THEY CAN PUT A MAN ON THE MOON BUT THEY CAN’T... PUT A MAN ON THE MOON (A Short Part Two, Because Part One Was Too Short)

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“I seen it [the Apollo Moon landing] on TV! ... Once you see it on television, you know that’s the way it is, you know?”
~ Big Daddy

Cigar store owner in Cocoa Beach, Florida

A week ago I posted the blog bit titled ‘CAVALCADE O’ COMMENTS’ (Or, ‘THEY CAN PUT A MAN ON THE MOON BUT THEY CAN’T... PUT A MAN ON THE MOON’). It seems the one thing everyone agreed on was that it was too long.

Well, guess what. I feel it wasn’t quite long enough, so here’s a (relatively) much shorter addendum.

I get on these kicks – been doing it for decades. For a period of time I will simply immerse myself in one thing or another until I wear it out... for awhile (before returning to it again some years later). It can be almost anything, like, Gene Tierney, W.C. Fields, Laurel & Hardy, William Holden, Hitchcock, or Film Noir movies. Frequently the kicks pertain to movies and actors. But they can also revolve around music, like the Beach Boys, Van Morrison, or Big Band music. Even foods – perhaps avocados, ice cream, soy-based hot dogs, or Chile Relleno burritos.

Currently, my kick is the Kroger brand of smoked string cheese and the fake Apollo Moon landings (the mother of all hoaxes!) The Fake Moon Landing kick is one I’ve gotten on and off of every few years for about a decade and a half. Ironically, when my friend Brother Beer Boy Bryan (Bodyguard Betty) wrote on January 1^st  in one of my comment sections “We didn't land on the moon”, as an example of a crazy conspiracy theory, I was already about two weeks into ‘The Return Of My Fake Moon Landing Kick’. Timing is everything!

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I think I’m done with it again... for another few years. But I did watch a couple more movies very recently and wanna yak ‘em up to ya here... briefly. (As I type these words I am listening to Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’ – always amongst my favorite Rock albums! One of these days I need to try out that ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’ synchronization bit with the movie ‘The Wizard Of Oz’ that I’ve often heard about.) 

I saw CAPRICORN ONE once before, long ago, and probably in a movie theatre the year of its release – 1978. I couldn’t remember much about it other than its basic premise. So, Brother Nappy and I got it from NetFlix. The movie contains several really stupid, bonehead scenes, and Elliott Gould is truly an atrocious actor – I mean, a seriously “bad actor”. The movie also features James Brolin and O.J. Simpson... before he had become a murderer (and then invented the "slow-speed chase", which I saw live on TV, so I know it was real!).

For me, the movie’s highlight is a small but funny part played by Telly Savalas late in the story. Yeah, you heard me right: Telly Savalas was FUNNY! [“Perverts!”] Despite a few truly nonsensical moments, Nappy and I enjoyed the movie overall.

But here’s what blew my mind about it...

CAPRICORN ONE

1978 - 123 minutes

Seconds before launch, the first NASA astronauts bound for Mars are pulled from the capsule and asked to fake the Mars landing instead. The astronauts agree, but as a reporter starts uncovering the truth, NASA turns its three heroes into martyrs.

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Do you get it? Can you believe it? With a plot like that, can you believe that NASA actually allowed its name and official emblem to be used in the movie ‘Capricorn One’? NASA fakes a Mars landing, and then seeks to kill the astronauts in order to keep the hoax a secret? Wouldn’t you think a storyline like that would ordinarily inspire NASA to send a ‘Cease and Desist’ order? And if not complied with, NASA would have sued the filmmaker for Slander and Defamation Of Character?!

But instead, NASA, at the very least, gave its tacit approval. Ya ‘spose maybe it was a sideways confession that their Apollo Moon landing story was also a hoax? Isn’t that a little too close for comfort?

3 minute movie trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoZ2AySW2bY

Below are a couple of speeches in the movie that also seem to be somewhat “confessional” to me:

Dr. James Kelloway:

Okay, here it is. I have to start by saying that if there was any other way, if there was even a slight chance of another alternative, I would give anything not to be here with you now. Anything.

Bru, how long have we known each other? Sixteen years? ... Sixteen years. You should have seen yourself then. You looked like you just walked out of a Wheaties box. And me, all sweaty palm and deadly serious. I told everybody about this dream I had of conquering the new frontier, and they all looked at me like I was nuts. You looked at me and said, "Yes."

I remember when you told me Kay was pregnant. We went out and got crocked. I remember when Charles was born. We went out and got crocked again. The two of us. Captain Terrific and the Mad Doctor, talking about reaching the stars, and the bartender telling us maybe we'd had enough. Sixteen years.

And then Armstrong stepped out on the Moon, and we cried. We were so proud. Willis, you and Walker, you came in about then. Both bright and talented wise-asses, looked at me in my wash-and-wear shirt carrying on this hot love affair with my slide-rule, and even you were caught up in what we'd done.

I remember when Glenn made his first orbit in Mercury, they put up television sets in Grand Central Station, and tens of thousands of people missed their trains to watch.

