Vacation-At-Home Log, Day Two:

• The Man Cub got me out of bed this morning at 5. Par for the course lately, but better than the former standard of 4am.

• Spent the first hour writing a long email to The Best Man. He doesn’t get the blog thing, and except for the increasingly-rare occasion (this morning for instance), I don’t have time for lengthy emailing. Good breadwinner, bad buddy.

• STNG episode 9 or 10 and our B-List supporting cast is visiting the first cheesey backlot alien tableau of the series. The other storyline features some fabulous one-on-one scenes with Patrick Stewart and John Delancie as the omnipotent Q hurling Shakespeare quatrains at each other. Talk about feast and famine in the same episode. Uh oh. Jonathan Frakes is being called upon to share a scene with Delancie. It’s painful to watch.

• So I go to the videotape: a B/C-Grade TCM WWII propaganda film marathon I’ve recently stumbled across. It’s the mother-lode of vacation TV. I actually put off “Abe Lincoln in Illinois” with Raymond Massey for this.

- First up is First Yank Into Tokyo: About a Japanese-speaking American GI who endures the world’s most offensive make-up job – uh, I mean, plastic surgery – and goes undercover in the land of the rising sun during the run-up to Hiroshima. The fake teeth are so outlandish you can tell every line of this actor’s dialogue is looped. Appropriately enough, the looping isn’t synched very well with the on-camera lip movements.
It’s a 1945 flick that talks obliquely about the A-Bomb – I guess they cranked it out at the end of the year for the Christmas crowds. My guess is this film was greenlit in early ‘45 as an anti-Nazi film, then VE Day came, and one hasty script revision later, we have this ridiculous mess. It has that slapped-together, kind of an afterthought feel to it.
On the other hand, it’s interesting that the war is barely over and already noir elements are sneaking into mainstream Hollywood productions. Hard-boiled dialogue, the femme fatale flashback – I’m definitely catching a scent of noir. The swords had scarcely been beaten into plowshares and the Warner Brothers factory was already re-tooling for the post-war paradigm.
Second-rate entertainment, but first-rate cultural anthropology.

• It’s 4:30 and I’ve fallen way behind on my TV viewing. It’s a sad thing when you set out to do nothing and can’t even get that done. Time to fire up “Abe Lincoln in Illinois” and try to make up for some lost wasted time.

• Midnight: Well, I fucked up Day Two. Earlier in the week, I had promised The Missus some quality together time at outdoor venues this weekend. I thought the steady torrent of rainfall we woke to this morning bought me a pass from that obligation, but – long story short – I was mistaken. It seems I’m on vacation from work, not my word or my family. Coming up tomorrow – Family Day For Real! And here on Christmas Island that can mean only one thing: Brokeback Mountain! Nothing says, “I’ve gone back on my word and I feel like shit about it” like taking the Missus to some damn hippie gay cowboy movie.

Stay tuned…