This Week for Happy Hour: Atlas Farted

Saturday is Arnold Schwarzenegger’s birthday!  More on that later.

I’ll begin with a title-related confession: I never read Atlas Shrugged.  I couldn’t finish it.  Not just because it’s thick enough to stop a bullet, either; the damn thing’s a contrived attempt to masturbate the reader’s ego until he thinks he’s man enough to hold the world on his shoulders.  All by himself.  Don’t need no help.  Stay out of my way, everyone – I’ve got the world to prop up.  And that I can’t abide.

Thing is, we’re all (like Soylent Green) just people.  I know that sounds obvious, but it seems worth acknowledging once in a while.  We are weird, complicated, feeble, funky little mammals, reacting to the world around us and trying to make sense of things, trying to do our best.   What we aren’t is superheroes, a la Commando.  Superheroes are fun precisely for that reason: that they’re not real; it’s something to fantasize about in daydreams.  They can be found in movies and in fiction – in Ayn Rand’s books and in Arnold Schwarzenegger blockbusters.  But the Ubermench doesn’t walk off the screen or page and lift the world up all alone.  I mean that would be awesome.  But that’s fairytale stuff.  Global accomplishments don’t come at the benevolent hand of the individual.  Great things on that level take teamwork and solidarity.  A bunch of flawed humans trying to hold up the world all together might work.  But I guarantee you at least one of them farts.  Atlas’ burden is a heavy one to bear, especially for non-superheroes.

So that self-aggrandizing attitude exhibited by Ayn Rand’s characters, especially when realized to the detriment of actual human beings, gets me, you could say, a little riled up.  Reading it, I’ll inevitably end up getting frustrated, try to throw the wood brick at the wall and find myself with tennis elbow for a week and a half.  Great, stupid Ayn.

Anyway, it’s Arnold’s birthday on Saturday.  He’s getting up there.  He’ll be 64.  Holy crap, the Terminator is 64. 

Interestingly, he’s become the embodiment of the duality of man’s self-(mis)conception.  On the one hand, the superhero – the muscular, witty, can’t-fail go-getter who can take on a thousand storm troopers with a hunting knife and a grimace and come out of it with all the satisfaction of a good workout and a full belly.  That’s the movie guy.  And on the other hand, the reality: the imperfect mess, the muscles gone soft, the kidneys and liver shot from roids, the State of California left unresolved, and the wife and family alienated and angry by his infidelities.  Right now, he’s probably eating cold baked beans out of the can with a spoon under a bare bulb, the TNT version of Predator on his turn-knob RCA until he spontaneously succumbs to afternoon naptime in a seated position.  I bet the poor guy can’t even blow out all his birthday cake candles without putting on a back brace first.  Oh, the mighty and their falls.

So it got me thinking this week, about how some folks’ infatuation with individualism can be borderline unhealthy and downright unrealistic.  Let’s keep in mind how much we all depend on society, on the people we live around, whether we know them or not, want to or not.   

The human being isn’t much outside of society.  I think we’re about on the level of a fourteen-year-old Golden Retriever with bad hips named Humphrey.  All alone out there?  Trying to do it all alone?  The food, the shelter, the cold.  Sounds like a lot of work.  No, Humphrey, come on back in by the fire and have a treat.  Good boy.  What do you think we are, monsters?

So come on into the Rhino for Happy Hour, Friday 5-9.  Show a little love and a little appreciation for your Metro DC kin – all those people who keep the city alive.  Have a smile and a moment of clarity amidst the reticent symbiosis and the booty-shakin’ clamor of it all.  And a beer.  Have those other things and a beer.  It’ll be fun, I promise.

Saturday, there’ll be Arnold movies on – at least a couple of them.  Besides being awesome on their own, they should be violent enough to make it uncomfortable for that one group at the tables who didn’t know what they were getting themselves into – the away team, you might call them.  And sometimes the free entertainment is the best kind around.

Here's a little taste:

See you there!

Cheers,

Finn