Tonight's movie was "X-15" (1961), about the pioneering rocket jet of the same name, that set speed and altitude records that may still stand (I'm not sure but too tired to Google right now). When I was a kid in second grade, and the teacher would ask all the students what they wanted to be when they grew up, my answer was "Jet Pilot". I never meant it as wanting to be an airline pilot, but always a military jet, because Dad took me to airshows and I thought those jets were the coolest. Probably a lot of boys gave the same answer in those days, and a big reason was the publicity surrounding the X-15. The kids I knew at school all knew what it was. We thought it was pretty fantastic.
The movie "X-15" was shot almost entirely at Edwards Air Force Base, one of my favorite places in the whole world, so that alone made it great viewing for me. As a dramatic movie, it was no great shakes. There is no real plot except for the repeated testing of the plane, and the only question that plays out is "will it work, or won't it"? There are a couple of minor subplots that involve the wives of the pilots, and in the case of Charles Bronson, his young son as well. But mostly the movie is about The "X", and it actually plays out like a Study Film that they used to show in elementary school. Remember those films? They were professionally made, and they would have a voiceover announcer, and they would take you in the film to a dairy, or maybe a bakery, and show you how stuff was made. Remember "Study Films"? Kids loved 'em because they took you away from the boredom of the class for 25 to 45 minutes.
"X-15" plays like half Study Film, half Hollywood drama. But the real draw of the movie is the authentic stock footage of actual X-15 flights. They begin under the wing of an enormous B-52. The X-15 cannot take off on it's own because it is not built to do so. Instead, it is attached to the underside of one of the B-52's wings and carried up to 45,000 feet. From there the pilot ignites the rocket, then detaches from the B-52 and takes off.......and you get to see all of this in the movie, real footage of the real thing, and if you are a Jet-Age Fan like me, to see it is awesome, and it takes you back to when you were a small child and you thought a lot about such things.
For me, airplanes were some of the first machines I was introduced to. Because my Dad was in the Air Force in WW2 (called the Army Air Corps until 1947), he was fascinated with military planes himself, and because he was in a Radar Battalion, their whole job was to watch out for enemy planes, in this case coming from the German Wermacht.
When I was about three or four years old, Dad built me several plastic models of WW2 planes, and they were all Messerschmitts and Henkels and Junkers. He also bought me a series of pamphlets on each plane, with all their statistics. Man, I wish I still had those! :)
I sometimes wondered, in a child's way, why Dad didn't make me any American model planes. After all, we were the Good Guys, right? And the Germans were the Bad Guys.
It didn't hit me until a couple of years ago that Dad made me those German planes because they were the ones he and his radar battalion were trained to look for. They were the planes of his experience, and he wanted me to know about them. And so, even in my crib I had model airplanes suspended overhead.
And I was born into the era of the X-15, which began right around 1960 (too tired to Google, lol), and so my own fascination grew from there. I have gotta get back to Edwards one of these days. They haven't had an airshow since 2009 because of budget cuts and the stupid ultra-paranoid security world we live in nowdays. But one day they will have another one, and I'll be there! Somewhere in my photos I've got a pic of the X-15 on display inside an Edwards hangar. Wow! :)
So that was really all the news of the day. These days, because of work hours, it's all about the nightly movie (where applicable) and some days a local hike, and my constant reading.
Movies are an escape for me, as they are for us all, which is why we love them.
But life cannot only be about escape, and relief from stress.
At some point - and I say this to anyone who might be reading who is aware of what happened in 1989 - we have to confront reality. It is very important for you to acknowledge, to yourself if to no one else, that you were part of an overwhelming, life changing experience that was monumental in importance and has been completely buried due to reasons known only to some high-level agency of the Federal government .
It wasn't just "some weird thing that happened" that you barely remember, and that consequently does not matter to you because you barely remember it.
No, that is not good enough. And it will rot your soul if you keep up that attitude. No joke; that is what will happen. It will rot your soul.
You cannot continue to pretend that This Thing never happened to you, or that if you do acknowledge it to yourself, that it was "only a dream" (as one guy who was there actually said to me) or just some weird thing that has long ago passed by.
You people who were there in September 1989 and who may be reading this blog cannot continue to do these things, to pretend this never happened, because it is not right.
And it will end up killing you, psychologically if not physically.
I am going to be bringing this subject up more and more. Not every day, but on occasion, as the mood strikes, and nowdays it strikes me very often.
I have been living with what happened every single day for 23 years now.
It's a wonder I am still alive.
Keeping silent about 1989 is profoundly wrong. Every day of your lives, when you fail to confront this, and fail to think about what happened to all of us, and what you participated in, and more importantly to talk about every aspect of it, you are doing The Wrong Thing.
Ignoring it is profoundly wrong. Keeping silent is profoundly wrong. Pretending that it never happened is profoundly wrong bordering on evil.
And yet, every day of your lives when you wake up and say nothing, and just go about your business, you are doing just that : Ignoring, Keeping Silent, Pretending.
Every day of your lives you are doing The Wrong Thing, and it's the very worst thing you could do, given the circumstances.
Please think about what I have said. Thanks.
That's all for tonight.
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