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Remembering Hulk Hogan… or at least his TV show

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There’s been a lot of talk lately about the death of Hulk Hogan, a recently born-again Christian, according to reports. He meant a lot to a certain generation of American kids, but they were younger than me, so I knew the man mostly from a 1993-94 TV show that lasted a single season. “Thunder In Paradise” has never made any lists as great entertainment. It was – almost jubilantly – a dumb show. But most people (most guys, anyway) agreed that it was a lot of fun.

The preposterous premise of “Thunder In Paradise” was that two former Navy Seals, played by Hogan and Chris Lemmon (Jack’s son) lived in a resort in Florida and worked brief, exciting mercenary jobs, with the help of their state-of-the-art speed boat, which boasted sophisticated weapons and CGI armor. Former model Carol Alt was on hand for eye candy, and Patrick Macnee (of The Avengers) himself showed up in the early episodes, for some reason. There was also a little girl in the cast, supposed to be Hogan’s ward, who needed rescuing from time to time.

The premise was ridiculous. The scripts were implausible. The acting (especially Hogan’s) nothing to boast about. But the scenery was beautiful, there were lots of girls in bikinis, and every episode offered shooting, running around, and stuff blowing up.

I had no illusions about “Thunder In Paradise,” but I watched it every week, and missed it when it was gone. I remember those days as the end of the fun times in entertainment. I could turn the TV on and not have to worry about receiving moral instruction about the sacredness of sodomy, or the peaceful nature of Islam.

Back then, you could produce a show purely for the enjoyment of men. Nobody agonized over the male gaze. Attraction between the sexes wasn’t considered problematic. We could all have fun – and I’m convinced that fun hasn’t increased in any way since entertainment got its consciousness raised.

Ah, well. That was back when I had dark hair, too.

R.I.P. Hulk Hogan.

(You can watch the whole series on YouTube).

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In which I pretend to keep my dignity

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Culvers’ battered cod offerings. Credit: culvers.com

The tale of my weekend and Monday is not a cheery one, but I can’t think of another topic. I’ll try to keep it PG rated.

My two-day Waffle Festival was all I hoped it would be. I do a pretty fair Bisquick waffle, if I do say so myself. No doubt there are ways to improve my waffles, but these will do. Sunday, the Great Preparatory Fast, could have been worse. The preparation process that evening… the less said about that the better. It’s over; I’ll say that much. The old friend who served as my driver on Monday is very cheerful and patient, which was necessary because the procedure got delayed a full hour. When it was all over, I bought him lunch. Oh, the joys of solid food! Have you ever had the batter-fried cod dinner at Culvers’? Why does a hamburger place have the best cod in town? That’s one of the great cosmic mysteries. Or paradoxes, or something.

During the Sunday Fast, I searched for the movie “Sunburn” on YouTube, and discovered that it was available there. I was thinking of it, because I’d reviewed The Bind, the book it was based on, the other day. The studio, in its genius, took a hard-boiled, tragic yarn and tried to make it a light action comedy. I remember enjoying it when it came out, but that must have been mostly because of my massive crush on Farrah Fawcett. The movie follows the story’s plot more closely than I expected (though they moved the action from Miami Beach to Acapulco), merely changing the tone of things. But the dark ending had to go, so they substituted a conventional, improbable Hollywood gambit and ended the story on a (very false) light note. One of the worst final sequences I’ve ever seen in a movie.

Watching Farrah, the picture of youthful health and beauty, I couldn’t help thinking of her early death some years ago, the victim of a cancer which (I expect) could have been prevented by the very procedure I was just then dreading.

My great comfort, as I now contemplate the completed ordeal (the results were acceptable), is that at my age I’m unlikely to have to endure many more of these once-every-five-year procedures.

And the moral of the story is – waffles are good, and so is Culvers’ batter-fried cod. I wonder if cod is any good with waffles, the way people now rave about chicken and waffles. Someone should try it. Authentic Norwegian cuisine.

