Fuel City

Next time you’re speeding through Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas headed for the Stemmons Freeway underpass, don’t hightail it to Parkland Hospital. Instead, hang a left on Industrial Blvd and head on over to Fuel City.

Technically, Fuel City is a gas station. But it’s a big one right in the middle of a tangle of elevated highways. And it sells every possible brand of mainstream domestic and Mexican beer to go. Plus it has a swimming pool with a bikini girl sitting on a plastic lawn chair. And, according to some scientific polling methodology, it has the best tacos in Texas.

The name enchanted me and came for a visit last night.



Fuel City could easily be a kitch landmark if some hipsters from the coast latched on to it but for now it’s a disappointment because it’s for real. There’s only the barest hint of irony. The tee shirts, which they will dig out from the far back somewhere if you ask for one, say in huge block letters, “FAMOUS FOR FUN” though I doubt Fuel City is even famous for fuel.

I guess the girl by the pool is a bit contrived but other than that, it seems to be more in tune with the Texas vibe than anything alt. Of course, for most of the coast hugging United States, Texas, and flyover country generally, is authentically alternative to what passes for officially sanctioned coolness. The huge signs pointing out the President George Bush Freeway are enough to make the whole area radioactive to sophisticates.

Texas doesn't allow you to forget where you are. Everywhere there are Texas flags. “Texas” is incorporated into most signs and brand names. And little Texas shapes are ubiquitously sprinkled over the landscape. And where Texas-jingoism leaves off, Americana begins.

This must be what Europeans feel when they come to anyplace in the United States . . . the flags, the overconfidence. It could certainly come off as arrogance, but it's actually far more benign than that.

I like jingo. Unlike the usual connotations, I think it’s hopeful and inclusive. After all, anyone can be Texan if they buy into the values.

The same with flag-waving America. If you buy into it, you're as American as George Bush. Can't say that about France or Sweden. And that may be a reason why those countries have such difficulty absorbing immigrants.

I'd like to compare assimilation success in chauvinistic states like Texas and less well defined states such as Connecticut. I suspect Mexicans feel more like Texans after a few months in Dallas than they feel like Nutmeggers after years of living in Hartford.

Anyway, it's remarkable to think that if JFK had simply said, "Ah drivah, don't ahh tahn heah. Take me ahh straight to ahh Fuel City," he'd probably be alive today.

Born to Sell

According to this CBS News Buzzwatch, Bruce Springsteen is putting his entire career at risk by taking a bold public stand on the Iraq war. He’s against it.

What kind of balls does it take to stand up in Hollywood and oppose the Bush Administration’s Iraq policy? Itsy bitsy teeny weeny ones.

It’s another case of dissent without consequences. The average Burmese monk is putting it all on the line. Springsteen is just standing on line.

The “story”, which inexplicably promotes Springsteen's upcoming appearance on CBS's 60 Minutes, says his views “will cause people to say he is unpatriotic.” Exactly who is saying that aside from CBS itself? It’s almost as if CBS is stoking a controversy in order to get more people to watch CBS programming.

I have no doubt that The Boss loves America and the Jersey Shore which is part of America and American cars, food, music, fans, and currency. No one is questioning his patriotism. But it’s fair to question is judgment.

I might even question his motives. I mean, why speak out now on network television just when he’s releasing a new album? (“Magic” on Columbia Records, Sony/BMG Corp.)

I sort of wonder when the anti-war folks are going to figure out they are being manipulated . . . by Sony Corp., by Viacom, by the Democratic Party, even Al Qaeda is leading them on. Everyone is either getting rich or getting elected (or both) and the policy never changes.

Why is that?

Mad Men










My old friend Mark nails the reason why Mad Men is one of the best things on TV these days. It’s not just the attention to details of 1960 design but also the amusing reminders of how effortlessly these “conformists” flirted with real danger.

The constant smoking, drinking, and driving . . . and often all three . . . while pregnant . . . either shows how foolish people were back then or how frightened we all are right now.

I remember vividly each year spending three days in the middle of the back seat of a smoke-filled Oldsmobile 98 driving to Florida (never stopping at South of the Border) and listening to The Living Strings. That was the Sixties. No tie-dyed hippiie shit for us.

If I can survive that, my kids can damn well put up with The Pixies for a half hour, dammit!

Le Freak

I’m sure I’m not the only one to recognize that Le Freak is the only disco song you’ll ever need to round out your music collection. It is the perfect example of the genre.

Does it have disembodied clapping? Yes.

