... people.
Until he does.
Just when Ray Carrigan and company have Danny and Nadya cornered in a junkyard, here comes the Rider, flying into action on his flaming motorcycle. But he’s distracted by eating again (souls), gets blasted, and the bad guys get Danny. The Rider wakes up in a hospital and Nic Cage gets to do crazy Nic Cage shit: asking for morphine and pills and yadda yaddas. When he and Nadya hook up, Nic Cage gets to say a few crazy Nic Cage lines: “No, I get it. You’re the devil’s baby mama.”
To be honest, there’s not enough of this. Nic Cage has built the second-half of his career around intentionally stupid shit (example), and some of that would’ve been preferable to the paint-by-numbers plotline we get here. At a diner, for example, after he and Nadya rescue Danny, and after seeing a father and son bonding at the diner for a few seconds, Johnny decides he wants to bond with Danny, too. His need is so palpable that Danny tells him, “Dude. You’re way cooler than the guys she hangs out with.” This, sadly, pleases Johnny. Is there anything worse than an adult who need the approval of a child? Who want to be cool in the eyes of children?
But then Danny is more grown-up than the overacting adults around him. He actually raises the question we’re all wondering. Aren’t I the Devil’s son? Isn’t that bad? To which Johnny tells him:
The power we have comes from a dark place. but it doesn’t mean we’re bad. We can do good. We can help people.
I thought the Rider didn’t ... help ... people? Oh right, that was a half-hour before.
“Ghost Rider 2” keeps doing this. We’re told that Roarke isn’t powerful walking the Earth; he only has the power of the deal. But we never see him make a good deal. He turns Johnny into the Rider to do his bidding, but the Rider never does his bidding. Ray actually reneges on his deal with the Devil, asking for more dough, and gets no comeuppance. Instead, after the Rider kills him, the Devil revives Ray as Blackout, a demon with the power of “de-CAY.” At the same time, at a far-out monastery with bald dudes with spirograph tattoos on their faces (head dude: Chris Lambert), the Devil is finally exorcised from Johnny. He’s himself again! Ah crap. Just when Danny needs him.
You see, the priests have this crazy idea to kill Danny, since he’s the Devil’s son; but then Blackout shows up, kills them, and takes Danny back to Roarke, who plans to transfer his soul into Danny’s body, effectively killing Danny and making himself stronger than ever.
So how do these three—the devil’s baby mama, a French alcoholic priest and a white-trash stunt rider without powers—save the boy from this coven of chanting yadda yaddas? Danny, who has the same power as his father, gives Johnny his power back, and, in a lengthy car-truck chase down European highways, Ghost Rider kills Blackout, growls “Road kill,” then lifts Roarke high in the air and sends him crashing through the earth. “Go home,” he growls.
It’s not cool, it’s not gloriously stupid. It’s just way, way tired.
So isn’t Johnny in the same place he was in the beginning? Clutching his right hand and bemoaning the dark places? You would think! But apparently the Rider was originally an angel named Blah-Blah and Johnny now feels that angel and so yadda yadda. He’s not yellow-flamed anymore but blue-flamed, and that’s good. Mother and Damien are reunited. The Rider is a hero. Or at least better. Or at least he doesn’t have to clutch his right hand.
“Ghost Rider 2” got made because the first, awful “Ghost Rider” grossed $115 million domestic, $228 worldwide, back in 2007. Never mind that in the U.S. it barely grossed twice its opening weekend total ($45 mil), indicating either a puny fanbase or lousy word-of-mouth. The studio thought it had a hit. It didn’t. This one grossed $22 million opening, $55 million total. Road kill.
Friday June 01, 2012
Movie Review: A Checkout Girl's Big Adventure (Les tribulations d'une caissičre) (2011)
WARNING: SPOILERS
“A Checkout Girl’s Big Adventure” is hardly a cashier du cinema.
Here’s a scene three-quarters of the way through that exemplifies its monumental stupidity, its arc de stupid, its tour imbecile.