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A tribute to the waffle

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Photo credit: Jodie Morgan twoluckyspoons Unsplash license

I have installed a photograph of waffles at the peak of this post, because waffles are much on my mind of late. I shall explain…

Tomorrow I embark on an ordeal that falls to my lot once every five years. This ordeal involves a procedure whose name I’ve always refused to use in this space. Suffice it to say that it’s a humiliating medical procedure, an examination, which demands certain dietary changes as one prepares. Two days of a low-fiber diet, followed by one day (that would be Sunday) of no solid food at all, and then, on Monday, truth will be sought in my inward parts.

I know that the procedure itself is likely to be okay. As a man who’s never indulged in recreational drugs (I sailed through the swinging sixties and the sexy seventies like Mr. Magoo through a construction site, quite oblivious) I can’t deny looking forward to the relaxants I’ll be getting in preparation. I think the last time I relaxed naturally was around 1957.

But be that as it may, I was not looking forward to two days of low-fiber pablum (is pablum low fiber? I’ve never tried it). But as I studied the list of acceptable foods, I was delighted to discover that waffles (as well as butter and syrup) are kosher.

And that, as the poet said, has made all the difference. For a man who’s always trying to limit his caloric intake, the wonderful waffle has to be a rare treat. They are high in calories, and everything  you’re likely to garnish them with is pretty lofty as well.

But tomorrow and Saturday will be waffle days for this patient. And any day with waffles is okay by me, gastronomically speaking. This reduces the worst of my ordeal to the Sunday fast, which I must endure, even as my going hence.

According to Wikipedia, the word “waffle” derives from a Frankish word “wafla,” meaning honeycomb or cake.

Waffles seem to be the consequence of the convergence of two culinary traditions. The ancient Greeks cooked flat cakes the called “obelios” between hot plates. Europeans, in the middle ages, cooked cakes between hot irons called “fer à hostiesʺ  or ʺhostieijzers” (communion wafer irons) and moule à oublies (wafer irons) in the 9th-10th Centuries (Vikings, conceivably, could have gotten a taste). Around the 16th Century, the Belgians invented the Belgian waffle (which is somewhat different from what we Americans call Belgian waffles – and that should surprise nobody). Personally, I favor the conventional, plebeian American waffle, the kind you get by following the instructions on the Bisquick box.

Back in Scandinavia, waffles are usually a little sweeter than our American ones, and are baked on irons formed like converging heart shapes and eaten as a sweet with the midday meal or supper, often topped by strawberries and whipped cream. Also very nice, but the American variety is one of my comfort foods.

And I shall be requiring some comfort.

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I was (semi) blind, but now I see

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I think I’m in a position to close the book on my cataract ordeal now. For this particular eye, at least. The other will be clouding up in its own time, they assure me.

But I woke this morning to the stunning realization that the vision in that much-abused left eye is crystal clear now. Good as it was even before I tore my retina, back before the cataract grew. Possibly better. Which is delightful.

Except for one small detail, a rather bizarre one.

My vision is warped.

The guy who operated on my retina told me I’d probably never get perfectly clear vision again. The retina, after all, is kind of like a mirror. Break a mirror and glue it back together, and it’ll never quite be the same.

So I was expecting my sight on that side to be a little fuzzy. But it’s not. It’s just warped.

If I look at a straight line, even the line of words in this sentence on the screen, it’s a little… wavy. Just a little.

It doesn’t really interfere with anything. In fact, it’s kind of amusing, like having my own personal funhouse wherever I go.

If I were a sniper, I suppose, it might interfere with my daily life. But I can get by just fine with a little bend in my perception. There are many people around who can testify that my view of the world has always been a little skewed.

Bottom line (it’s a crooked line, but on the bottom): my vision is clear and bright, and I’m extremely grateful to God and modern ophthalmological science. My grandmother had cataract surgery back in the 1960s, and she had to spend weeks in a bed, with sandbags holding her head immobile. Then she had to wear coke-bottle glasses the rest of her life.

Music, Uncategorized

Post-cataract patriotic stuff

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Here I am, in spite of my augurings yesterday, having risen from a bed of pain just to craft a blog post for you. And you alone. (I think that’s about the total size of our readership.)

I’m happy to report that, in spite of my warnings, I do have the ability to read a computer screen, and am capable of posting in a languid, invalid fashion. (I heard that! Somebody said, “How will that be any different?”)

