Someone close to me died and only now has it started to sink in.

That’s right, I’m talking about Captain America.

Cap and I go way back. We first met in the late 60’s, when, according to my father, hippies were attacking the country. That didn’t sound like a good thing, but it didn’t seem to affect Cap too much — he was always fighting Hydra or the Red Skull, and when he did interact with hippies or “minorities” it seemed like he was able to bridge the gaps in culture and generation. (And remember, Cap was an enlisted man in during World War II, so the gaps were huge.) He teamed up with the Falcon and learned some things about an outsider’s view of the system and what it felt like to be non-white and suspicious of the Man. And then, famously, Cap had a falling out with the Nixon administration, discovered that it was the president who was behind the vast conspiracy attacking the country from within, and quit being Captain America.

I was 12. It seemed impossible that Captain America — who set such a personal example of tolerance, yet, like Churchill, was able to spot evil early when he saw it — wasn’t going to represent us any more.

He came back later, after a number of other people tried to be Captain America. They knew the value of the symbol, and if he wasn’t going to wear it, others would. And that was the point when I realized that Captain America had never symbolized the United States of America — that he symbolized an ideal that we hoped to get to.

Now he’s dead. Will he be back? According to my subscription form — sorry to blow the surprise — after five months or so of downtime, someone named “Captain America” will be back with a new title. But if it is not this character, Private Steve Rogers, who surrendered to the government recently after waging an all-out war against what sounds to me suspiciously like The “Patriot” Act (quote marks courtesy of me), it won’t be the same. Steve Rogers turned himself in when he found that he’d lost the support of the people in the streets; evidently they liked the idea of registration for people with powers. To me, this is suspiciously close to “registering” the artists, the writers, the musicians, the philosophers, the scientists — anyone who thinks differently — and the relative quiescence of the majority of us speaks volumes.

Yesterday this nation’s Inspector General released a report documenting the extent to which the FBI has misued the “Patriot” Act in securing private information about individuals, all with no warrant. Today we have a minor hoohah over this; tomorrow, the “Patriot” Act will continue.

I’m sorry Captain America died, especially now. It seems like one more indication that we’ve lost the ideal, and that we aren’t deserving of the symbol.

Insomnia may be a blessing in disguise, especially for creative types.

At least, that’s what the writer of this feature in the Washington Post would have us believe.

I hope I feel this good about it tonight when I’m pounding the pillow, but I suspect I won’t.

I’m always asking students about the characters they’ve created, “What’s their motivation?” Although at some point or other most of us will act irrationally at least once, most behavior is defined by our pursuit of objectives. Asking what someone was trying to do, and therefore why they acted in the way they did, usually tells the tale.

Along a similar line, Deep Throat advised Bob Woodward during the Watergate investigation,  “Follow the money.” If you follow the money, and track who benefits, you find the culprits.
Which brings us to Scooter Libby. Hard as it is for me to imagine, I find I’m spending some part of my thinking yesterday and today feeling sorry for Mr. Libby, who faces up to 30 years in prison. That’s because I can’t understand why he would have gone down the path of exposing one of our own spies, because I can’t track his motivation for having done so. That is, unless he was ordered to do so by someone higher up in the chain of command.

I’m not alone in that theory, as this news report shows. The jury that convicted him — comprised of what sound like very smart and highly trained people, including a former reporter for the Washington Post — also believe that Mr. Libby was acting under orders.

That makes sense.

What doesn’t make sense is that our court process doesn’t appear to be headed further up the chain of command.

What does the “E” in Wile E. Coyote stand for? Mark Evanier says the answer isn’t definitive, but he can clarify the origin of the name.

Here’s a recent New York Times piece about Robert and Aline Crumb, their new book, and their open marriage. By the way, I used to know one of Aline’s “second husbands” (who admitted that he hung out with her to get to Crumb himself).

Dr. Mabuse, as you may recall from this earlier post, writes a manifesto of evil that compels acolytes to bring down society through chaos and confusion. To contemporaries — including Josef Goebbels, who initially banned it — the second Mabuse film, “The Testament of Dr. Mabuse,” presented an allegory for Hitler, who wrote “Das Kampf” and then inspired others to implement it.

In Europe, the legend of Dr. Mabuse continues to grow. And why not? They experienced his “testament” of World War II in a way we did not. Many people have taken the Mabuse mythology and twisted and interpreted it for their own reasons, and again, I say why not. If Supergirl can go through so many iterations, then Goebbels is free to shoot new framing sequences that insist that Fritz Lang’s film blames society’s ills on the Weimar Republic and that herald Hitler as the cure.

