Parsec Inc.

by Joe Coluccio

Language lives and is far too vital to be ossified in a graveyard of grammar books, the commercial guidelines of publishing house editors, or in the strictures of those who claim to hold our key to linguistic structure.

If it isn’t obvious by now, I will point out that my tack is toward descriptive, not predictive language. Grammar and word usage should not be something akin to a literal interpretation of the Bible. All rules passed from on high applied by tightening fingers around your stiff starched collar.

On the other hand (four fingers and a thumb, a friend of mine would say every time he was faced with a dilemma) I dislike common parlance and works of fiction that insist on peppering speech, prose, or script with the topical phrases, mostly gathered from popular movies and television, which rise then fall with the depressing regularity of a row of rotating sheet metal ducks at a busy bee bee gun gallery. It’s kinda like using a cellophane wrapped greeting card to express your emotion. I guess you could say that I dislike it big time, bro.

I believe that one of the important concepts of writing and reading is novelty. I’m not sure what I make of James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake, but I love the fact the end of the Wake, “A way a lone a last a loved a” wraps back around to the beginning sentence “riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s…” Ouroboros. Eternal Return. World Without End, Amen. I like the fact that the very words of the story carry as much meaning as the story structure. And many thanks to Murray Gell-Mann who discovered quarks then drove the name from Joyce’s elementary text into the sea of our language. “Three quarks for Muster Mark! Sure he hasn’t got much of a bark. And sure any he has it’s all beside the mark.” Strange and Charmed. It is all great fun. Great fun is important. Maybe more important than you think.

Science fiction, full of neologism and wacky meme, from its pulp roots, seems the best place to find novelty. Darko Suvin, who would most likely disagree with everything I think about the importance of the pulp origins of SF, describes the field by what he calls “cognitive estrangement” the presence of a “novum,” a novel device, that leads us to conceive our world in a different way.

“Ninety percent of everything is crap,’ observed Theodore Sturgeon. Ninety percent of crap may reveal everything of value. It’s a grand feeling to throw off the pristine uniform and wallow in the muck.

by Joe Coluccio, President Parsec

“How dare you resemble someone I despise?” says the passing woman as she slaps Lou Costello, who, unassuming and innocent, is waiting at the bottom of the tenement stairs for the return of Bud Abbot  You laugh, but that’s funny. Every bit as funny as The Susquehanna Hat Company and the tragedy that occurred at Niagara Falls. No bout a doubt it. I meally rean it. Bud and Lou are two of my comedy faves.

In succession, from 1948 to 1955, Abbot and Costello met the whole of the famous Universal Horrors. “Frankenstein,” “The Killer, Boris Karloff,” “The Invisible man,” “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” and “The Mummy.” Both Horror and Comedy are treated with respect in the films.

In the first of the movies Abbot (Wilbur Grey) and Costello (Chick Young) meet Frankenstein, they also meet Béla Lugosi, in the only film where he repeats his role of Dracula and Lon Chaney Jr. As Larry Talbot, The Wolf Man. “Even a man who is pure of heart, and says his prayers at night, may become a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms and the moon is full and bright!” After The Wolfman and Dracula fall into the sea, and the Frankenstein Monster succumbs yet again to a fiery demise, and all is right with the world, the disembodied voice of The Invisible Man (Vincent Price) disappears as a cigarette floating in the air.

As the series progresses, the monster gag becomes a little frayed, but the happenings are always more than a ton of fun. Even when the duo meets the Mummy, which is the weakest of the five films, has a clever chase sequence with three rag wrapped Egyptian princes.

I can’t help myself. Every once in a horror I grab the entire four volume DVD set (27 seven films) of “The Best of Abbot and Costello” off the shelf and watch them all over a period of a few days. When I get to the Universal horrors, like a comedy/horror freak zombie with a weak will and a powerful sense of nostalgia, I find copies to watch of Martin and Lewis in “Scared Stiff,” Bob Hope in “The Cat and the Canary” and “The Ghost Breakers.” Even “The Three Stooges “Have Rocket Will Travel” and “in Orbit.” Finally, I celebrate Halloween watching “Arsenic and Old Lace.” Once in a particularly virulent strain of my horror/comedy disorder, I also viewed the classic, Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo blockbuster “Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla.”

I was found babbling, much as Renfield, “ Abbot and Costello try to fly to Mars and end up in New Orleans. The Stooges accidentally end up on Venus. What cruel conspiratorial creatures on Mars are clouding our minds. Were Welles and Wells right? Did I hear the news correctly? Was there a landing in Grover’s Mills this morning? I sov you low much”

Friends and family dragged me away from the TV set and put me on a strict diet of more substantial fare. Did you know there are four more Antoine Doinel movies after “The 400 Blows?”

Seems I have been on a quest, circling the science fiction and fantasy whirlpool in a distant, yet interesting manner. On the periphery, far away from the madding bustle, I’ve been reminded of some quirky works of film and literature that don’t fit into any category. They are moving, deep, wonderful, and, at times, disturbing experiences.

In 1968, Burt Lancaster starred in a film, The Swimmer, directed by Frank Perry from a screenplay by Eleanor Perry adapted from a 1964 short story by John Cheever that appeared in The New Yorker. How’s that for SF? Neddy Merrill, who has been away for a time, appears in a bathing suit at a summer cocktail party in an upper-class suburb of New York City. As he schmoozes with his former friends who are surprised and happy to see him, he talks about his wife and kids, then looks across the well-maintained community landscape, dotted with homes and lawns and swimming pools. He realizes he can swim home, which is miles away, by stroking across the line of his neighbor’s backyard pools that form what he calls the Lucinda River, in honor of his wife. Ned jumps into the pool, energetically swims from one end to the other, and leaves his friends behind. He navigates the River for the rest of the film. I will reveal no more.

It is quite an experience to take the journey with Ned. Each step reveals part of the mystery of Ned that grows but is never addressed directly. It is the kind of quest story you find in fantasy stories. In a certain sense, the film reads like an episode of The Twilight Zone. There is a cameo performance by Joan Rivers and an appearance by John Garfield’s son. Sydney Pollack (uncredited) was brought in to direct some of the scenes. You can stream “The Swimmer” as an Amazon rental. It is also available on Blu-ray and standard disc. Or come out to my house and we can have a glass of wine and watch. There once was a single swimming pool in the neighborhood so that we will be landlocked. Unless, of course, we empty a line of vino bottles up to Frankstown Road.