Our title character, Solweig (Déborah François), a cashier at a Target-like store, is being followed into the women’s locker room (cashiers have locker rooms in France?) by the creepy, petty floor manager, Mercier (Jean-Luc Couchard), who has just found out—ah ha!—that the mysterious blogger, misscheckingout.com, who has gotten over a million hits expounding on customer-service matters, and whose posts have led to the beginning of a nationwide strike by checkout girls in France (are there no checkout boys in France?), is, in fact ... Solweig! She’s the one who’s making the lives of management miserable! So what does he do with this information? How does he handle Solweig, who, he now knows, has the ear of the nation and a forum with which to talk to millions about every aspect of her day?
He sexually assaults her, of course. Wouldn’t anyone?
But wait! At that moment, passing by, is a young, handsome man dressed in a Santa Claus suit. (It’s Christmastime.) He’s named Charles (Nicolas Giraud), and he has a thing for Solweig, and she for him, because one night when it was snowing as prettily as it snows in snowglobes, she, in the midst of breaking up with a boyfriend we’ve never seen, slips in the snow and Charles emerges from a limo to help her up. Like in a fairy tale! He also gives her his phone number, which is subsequently besmirched and made illegible by her bratty 10-year-old brother, whom she is raising alone, so of course she can’t call and make a date and continue along the path of young love. Fortunately, he finds out about her, since her store ID card slips from her purse as she’s leaving a tutoring gig, where the tutee, another bratty thing who thinks it’s cool to talk in hip-hop slang, just happens to be ... wait for it ... Charles’ brother! So now he knows where she works. He can ask her out.
Except he delays. He’s wondering: Is she a teacher? Is she a cashier? What is she? And rather than ask, he dresses up as Santa Claus so he can spy on her without revealing himself. But when Mercier attempts to rape her, he reveals himself: he bursts in, head-butts Mercier, gapes at Solweig, then flees.
But wait! Our heroine, who is sweet, pretty and rather self-satisfied for someone with such a shitty job, has just been revealed as a hugely successful blogger, then assaulted by her scummy boss, then saved by the man of her dreams. What does she do? Why, she follows the man of her dreams into the parking lot to thank him. No no, I'm sorry, that would make too much sense. No, she follows him out into the parking lot ... to berate him for making her lose her job. Seriously. “Now I’ve lost my job!” she wails. “I’ve lost everything because of you!” Because of him? Because he saved her from rape? From her boss? She can get fired for that?
Besides, doesn’t she get it? A million hits. Talked about on the nightly news. Fomenting a national strike. How can she not see the upside of all of this? Surely it means a book deal. Maybe even a best-seller. Perhaps called, as this film is called, Les tribulations d'une caissičre.
Because we can see it. We can see it a mile off.
“Checkout Girl” could’ve been good. Its topic is a relevant one. Many of us have been there. I worked as a cashier for a number of years at a bookstore in Seattle, and I too was driven crazy by the mindless, endless repetition, the sometime-nasty customers, the often insipid management. I once wrote a short story called “Bags” about a cashier who anthropomorphizes the bags he’s supposed to give away; who treats the bags as more human than the customers. It began:
The question about the bags was the penultimate part of an eight-step procedure Scott Widdershins repeated 240 times a day, 4800 times per month, or approximately 28,800 times in his first half year at the Pine Avenue branch of R & R Books. The procedure began with a greeting (“Hello”) and segued into a request for a form of payment (“Cash, check, or charge?”); then, while the purchases were being rung up, and though it was not recommended in The R & R Employees Handbook, Scott usually attempted some kind of conversation with the customer (about literature, or the local sports team, or, daringly, politics); afterwards, credit card slip signed, driver's license number confirmed, change given, Scott asked about the bags. “Would you like a bag?” he asked. There were five types at R & R Books--small, medium and large (paper), medium and large (plastic)--and if the answer was affirmative, and once a preference for paper or plastic was sorted out, Scott slipped their purchases into the properly-sized bag, thanked them, and turned to help the next customer coming down the line.
(Sorry about Widdershins.)
“Checkout Girl” has some of that. In her blog posts she writes about the weight of all the goods they scan every day: a ton, she says; an elephant’s worth of stuff. But her posts, at least translated into English, seem too general and obvious to garner any kind of attention, let alone a million hits, let alone the ear of the nation.
But of course it’s a fairy tale.