Some of this was on my mind last night in a conversation with a friend who, surprisingly to me given his proclivity for the provocative and obscure, hasn’t seen these Lang films. Today, he emailed with another coincidental and bizarre Mabuse appearance (and before I quote him I should note that during this conversation I connected Lang, and Mabuse, and World War II, with a lengthy discourse on Samuel Beckett hiding from the Nazis durings World War II):

Curiouser and curiouser. Last night after we spoke I opened a box of books I had ordered. There was a novel titled “Red” by Richard James. It involves “the curious machinations of Dr. Mabuse” and thanks Grove Press for permission to quote from Samuel Beckett’s play, “Krapp’s Last Tape.” Does any of that sound familiar??? Beyond coincidence? (Play “Twilight Zone” theme here.)
I bought it from edwardrhamilton.com. The original price was $14.95 but they have it as a remainder for $3.95. The stock number is 6050662, in case you want to check it on ERH’s search engine. It was published by gaymenspress.co.uk, if you would like to check there for more info. I imagine it will have a bunch of gay men somewhere in it.

I checked out “Red” by Richard James on Amazon.com, and yes, there seems to be a connection to my new master, who orchestrates all our doings behind the scenes. My heart goes out a bit to Richard James; not only does the novel not seem to have sold well, but it appears that he’s taken to reviewing it himself on Amazon, and under his own name, as this link reveals. If you can write a clever book involving a mastermind plotting to take down society, certainly you’re clever enough to set up a psuedonym to review your own books, no?

I suppose I should be unsurprised that someone who would want to touch on Dr. Mabuse would also gravitate toward Beckett. I think the big surprise is that Grove Press permitted the quote (perhaps these things are easier now that Beckett is in the ground). One can’t tell from either site, Amazon or Hamilton, that the book is published by “Gay Men’s Press” (Hamilton says “GMP”), but when you click the latter site for “related reading,” you get titles like “Fag Hag,” “Father’s Day,” and “The Irreversible Decline of Eddie Socket,” so it seems a safe bet that the book relates not only to society’s “irreversible decline,” but also to the man (and men) behind it.

Release the white doves — Camille Paglia is back on Salon.com after a 6-year absence. Given the way the site is trumpeting it, I guess it’s important for them (and for her).

I don’t begrudge them their celebrity columnist — and here’s her first new post, if you’d like to see it (may require registration). But I couldn’t help noting the self-obsession leaching through every line of it. We shouldn’t expect more of celebrity bloggers, but if you’re going to put on airs, at least really put on airs. Don’t be so transparent about your megalomania unless you’re doing it for laughs. I was willing to let it all go as yet more postmodernism (Camille about Camille about Camille) until the following caught my eye:

A final news item: Mitchell Lichtenstein, an actor (“Lords of Discipline,” “Miami Vice,” “Law & Order”) and a student of mine from Bennington College in the 1970s, has written and directed his second film, “Teeth,” which was screened at the Sundance Film Festival last month. It was immediately bought for distribution by Weinstein/Lionsgate, and the lead actress, Jess Weixler, won a Sundance award.

Mitchell’s theme — brace yourself! — is the vagina dentata or toothed vagina, an ancient myth that he first heard about in my classes and that, he has told interviewers, he never forgot. At his request, I specially wrote some lines for the film but have yet to see it. Web reports from Sundance have raved about the film’s comic mix of retro horror with satiric sociology. This week, “Teeth” is having its international premiere at the Berlin Film Festival. Bon appétit!

Here was my Thought #1: Hey, this is what Mitchell has been up to! (He was in a play of mine in 1990.) Thought #2: Hey, Mitchell was Camille Paglia’s student — I didn’t know that. Thought #3: I’ve been making references to the vagina dentata for years and I never studied with Camille Paglia, and Thought #4: Now when I mention the vagina dentata people who understand the reference will think I got it from Camille Paglia or Mitchell Lichtenstein. Which led to —

Thought #5. This train of thought is so self-referential and all-consuming that I could blog for Salon.

Postmodernism. Everything comes full circle.

For several years in the early 1990’s, I was a frequent reader of tarot cards for other people. I remember my sister seeking guidance from the cards, and my wife, and assorted friends. I didn’t read them to offer divination, I read them the way Carl Jung read them: as a key to the subconscious of the seeker.

When you read the cards in this way, allowing people to make their own connections, they reach metaphorical associations and conclusions they wouldn’t have otherwise. “The dark-haired woman” becomes fixed in their mind as “Sally,” the friend they hadn’t been thinking of, but who of course will be rushing to their aid now that they’ve thought of asking her for help.