You know, when Apollo 17 landed on the Moon, people were calling up the networks and bitching because reruns of I Love Lucy were cancelled. Reruns, for Christ's sake! I could understand if it was the new Lucy show. After all, what's a walk on the Moon? But reruns! Oh, geez!

And then suddenly everybody started talking about how much everything cost. Was it really worth twenty billion to go to another planet? What about cancer? What about the slums? How much does it cost? How much does any dream cost, for Christ's sake? Since when is there an accountant for ideas?

You know who was at the launch today? Not the President. The Vice-President, that's who. The Vice-President and his plump wife. The President was busy. He's not busy. He's just a little bit scared. He sat there two months ago and put his feet up on Woodrow Wilson's desk, and he said, "Jim, make it good. Congress is on my back. They're looking for a reason to cancel the program. We can't afford another screw-up. Make it good. You have my every good wish." His every good wish! I got his sanctimonious Vice President! That's what I got!

So, there we are. After all those hopes and all that dreaming, he sits there, with those flags behind his chair, and tells me we can't afford a screw-up. And guess what! We had a screw-up! A first-class, bona-fide, made-in-America screw-up!

The good people from Con-Amalgamate delivered a life-support system cheap enough so they could make a profit on the deal. Works out fine for everybody. Con-Amalgamate makes money. We have our life-support system. Everything's peachy. Except they made a little bit too much profit. We found out two months ago it won't work. You guys would all be dead in three weeks. It's as simple as that.

So, all I have to do is report that and scrub the mission. Congress has its excuse, the President still has his desk, and we have no more program. What's sixteen years? Your actual drop in the bucket!

All right. That's the end of the speech. Now, we're getting to what they call the moment of truth. Come with me. I want to show you something.

DUDE GIVING THE EULOGY AT THE MEMORIAL SERVICE:

...My fellow Americans, I came here today to talk of unfinished hopes and of unfulfilled dreams. Charles Brubaker, Peter Willis, and John Walker left this Earth for their dreams a little more than eight months ago; they were never able to return to us.

Their dream was able to grow and flourish because of the support of millions of citizens all across America. At a time when cynicism was a national epidemic, they gave us something to take pride in. It is a dream that should NOT be allowed to die.

A nation is built on the spirit of its people; the test of greatness of any nation is how that nation pulls together in a time of crisis. The only limits on what we can achieve are the limits we place on our hopes. These three men reminded us of the limitlessness of our hopes.

There was a moment these past few days when we were all one people; we were all hoping, we were all a little bit taller, a little bit prouder. We were all feeling the same fears and the same exhilaration. These three men brought us together. We knew, together, that there are no goals we cannot reach if we just reach for them together.

There is no adequate way we can express out gratitude to the men themselves because they are no longer among us. However, we can serve their memory... [the voice trails off as...]

I don’t want to say any more and spoil the movie should you decide to watch it. But... uh... is it just me, or did that not sound like NASA would like to confess something to the Americonned Sheeple?

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Another movie Brother Nappy and I just watched together was this:

DID WE GO?

2005 - 60 minutes

Filmmaker Aron Ranen's tongue-in-cheek documentary explores the controversial conspiracy theory that asserts that, in 1969, U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong spoke the famous words "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" from an earthbound film set, not the moon. In investigating the claims of an Apollo 11 hoax, Ranen uncovers a KKK faction at the Kennedy Space Center, slave-owning Nazis, hippies, soused space cowboys and more.

“The most redneck, in-bred town in America!”

~ A Young, White Dude in Wapakoneta, Ohio

DID WE GO? is almost closer to a “mockumentary” than a documentary. In the one-hour program, Ranen sets out (kinda, sorta) to prove that the Apollo space program really did land Americans on the Moon and then returned them safely to Earth.

It seems that most reviewers at NetFlix hated the movie but Nappy and I found it rather entertaining. It starts out funny, then gets pretty serious and grisly during the Nazi section, and then turns funny again later. If you’re an odd duck (like apparently Nappy and I be) you might enjoy the program too. (I believe it’s fully free to see at YouTube.)

5 minutes and 27 seconds clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJKImObTMDs

[Never trust a 21^st Century man wearing a bow tie! EVER!!]

“It’s a journey we can’t repeat with today’s technology, but in 1969, a group of astronauts risked everything to walk on the Moon.”

~ ‘When We Left Earth’,

The Discovery Channel, 2010

HUH?! WHA’?! You mean, if only we could somehow recapture, in 2014, the technological advances we had made by 1969, we could again land men on the Moon? Yeah, makes total sense to me! (You telling me some people aren’t trying to “come clean” without actually having to admit to the biggest lie in mankind’s history?)

I was just watching the movie ‘AFTER THE THIN MAN’ with William Powell and Myrna Loy. (Actually, I was watching it with Brother Nappy because, Powell and Loy? They're dead.)

Uh-Oh! 'Dark Side Of The Moon'? Fuhgeddaboudit! I think I feel another Big Band kick coming on again...

DOIN' THE JIVE – The Glenn Miller Orchestra

[Irving Fazola’s clarinet at the 1:41 mark absolutely slays my soul!]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYHT2LFG7uc

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.

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