Cheerio! Pip Pip! And All That Sort of Rot!

 The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare

starring Henry Cavill, Eiza Gonbzalez, Alan Ritchson, Henry Golding and Alex Pettyfer

directed by Guy Ritchie 

There are no surprises in this movie. All the Good Guys live; all the Bad Guys die. Heroes' shots never miss, while one wonders why villains even bother with guns. The mission is a success and Britain, as is widely known anyway, survives to conquer the Nazi menace with the somewhat important assistance of the US of A, arriving in the nick of time like the cavalry in a 50's western.

 

The point of this movie, if it needs one beyond mere entertainment, is to reinforce the traditional British self-image of devil-may-care aplomb in the face of danger: the Scarlet Pimpernel versus Napoleonic France, brought forward a century and a half or so. The Nazis are dominating Europe? I say! We shall need an impromptu team operating in complete secrecy; shall we say seven people? And I know just who we need. What's that? One is in enemy hands? Hmmm, deucedly awkward, eh what. Well, not a problem; we'll collect him on the way to our destination, and leave alive not a single one of the roughly 200 Germans guarding him. In fact, long as we're there, we may as well blow up the entire facility. Smashing idea, old chap; do, let's! Whisky?

 

The mission, we are told, was an actual one that took place just before the United States got involved in the war. (World War II, in case you haven't figured that out already.) Classified information about this event was released a few years ago, and a book was written (interestingly, two years before the declassification), rights were bought, and the messy business of making a movie chuddered into motion.

 

The film would have us believe that British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was a neophyte in office, likely to be destroyed politically by obtuse machinations of defeatist Royal Navy types; actually the man had been a major political figure for decades, and Prime Minister for over a year, by the time the story took place. But then, feature films aren't usually where one goes for a lesson in reality, any more than a Trump rally. The story is the supremely important thing, and it must be entertaining: a ripping yarn. Maybe it'll be kind of like what really happened, but Jeez, don't go getting all Sheldon about it!  Anyway, this movie-version Winnie C orders an off-the-books operation à la Mission: Impossible; Churchill did love that show by all accounts, even before it existed.*

 

The Special Op is to take out a U-boat supply operation in Fernando Po, at that time a Spanish colony and thus technically neutral in the War. Naturally, the best person for the job -- really the only person -- happens to be incarcerated for insubordination. I'm not sure if Ritchie intends it as a parody or an homage, but either way, it's fun to watch. You can picture the scene, played for laughs, wherein this perfect special operative is enticed into taking on the task without the actual words being spoken. All veddy British, don't you know: A hopeless task, against insurmountable odds, and nothing at the end but certain death? Rather! Whisky, old boy?**

If you're going to see this movie expecting character development or intense drama, stay home and stream something. If you just want to be entertained (or if you wonder how the British see themselves), I recommend this movie. It is entertaining, and the plot, while a little convoluted, is fairly easy enough to follow. Ritchie is not sidetracked by P.C. concerns any more than he is with rigid historical accuracy, he just tells his feathery-light story with as much gusto as will fit on the screen. And by the way, even the night-time scenes can actually be seen clearly. I was grateful for that. 

My only other complaint is that the soundtrack was overly loud, relentless, and not at all inspired.

* In fact, it was stories about offbeat Allied derring-do in the War that gave rise to my own interest in the subject. Without Churchill's love of such intrigue, and his willingness to authorize it, I probably would never have bothered with this movie.

** c.f., Gimli in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King: "Certainty of death? Small chance of success? What are we waiting for?"

Tulsa? Can it Really Be?

All the pictures from this trip can be seen online by clicking on this link.

The Trip Up 

Wednesday, October 25

 This is the fourth time I've planned to go to Tulsa. The first time, last year, I ended up skipping it because of the timing of things. I was coming up from San Antonio on the way to Michigan, & the mechanics of the drive meant that I would have gotten to Tulsa less than an hour before everything I was interested in closed, and nothing opened early the next day. So I figured it'd be best to leave it for another time.

 That 'nother time was supposed to be last June, when I was wandering around with my friend Roland. We went through Little Rock and the Ozarks and up to St. Louis, then back down through the Ozarks with a plan to drive the Talihena Scenic Route before heading up to Tulsa for a couple of days. Well, let's just say that, after a good long trip, neither of us was interested in extending it when it was a hundred degrees every day. So we went home instead, by the most direct route. Strike two.

