Kicking Up A Little Dust

My friend, Sandra, was huddled in the corner of the room, blankets pulled to her chin while watching the news on television. She shuddered.

"I've got bad feeling about this," she muttered.

"Is there something wrong?" I asked, genuinely alarmed.

"Don't you see?" Sandra said sharply. "They're bringing all that comet dust back from who knows where. Isn't there enough trouble down here on earth? This can only bring more catastrophe."

I noticed the dust that had been accumulating on the top of the TV. I hadn't noticed it before. It didn't look all that dangerous, though I'll have to mention it to the housekeeper. If I had a housekeeper. If I had a hammer. There's a phenomenon about household dust. Once you notice it in one spot, it seems to be everywhere. Dusting becomes an endless search and wipe-clean mission. On the TV screen, the NASA scientists were celebrating the safe landing of what looked like a rusty spittoon in the Utah desert. The capsule had made a long journey through the heavens to collect a portion of dust from a comet. The cargo resembles dirty ice. Like slush that had accumulated along the highway in the mountains. You know, I can't remember the last time I defrosted the refrgerator. But this was no ordinary slush. This was from the entrails of a comet that has been flying through space for millions and millions of years. Or perhaps, as the great Carl Sagan would declaim so deliciously, "Billions and BILLIONS of years!" The scientists gave the extraterrestrial project a lyrical name: Stardust.

I thought of the great Hoagy Carmichael tune with the words, "And now my great consolation is in the stardust of a song ..."

I began to see Sandra's point. Stardust is something ethereal, untouchable, something that will always be wistfully beyond our reach.

And should be. It's not supposed to be captured and shipped back home in a crate or a parcel. It's designed to produce that celestial razzle-dazzle in the sky that makes lovers hold tight and inspire loopy poets to scribble away on spindrift pages as they look up in perfect silence at the stars.

But Sandra isn't worried about the purity of the moment. She believes capturing comet dust signals a bad omen and portends great misfortune. Perhaps, as it is in all those science fiction movies, the paranoid parables of my 1950's childhood, the space debris that's been harnessed for analysis will bring an alien contagion to our planet. A bird flu that's winged in from the great beyond. Or it could upset the delicate cosmic balance. It doesn't seem all that delicate.

Here's a more fanciful scenario. Perhaps the protectors of interplanetary cometary property will come to Earth from distant galaxies and demand its return and then all hell will break loose because we will fight to keep our precious space dust. A war of the worlds right here in the world of the weird. Not likely, though. The Elgin Marbles aren't going anywhere, either. In an odd twist, the ashes of Clyde Tombaugh, the astronomer who discovered Pluto, are now being carried on the New Horizons spacecraft to that farthest planet -- the farthest as far as we know -- on a nine-year journey. Ashes are coming and going throughout the universe.

Scientists explain the purpose of the Stardust project in their usual way: it will unlock clues to the origin of our solar system. I wish them luck. I can't even understand where "American Idol" came from. The logic behind this insatiable desire for discovery is that if we figure out where we came from, we might have an idea where we are going. The answer to that is already all too apparent. All of our best and noble efforts are likely destined to end up on the dustbin of history, as transitory as a shooting star. Maybe Sandra, a fastidious housekeeper, dislikes dust so much because it's not only messy and pervasive -- it's downright primordial. And maybe a little creepy.

Like Clyde Tombaugh, we are, in the final analysis, all inevitably bound together by a common reality; we will ultimately be reduced to flakes and seemingly insignificant cinders. For many, that's a bleak prospect. Too dreary for a self-important humanity to contemplate. It's the same old story, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. That's why the results of the Project Stardust research will never be widely disseminated. Once the answers are found, they will all be quietly swept under the rug.

____________________________________________________

Bruce Bellingham is the author of "Bellingham by the Bay." He confesses he gazes at the stars far too often and must be dusted off from time to time. bruce@brucebellingham.com

Maurice Kanbar's "Hoodwinked" Makes A San Francisco Debut

Maurice Kanbar, San Francisco's peripatetic preeminent philanthropist, was honored last month at the Clay Theatre with a preview screening of the new big-budget animated feature film that he's produced and a special proclamation from the mayor of San Francisco. Maurice's name also blazed on the marquee.

