L.B.: Freeze frame, roll credits

Left Behind, pp. 467-468

Buck Williams carefully plans the book's final phone call:

Buck couldn't wait to talk to his friends in Illinois, but he didn't want to call from his office or his apartment, and he didn't know for sure whether his cellular phone was safe. He packed his stuff and took a cab to the airport, asking the cabbie to stop at a pay phone a mile outside the terminal.

One last phone call, one last NY-to-Chicago flight. All he needs is one last multi-page bout of introspection in the men's room and Buck's end-of-the-book victory lap would be complete.

Buck's precaution here about the phone lines is a prudent bit of paranoia, but it doesn't seem to occur to him that Nicolae tapping his phone lines might be the least of his worries. The newly appointed god-emperor of earth has just singled him out as the subject of mass-delusion and I can't imagine how that could be a good thing.

This recalls Buck's earlier stint as an innocent man on the run, traveling under a false name to elude the conspiracy led by Stonagal and T-C. That episode ended with him having his best friend* and closest colleague pick him up at the airport and then take him back to the office. He seemed to assume -- correctly, as it turns out -- that the nearly all-powerful conspiracy tracking him across three countries would not also be staking out his office or keeping an eye on his friends.

Now Buck worries that he may have run afoul of an even more powerful conspiracy, so he takes great pains to find a safe phone line on which to call his newest close friends and arrange to have them pick him up at the airport. If Cary Grant had been this clueless he wouldn't have survived the first half-hour of North by Northwest.

Not getting an answer at the Steeles', he dialed the church. Bruce answered and told him Chloe and Rayford were there. "Put them on speakerphone..."

Speakerphone! (Confetti and balloons drop from the ceiling, the band begins to play, etc.)

"Put them on speakerphone," he said. "I'm taking the three o'clock American flight to O'Hare. But let me tell you this: Carpathia is your man, no question. He fills the bill to the last detail. I felt your prayers in the meeting. God protected me. I'm moving to Chicago, and I want to be a member of, what did you call it, Bruce?"

"The Tribulation Force?"

"That's it!"

And who publishes that, again, Bruce? Tyndale? And will that be available soon at a bookstore near you?

"Does this mean --?" Chloe began.

"You know exactly what it means," Buck said.

That Nicolae has brainwashed you into returning to Chicago as his spy, infiltrating the resistance as a mole in order to learn all of our secrets, foil our plans and eventually have us all killed?

Oh, or maybe you meant that other thing. ...

"What happened, Buck?" Chloe asked.

"I'd rather tell you about it in person," he said. "But have I got a story for you! And you're the only people I know who are going to believe it."

I'd have switched that around a bit and ended the book right there: "Have I got a story for you ... but I'd rather tell you about it in person."

That would be a nice note to end on, with telephone-addicted Buck Williams taking the first halting steps toward recovery, expressing for the first time in the entire book a preference for face-to-face communication without the telephone as a crutch. It would be almost uplifting.

Jenkins doesn't leave it there, of course. The book has to close in prayer and he has to get everyone together for the team photo while he plugs the sequel for another three paragraphs. (Note: If as an author you're finishing Book 1 in a series and you're not yet convinced that readers will want and need to read Book 2 as soon as it comes out, then turning the final page of your novel into a sales pitch for the second book probably won't help much.)

Here, then, are the appropriately awful concluding paragraphs of Left Behind:

When his plane finally touched down, Buck hurried up the jet way and through the gate where he was joyously greeted by Chloe, Bruce and Rayford Steele. They all embraced him, even the staid captain. As they huddled in a corner, Bruce prayed, thanking God for their new brother and for protecting him.

They moved through the terminal toward the parking garage, striding four abreast, arms around each other's shoulders, knit with a common purpose. Rayford Steele, Chloe Steele, Buck Williams and Bruce Barnes faced the gravest dangers anyone could face, and they knew their mission.

The task of the Tribulation Force [Tyndale House, $19.95, 450 pages] was clear and their goal nothing less than to stand and fight the enemies of God during the seven most chaotic years the planet would ever see.

The inspiration for this scene seems to have been the freeze-frame endings of 1970s television. Our smiling heroes walk, four abreast, toward the camera and the picture freezes, just like the ending of every episode of CHiPs or The Love Boat. It's easy to picture this scene playing out on such a TV show.

It's not easy, however, to picture this scene playing out in a crowded terminal at O'Hare International Airport.

Just try walking this way with three friends -- "striding four abreast, arms around each other's shoulders." It's not easy. Or comfortable. It's completely unnatural (unless you're also singing "... people say we monkey arou-ound" while swinging your legs in choreographed unison). People don't walk like this, especially not through crowded airport terminals and even more especially not if they're part of a secret resistance cell group facing "the gravest dangers anyone could face."

The idea of our heroes walking like this might sound semi-plausible at first, but once you try to picture it actually happening you find that it seems unreal and impossible. The more you try to flesh out how such a thing could really occur, the more convinced you become that it never could.

