Douglas MacKinnon: The Bulwer-Lytton of the Joint Command

 Townhall tough guy Douglas MacKinnon "is former White House and Pentagon official who spent three years working in a Joint Command."  This was back during the Reagan Administration, so I assume by "Joint Command," Mr. MacKinnon means he was in charge of ordering 55-gallon drums of paraquat refills for the Air National Guard.

But he's also a writer of tough guy, Ludlumian fiction, with titles like The Apocalypse Directive, and America's Last Days: A Novel, and with his latest book, he's facing the same dilemma confronted by every tough guy American writer from James Fenimore Cooper to Ernest Hemingway to Norman Mailer: dismissive online reviews that seek to weaken his main character's bladder control.

The Top Ten Quotes From a Fictional Hero That Liberals Already Hate

The Threshold Editions division of Simon & Schuster (the publisher of Dick Cheney, Mark Levin, Glenn Beck, and Laura Ingraham -- defenders of Traditional Values, all) has just published my new novel titled Vengeance Is Mine.

Because The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants was already taken.

No surprise that some liberals are already attacking the book and the beliefs of the main character.

You say "attacking," we say "mocking."  Let's split the difference and just say that some liberals are "macking" on your main character, which makes your book sound sexier, and more like an Iceberg Slim novel.

The thumbnail description of the book being that twenty years after ex-CIA operative Ian Wallace watched a brutal KGB Colonel ruthlessly murder the love of his life (and their unborn child),

I hate when that happens.

he is presented with the chance for revenge. The former KGB Colonel is now part of the Russian Mafia and on his way to Wallace’s hometown of Boston.

The key to a successful blood vendetta is that it must be conveniently located, like a Denny's, or a car wash.  I mean, I'm all for exacting revenge on the ruthless killer of my wife and unborn child, but not if it involves getting on the freeway.

So I wonder if Mr. MacKinnon named his secret agent character "Ian," after Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, because that would be incredibly clever and super sly, and "Wallace" after William Wallace, the Scottish freedom fighter, because Douglas likes to occasionally mix that mass ass-baring scene from Braveheart into his regular porn rotation of Tijuana Toilet Tramps and Roughin' It.

What sets the main character Ian Wallace apart is that he is fanatically conservative and proudly wears his strong belief in Traditional Values on his sleeve.

Oh, I see.  He was named after Ian Smith and George Wallace.

As such -- and as to be expected -- some in the liberal mainstream media have already started to beat-up me, the book, and Ian.

Beating up on you, I can see -- I've done it myself at the old site.  Beating up on your book?  Eh.  As Joanna often says, "honestly, who's got the energy?"  But I do have a beef with Ian, because Dude, you're a fictional character!  You can could fire a laser beam from your tie tack, or pull an RPG out of your pants, but you can't take a little chin music from some random Amazon users?  No wonder you sat there with your thumb up your ass while a KGB colonel ruthlessly slaughtered your family.

With that as background, what follows are some Ian Wallace quotes from Vengeance Is Mine that seem to be offending some thin-skinned liberals:

• "As a proud member of the NRA and a very strong supporter of the 2nd Amendment, I nodded my head in admiration of Tommy's Remington shotgun and his belief in self-protection. With the current liberal occupant of the Oval Office and his allies in Congress and the media working day and night to take away our guns and ammunition, I sincerely hoped Tommy had more where that came from."

Well...Okay.  I'm a liberal, my skin is probably as thin as the next guy's, and I admit, I do find that passage offensive.  But my objection isn't exactly political...

• "If I were emperor of the earth for one day, one of the first things I would do would be to disband the TSA and turn the entire operation over to the private sector. In the parade of our government being intrusive and out of control, the beyond incompetent TSA is carrying the baton and wearing the shiniest jackboots of the lot.”

This appears to be a Joycean allusion to an earlier work -- specifically, the original verse of Irving Berlin's Easter Parade, which was only heard during the out of town try-outs.  When the 1933 musical revue As Thousands Cheer opened on Broadway, matinee idol Clifton Webb warbled the now familiar words, but in Baltimore and New Haven, audiences heard him sing to co-star Marilyn Miller, "You'll be the grandest incompetent/In the parade of our government being intrusive and out of control."