The biggest part of the fairy tale? That she’s trapped in her job. She’s blonde, with movie-star looks, and a hugely popular forum. What can’t she do? Her checkout mates include a heavyset black woman with two jobs and too many kids; a peppy Muslim girl with two jobs, one kid and another on the way; and a middle-aged white journalist for a nefarious magazine who is trying to uncover misscheckingout.com. When she does, when she exposes Solweig as a star, she, in a sense, releases both white girls from the checkout-girl trap. They go on to better things. The colored girls remain behind. Your fairy tale isn’t everyone’s fairy tale.
“Les tribulations d'une caissičre” was apparently recommended for the Seattle International Film Festival this year by a sponsor, the French embassy in San Francisco, and for that I’d like to thank them. Because it’s a movie that furthers cultural understanding. It reminds us that French films aren’t always as good as “L’Heure d’ete,” or “Un Prophete,” or “Des hommes et des dieux.” Some are as awful as the worst crap coming out of Hollywood.
Merci.
Tuesday February 14, 2012
Valentine's Day: The Point of the Story
The point of the story is to keep the lovers apart. That’s where the drama is. That’s what we paid to see. We want to anticipate them being together, we want to hope for them to stay together, but once they do stay together they become a bit dull. They share a bathroom and go to work and come home and share a bathroom. They’re no longer lovers. They’re a couple. Who wants to watch that? Nobody. Not even the couple. Especially not the couple.
So the goal of the dramatist is to keep the lovers apart for as long as possible. How? However. Family hatreds, class issues, war. She’s married, he’s shallow, they’re gay. He doesn’t recognize true love, neither does she. Fiddle-dee-dee and lah-dee-dah and Play it again, Sam. Stella! Elaine! Adrian! Or the old standby: Please, we’re British.
Which is to say if you’re alone on this awful day of forced national celebration of what Gore Vidal once referred to as “love love love”? You’re the point of the story.
Saturday January 08, 2011
Photo of the Day
Friday December 31, 2010
The Last Blog Post of 2010
I'm still in the process of seeing some of the big U.S. releases in December (“King's Speech”; “True Grit”), so I'm holding off on my Top 10 list until all that's done. If I can't promise punctuality I can promise thoroughness. Since I can't be the first out with a top 10 list, I hope to be the last.
In the meantime, here are the movies I've reviewed so far this year. “Un Prophete” and “Restrepo” are still tops for me.
What about you? Favorite movies from 2010?
Feel free to include favorite books and songs as well. I really need songs.
(And for anyone who thinks the conceptual video with great dancing is dead, please check out Janelle Monae's “Tightrope,” which I first came across via Time magazine's top 10 list. A sure sign you're old: when Time magazine is hipper than you.)
Good-bye, 2010. Skol, everyone.
Thursday August 20, 2009
Link of the Day
A piece on the joy of walking your dog, called "One Night in Dog Heaven," by my friend Jim Walsh. Not many writers are able to pull the eternal and the mystical from the quotidian as well as Jim. Excerpt:
Master, I know I am low on your priority list but please deliver me from this godforsaken prison of human stasis and let me run wild. You hold the key to me being the best I can be, the unbridled creature I was born to be. Let me hump a few friends and strangers, chase a few leaves I have mistaken for pheasants and overall be so in the moment that I make all the Zen people look like multi-taskers.
Sunday June 07, 2009
Federer, tout simplement magnifique
From Le Monde:
On pensait que l’histoire sportive de l’année serait le retour de l’Américain Lance Armstrong sur le Tour de France. Il n’en est rien. L’histoire sportive de l’année, elle s’est jouée en trois actes, en trois sets (6-1 7-6 6-4), sur le central de Roland-Garros, dimanche. L’histoire sportive de l’année, c’est d’avoir vu Roger Federer soulever pour la première fois la magnifique Coupe des Mousquetaires. De l’avoir vu se laisser emporter par l’émotion et verser de chaudes larmes en écoutant l’hymne national de son pays.
Or in my hastily translated English:
We think the sports story of the year will be the return of the American Lance Armstrong to the Tour de France. That's nothing. The sports story of the year played itself out in three acts, or three sets (6-1 7-6 6-4), at center court, Roland-Garros, Sunday.The sports story of the year was seeing Roger Federer raise for the first time the magnificent Coupe des Mousquetaires. It was seeing emotions get the better of him and the warm tears come, listening to the national anthem of his country.
Corrections are welcome.