Some time last year I joined Netflix, and in an odd tarot-like way the system has brought me circling back around to earlier artistic interests and obsessions of mine, as well as new associations. Specifically: Thirty years after first being introduced to dadaism and expressionism, I’ve had a recent re-immersion in the latter thanks to the films of Fritz Lang and, especially, “The Testament of Dr. Mabuse.” Just as it would not occur to the questioner to think of “Sally” until the cards jog their memory, I would not have found myself brought to this film had I not begun my Netflix account with two Werner Herzog films (“Fitzcarraldo” and “Aguirre, Wrath of God”), which led the system to suggest other arty German films. It’s wonderful at this point to discover an artist like Fritz Lang and feel as thought you’ve found something fresh that you also already knew in some way.

And what is “The Testament of Dr. Mabuse” about? A svengali of evil, evidently dead but somehow still operating, sets in motion a chain of events that are seemingly unrelated but deeply connected in ways that the film’s lead, Inspector Lohmann (played with riveting naturalism by Otto Wernicke), cannot ever fully puzzle out. “Mabuse” is a puzzle box where all the pieces don’t fit, or perhaps more appropriately, where they fit in more ways than seem possible. The film includes a chase scene that goes nowhere except right back to where it began, a locked-room escape that turns the villain’s weapon into a mechanism of egress, and any number of appearances by characters who aren’t really there, either in the form of silhouettes, recording devices, spectral images, voices from the grave, or imputations from an evil manifesto.

After watching it no fewer than three times, the second time with the excellent commentary track by “Mabuse” scholar David Kalat, I still haven’t fully solved the film and never expect to. Rather than having gained an explanation from it, I’ve gained an enlightenment. That’s what tarot does for you, and that’s what art does, too.

To put in further bas relief how good the “reign of terrier” headline is, here’s a headline from today’s — you saw it coming — Press of Atlantic City:

“Computer techs on the clock to prevent glitches from early daylight-saving shift”

Why is this not a good headline? First of all it takes no fewer than four lines on the Press home page. That’s a lot. Secondly, it tells you precisely what the story is about in an unclever way.

Here’s the lede and first few grafs of the story by Tom Barlas (who was there when I was there!):

It’s easy to set the time on the bedroom alarm clock. Just push a few buttons.

But for the past several weeks, businesses and organizations have been tinkering with their computer systems to make more major adjustments linked to an earlier-than-usual start of daylight-saving time.

With the federal Energy Policy Act of 2005 setting daylight-saving time to begin March 11, technicians are installing new programs and computer patches so the switchover won’t create problems with electronically monitored things such as rail schedules, bank transactions and automatic stock trades.

Even something as simple as computer-logged appointments must be checked.

That’s good writing. It merits a better headline. How about:

“Shift in time takes sine.”

No, that isn’t Mr. Malaprop (the quote unquote president) wondering about the latest actions of “Islamofascists” (a word no doubt coined for him by others). That is my favorite headline of the day, and it accompanies coverage on MSNBC.com about the Westminster Dog Show.

In the days before the World Wide Web, I was a copy editor at The Atlantic City Press. (Excuse me — “The Press of Atlantic City.” Clearly the name change, made in the early 80’s I believe, fixed a grievous misconception that this daily newspaper was in some way aligned with Atlantic City.) The duties of a copy editor include, yes, editing copy, as well as rewriting, and supplying headlines. At times the headline assignment — always on the fly, with a deadline looming — was a real head-scratcher. It wasn’t uncommon to be assigned a “242” (a headline to fill two columns in a 42 point-typefont) or even a “142” (ONE column, 42 points) with seemingly mere minutes to go and on a subject best summed up by a 90-minute lecture with Q & A to follow. At some point our beloved managing editor Bob Ebener (well, I loved him; he was my Lou Grant) sweetened the pot with a weekly contest — $25 for the best headline and $25 for the best caption. I won each of these several times in my 6-month stint on the copy rim, winning best caption once for a photo of a billboard painter doing the art for a gigantic sign of a human (lending me the inspiration for a caption that played off Lilliputians), and best headline once for anchoring a lengthy piece on local welfare fraud with the headline “Brother, can you spare too much?” This latter achievement was especially noteworthy among copy editors because the reporter actually sought out the editor responsible (me) and thanked him profusely. I would say that was better than the extra 25 bucks, but I really needed the 25 bucks.

While I haven’t been a copy editor for 20 years, I haven’t lost one bit of my appreciation for the oft-neglected art of headline writing. (An art I still employ, of sorts, with corporate clients.) The “Reign of terrier” headline works in all aspects: It fits the small space assigned, it grabs the eye (because, indeed, I thought at a glance there was a story about a “reign of terror” alongside a photo of a dog), and it delights the reader.

I don’t know who wrote this, but somebody oughtta send him 25 bucks.