• "Every time I enter Massachusetts, I feel like I am entering the former Soviet Union. Creeping Socialism Bay-State style...as a conservative who believes in limited government and lower taxes, it's a bitter pill to swallow, but home is home."

If this doesn't really sound like a quote from a breathless, seat-of-your pants thriller, that's only because MacKinnon originally wrote it as a 30-second campaign ad for Scott Brown.

• "...You had to wonder sometimes if the Members of Congress worked for the American people or for those who would like to dismantle the CIA one spy at a time."

I'm sorry, but the answer is C) the Koch Brothers.  However, we do have some lovely parting gifts, including the Vengeance Is Mine Home Game...

• "I always get a queasy feeling whenever I enter Cambridge (MA). It is an exceptionally liberal city. Lots of fanatics...75% of the inhabitants consider themselves to be very liberal...I don't think Beijing comes close to that number. The only places on earth that might be more liberal than Cambridge are our own State Department and the United Nations."

Ian sounds a little bitter.  Which is fine, nothing wrong with a dark, brooding protagonist -- just look at Casablanca, or most every Harlequin Romance -- but I prefer the kind of cynicism that leads your hero to pre-empt a speech by rising from the table with an abrupt, "Gentlemen, your business is politics.  Mine is selling drinks," rather than pitching in with made-up statistics about arugula consumption.

• "As one who had worked with Mossad and the Israel Defense Forces in the past...I always became particularly incensed whenever I saw one of these spoiled, rich, never-had-to-serve-their nation liberal brats walk past me wearing a Keffiyah scarf in "solidarity" with the Palestinian people...the same "populist" idiots who wear the Che Guevara T-shirts and have no idea of the atrocities that man committed against homosexuals, blacks, and children."

You can always tell when an author is writing from personal experience, and this passage reeks of the kind of passion that only comes from the heart.  I imagine Mr. MacKinnon's own service was hard, but ennobling, although strangely I can't find any mention of it.  He used to boast of having been Bob Dole's press secretary, but lately that information seems to have slipped his bio, so maybe he also forgot about humping an M-16 through the sweltering rice paddies of Indochina.

Wait, here's his official author biography from Simon & Schuster (Canada):  "Douglas MacKinnon has written for both the White House and the Pentagon."

Ah, so when he says he worked in a "Joint Command," he really means he worked on the Commanders' Joints by providing the brass with a full manual press release.

• "Well, at least not the ones being blamed by the liberal leadership in Congress for every disaster including the fictional and budget busting global warming --- aka climate change."

"Say, Ian, brutal former KGB Colonel Vladimir Ivanchenko is in Boston.  Shouldn't we go make him pay for murdering the love of your life and your unborn child...?"

"I can't leave the house right now.  It snowed yesterday in DC and Hannity is making fun of Al Gore."

• "The kind of people who insisted in saying "Happy Holidays" at Christmas and were offended or thought you a bigot for saying the perfectly proper "Merry Christmas" in a nation that was more than 80% Christian."

"Ian, I don't want to tell an ex-CIA operative his business, but Ivanchenko's only going to be in town for a week.  Shouldn't you revenge yourself upon him now for killing your family, and argue with the Target check-out clerk later?"

• "I used to read the paper normally front to back, but all…the liberal bias pushed by most mainstream papers was starting to have a cumulative effect on my already fragile mind."

Ian Wallace: on the surface, a deadly killing machine bent on vengeance, while underneath, he's everybody's elderly, email-forwarding aunt.

Mainstream media and liberal attacks aside, I am confident Ian Wallace can take care of himself.

So am I, assuming that Ian fights his battles primarily in Usenet threads.  Anyway, the "liberal mainstream" attacking Mr. MacKinnon's book appears to have emerged from the same place as Ian Wallace himself -- Doug's asshole fertile imagination.  I can't find any evidence of a genuine (though coincidentally sales enhancing) controversy, and there are only eight reviews on his Amazon page, 5 of them favorable.  This is the top one:

Aside from being a fan of author MacKinnon's previous novels, one of the things which made me want to read Vengeance Is Mine, was the endorsement on the cover by conservative commentator Tony Blankley which said: "A Thriller for the Tea Party Generation." How right he was.

