Daily Archives: January 20, 2012
What Does Superman See In Lois Lane?
| January 20, 2012 | Posted by CalamityJon under Writing |
This is an article I posted on my Tumblr some months back, and which proved fairly popular at the time. It’s been getting some reblogs recently and I thought it might be worth reposting on my own blog …
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What does Superman see in Lois Lane?
Well, let’s set aside the obvious, to begin with – that’s she’s intelligent, beautiful and driven. Lois Lane is fiery and passionate, but compassionate and big-hearted, committed to her ideals, fearless, accomplished and brave. She’s wry, witty, sarcastic and clever, she takes no guff and she doesn’t acknowledge obstacles, she’s classy, brassy, bold and ultimately kind. She is, in short, enough for any hundred men.
But, yes, let’s set those aside, because as rare and exceptional a woman as Lois Lane is, surely she’s not the only one in the world. Superman has the universe at his disposal, and you have to ask what makes Lois Lane stand out among the beauties of a thousand planets, undersea kingdoms, alternate dimensions and limitless far-flung time periods. Why, in short, with all the women in a hundred universes to catch his eye, does he fall in love with the girl who works two desks over?
The relationship between Superman and Lois Lane changes every decade or so. When I was growing up in the post-Ordinary People years of constant self-analysis, they were as often estranged as they were an item, asking all those difficult questions people in long-term relationships were expected to ask themselves. This was a far cry from the by-turns white-hot and ice-cold triangle Lois, Clark and Superman maintained in the early days of the book, or the I Love Lucy hijinx which were the notorious mainstay of Lois Lane’s own comic in the early Sixties.
Still, the relationship changed from decade to decade – even stopped dead now and again – but they never parted. It’s always writ that Lois Lane is the girl for Superman. So … why?
Imagine this: Clark Kent – shy, awkward, fragile Clark Kent – works in an office with dozens of women. There are hundreds – and probably even thousands – of women working in his office building. There are millions of women in his city, who read his column, who know him from television, who bump up against him on the subway or see him the supermarket buying eggs.
And of all these women in their dozens and thousands and millions, only one - one - has ever looked at Clark Kent – with his bad posture and lack of confidence, with his shellaced-back hair and VFW donation eyeglass frames, his ugly red tie, his orthopedic shoes, his meek demeanor – and thought to herself “HE … might beSuperman.”
Don’t underestimate the power of someone seeing through the worst in you and seeing only the best. Superman, after all, only truly exists because two kind, unassuming and deeply good people found him in the wild plains of Kansas and – rather than seeing him as an alien, or a dangerous unknown, or a plastic hassle – saw a beautiful son with tremendous powers who would do only good. And so he became.
And, of course, that’s how Superman sees everyone else; even the worst of us, even his greatest enemies, he sees past their weakness and sees only the best in them (Which is, to my mind, his greatest power, although that’s perhaps for another discussion).
So, in Clark Kent – or, at least, in the Clark Kent disguise he crafted to hide his dual identity – Superman has laid out all of his weaknesses, self-doubts and fears for everyone to see. It’s as if he were saying to the world “I’m so scared of being left alone that I make lousy excuses to keep everyone at a distance. I try to always help others at my own expense, but I’m worried that others see that as spinelessness. I am reluctant to assert myself for fear of scaring people off, so I cave in,” and so on and so on, and while everyone else only sees all the failings of Clark Kent, Lois Lane still looks at him and says, no nonsense, “No, you’re Superman, we both know it.”
You may conceivably interpret this as a selfish way of looking at love, I concede, if you look at it as though I’m suggesting that you fall most strongly in love with the person who most flatters you. To my mind, though, it’s not about flattery. Rather, it’s about the power of having someone acknowledge the worst in you, but believe in you to rise above it and love you all the more strongly for it – to even despise the worst in you but love the best in you all the more fiercely. It’s about the strength you get from that.