I can report, since I know you’ve been holding your breath about it, that my cataract surgery went just fine. Everything looks good. I did not acquire immediate clear vision in my affected eye; they tell me that’ll probably take two or three days in my case. But everything seems to be squared away, ship shape and Bristol fashion. Thank you for your prayers.

Tomorrow is Independence Day. Hence, I post above the classic movie performance of “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” by that noted Norwegian-American actor, James Cagney. (Seriously. His mother’s father was a Norwegian sea captain.)

Have a free and brave Fourth!

Reading, Uncategorized

The ambivalent wonders of cotton

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Eli Whitney’s cotton gin

Do they teach them about Eli Whitney in schools anymore? When I was young, Whitney’s story was told (briefly) because of his tremendous – and ambivalent – importance in American history.

Whitney’s cotton gin revitalized the economy of the American south. It made cotton a cheap and profitable bulk commodity. (Until then it had been exclusively luxury wear.) And – tragically – it revived human slavery as a business model in America, where it had been – everyone agreed – quietly dying out. All those self-righteous sermons about God ordaining slavery mostly got delivered after the plantation economy had been revived and prosperity once again depended on cheap field labor.

But there’s another side to the cotton story, less well known but equally significant. I read about it, I think, in Paul Johnson’s The Birth of the Modern, and it astonished me.

I’ve written much about the rise of Pietism and how it contributed to literacy, social mobility, and a new social status for common people. But few are aware how much cotton fiber also contributed to that change.

As I understand it, John Wesley never actually said, “Cleanliness is next to Godliness.” But it does encapsulate some ideas he expressed. However (I think Paul Johnson made this point), it would have been impossible to say that before cotton became widely available.

Cotton is a wonderful fiber. It’s light and cool, great for summer wear. And you can boil the stuff. Throw it in a kettle and bubble the germs out of it. A poor man who owns cotton clothing can be as clean as the king of England or the president of the United States.

Wool is wonderful in its way (especially up here in the north), but you have to wash it in cool water. You can never sanitize it. That means that throughout history, when most of the poor wore wool, even next to the skin, those poor people stunk.

Cotton gave them a new dignity. I remember my mother reminiscing repeatedly about her childhood in the Great Depression. “Our clothes may have been old, and they may have been patched,” she said, “but my mother saw to it they were always clean.” That’s the pride of the honest poor, and a revolution in the world.

Since it’s supposed to be Pride Month, I’ll go with Cotton-Wearing Pride, thank you.

Reading, Uncategorized, Writing

‘Troll Valley’ and Dalebu Jonsson

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Finished reading Chapter 19 of Troll Valley today for the audiobook iteration. Chapter 19 was a bear. It took three days (one-hour sessions) to record, edit, and master the whole thing. I was a little fuzzy on the concept of chapter length back when I wrote the book, and I let that one get out the barn door and off across the pastures into the corn. I start it with Chris, our hero, in the fictional town of Tuscany, Colorado, getting a visit from his brother Fred. Then Fred takes him to the ghost town where their father has settled down for a hermit’s life, and they have quite a lengthy reunion, getting to know each other better than they ever did back home in Minnesota, and revealing some secrets. Then Fred, who’s now an outlaw, has a confrontation with a lawman, after which he must go on the run again. Then Chris says goodbye to his father, has a couple supernatural experiences that change his personality, and gets in a fight in a brothel, in which he is injured. After recovering from his wounds, he heads home to Epsom.

If I were writing it today, I’d make that at least two chapters. Possibly three. But in spite of that, I have to admit that – contrary to my expectations – I think Troll Valley isn’t a bad book at all. I was pretty young when I wrote it, and I’m sure I’m a better artist now, but it’s still a good book. There’s stuff in there I’d completely forgotten about, and it mostly works. If somebody else had written it, and I were reading it for review, I think I’d recommend it.

At one point, when the Anderson boys are gathered with their father, they sing the song posted above, a Norwegian folk song called Dalebu Jonsson. It’s about a man who kidnaps a princess, then singlehandedly fights off 7,000 warriors her father sends to rescue her. Finally the king is so impressed that he agrees to let him marry her – “You can have little Kjersti; you are worthy of her.” (Or words to that effect.)