You know, I didn't much care for Tony Blankley, but I feel kind of bad that that's his epitaph.

We Used to Know

By Chris Vosburg

As Mitt Dullard Romney rejuvenates the cold war dreams of the Reagan years in his campaign speeches, I thought it might be worthwhile to remind us all that there are those of us who were never quite down with the whole “evil empire” thing, even back in the “space race” days—we thought the world of Yuri Gagarin and his brave venture into orbit in the Vostok spacecraft, and it tickles me to remember that his biggest fans were the American astronauts assembled for the similar US effort.

International Space Station resident and flautist Colonel Catherine Coleman is one such brave new worlder, and last year, perhaps as the result of a Craigslist ad (“looking for musicians to jam with—have rehearsal space”) found someone to play flute with—an aging popstar fellow who shared her appreciation of the cosmonaut’s journey and “our rocket heroes”, and they performed a duet:

 Coupla notes:

Awesome hair, babe. This was, by the way, in April 2011, commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Gagarin’s trip. There’s been on TV since a series of ads for a sexual stimulant that promises to “blow your hair back”, with resultant hairstyles to demonstrate, so, yeah, okay, comedy.

Cady Coleman confirms: it’s much easier to play flute standing on one leg in zero gravity.

Yuri Gagarin bumped in ‘68, crashing a jet he was test-piloting. Doesn’t seem fair, does it?

“We Used To Know”, is the title of an old Jethro Tull song, which has some notoriety as a result of the fact that the Eagles, which toured with Tull in ‘72, used the same chord progression in “Hotel California”. Different key, different time signature, but Ian Anderson noticed as well, and graciously said in an interview that he considered it “a tribute, much in the same sense as the tribute Rolex watch I’m now wearing.”

And lastly, I salute our “Rocket Heroes” often, as I watch the ISS sail overhead. Yes, it’s visible from the ground, and NASA has a web page which gives time, duration and direction (page is for Los Angeles, select other location as required). It’s typically the brightest object in the sky, and you might mistake it at first for an aircraft-- but it has no blinking lights, so there you go. If in Los Angeles, by the way, note that we have a nice one coming up tonight (Saturday), appearing on the Northwest horizon at 8:43 PM and traveling directly overhead, departing in the Southeast horizon three minutes later. Cool, huh?

Post Friday Beast Blogging: The Panic and Passed out Edition

Riley:  Help!  I'm trapped with a book on cinematography theory, and it's getting really pretentious in here!  Send help...!

Moondoggie:  ...while I am experiencing the otherworldly calm and total bliss known only to a Tibetan Lama or a taxidermied moose.

Good News! Bad News!

Actually, there's good news, bad news, and weird news.  The good news is that the Good News isn't the Good News starring June Allyson and Mel Tormé.  The bad news, however, is so bad it might as well involve Mel Tormé, so let's get that out of the way first:

Some of you may have already heard that Annti -- our own much adored Joanna -- has suffered yet another cruel misfortune, this time the loss of her beloved "furry chirren."  The Boy, as he was affectionately known, passed away in September, and now his sister, Biddy is gone.  Perhaps it's a small mercy that Biddy, an older cat in poor health, won't have to spend her final days enduring the shocks and stresses that will surely follow Annti's eviction, but that means Joanna herself much face those same things alone, making this normally sad event seem all the more heartbreaking.

Joanna sent me this photo months ago, and I wish I had posted it sooner.  But perhaps there is no better time than now.

 Farewell, Boy and Biddy.

Happily, there is one slim ray of sunshine beaming down on the World O' Crap community.  Yesterday, our Special Correspondent Keith sent me the following email:

 After 16 mos. of unemployment, as of this afternoon have finally been offered a position that offers gainful employment. I'll start in a few weeks.