December 11, 2005 was officially Maurice Kanbar Day in San Francisco. The declaration was read for the mayor by Stephanie Coyote, the head of the S.F. Film Office, for a crowd that eagerly awaited the movie, "Hoodwinked: The True Story of Little Red Riding Hood." Among the crowd were actor Peter Coyote, director Philip Kaufman, and writer Barnaby Conrad III. The ushers kept checking the bathrooms for any trace of Mel Blanc.

The audience was not disappointed. The film, that moves at a dazzling pace, is witty, acerbic and clever. The jokes target a broad audience and the film is rife with grown-up allusions to "The Thin Man," the James Bond movies, the classic cartoons of baby boomer youth such as, Road Runner, the Fletch series, and even Stan Freberg. One of the bad guys bears a distinct resemblance to Arnold Schwarzenegger. "A pure coincidence," claims Edwards.

"We went to Maurice with an idea," Corey Edwards, the director, told the audience. "He advised us to tackle something that's been tried and true -- such an old nursery rhyme. We went through them all, Grimm's Fairy Tales, Aesop, the whole thing. My brother, Todd, came up with the idea for telling Little Red Riding Hood with a 'Rashomon' or 'Run, Lola, Run' style of telling the story through several different points of view. We brought Maurice an example within a month. He liked it."'

The film, featuring the voices of Glenn Close, Anne Hathaway, James Belushi, David Ogden Stiers, and Chazz Palminteri, was made for just under $15 million, a rather frugal budget for a Hollywood feature.

"We hired animators in Manila and in India," said Edwards. "Otherwise we could not have kept the costs down like this."

"Hoodwinked" opens in San Francisco and in 1,300 theaters around the country later this month.

__________________________________________________

Bruce Bellingham is the author of "Bellingham by the Bay." His e-mail is bruce@brucebellingham.com

"Patriot Act": A Riveting Movie About Comics' Tour of Iraq

Comedian Jeffrey Ross brought his new "home movie" of his USO tour with Drew Carey and other talented comics of U.S. military installations in Iraq to the S.F. Film Center in the Presidio last month. It is not your typical, "Well. dinner's over. Now you have to see the video of my summer vacation."

In fact, the tour takes place in four non-stop, sleepless and very dangerous days. Ross and company's itinerary was top secret -- even from them. They traveled only at night in planes, trucks and Blackhawk helicopters. The tension is palpable. "When Robin Williams and David Letterman go to Iraq, they're usually at the heavily-fortified Baghdad Airport and in and out in a few hours," Ross said. "Drew Carey is a former Marine and he wanted us to go to the outposts that are not so secure -- remote installations that are scattered all over Iraq." Ross describes the film, "Patriot Act," as the "funniest movie to come out of Iraq." Not only is it a tribute to the soldiers and Marines serving in Iraq, it's Ross' homage to Bob Hope, who defined the USO tour.

"I thought I could reverse a lifetime of apathy by joining this crazy comedy tour in Iraq when Drew Carey invited me," Ross said. "After 9/11, I was nearly moved to enlist in the military. I thought that meant being a security guard at Old Navy."

One amusing but poignant scene depicts Ross' encounter with Jewish soldiers and Marines in a mess hall as they celebrate Rosh Hashanah.

"I've never been religious," confessed Ross. "But after being here for a while, I began to feel like a Jew and what it means to be a Jew. I never got that 'Jews for Jesus' stuff. That's like 'Dogs for Cats.'"

Also appearing in the movie are comedians Kathy Kinney, Blake Clark (also a Viet Nam vet), Kyle Dunnigan, Andros Fernandez, Rocky LaPorte and the legendary Larry Gelbart. Ross confessed to a standing room crowd at the Film Center that he has mixed feelings about our involvement in Iraq: "I'm for the war, but I'm against the troops."

Yes, that's a joke. He made plenty of friends at the U.S. military high command and has gone on a few more tours subsequent to this trip, which took place just before the capture of Saddam Hussein. The comedians' whirlwind and perilous journey left him a changed man: "I learned that jokes can penetrate bullet-proof vests."

Then Ross wondered, "How could Bob Hope have done this for so long?"

Bruce Bellingham is the author of "Bellingham by the Bay." His e-mail is bruce@brucebellingham.com