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FROM THE PHONE BOOTH: The Smallest Space in  Hollywood

	FINEFROCK

Oh, The Humanity!
Disaster Best and Worse
by Steve Finefrock - Hollywood Forum [scriptwriter] 11/6/07

Former Disaster ‘Master’ [previous FEMA life!]

Maxine Hong Kingston lost the only floppy-disk copies of her latest novel, in the now-past fires of Oakland.  The concrete slabs of totally-destroyed Oakland homes was remarkably clean – nothing remained, as the cleanup crews apparently had acted efficiently, while the embers were still smoking.
 
Just a signal of how bad it can be, and is yet to be – YET! – in southern California.  For professional masters in disaster – fire, EMS, law enforcement, emergency management – it’s déjà vu all over again.  More of the same recipe, just up-the-portions.  Not reassuring?  It should be – for they know what they’re doing, what they will see, how they will feel, who will play blame-game and who will do well, who will be oh-so-worthless.
 
Dickens would see it clearly: the best of humanity, the worse of humanity, in the same setting, even the same block of a fleeing neighborhood. The pros know why those clean-slabs in Oakland were so bare of any remaining debris – the metal appliances and even ceramics were literally vaporized – like heated solid ice, turned instantly to liquid then to gas.  The ‘firestorm effect’ known to Germans and Japanese recipients of Allied firebombing in WW2 – sucks up everything, makes even steel and glass into a gas, rising into the atmosphere to condense as pebbles and sand ‘fallout’ to the ground at a downwind location.

No cleanup crews required – vaporized belongings became downwind dust.  Not yet in southern California – the best yet shown was NBC’s Brian Williams noting a streak of solidified wheel-rim metal, shiny streaked-puddle of aluminum, upon the pavement, to Williams’ amazement at how hot the fire had reached.  Yet, the upright charred carcass of the entire car remained and framed neatly in the video viewfinder.
 
Not all that hot.  Yet.
 
The media heat is to come, soon – Keith Olberman and Barbara Boxer and other untermenschen have dubbed this to be Dubya’s Fault.  That heat will increase, vaporizing reason in a flash-fry of good sense.  And of course, it’s connected – by all-too-willing reporters – to global-warming!  Never mind the Oakland fire, where those vaporized metals challenged the mettle of society so much more deeply than this inferno.  It just HAS TO BE GLOBAL WARMING – Pope Gorenstein had to be right, and righteous to be sure.  Once a narrative has been ‘established’ in the First Act of a Hollywood portrayal of ‘reality’ it’s hard to disabuse the cooperative media of their religious convictions. Shades of Galileo, and Socrates’ hemlock.
 
For those who’ve been there before – which includes damned few media, and very nearly none of Hollywood’s ‘hos of hype – this is old hat.  We are seeing the best, and the worse, amidst the flames and fire – a standard-issue phenomena in all major disaster events.
 
‘Best’ includes a reiteration of an old PhoneBooth theme: American society grows heroes like Kansas grows wheat, Russia grows autocrats, Europe grows older, France just glows with insanity.  ‘Worse’ includes the media seeking to make this into another Katrina, another Gore-mania global-warming scheme, and find fault with a republican governor.
 
But Mo’ Better Best includes Arnold the traitor giving Claire Shipman some rare babe-bashing for her insistent rant that something-must-be wrong.  Babes like Claire are accustomed to male targets of journalistic jacobins being wowed by their sumptuous lusciousness – but Arnold has known more major babes than she’s ever met, having married a major political babe of the media and Kennedy clan, making babies with his babe.  So Claire had to be trembling with the unfamiliar response of a male power-meister – he cleaned her clock in the best showdown on media in some decades.  The worse is that she is a mere random-sample of the folks whose striped-shirt role as referees suffer from habitual Penalty Blindness.
 
Another Best: local government in SoCal proving how much Worse was New Orleans.  California ain’t Louisiana.  The mayors of local southern California communities aren’t the stupid dunderhead that C. Ray Nagin proved himself to be in such trumping, strumping, ego-ridden manner.  The difference this time, with Katrina?  Same president, virtually the same FEMA, but such radically DIFFERENT LOCAL/STATE LEADERSHIP.  Which is where it all meets the road, always has, always will, always must in such a big, federal-style nation.
 
Best includes media coverage, when they stuck to “just the facts ma’am” and didn’t try to pontificate, Gore-iate and politicize.  Excellent photos on websites for LA Times, NY Times and Malibu Times gave three Times’ zone-centric representation, some by pros and a few by readers’ contributions.  It was all there: misery and hope; danger and courage; devastation and expectations for things to be better.  The worse was there: some scheming connivers, but less thievery and scamming than is typical.  Nothing like NOLA [New Orleans, LA] – none of the Big Easy’s Big Sleazy citizenry – or spell that ‘citizenry’ with emphasis on the quotes.
 