 Then I made plans to do Tulsa and Fort Worth during my August-September travel window, when I had a five-week gap available to go somewhere. The weather was extremely uncooperative with that plan, so I shelved it with little reluctance. I mean, it was f'ing hot back then, and not just in Texas and Oklahoma. (That plan to visit Tulsa and Fort Worth was a fallback; initially I was going to spend a couple of weeks in Quebec during that window, but there were all these wildfires going in Canada, and after checking air-quality reports every day, I finally decided that plan was out. I would have been more reluctant to abandon it had it not been a five-day drive up, and a five-day drive back, and wicked hot.)

 So now, here I am, just back from the Huntsman Trip, and finally on my way to Tulsa. I would have started out Monday, but I had an issue with the car that I decided (late last Friday) I could not deal with myself, so the car was in for a repair to the rear window regulator, a steel cable with a cheap piece of plastic on it that apparently is going to break every 3 or 4 years. Anyway, got it back first thing this morning -- my mechanic had quoted me a cost of $4,000 a few months back, but that was because Jaguar charges $3,000 for the replacement parts. Turns out they only sell the entire assembly, including window glass (didn't need it), regulator mounting panel (didn't need it), regulator motor (didn't need it) and regulator. I bought an OEM regulator on line for $21, and took it in for my mechanic to install when I realized I couldn't do all that stuff myself. (There were 20 steps to get to the regulator, and 22 to put it all back together, and I don't even know what some of the words mean in the instructions. So I let them do it.)

 Because I have an appointment back home next week, I dropped the Fort Worth part of the trip; I'll do that some other time. I'm sure it'll be a maudlin trip down memory lane anyway. But because there are so many things on my List of Things to Do in Tulsa, I added an extra day to my stay there. 

 The trip started today. Because of the car-repair timing I got on the road about an hour and a half later than I'd planned. There was a huge line of storms moving into my route from west Texas, but I decided to go anyway. The rain caught me around Hamilton, Texas, west of Waco, and slowed me down pretty badly. I haven't seen rain like that outside of Louisiana in ... well, my entire life, as far as I can remember. It was biblical. But I made it to Hico for lunch at the Koffee Kup, which has been The Best Place for decades, though I hadn't been there in the last 20 years. I had the best cheeseburger ($3.29) and excellent steak fries ($3) and a slice of Doctor's Office Pie ($5.29, and don't ask what's in it; go have some yourself). I strongly recommend the place. When I was done the rain had stopped and I headed off.

 The only problem I encountered otherwise on Wednesday was that, south of Dallas, my phone lost the GPS signal, dumping me in downtown Dallas with no idea how to get out. Dallas is a maze to me, even though I used to live there. I finally thought to re-boot my phone, and it found the GPS signal for a while, then lost it again. I re-booted it again & the problem has not recurred. (Well, it did, but the phone quickly re-acquired the signal that time.)

 I had hoped to get to Broken Bow on Wednesday, but only got to Idalou ... which is only 12 miles from Broken Bow, so I guess that's not something worth complaining about. And the hotel I found turned out to be a great deal: extremely clean, very cheap, with very good linens and very quiet.

 I've been listening to an audiobook called 150 Glimpses of the Beatles. It's reflections from various people of the group's early years, and it's very interesting to me, who vaguely remembers Beatlemania mostly from old clips on TV. Unfortunately it's read by three people, and whenever they read quotes from anybody, they do voices. They do passable imitations of the Fab Four, whose voices are familiar to everyone of my generation, I'm sure, and they do passable voices for British celebrities and politicians (as far as I can tell). But their American accents are just horrible. In their estimation, everyone from fangirls in Denver to Baptist preachers in Florida has a Noo Yawk accent; they all sound like Brando in On the Waterfront. Very irksome. But still an enjoyable book, a mix of history and trivia. Brings back memories.

Thursday, October 26

I slept through the night last night for the first time in years. Don't know why, but I did. And felt more refreshed today than I have in an age. Wunnerful.

It was pouring rain again when I left, about 6:30, while it was still dark. I stopped at a gas station/restaurant/car museum called Gasquatch, which I'd been to a few months ago. All muscle cars, so nothing to get excited about. Had coffee and a breakfast sandwich mainly just to kill time, hoping that dawn would come and I could see. It didn't, at least not soon enough. When I got back on the road it was so hard to see that I actually pulled over and got out to make sure I had two working headlights. (I did.) I puttered along into Broken Bow (12 miles away, if you'll recall) where I stopped for another cup of coffee just to kill some more time. I was a little more successful that second time. 