I know the song from a recording by a male Norwegian group called “Vandrerne,” which no longer exists. They did it in a very rousing style, sort of like an Irish drinking song in spirit. When I got to the part of the text where I include the first verse, in Norwegian, my full intention was to just read the words straight. But as I was reading, I found myself sliding into music, so I ended up singing it. I translated that verse, “Oh, Dalebu’s love was a beautiful maid; he won her with steel and sharp iron blade.” (Which I think is a jolly translation; not literal, but it nails the spirit of the thing.)

The arrangement embedded above is nothing at all like the song as I know it, but I couldn’t find a better one and I thought somebody might be interested.

Religion, Uncategorized

Spittoons, and my day job, plus a heresy at no extra charge

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In my ongoing project of audiobooking Troll Valley this morning (I’m about 80% through it now), I came on a mention of a spittoon, and it got me thinking…

But first, let me tell you about my day job. I’ve already declared that I won’t describe exactly what I’m doing (temporarily), but let me speak in general terms.

Imagine you’re a teacher. In Middle School, say. (The horror! The horror!)

And imagine you’re grading English essays. (I suppose some of you may have experienced this trauma in real life.)

And imagine (implausible as it may sound) that those essays aren’t very good. That the same mistakes are made over and over. You’re not even getting original mistakes.

And imagine the pile of essays is about ten feet high. And it never seems to diminish.

That’s what my temporary, online job is like.

Thank you. Now that’s off my chest.

So, there was a brief appearance by a spittoon in today’s chapter of Troll Valley. And that reminded me of something.

A while back, a pastor I know, who at one time served my home congregation, asked me, “Do you remember anything about spittoons in the back of Hauge Church? Somebody told me they used to have spittoons back there. The ladies let them have them, just in that section, but the men who used them had to clean them out themselves.”

And it seemed to ring a bell (no doubt a brass bell). This would be part of my very earliest memories – and with memories that old, I’ve learned that I’m highly suggestible. So I’m not at all sure here. But I have an idea I may have seen the spittoons back there, in the rear alcove of our church, next to the entryway, where my family always sat when I was little. There were warm air registers in the floor, I’m pretty sure, and I think I recall a spittoon sitting on top of one. I may have asked about it when they disappeared, too.

Or maybe not.

We Haugean Lutherans had a weird (I was tempted to say “fraught,” but I hate the way people use that word these days) relationship with tobacco in the old days. I remember discussing sin with my saintly grandmother one day, confidently asserting that drinking and smoking were both sins, but drinking was worse.

A pastor I knew years ago always used to link Haugeans to cigars. Somebody had told him that all the Haugeans back home had smoked big cigars, and that was all he knew about us, or cared to know. (I suppose it had something to do with the prosperity of some of the Haugean merchants back in Norway.)

Dad recalled how his grandfather was forced, by the two unmarried daughters who kept house for him in his old age, to always go out on the porch to smoke his pipe. (I incorporated this into Troll Valley.) Dad felt that was demeaning to the old man.

I saw a short video recently – think it was by Rory Sutherland – in which he was asked what secret, heretical views he held. And he said he thought tobacco was good for you, and will make a social comeback in time.

I’d almost welcome it. I know, there are lots of people who find the smell revolting, and some even get sick from it.

But I grew up in a world of ubiquitous tobacco smoke. I always kind of liked the smell, myself.

And it is an appetite suppressant. We were all a lot thinner back when we were lighting up rather than munching on chips all the time.

I think my rooting in secret for tobacco, though, mostly rises from my instinctive dislike for everything that’s fashionable.

Just don’t chew it. Spittoons are nasty.

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Roses fade

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A random post tonight, drawing on my long and tedious life story. My reading is slowed right now by the fact that I’ve acquired a kind of a job, online. It’s a temporary one, but demands my time while I’ve got it. I may tell you about it, if I discover it’s okay with my employers.

Anyway, my memory wandered back, the other day, to a trip I took around 1978, when I was spending a year in Missouri (how and why is beside the point here). My parents came down from Minnesota to visit me, and we took a trip to the Ozarks. It was one of my first experiences relating to my parents as an adult, and weird for all kinds of reasons. My big interests were in visiting the Wilson’s Creek battlefield (an early Civil War battle at which both Wild Bill Hickok and Jesse James were present), and the Saunders Museum of Berryville, AK, which has a splendid collection of historical weapons. My parents dutifully accompanied me, but were more interested in the sights of Branson, which was just getting going as a tourist spot at the time.