For the sake of full disclosure, let me share this with you: I have been married, as of today, for 11 years, 9 months, 3 weeks and 2 days. I did not have to look up that number, I always know exactly how long I’ve been married. I know this because marriage has been wonderful, and I don’t want to miss a day. And it has been wonderful because of this - I am not a catch. There’s a LOT wrong with me. I am no Brad Pitt, as they say.
And yet, despite that, every now and again over the last 11 years, 9 months, 3 weeks and 2 days, I wake up in the morning to find my girl wide awake and looking at me, beaming, her eyes bright, and I come to my senses and realize that she’s not seeing my fat, bald head or dumb, cranky face, but is seeing something in me that is better than I ever expected I could be, and which gives me strength of a fashion that is essential and impossible to describe.
So imagine Clark Kent sitting there, hunched over his desk, mustard on his tie and grimly awaiting Steve Lombard dropping a firecracker under his chair, and he steals a glance at that sharp-eyed brunette he’s had the hots for forever, and he’s never told her his biggest secret but she’s giving him a look that plainly says “I bet he’s wearing the costume right now, isn’t he?”
Imagine Superman, and all his responsibilities, and the danger and pressures and the temptations, and the deep well of strength it requires to have all that power and yet to do only good for others, and imagine where it comes from: It comes from the woman he loves believing – knowing – that he has that strength, despite everything else.
Superman is totally a love story.
The City Desk – The Eat at Joe’s Riots
| January 20, 2012 | Posted by CalamityJon under Writing |
The City Desk was a blog documenting the daily life and often absurd history of an unnamed, imaginary city somewhere in North America. Dozens of contributors helped give weight and breadth to this storied, anonymous urban institution over the course of several years, including yours truly.
What follows is an article, written by me, which originally ran on January 5, 2009.
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The Eat at Joe’s Riots
With the Stock Market Crash of 1929 came a subsequent decline in money to support local businesses, and with a record number of the workforce either laid off or economizing with wax paper-wrapped sandwich lunches from home, local eateries folded by the hundreds.
Those which survived the initial collapse and subsequent lean months of struggle were in fierce competition – a customer sitting at the counter may only be good for a dime, but every dime counted, and the battles grew serious.
It was the habit of the day that much food industry advertising was done by way of theappropriately-named “sandwich board,” a pair of wide wooden planks attached by ropes at one end, and painted with advertising slogans on either side. The boards were then worn like a crude wooden vest or awkward suit of armor – usually by a transient or otherwise unemployed man who would often work in exchange for a hot meal, and who would walk through the city crowds, enticing hungry customers to the place of business.
But even the expense of this unpolished form of promotion put a strain on some diners’ budgets, leading at least one business owner to attempt an inspired dirty trick.
According to Dr. Henry Weathers, author of The Eat At Joe’s Riots: A Story of Sandwiches, Sandwich Boards and Blood, the first culprit in the war of dirty tricks was very likely a Greek proprietor of a small sandwich shop and deli, “Pauly” Kartalopoulos. “He ran a deli which was unimaginatively dubbed something like ‘The 65th Street Deli,’ something like that, and the records show that while he did attempt legitimate sandwich board advertising, potential customers were just as likely to drop into any other deli named after its street – there were hundreds back then.”
“It was names that people remembered, and the name with the most advertising was a simple but well-established café on Hammer Ave, called Joe’s.”
What ingenuity Kartalopoulos lacked in naming his business, he made up for in spades with an under-handed idea. “He tells this to a police officer who is a frequent customer to his place,” says Weathers, “He says, ‘I see all these signs saying Eat At Joe’s, Eat at Joe’s,’ and he asks the officer, ‘hey, why don’t I just change my name to Joe, then everyone eats here, right?’ So he asks this police officer if it’s illegal to rename his place Joe and take advantage of all the sandwich board advertising for this place, Joe’s Café, or Joe’s Bistro, or whatever it is, and the cop just tells him ‘Nope.’”
“He says ‘knock yourself out.’”
If the officer had known what sort of trouble was lurking around the corner, he might have had different advice.