While I was waiting for the sun to come up I opened Google Maps and set it to take me to the eastern end of the Talimena National Scenic Route. Then I set out. The road going up was very pretty: winding, recently resurfaced, lightly travelled, with alternating light rain and fog. After about an hour and a half I arrived ... at the western end of the drive. So I turned off Google Maps, got out the road atlas I was given for Christmas, and headed east across the ridges. Despite the occasional fog, it was a pretty drive, with some nice views of the valleys on either side. Then I headed north to check out Mike Fuller's Car & Gas Museum in Inola.

Mike Fuller's Museum

 It proved to be, in essence, an old garage building filled with about half the man's collection of old cars (mostly from the '20s and '30s, but a few from the '50s), along with hundreds of glass finials from old-style gas pumps, gas station signs, and toy cars. The cars are in various states of repair; he has restored a couple, but most of them are in the condition they were in when he acquired them. I spent probably two hours looking over the collection, and then nearly another hour sitting outside chewing the fat and getting scratched by his very friendly, very chubby dog Nellie.

the Correll Museum's car collection

 From there, I headed just down the road a piece to the Correll Museum in Catoosa,  a suburb of Tulsa and pretty much the next town along from Inola. I of course went only for the cars, of which there are only about a dozen, but also found myself fascinated by the displays in the first building, chiefly local geological samples and toys. Then, as long as I was in Catoosa, I figured I might as well go by and see what the town is most famous for: the Blue Whale of Catoosa. Fabulous.

 Then I drove into Tulsa proper and found my hotel. 

 When I was looking for a place to stay in Tulsa -- a town I knew nothing whatsoever about -- I thought that I would stay in a nice hotel downtown. I can afford it, I thought. And I found a nice hotel downtown, which was more or less reasonably priced and part of the Wyndham group, so I'd get Rewards points, which actually does make booking that group of hotels more attractive. But I have to say it's getting less and less attractive with the passing years. Now, it happens that the downtown hotel I found didn't have a room available for the three nights I planned to be here, so I started looking further out. And when I had to choose between a room 6 miles from downtown for $117 a night, or a room 5 miles from downtown for $76 a night, I decided that, if I couldn't be downtown, I might as well save $120. I thought, Super 8? It's a good enough chain. It'll be fine.

 It's not fine. It is barely adequate. The motel itself is passable: a little on the tatty side. The bathroom counter, mirror and shower are made for short people. The room's lighting is inadequate. The towels are left over from a Civil War army hospital. The switch that controls the only light in the room also controls the switch where I had my computer plugged in. I did not know that. So when I woke up the next morning I found my computer had drained its battery substantially. 

 Worse is the neighbourhood this hotel is in. There was a homeless guy in the parking lot when I arrived, trying to affix the front of his shopping basket to a skateboard. There are people who appear to be homeless wandering the streets throughout the area. And of course there's a lot of noise from the freeway at the front of the hotel. (It gets better at night, thankfully.) (Also from the 20-something idiot girl pounding on the room next door and threatening to break the window if they didn't open up.) This is not exactly a common experience with Super 8, but it is becoming increasingly common. Which means I'm less & less interested in Super 8 motels, and in Wyndham. (I also had problems with their mobile website for most of this year, but that seems now to be fixed. Still, it has a place in the calculus of preferences. Likewise my experiences with both La Quinta and Super 8 in Amarillo, going to Colorado and returning every year.) I think when I use up my Rewards points I'll switch loyalty to another chain; maybe Marriott? (I've already found that the Best Western in Deming, New Mexico, is a better deal than the La Quinta there, so now I have a Best Western loyalty account.)

 Enough of that. Nobody but me is interested (though Wyndham should be) so I'll move on to the Main Course of this trip.

Tulsa Itself

Day one: Friday, October 27

 I lucked out this morning, and found a good breakfast place half a block from my hotel. I knew rain and colder temperatures were expected, and I walked as far as the corner before I noticed just how close and just how threatening the clouds were, so I walked back to the hotel and loaded up the car for the day's explorations (i.e., I got my city map) and drove over to the restaurant. Good coffee, one slice of wheat toast and one egg over easy. Not many people there, but everybody seemed to know everybody else, which made me feel very much the outsider. No matter; I drank my coffee, ate my breakfast and left, first for a branch of Chase Bank, then to the Philbrook Museum, Tulsa's local museum of fine art. 

hand-carved

 The museum is located in a former private mansion with extensive gardens in the nicest part of town. Reminds me a lot of the McNay, surrounded by Terrell Hills and Alamo Heights: big, expensive houses built by the Pillars of Society. Only the Philbrook house was much nicer than Lady McNay's place. The museum has added on extensively, with kind of half-assed attempts to match the style, but the additions still end up looking like Postmodern Corporate Committee Choice. Too bad

 Anyway. Naturally, being in Oklahoma, you'd expect that this museum's collection is fairly heavy on the Native American artists; and it is. I saw works from Lakota, Hopi, Navajo, Pueblo, Blackfeet, even Chemahuevi artists in abundance. But there's only one small room with perhaps a dozen pieces by artists from Oklahoma tribes. That surprised me.