Friday May 29, 2009
Jim Walsh: For the Graduates
Remember Kurt Vonnegut’s commencement address that made the viral rounds in the late ‘90s (“wear sunscreen”), which turned out to be a well-written column by Mary Schmich of the Chicago Tribune? Her faux commencement address? Her commencement address if asked to give one?
Here’s one by my friend Jim Walsh, which appeared this week in the Southwest Journal in, yes Jim, sexy South Minneapolis. Everyone who knows Jim Walsh will never mistake this for anyone but Jim Walsh.
Read it. Love it. Live it. Pass it on. (You can read more of Jim's stuff in Southwest Journal and MinnPost.)
For The Graduates
By Jim Walsh
Southwest Journal
May 28, 2009
I was in an ambulance for the first time in my life last week. As the morphine entered my system and the trees billowed past the window (Satan had entered my kidney; he hath since exited and I am yet again feeling lucky to be alive), I remembered a few things I’ve been wanting to tell you before I go:
- Even though the real world can feel overwhelming with all its war, poverty, stupidity, and fallible-to-foolish parents, don’t waste your life in front of a computer screen. Go outside and play.
- Before he died, singer/songwriter Warren Zevon said, “Enjoy every sandwich.” Meaning, of course, that tomorrow isn’t promised and that life is fragile. I would also say you should enjoy every ant, breath, bud, and magic moment, and, as often as possible, put yourself in situations where your and others’ enjoyment is maximized.
- When said enjoyment is happening, various wanton killjoys will try to rain on your parade. Don’t let them. Smile your wry smile and move on.
- The Bible’s most oft-cited mandate is “love the stranger.” Now, I wouldn’t go so far as to suggest that you start wrapping your arms around every Sven, Dick, and Lorna you run into, but at least talk to strangers. Here in Minnesota, that will get you plenty of arched whataya-selling? eyebrows, but more often than not it’s worth it.
- There is no such thing as “too much information.”
- Love and sex is more intense, interesting, and infinite than they make it look on TV. For the most part.
- When it comes to the future, heed the wise words of the Waterboys’ Mike Scott (“Dream harder”), and Suicide (“Dream, baby, dream”).
- When it comes to suicide, heed the wise words of Neil Young from Sleeps With Angels (“Change your mind”) and Dory from Finding Nemo (“Just keep swimming”).
- I can’t prove this with any scientific certitude, but it says here that every moment spent at the Mall Of America turns your flesh into polycarbonate plastic and your blood into Liquid Plumber.
- Unless, of course, you’re shopping at the LoveSac or Apple store. For me.
- When you’re in a dark place and thinking that you’re all alone, pick up a book. The human experience isn’t all that unique, and chances are better than even that you are not the first one to be going through what you’re going through.
- If you go through life open-hearted, you will at some point fall in love and very likely get your heart broken. This is not always a bad thing. In fact, this is unavoidable and welcome and normal, unless you are a zombie.
- If you are a zombie, find another zombie and go make out like only zombies can — under the Washburn water tower.
- At least once a week go to the Peace Garden and Bird Sanctuary at Lake Harriet and listen to the quiet. Then go to the Rose Gardens and sit on Karl Mueller’s bench and listen to the birds and yourself.
- When it comes to true love, heed the wise words of Neko Case: “I don’t care if forever never comes, ‘cause I’m holding out for that teenage feeling.”
- Don’t just type “LOL.” Do it. Hardily. Often. Until energy drink spouts out of your nose like anti-freeze from a spent hose.
- Disconnect.
- Reconnect.
- Repeat.
- When people ask you what you want to be when you grow up, tell them to get back to you after they’ve listened to the Ramones’ version of Tom Waits’ “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up.”
- When people try to convert you to their religion, tell them to get back to you after they’ve read Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search For Meaning,” the collected works of Joseph Campbell, Herman Hesse’s “Siddhartha,” the Sufi poets Rumi and Rilke, and the new bumpersticker you just came up with: THANKS BUT THE WHO ALREADY FORGAVE ME.
- Give your mom the occasional unbidden foot massage.
- Give your dad the occasional unbidden neck rub.
- Work hard, but realize that competition will only take you so far. Collaboration and cooperation is more fun, more productive, and more heart- and brain-expanding. Keep in mind the wise words of Ralph Waldo Emerson: “There is no limit to what can be accomplished if it doesn’t matter who gets the credit.”