[Details redacted so Michelle Malkin isn't tempted to snoop around his office break room, looking for granite countertops.]  So that's one positive thing that's happened to a fellow Crapper, but the good news for us is that Keith (despite blandishments from another blog which has been attempting to poach our staff) will be maintaining his Wo'C Special Correspondency:

However, I shall not abandon the magnificent cause of crap and will continue to provide our readers with the worst of the worst. So stay tuned.

In my own life, things continue to be stressful, but occasionally the tension is relieved by a bit of Dadaist street theater.  Walking down Hollywood Boulevard yesterday, en route to meet a friend, I had to step off the curb as a young guy dressed in a backwards baseball cap, a button down shirt, and nude below the waist, burst onto the sidewalk after stealing a plaid tea towel from a souvenir shop.  He engaged in a brief, violent tug-of-war with the store's middle-aged proprietor, and lost, perhaps because he could only wrestle one-handed, as the other was assigned to clutching his groin.  He spun around and sprinted down the street, with the grizzled, wheezing, bespectacled shopkeeper in hot pursuit.

When I recounted this to my friend, her main interest was in the tea towel.  "Was he covering his junk, or just being an asshole?"

"He was both covering his junk and being an asshole," I said.  "But not, alas, successfully covering his asshole."

Toward a Radical Re-Interpretation of Just For Men Mustache Dye

Smear of greasepaint Joseph Farah is giddy with his own bad self, for he has written a naughty headline at internet snake oil dealership, WorldNetDaily.  But don't worry about slipping into a fugue state after reading his outrageous, paradigm-shifting words, because on advice of counsel he spends the first paragraph talking you down like you're on a bad acid trip.  So relax.  Take some vitamin B complex.  If you've got a beer, drink it.  And put on some Allman Brothers.

Live like George Zimmerman
Exclusive: Joseph Farah says shooter behaved as men should in a self-governing society

While Joseph behaves as Maoists do in a free society, since there was a long lived graffito in downtown L.A., applied to a overpass pylon during the whole "Gang of Four" business in 1976, that read, "Jiang Qing, Live like Her!"  This was replaced about four years later, presumably by dues-paying members of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, with the slogan, "Bob Avakian: Live like Him!"  I absorbed these messages at a formative time in my life, and by 1980 I didn't know who to live like, so instead I adopted the Depression Era motto of the National Restaurant Association: "Enjoy Life--Eat Out More Often."

I know that’s a provocative headline – especially when all the facts on the Trayvon Martin case are not yet in.

But it's not like the facts could ever boomerang and make this sentiment seem stupid and short-sighted.  It's just like Joseph's earliest money-making scheme, back in 1966 (before he started selling the crisis seed banks, the secret karate moves the government doesn't want you to know about, and the perpetual motion Galtian solar engines you can make from stuff found in your junk drawer), his line of "Live like Richard Speck" t-shirts.  Oh sure, some unsavory things came out at the subsequent trial, but these rugged Beefy-Ts remained a popular item pretty much everywhere they were sold, except in certain Chicago-area nursing school gift shops.

However, as we learn more about this case, it is becoming clearer every day that George Zimmerman was not only defending himself against a vicious attack when he shot Martin, he was doing so while attempting to be a good citizen, a Good Samaritan, watching out for his family, friends and neighbors.

That's pretty much the lesson I drew from the parable of the Good Samaritan, and it bugs me that people focus on the protagonist helping that one injured man, rather than focusing on all the men he injured along the way.  It's like the complaint lodged by Peter Graves Impersonator Bryan Fischer that the Pentagon has totally "feminiz[ed] of Medal of Honor," because "every Medal of Honor awarded during these two conflicts has been awarded for saving life. Not one has been awarded for inflicting casualties on the enemy. Not one."

Clearly, there's only one cure for this misunderstood, vulva-ized parable, and that's an action movie.  I'm just spitballing here, but I see a kind of Superfly-style poster, with the Samaritan standing in the foreground, holding a bloody sword and giving the camera a hard look while a woman clings to his leg, and the tagline reads: "To You, He's a Good Samaritan.  But to Them...He's Bad News!"