Whatever the case, in early 1930, Kartalopoulos rechristened his shop (and himself) “Joe’s”, peppering the exterior with colorful signs and shunning further sandwich board advertising for himself – he was now subsisting largely on the promotional efforts of his competitors. As unknowing accomplices, Kartalopoulos’ rivals were doing him tremendous business – even many of the sandwich board salesmen became confused and would direct potential customers to the wrong storefront. Kartalopoulos was getting away with it, but the problems began when his bright idea was used a second time.
“At this point, the record is utterly confused,” says Weathers, “Either someone was clued into Kartalopoulos’ scheme or they happened upon it themselves, but you start to see in the old photos and the newspaper, all these other restaurants named ‘Joe’ start popping up. Joe’s Blintzes, Joe’s Chowderhouse, Joe’s Boulangerie – Joe’s Chinese – it was a stunt which worked so well once, pretty soon everyone is desperate enough to try it, and something like twenty percent of the placesto eat in the city are under a banner reading ‘JOE’.”
Meanwhile, over at the Hammer Avenue Joe’s Café – the only legitimate Joe in the story – tempers begin to run high. “He’s watching his own business dwindle, he’s watching all these other Joe’s restaurants pop up, and he gets word that Pauly Kartalopoulos is the fellow who starts all the trouble.” Weathers describes the original Joe as a Croatian immigrant and well-known neighborhood hothead, so what follows was probably no real surprise. “A firebomb,” says Weathers, “Puts Pauly Kartalopoulos out of the Joe picture permanently.”
Shaken by the rise in aggression but unwilling to let go of a hard-stolen marketshare, the assorted faux Joe’s continue to do business as usual during the day, and up the ante at night. Joe’s-on-Joe’s violence becomes the leading cause of violent crime in the city within two months, and by September of that year, the eateries are hiring impoverished and unemployed men for more than sandwich advertising – they’re hiring for gangs.
“In short order, it becomes worse than the mob violence in Chicago, with activities ranging from individual assaults to arson and vandalism to at least two cases of murders committed while the victims were asleep in their own beds.” Weathers adds, “It’s a horrifying period in history.”
On November 10th, tensions reached their absolute peak. At some point just before the lunch rush, Emil Lapeune – short-order cook at the original Joe’s on Hammer – confronted a sandwich-board advertiser outside the door to the café. A scuffle ensued, and the sandwich-board advertiser was joined by two men who may or may not have been hired as ‘toughs,’ in case of trouble. “Lapuene was beaten badly in the struggle, it took most of the rest of the staff of the original Joe’s to break it up. At some point, one of the dishwashers leaves his post, and most historians think this is the fellow who starts the trouble at the hot food carts in front of the Justice Building, about an hour later.”
In a scene which wouldn’t look out of place in The Untouchables, an unidentified gang of men took to “Joe’s Row” – an avenue bearing at least six Joe’s-titled chow joints – breaking windows and dragging patrons out by the collars of their shirts. Armed with thick clubs, the gang was moving downtown towards Hammer Ave when one of them was shot by an unseen assailant. “This is when all hell breaks loose,” says Weathers.
By evening, several Joe’s restaurants are left empty with their doors swung wide open, either because the employees have fled or because they’ve taken to the streets to participate in the violence. Most other business have barricaded themselves inside, customers and staff alike fearing that the riots might spill through their windows and front doors. Fires light up the evening sky like the underside of an open-flame grill, and the occasional scream or gunshot come so often they begin to sound like popping fat on a sizzling hot griddle.
The riots continued well into the morning of the eleventh, with police and fire crews alike responding in full force. Damages were estimated at well over the $1,200,000 mark in terms of damage to civic services and infrastructure alone, not counting damages done to the competing establishment. At least one hundred and thirty were dead. “Sandwich boards littered the streets,” adds Weathers, “Still smoldering in the morning fog.”
The City Council was prompt to respond with the ban on the further use of the name “Joe’s” for any other eating establishment, for fear of a repeat of the violence. “Still,” Weathers adds as a final note, “Let’s wish Shoeless Joe’s all the best of luck. It will be something of an illicit thrill after all this time to, in this city, once again ‘Eat At Joe’s.’”
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