 There were a number of pieces that caught me up in them in the three hours I was there. One thing I noticed in particular is how ugly the baby Jesus is portrayed in early-Renaissance paintings. In some He looks like a nude Fred Mertz, in others He just looks morbidly obese, and with a tiny head. I thought about taking pictures to illustrate it, but apparently I forgot.

 I did, though, take pictures of many works, which (again) can be seen in my online photo album for this trip. But three in particular interest me enough to present here.

1. Fanon Mask by Joanne Petit-Frère. This is a head made out of (synthetic) hair formed into a face and mounted on the lower part of a stone bust remnant. According to the accompanying placard, it has something to do with Covid 19, so I'll let you draw your own conclusions as to what the artist is saying. I mention it here just because I found it fascinating: initially startling and repulsive, then merely disturbing, then (I flatter myself) meaningful and even ... well, not entirely ugly.

2. Two Generations, by Rose Kuper. According to the painting's placard, "two women appear to be dreaming." That's not what I see when I look at it. I see a young woman staring wistfully out the window at a life she cannot access, while next to her, her grandmother prays. To me the painting shows the frustrations of youth and the frustrating complacency of age. 

3. A Day at the Beach, by Martha Walter. This painting is remarkable to me only because it was painted in 1930 or so, and yet clearly shows the image of the Starship Enterprise in the sky above the beach. I can't explain it. 

 There were a number of other beautiful things at the museum, but those three, I thought, were a little out of the ordinary. 

Tulsa skyline, 1906 & 1928

 One of the things Tulsa is known for is Art Deco architecture. The city experienced its greatest boom time during the height of the Deco era, and as a consequence many of the major buildings are exemplars of that style. I found a listing on line for the Tulsa Art Deco Museum, so naturally I wanted to go, as I'm a fan of that style of architecture. The museum, formerly located downtown in one of those Deco buildings, has relocated to a shopfront on 11th Street (Historic Route 66), where it consists of one room, and a tiny room at that, in one of America's more interesting and eclectic gift shop. The Deco stuff on display is mostly mundane, and no effort is made to protect it from curious hands, yet it seems to be in good condition. The museum artifacts, however, have to share space with inflatable dinosaurs, fridge magnets, Lego Star Wars kits, Disney princess dolls and oddities like an inflatable tiara ("for formal emergencies"; I very nearly bought one as a gag gift). The shop sells everything from complex 3-D puzzles and elegantly bound classic novels to t-shirts, taffy-by-the-pound and Christmas decorations. While I was disappointed in the Deco Museum, I take advantage of the opportunity to start my Christmas shopping. (Spoiler alert: you're all getting stuffed animals or resin boxes in the shape of Anubis.) (Just kidding.)

 By the time I finished lunch today (at Tzatziki's Mediterranean Cafe on 15th Street: good but not great) I felt like I was coming down with something. It was in the 70s when I got up this morning, but dropped soon into the 50s and is going down to the 40s tonight. I prepared for the weather as best I could, with a long-sleeved T-shirt, jeans and a windbreaker, and since I was indoors substantially all day, I thought I was ready. But now, at 10pm as I write this, I'm pretty sure I'm going to feel like crap tomorrow. Fortunately I've done almost all the main things on my list of things to do; what remains is a small car museum west of Tulsa, and the aforementioned Deco buildings downtown, which are basically point-and-shoot occasions. Consequently I have decided (just at this moment, in fact) that I'm going to check out of this crappy hotel tomorrow morning instead of the next day, stop and look at the downtown buildings, go see the cars, and then start for home. I will skip the Bob Dylan Center, I think, as I'm not all that interested in it (mainly I'm curious as to what the Hell it's doing in Tulsa, Oklahoma); and I'll probably skip the Woody Guthrie place in his home town (the name of which escapes me at the moment) for the same reason.

 That was an aside: stream-of-consciousness typing. I don't want to forget to mention that I also went to the Jewish art museum and the Blue Dome District. These were both on my list.

wooden vessels by Donna Matles

 The Jewish art museum was interesting in a provincial way. There was the expected Holocaust display, which I found (having seen others in several cities) oddly sanitized. This one was arranged to show the life of European Jews in chronological context as their place in society descended from vital elements of their various communities to hated outsider to victims of unfathomable cruelty. There was an attempt to relate the shoah to modern hate movements (the KKK, white nationalism) but I found all those presentations failed to arouse much in the way of anger or revulsion in me. Maybe I'm just too enured to it; maybe I've seen it all too often already. 