Since the facts of the case clearly no longer support the hysterical claims of Al Sharpton, Spike Lee and Jesse Jackson that Zimmerman stalked Trayvon Martin and murdered him in cold blood because he was black, there is a new fallback narrative emerging from the media. It goes like this: “Well, the police dispatcher advised Zimmerman not to follow the suspicious person and let them handle it. If he only had listened to the authorities, Martin would still be alive and Zimmerman would not be facing second-degree murder charges.”

Nonsense.

In a self-governing society, the police are not the boss of you, and aren't allowed to tell you who you may and may not hunt within the confines of your own gated community.  The most they can do is issue you a ticket if you bag more than your limit (although, if you shoot a teenage girl, they may ask to see your doe license).

No. 1: We don’t know that Zimmerman was still following Martin. Martin may have been following Zimmerman, for all we know.

It could have been a wacky French style farce, playing out on the streets of Sanford, Florida, with Feydeau's trademark slamming doors replaced by the sound of fatal gunshots.

No. 2. This is what police say all the time. It’s what the Nanny State-types persuade Americans to do: “Just let the police handle it. This is our job. We’re trained to deal with these matters.”

That's exactly what police detective Christopher George said to embittered Vietnam Vet Robert Ginty in the 1980 film The Executioner, when he advised Robert not to go into crackhouses and roast hopheads at close range with his homemade flame-thrower.  I like to think this typical Carter-era scene was the pivot that turned viewers against the Nanny State and helped to spark the Reagan Revolution, leading ultimately to more "Stand Your Ground" legislation, and fewer FDA busybodies poking their noses into poultry slaughterhouses.

What we have as a result of that kind of programing is the beginning of the end of a self-governing society in which neighbor watches out for neighbor and citizens take personal responsibility.

I agree with Joseph.  Society was much stronger back before the state shoehorned itself into personal issues like who killed who, and murders were avenged by family members, leading to feuds that could last for years, because the cornerstone of civilization is the family, and nothing brings a family together like having a tradition.  Ours was cottage cheese and lime Jell-O salad at Thanksgiving, while yours might be a multi-generation blood vendetta.

Not too long ago, I saw a suspicious pickup truck parked in front of my property. I went out to see what was up. Naturally, I took my two best friends, Smith and Wesson, with me.

He also tried inviting his other close buds, Ass and Hole, but they've learned through hard experience to screen their calls.

Over the years, I’ve had to chase many suspicious people off my property or out of my gated community.

Most of them were rather transparently disguised as "UPS Delivery Men," "Paperboys," or "Neighbors."

I never had to shoot any of them. But I was always armed and ready to do that if they attacked me.

That appears to be what happened with George Zimmerman.

You're jealous, aren't you?

We shouldn’t be demeaning such men. We shouldn’t be booking them for second-degree murder. We shouldn’t be putting bounties on their heads. We shouldn’t be calling them racists. We shouldn’t be railroading them through the justice system.

We should be thanking them.

We should be rewarding them.

We should be honoring them. Because this is the way men are supposed to behave in a self-governing society.

Remember, "The Only Way You'll Get My Gun is When You Pry It from My Cold, Dead Hand.  Which, Coincidentally, Will Also Be the Way I'll Get Your Skittles."

And The Sinner Is...

Wo'C Correspondent Keith alerted me that the results are in for that Worst Movie Ever poll we talked about here, and the winner, as he more or less predicted, is...Battlefield Earth!  So I apologize for recycling yet another piece from Better Living Through Bad Movies, but the temptation -- let alone the synchronicity -- is simply too great to resist.  So here's our exegesis of L. Ron Hubbard's magnum opus, along with a few life lessons we picked up along the way.

Battlefield Earth (2000)
Directed by Roger Christian
Written by L. Ron Hubbard (novel), Corey Mandell and J.D. Shapiro

A crawl informs us that it’s the Year 3000, and for the past thousand years, Earth has been ruled by the "Psychlos." How did such an advanced race of space-faring beings wind up with such a stupid name? Well, they’re obviously a nutty bunch, judging by John Travolta’s performance, and they seem to have wiped out every trailer park on the planet, so I’m guessing that author and Church of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard just combined the words “psycho” and “cyclone.” Anyway, they’re big-assed aliens from a planet where George Clinton is the dominant life form.

