Coonridge Digest: Thankful…for hope in whatever shape it comes

Greetin’s from the Ridge.

Sometimes I just can’t account for tastes…even my own. James Bond movies are silly, they’re violent, they’re sexist, the films stretch credibility ‘til it’s plumb unrecognizable, their extravagance symbolize everything that’s wasteful and indulgent in our society, they’re not especially well written…and I love ‘em. Lord help me, I love ‘em. I may love you too but if your funeral’s on the day that the newest James Bond movie comes out, I’ll just have to send a card. While they carry out your flowers to The Old Rugged Cross, I’ll be on the front row of the local Bijou listenin’ to the strings and blarin’ trumpets of Die Another Day.

James Bond is one of the few things Herb and I agree on. In fact, if it’s a James Bond movie, Herb will mortgage the house and buy a box of popcorn to celebrate.

The most recent Bond picture may very well be the worst written, most excessive, and silliest… and I think I liked it the most. And lookin’ around the movie theatre it seemed as if most of the crowd was several ticks past the action hero age. Gray hair, potted bellies, worn out knees and mortgages paid off. Made me wonder why otherwise sane folks would pay good money for two hours of excessive kissin’ and blowin’ things up.

Since the last thirty minutes of the latest Bond slam-jam fest is silliness beyond even a Coonridger’s ability to make believe, I pondered on the appeal of this 20-film epic. I think it has somethin’ to do with our national sensibility in the past forty years.

I grew up thinkin’…no, firmly believin’ that somewhere, somehow, somebody good was in charge. No matter how badly out of kilter the world got, there was a noble group of powerful folks at the center of things who’d set things straight. I always held the naive but comfortable notion that somewhere deep in the bowels of decision-making bureaucracy, somebody had both the good sense and the power to make things come out right…sort of a hidden deity at the helm.

(My Grandpa always told us, "Don’t worry, kids. Whenever things get in bad enough shape the government will give me a call to come straighten things out." When you’re six years old you believe anything your Grandpa tells you. One day he got a letter askin’ him to serve on a governmental committee. Grandpa flashed it around the Thanksgiving table and said, "There it is! Things finally got bad enough and I’m off to straighten things out!" I found out later that he’d been asked to serve on an Ag Extension Service committee to help improve traffic patterns at the county fair, but I grew up thinkin’ that Grandpa had saved the Free World from calamity. Sometimes fantasy makes you sleep better than fact.)

Of course I had no good reason for thinkin’ this way except for the fact that things did turn out right for the country. We won the wars. We survived the depressions. The Cubs are still playin’ ball. The sheep will come home wagging their tails behind them as long as we wait long enough and good sense prevails.

Then Vietnam. Then Watergate. Then September 11th. As the horrible pictures filled the news screens and it became obvious that a good deal of the world has a sincere distrust if not outright hate for us, and that we might not be able to fix everything. I began to yearn for the sight of a suave man in a black tuxedo who liked his martinis shaken and not stirred and tended to blow up everything evil by the time the last reel spun around.

The events of the past four decades make me wonder if the hero of Her Majesty’s Secret Service still exists or if his ilk ever did. In the past forty years I’ve almost come to the notion that we’ve survived out of brute force, the bravery of our armed forces, and a little bit of dumb luck. When we’re asked to fight for freedom, we wonder as to the real motives of our leaders. Many brave Americans will still give up their lives for a noble cause but we no longer have blind faith in those settin’ the goals.

There’ll probably be a 21st James Bond film and he’ll no doubt put evil in its place. Agent ‘Q’ will have designed just the perfect gadget to obliterate the bad guy in the last twenty minutes and ‘M’ will be there to roll her eyeballs as she congratulates Bond saving the planet while running up an enormous expense account. I’ll be on the front row cheerin’ him on and hopin’ that things are really that way.

James Bond films tend to come out around Thanksgiving and that suits me just fine. I like to make their premieres a part of my celebration. For at least a couple of hours I know that the world’s in good hands, that evil will get its snout run into the ground and that I can tell myself it’s safe to go to bed.

I am truly thankful this Thanksgiving…for hope in whatever shape it comes.

You ever in Coonridge, stop by. We may not answer the door but you’ll enjoy the trip.