 Otherwise, the museum was dedicated to the local scene, or modern pop culture. There was a section on Synagogues in Oklahoma; there were explanations geared either towards children or utterly parochial non-Jews about Jewish holidays and a little about Jewish (biblical) history: how to play with a dreidel. What order the Channukah candles are lit. What Rosh Hashannah is. Interesting, maybe even enlightening, but essentially mundane.

 On the other hand, there were two things of particular interest to me in the Jewish art museum. One was a small display of stunningly beautiful woodcraft by a now-deceased local artist named Donna Matles; the other was a huge stained-glass synagogue window built about a hundred years ago by the Tiffany Workshop. It was of major interest to me because, unlike every other such window I've ever seen on display anywhere, this one was mounted in such a way that I could see the back of it, and so now I understand how it was done. Not that I will now go home and build stained-glass windows in the style of Tiffany, but at least now I feel like I could do it if I wanted to. I like that feeling.

Tulsa skyline at night, including the Blue Dome

 Finally, tonight, I went down to see what the Blue Dome District is. It's like St Mary's Strip back home: a bunch of clubs and bars and restaurants catering to young people. I had dinner at the Dilly Diner (I don't know why, but I recognized the name from somewhere) -- excellent pulled pork nachos -- and saw the Blue Dome, which is unimpressive, and went back to the hotel. It was still early and I'm damned if I wanted to be out there late on Hallowe'en weekend. Especially the way I'm feeling.

 Day Two: Saturday, October 28

 Definitely a sinus cold. Oh, well. I checked out of my sleazy hotel and had breakfast down the street (they got my order wrong -- ham instead of bacon in my omelet -- but I ate it anyway), then went to see some of the Art Deco buildings downtown The South Boston Avenue United Methodist Church was easily the most beautiful; the others were kind of meh. (And of course there was the Tulsa Marathon to contend with; those damn marathons seem to just follow me around the country.) Following that, I went to the supposed location for the Greenwood Memorial, a little storefront by the baseball stadium, but it was vacant. Then to the Center of the Universe, a spot near the train station. I got out of the car and wandered around but couldn't figure out what was supposed to be special about it. It was just a few rows of bricks in a circle around a bit of broken concrete, on a bridge over the train tracks. I tried yelling, to see if maybe it had special acoustics, but if it did only a dog can hear it. It was cold and drizzly and so I didn't investigate further. Nor did I bother to take a picture: it was that not special.

 From there I headed out of town to Sapulpa, to see the Heart of Route 66 Auto Museum. Not huge, but some nice cars, and I took lots of pictures. Of course I like the museum: they had both a 1955 Jaguar XK-140 and a 1971 Jaguar E-Type. What more could a body want? There were a couple of dozen other nice cars, but too many of the displayed vehicles were fancy modifications or other one-off models, like a "Maserati" built by a local guy in the 1950s from parts of a bunch of other marques, and a mid-1950s Ford Custom with a fancy paint job. And a lot of muscle cars, which, I'm sorry, seen 'em enough.

 There would appear to be some problem on Interstate 35, because when I asked Google Maps for directions home, first it told me there might be flooding in Dallas, then it gave me a route that takes me down into Fort Worth, around the northwest side, and out I-30 west to pick up 281. Later on, it changed the route to avoid I-35 altogether, sending me west at Ardmore, Oklahoma, and then south. I actually preferred that route anyway, and spent the day on just the kind of roads I like to travel. But I didn't sleep well last night, and by 4pm I was barely able to stay awake. I stopped at a convenience store for a break, thinking I'd close my eyes for a few minutes -- that usually solves the problem -- but instead I decided to just get a room for the night in the next town, Bowie, and that's where I am now, finishing up this blog post. I'm about five hours from home, and it looks now that I-35 is the fastest route to get there. But 281 is the most eco-friendly route, and only takes a few minutes longer, and it will take me by the Koffee Kup in Hico once again. Mmm, pie! That is worth the extra time!

Postscript:

I finished the Beatles audiobook on the drive from Bowie to Hico on Sunday. The very last "chapter" consisted of a single quote from some 1967 article by someone who was not a fan, to the effect that no one in their right mind could think that, in 50 years, the Beatles' music would be a regular part of life. I think an extra layer of irony is added by the fact that, in the next week, the Beatles will have yet another new Number 1 hit.