The Psychlos have spent the past millennium prospecting for gold, so I assume that when not invading other planets and committing genocide, they act as the Gabby Hayes-like comic relief to an alien species that resembles Roy Rogers or Hoot Gibson.

Meanwhile, humans (represented by pasty white people dressed like Vikings) are confined to pockets of wasteland, where they are rapidly becoming extinct—so I guess all those dead 19th century Indians are having a bit of a laugh. Just so we get the point, the director pans the pristine, snow-capped Rocky Mountains (giving us a glimmer of hope that even in the bleak, post-apocalyptic future, there will still be beer commercials) and a subtitle reads: “Man is an endangered species.” Despite this, the Bush Administration still wants to drill in the Arctic National Man Refuge.

The survivors of humanity have adopted the usual trappings of barbarism—furs and buckskin clothing, polytheism, and French braids. One courageous lad (Barry Pepper) defies the anger of the gods and boldly ventures forth alone to find his destiny. Within thirty seconds he gets thrown from his horse, and panicked by a miniature golf course. Fortunately, he runs into a pair of hunters, and offers them snacks in exchange for exposition.

They take shelter in the Apocalypse Galleria and huddle around a cook fire. But one of the Psychlos turns out to be a mall walker, and he takes exception to their careless use of an open flame so close to Lane Bryant. The alien stuns the two hunters with its ray gun, but Barry is too fast for it, perhaps because the alien isn’t entirely at ease clomping around in Gene Simmons’ platform boots from
KISS.

Eventually, Barry and the hunters are put in a cage built into the belly of an alien jet. Yes, even though it’s a thousand years in the future, and the aliens can instantly teleport across the galaxy, they still use internal combustion engines. Suck it, Al Gore!

The jet flies to the Psychlo’s capital, Biosphere 2. The humans are issued those little anti-snoring patches for their noses, which somehow helps them to survive the extraterrestrial environment inside the dome. But it’s not only the air that’s different; the entire domed city is perpetually bathed in a dim blue glow, suggesting the Psychlos can only exist in the atmosphere of a soft-core porn film.

The jet lands at the “Human Processing Center—Denver,” and we look forward to watching Barry get rendered into a form of alien Velveeta. Instead, he startles his captors by shooting one of the Psychlos with its own gun, and making a break for it. But he immediately slips and falls, for along with man’s loss of art, science, and medicine, he has also forgotten the ancient admonition not to run on the linoleum in your socks.

Barry slides to a stop at the platformed feet of Psychlos John Travolta and Forrest Whittaker, who were in the middle of discussing how beeswax will help to keep the fuzz down on your dreadlocks.

Travolta, it seems, has fallen from favor with the Home Office, and has been condemned to serve as security chief of Earth for another 50 years. All the other Psychlos laugh at John, except for his immediate supervisor, who’s too busy cultivating the largest dewlap in the galaxy.

Cut to Planet Psychlo. It’s a grim, inhospitable world; a dark urban landscape stretches to the horizon, studded with towers belching fire and pollution into the perpetual twilight of a purple sky, and inhabited by cruel beings thirsting for wealth and power. So basically, it’s Houston.

Cut right back to Earth, where John is getting drunk and working himself into a thick, creamy lather of overacting, which is later harvested, and dispensed as food to the humans with the help of a sour cream gun from Taco Bell.

John plans to buy his way off the planet by secretly training “man-animals” to mine a newly discovered vein of gold. First, however, he sets the humans to remodeling his office with pickaxes. But Barry, who is evolving faster than the apes in 2001, turns on John’s stereo and boldly messes with his equalizer settings.

The outraged Travolta immediately straps Barry into a dentist’s chair and has a Portuguese Man O’ War teach him Conversational Psychlo. Then they shoot some pollen in his eye, and suddenly, he’s The Computer Wore Moccasins.