- And President Harry S. Truman: “It’s amazing how much you can accomplish when it doesn’t matter who gets the credit.”
- And President Barack Obama: “Never stop adding to your body of work.”
- And [your words here].
Friday May 08, 2009
My "Star Trek" Novel: S179276SP
Intro.
First section: A Routine Science Expedition.
Second section: Holodeck Baseball.
Third section: Mj'cra souft.
As the Captain entered the bridge, his stiff body language and sour mouth communicated to all hands that he was not to be bothered with trifles; but what Lt. Langley had wasn't a trifle.
"Captain. Message coming in from Romulan space. Code Two."
Harrison paused over the shoulder of Ensign Ciam, to whom he was about to give the coordinates for Halkan space. "From Romulan space? Code two?"
"Yes, sir."
"But that's been out of use for..."
"One hundred two years, five months," Mr. B replied.
The Captain nodded. "Let's hear it."
"In your ready room, sir?" Lt. Langley asked.
"Here."
"Transmitting."
Captain Harrison squinted upwards as static filled the bridge.
"Isolate the static," he commanded.
"Isolating," Lt. Langley responded.
Without the static, a series of blips were heard; several crewmembers nodded their heads slightly as they tried to make sense of the rhythm.
"It seems to be repeating itself," Mr. B mentioned.
"Could it be another code?" Captain Harrison asked.
"It is a code!" Lt. Langley shouted triumphantly. She blanched when everyone looked her way, and added, more softly, "I mean it is a code. It's an old Earth code for pronunciation symbols and numbers."
"Can you tell us what it means?"
"Yes." She closed her eyes. "O...S...S..."
"An S.O.S.?" Mr. B asked.
"Garbled?" Ensign Ciam wondered.
Mr. B shrugged.
"More to the point," Ensign Siler began, "who on Romulus would be sending an old-fashioned Earth code for--"
"There's more," Lt. Langley stated firmly. "Numbers. Nine...two...seven..." She shook her head. "I should wait until it begins to repeat itself again. Wait a minute. Here. "S...O...S..."
Mr. B and Captain Harrison exchanged raised-eyebrow glances.
"S...One...Seven...Nine...Two...Seven...Six," Lt. Langley read, "...S...P...S...O...S...S...One...Seven... It's repeating now."
"Is it an S.O.S.?" Mr. B asked.
"If it is," Captain Harrison wondered aloud, "what might the other numbers be?"
"Other numbers and letters," Ensign Siler corrected.
"And why, as Ensign Siler was saying, would anyone..." Harrison's thought hung in the air for several seconds before he pulled it down himself. "An I.D. of some kind?"
"Maybe," Ensign Ciam nodded.
The Captain turned to his science officer. "Mr. Abelsaan."
"Already on it, Captain. Cross-referencing non-S.O.S. numbers and letters in the message with all known Romulan and Federation identifications." He stared at his monitor and sighed deeply. "Let's see. In the country of Hawaii on Earth it is the driver's license number of one Israel Kamakawiwo'ole, while in Washington D.C., it is the patent number for Zamweewee--a kind of child's toy."
Mr. B brightened. "I used to have a Zamweewee."
Will Abelsaan continued. "It is also the serial number for a 20th century weapon known as a revolver. In Arizona, it is the registration number of a right-wing organization called the Diamondheads, in England--"
"How many Earth references are there for this number, Mr. Abelsaan?"
"Two hundred thirteen, Sir."
"I see. Romulan references?"
"Checking." Another deep sigh. "None, sir."
"What about Federation identification codes that cross reference correctly?"
Mr. Abelsaan's hands flew over the consul. "One."
"Yes?"
"S-one-seven-nine-two-seven-six-S-P is the Starfleet service number for Ambassador..." His eyes widened and he turned to his Captain. "...Spock."
"My God," Lt. Langley stated.
"You're kidding," Ensign Ciam said.
"Spock?" Mr. B wondered aloud. "What would Ambassador Spock be doing on Romulus?" He motioned with his hand towards the consul. "Let's hear some of those other Earth references, Lieutenant."
But Captain Harrison was already out of his seat and giving orders. "Lieutenant Langley. Send that message along to Star Fleet command. I'll be in my ready room! Mr. B, you have the--" The doors to his ready room swished behind him before he could finish his sentence.
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