Gratuitous references to Studio 54? Yup

What about absurdly simplistic orchestration and an exaggerated bass solo? Oh yes.

Utterly mindless and self absorbed lyrics extolling the benefits of a fictitious activity, one that exists in name only? Yeah man!

But there’s so much more. The name alone captures much of the despondent cheapness that characterized the mediocre age. It incorporates French which was considered at the time to be “classy” – a word, by the way, which cancels out its own meaning.

But it also includes a word devoid of meaning altogether. “Freak” takes the lazy way out, it means whatever you want it to mean. Everything is valid and absolutely nothing is authentic anymore. It says, “we give up.”

The simple title of the song expresses deeply the exhaustion and shame of the 1970s that drove popular culture to celebrate all that was base and ignoble. “Le Freak, c’est chic” says it all without actually saying anything.

Before the dismal Seventies is totally whitewashed by benign nostalgia I feel it is my duty to remind you of the profound half-assedness of what passed for creativity in a craptacular world of stagnation and moral decay.

I give you . . . Xanadu!

Wrong Move

I enjoy long, gloomy, mid-1970s German films as much as the next guy but I take exception to Wim Wenders’ embarrassing, pre-election, hand-wringing session on the Sabine Christiansen talk show on the German television channel ARD.

The director of dark art such as Alice in the Cities, The American Friend and The State of Things – as well as utterly forgettable big budget sell outs like Wings of Desire and The Million Dollar Hotel -- reveals himself to be as perceptive as Barbara Streisand when it comes to George Bush.

The Transatlantic Intelligencer reports that according to Wenders, America is turning into a fascist state under the boot heel of the Bush Administration.

“They (the Bush Administration) have made this country into an evil mixture [ein ganz böses Amalgam] of big business, petty bourgeoisie, and right-wing religion…. I still live there, but four more years of Bush I won’t live there, I won’t survive it. And the whole country won’t survive four more years of Bush. Before the end of these four years the country will implode like a giant balloon. . . .

. . . his (Bush’s) biggest triumph: his fanatic fundamentalist politics [sic.] has driven this free country to become also a fundamentalist totalitarian state....

Is anyone else troubled by how casually Europeans throw around words like “totalitarian” and “fascist”? I know they have far more experience with fascism than Americans do but it seems like they’ve learned nothing from the experience. In fact, saying the Americans are fascists conveniently devalues the entire concept of fascism and makes Europe’s Original Sin seem a bit more palatable for its heirs.

For that matter, claiming that Christianity and organized religion is “fundamentalism” also allows post-war Euros off the hook since that eliminates yet another of those pesky institutions with the moral authority to assign blame for human history’s most barbaric chapter.

The left doesn’t like all this talk about Good and Evil because they know they were once on the side of jackbooted evil but they can’t admit it because the greatest sin in the Progressive Canon is hypocrisy.

The thing about humanity, though, is that all of us are capable of evil. We have a choice and recognizing our mistakes is not hypocrisy . . . it’s penitence. And penitence requires humility, a resource in short supply in Europe -- particularly among cinemists.

Wenders should know more about the United States than most Europeans. He lives here after all. But he lives in one of the most parochial backwaters of the country (West Los Angeles) and seems to have absorbed a great deal of the local culture. But Wenders makes a mistake common among Europeans – he mistakes familiarity with insight.

Wenders has always been ambivalent about America. In his films it appears as a bleakly foreign land, an inscrutable vaguely malevolent force. “The Amis have even colonized our thoughts,” says one character in his film "Kings of the Road" after he can’t get an Elvis tune out of his head. It’s an intriguing place, but not one that Wenders really wants to know about. The flashing lights and strange colors are enough for him.

To gain a deeper insight into America, Wenders would have to venture into those places he would rather not understand. After all, it’s easier to say someone who is at ease with religion is a fundamentalist than it is to explore the reasons why that person feels such ease.

Maybe this deliberate ignorance is necessary.

I suspect those who are attracted to the group therapy aspects of leftist politics are afraid of getting too close to organized religion because they know they are inherently receptive to that sort of seduction. Look too closely and they’ll be sucked in. If you believe in nothing, you’ll believe in anything.

If Wenders held his nose long enough to comprehend the role religion played in American history and role it continues to play in contemporary culture and perhaps actually showed compassion for those he doesn’t understand rather than contempt, he might actually have the basis of a pretty good screenplay.

Too bad his career ended once he became popular. The opposite seems to be true of America.