John, realizing that Reading Is Fundamental, takes Barry on a field trip to the Denver Library, and tells him that “Man is an endangered species,” because Barry was ignorant when the film began, and couldn’t read the opening titles.

Later, John hauls Barry and his friends out to the forest, and proves his technological superiority by shooting the legs off a cow. Just as he’s about to win the plush toy, he’s jumped by a feral tribe wearing fox pelts on their heads, which menace him with spears. John miraculously escapes, however, when the tribe itself is attacked by PETA.

Suddenly, Forrest arrives with Barry’s girlfriend, who they’ve identified because she was carrying a chamois with a face scratched into it. The image looks remarkably like one of Red Skelton’s clown paintings, so the Psychlos immediately deduce that it must be Barry. The Girlfriend is then accessorized with the latest in explosive collars.

Back at Biosphere II, John sexually harasses his new secretary, giving us the opportunity to see that female Psychlos have prehensile tongues and male pattern baldness, and, one would assume, an escort service that does pretty well when the House Republican Caucus is in town.

Suddenly, Travolta discovers that governor Dewlap has been skimming profits, and threatens to report him to the Nevada Gaming Commission unless he does something about that Elizabethan ruffle of loose skin hanging from his neck.


Cut to the Rockies, where Travolta orders Barry (who has now gotten his alien jet learner's permit) to fly the human miners up to the gold vein, since the thin atmosphere at high altitudes doesn’t supply enough oxygen to support the Psychlo’s spittle-flecked, mouth-breathing acting style.

Instead, Barry flies to Ft. Hood, where the illiterate, spear-wielding fox-head guys learn how to pilot F-16s by playing Asteroids, while Barry watches that How to Assemble an Atomic Bomb film strip  they always used to make us watch on rainy days in junior high. Then they fly to Kentucky and rob Ft. Knox in a scene that’s not exactly the climax of Goldfinger.

Later, Barry manages to sow doubt and distrust between Forrest and Travolta, with the result that John decapitates a bartender, and shoots off Forrest’s hand.  Forrest looks confused, and considers reporting John to the EEOC for creating a hostile work environment.

Barry riles up all the human prisoners in the Planet of the Apes Memorial Cellblock, and sparks a revolt, but it doesn’t go very well. Just in the nick of time, however, the tribe of primitive hunter-gatherers arrive, flying jet fighters which are in perfect working condition after a thousand years of neglect. But let my car sit for more than a week, and I can just forget about getting it started again without begging one of the neighbors for a jump. Anyway, a bunch of illiterate, lice-ridden, half-naked savages suddenly turn into Top Gun fighter jocks after one trip to the Drivers Ed simulator and start shooting down the technologically advanced Psychlos, proving that Scientology really does work wonders.

The humans blow up Biosphere 2. Then Barry uses his girlfriend’s explosive collar to blow off Travolta’s right arm, in a ruthless act of attempted irony.

Meanwhile, one of Barry’s posse teleports to the Planet Psychlo with an atomic weapon. This is where the aliens really pay for basing their entire economy on the petrochemical industry, since the bomb causes their atmosphere to catch on fire.

And even though the film isn’t explicit about this, we sense that as every living thing on the surface of the planet is incinerated, certain cashiered whistleblowers from the Psychlo EPA enjoy a moment of smug vindication.


So what new truths have we gleaned from Battlefield Earth? Basically, if you're looking for a weird, nerdy religion with a scripture based on classic sci-fi themes like time travel, teleportation, and strange alien worlds, then you might as well just join the Mormons.  At least they don't make crappy action movies, and if you're an attractive young woman, you're much less likely to be selected by church elders as the host organism for Tom Cruises' next baster baby.

She's Like Perry Mason, But With a Breathable Cotton Panel

Our friend, mystery writer Debbi Mack is giving away an e-book version of her latest novel, Riptide (not the 1984-86 TV detective series with Joe Penny and Perry King, which I always confuse with the 1960-62 TV detective series Surfside 6, with Troy Donohue and Van Williams).  I'm a little late to the party, and the coupon on her site is only good until Saturday, so as she says, "act fast."