Best is the mix of resources, benefitting not from ‘lessons learned in Katrina’ but from a century of accumulated wisdom, beginning at least with Ed Pulaski’s fire-tool and his rising from apparent death after holding his fire-team ‘hostage’ [at gunpoint] in a shallow cave during a blowup at last century’s early massive fires.  Rising from prostrate apparent death as his men commented that he must be dead, he defied their analysis as he rose to his feet amidst the dissipating smoke: “Like hell I’m dead – let’s go fight fire, men” – and off he marched, into duty and legend.  Any reporter, and any Hollywood ‘Ho who don’t know what a Pulaski is, and who is the inspiration for its name [and designed it himself] ain’t got any cred on this issue.
 
The worse includes a lot of liberal thrills at inmate labor being applied – what seems ‘free’ labor in fact ain’t such a good idea.  There ain’t no Franken free-lunch in economics, or firefighting.  It takes skill and judgment borne of experience, plus discipline that defines teamwork – and the kind of folks who make their lives as inmates are the polar opposites of what makes a good hotshot or smokejumper.  The best of course are the endless supply of hotshots – including one actor returning to homebase in HWD, summoned from Wyoming fires.  
 
Best includes newly-acquired public awareness of fuel-load, prescribed burning and other long-known issues and techniques [well, known to those who know, versus those who parachute into the event, e.g., reporters and liberals].  Worse is the lingering exploitation by enviro-wackos [a redundancy in most instances], and of course Barbara Boxer blaming response deficiencies on National Guard resources being used for a ‘national’ mission in Iraq.  Not the first to engage in such a rant: Benedict Arnold made the same rant in June, blaming Bush for “taking our resources and never returning them” to the richest state in the nation, the seventh-largest economy in the world [or sixth, depending on the year]. California don’t need no stinkin’ Guard equipment.
 
So, a mixed-bag: Arnold whacks Clare, but earlier did a pre-Boxer.  Firefighters prove again we have heroes amongst us, every day in every county, ready to run toward danger while most of us run away [including HWD liberals, and reporters].  Pretense that this is ‘the worst’ ever – mindful of the endless supply the media gives us of “Fight of the Century” and “Game of the Century” with the last count of such century-events now in the dozens in my lifetime.  It ain’t the worse – ask Maxine Hong Kingston.
 
And the worse may be yet to come.  Fortunately, the best has come again and again.  The men – and some women – who wear yellow and fight the red stuff with wet stuff and Pulaskis, from the air and on the ground, as the yellow-streaked pontificators fight with err of human arrogance represent the endless supply of the Worse.  
 
Vaporized in Oakland was journalistic integrity, still yet to condense to sanity – witness Clare’s babe-meltdown.  As was all that metal.  But we have an ample supply of Mettle Men, with Pulaskis and saws, wielded by ‘sawyers’ [part of your test, journalistic jacobins parachuting into ‘expert’ status], aided by air-tankers dropping thimblefuls of water on precise sites with the exactness of brain surgery.  And that while fighting brutal updrafts at 150 knots.
 
All being condensed into “Fire Weed The Movie” – by yours truly.  Who do know a bit about this subject, having forgotten more than Geraldo or Clare or Boxer or Gore has ever known.  What most folks know about things they don’t know from personal experience or training or profession is IN THE MOVIES.  So it was asserted at Heritage Foundation last month.  Now, let’s examine the issues inherent in these fires, and more to come.  So America will come to ‘know’ as they learned from “Backdraft” what our inborn heroes do every day in every city in every firehouse.  
 
The ‘simple-minded history’ which Gore Vidal sez he learned from the movies also includes the simple-minded ‘first rough-draft of history’ borne by journalists.  The same who sanctify Gore and blame Bush – and dare never challenge the left’s politicizing of this event. Time to Make Some History.
 
Now, your next exam question: What other famous persona arose in the fires which gave us Ed Pulaski’s famous cave tale?  Here’s a clue: Only you can prevent forest fires. Of course, Smokey the Bear was and is fictional, based on a singed orphaned bear cub rescued by hotshots of that distant day.  As the reporters and HWD ‘Hos remain clueless, so do the public – getting an endless diet of mindless history.  First from reporters, along with the lefty politicians.  And soon the ‘history’ will be proffered by HWD – unless of course, someone who’s Not A Lefty pens the tale on the donkey of this story.
 
“Fireweed” is the quick-sprouting plant that rises among the ashes after a burnover.  Within days the daze of carbon-soot is peppered with the brilliant blue version of forsythia.  It  does grow back.  As Kansas grows wheat, and our society grows firefighters.  But, also grows idiots in the media.  “FireWeed The Movie” will make that point better than any news story or learned tome, or “noble yet piddling organs” of commentary.
 
Thus, an opportunity to get-ahead-of-the-curve on this one.  Wanna help? ExileStreet

copyright 2007 Steve Finefrock

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