We stopped at a couple places related to artists – we saw the open-air play based on Harold Bell Wright’s novel, The Shepherd of the Hills, which was once a world bestselling book – now almost forgotten. I ought to write something about Wright and his novel one of these days.

We also visited (I’m pretty sure this was Mom’s idea) Bonniebrook, the home of the artist Rose O’Neill (1874-1944), who was also a world-class celebrity in her time. (The song “Rose of Washington Square” from the movie of the same name, embedded above, is supposed to have been a tribute to her, although the movie’s based on the life of Fannie Brice). She is best remembered as a cartoonist and illustrator. She created the “Kewpie,” on which the kewpie doll is based. “Kewpie” is a diminutive for “Cupid.” The kewpies were cute, playful babies, inspired by the Cupids and cherubs of Renaissance art, only their wings were so vestigial you could hardly see them (which didn’t stop them flying, apparently). The kewpie doll was the first mass-produced doll, and it was bigger in its day than Cabbage Patch Kids or Tickle Me Elmo could ever hope to be.

Rose herself was a Nebraska native who moved to New York to pursue art. She became the first woman to ever have a comic strip published, and got to be rich and famous. She bought the Bonniebrook property in Missouri, where her father already lived, and spent the bulk of her earnings on her family there – plus her profligate first husband. But she herself did not live exactly modestly, and in time the kewpie doll fad receded, and her fortune (which had been huge) ran out. She retired to Missouri, where she died.

You can visit Bonniebrook today, as we did. I remember it as a large house full of art. I seem to recall they had a genuine Andrew Wyeth there, though my memory is not reliable. My mom bought a small ceramic kewpie of her own.

I guess the memory of that place got me thinking about fame. Even if you succeed as an artist in your own time (something I seem to have avoided), it doesn’t guarantee immortality in the eyes of man. When you think of famous artists or writers, there seems to be a lot of them, but there were multitudes you never heard of. Some were highly regarded by their contemporaries, but their work has been lost, or they fell out of favor with later generations.

Yet we all long not to be forgotten. I recall an old man somebody once brought along to a family gathering, when I was just a kid. I remember him sitting on my grandfather’s couch, tentative, melancholy, quiet. When the time came for him to leave, he came over to us kids and said, “Don’t forget me.”

We looked at him dully and said we wouldn’t.

And I haven’t.

But I have no idea who he was.

“For here we have no continuing city, but we seek the one to come.” (Hebrews 13:14)

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Birgitta Wallace, 1934-2025

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I recently learned that the archaeologist Birgitta Wallace has died, aged 91. (She is featured in the Canadian video above, which is in English with French subtitles.)

Birgitta Wallace is memorable to the world for her outstanding work as chief archaeologist at the Viking site at L’Anse Aux Meadows, Newfoundland (which I have visited, he mentioned casually).

She was the successor there to Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad, the original discoverers of Viking artifacts at the site. Helge Ingstad was adamant throughout his career that the Vinland (“Wineland the Good”) of the sagas was the place he’d found in Newfoundland and nowhere else. He insisted – for some reason – that it was impossible that the Vikings could have gone anywhere else. “Stop looking. This is all there is,” was his message. The fact that no grapes have ever grown at that latitude did not trouble him – he considered the wine story pure fantasy.

Birgitta Wallace was less convinced. She noted that butternut shells were found in the excavations at L’Anse Aux Meadows, and butternuts also do not grow at that latitude. But they do grow at latitudes where grapes grow. She believed (and most historians today agree) that other Viking settlements very likely did exist in America. We just haven’t found them yet. We may never find them.

For me, Birgitta Wallace had the distinction of being about the most famous person I ever met personally. She spoke at the Chicago seminar on Vinland organized by Prof. Torgrim Titlestad back in 2010, which I attended. I walked up to her and told her I would like to be able to tell my friends I’d met her. We shook hands (very delicately; she was quite frail). It never occurred to me to take a selfie – I’m not in fact sure whether I even owned a phone with a camera in those days.

R.I.P. Birgitta Wallace.