This brief chorus line stroll here on the final page of the book is only a trivial example, but larger examples of larger impossibilities can be found on every other page. This is, in fact, a major theme -- perhaps the major theme -- of Left Behind. The book is an unending series of events that it is impossible to imagine really occurring in the way they are described.

This brings us back to the failure of world-building we discussed last week. LaHaye and Jenkins almost never bother to tell us much of anything about the strange post-Event world in which their story takes place, and when they do provide details they turn out to be irreconcilable with details provided earlier. This lack of world-building in Left Behind is not an oversight, it's a necessity. The authors are presenting an impossible story set in an impossible world. The more they tell us about that world, the less convincing their story becomes. But they couldn't do more to describe such a world even if they wanted to because such an impossible place is indescribable, unimaginable.

I'm not merely suggesting that this story is outlandish or that it's premise is audacious. I like outlandish and audacious stories. Tell me that the super-powered last son of Krypton has come to earth, or that vampires are real, or that a wardrobe can be a magical portal to a land of talking animals and I'll gladly go along for the ride. Spin me a tale based on a time-traveling Gallifreyan, or a fleet of faster-than-light spaceships, or an alternate earth where 99 percent of the population is lycanthropic and I'll be delighted. A square protagonist in a two-dimensional world populated by geographic geometric figures? Fine. Wonderful. Tell me more.

But such outlandish settings must be consistent. Storytellers can make up their own rules all they like but, having done so, they have to abide by them. Otherwise, it's just nonsense.

And Left Behind, ultimately, is just nonsense. It makes up its own rules and then breaks them. And then it makes up more rules that require its other rules to be broken. Left Behind refutes itself.

The premise of the book is clear and clearly stated. The Rapture and all the other events foretold by premillennial dispensationalist "bible prophecy scholars" are all real and are all really going to happen. Soon. The book wants to show us the events of this cosmic drama acted out before our very eyes in a story that takes its plot from the authors' End Times check list.

Yet the more we watch, the more we read, the less convinced we become that such a series of events could ever occur. Not because they're too outlandish, but because they contradict and preclude one another. We cannot accept the authors' assertion that A will be followed by B and then by C, because A renders B impossible and C could never take place in a world in which B had already happened.

This is the great and insurmountable failure of Left Behind. It set out to be a work of propaganda, a teaching tool meant to demonstrate -- the authors would say to prove -- that the events it describes could and indeed will really happen. Yet their attempt to present a narrative of such events instead demonstrates -- I would say proves -- that these events could not and indeed will not ever happen. It proves that the weird and contradictory events of their check list could never happen in a world anything like the world we live in, or in any other imaginable world. It proves that their supposed prophecies will never, and can never, be fulfilled.

Left Behind fails as a novel for many, many reasons, but all of its other faults -- the odious lack of empathy it holds up as a moral example, its blasphemous celebration of self-centeredness masquerading as Christianity, its perverse misogyny, its plodding pace, its wooden dialogue, it fetishistic obsession with telephones, its nonexistent characterization, its use and misuse of cliches, its irrelevant tangents, deplorable politics, confused theology, unintentional hilarities, hideous sentences, contempt for craft, factual mistakes, continuity errors ... its squandering of every interesting premise and its overwhelming, relentless and mind-numbing dullness -- all of these seem to be failures of the sort that one might encounter in any other Very, Very Bad book hastily foisted off onto the public without a second glance.**

Any one of those faults, on its own, would have been enough to earn Left Behind a place on the Worst Books of 1995 list. The presence of all of those faults -- in a single book and in such concentrated form -- is more than enough to secure its place on a list of the Worst Books of All Time.

Yet the book's signature failure is something far simpler. Left Behind disproves the very thing it sets out to prove. It presents an inadvertent but irrefutable case for the unreality and impossibility of all of the events that Tim LaHaye claims are prophesied to occur at any moment.

Those events are not about to occur. They never will occur. They never can occur. Don't believe me? Go read Left Behind and see for yourself.

That signature failure, Left Behind's forceful refutation of itself, is what earns this book my vote as the Worst Book of All Time.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

* Like Rayford, Buck seems constitutionally incapable of friendship, but Steve was as close to a friend as he had. Steve has always looked out for him, shepherding his career and securing his recent promotion. He was somebody Buck relied on for rides to and from the airport, and when the Event went down and everyone else was desperate to call their families, Buck McGyvered an airplane phone in order to e-mail Steve. Now Buck has been saved and Steve is captive in the thrall of the Antichrist.

There's probably nothing Buck could do for his old friend at this point, but you'd think there'd be some nod in the direction of the standard convention/cliche in which the hero protests that "We can't just leave him" and has to be dragged away or convinced against his will that there's nothing anyone can do, etc. That convention is so overused because it's necessary if readers or the audience are going to continue thinking of the hero as heroic. Thus the plethora of scenes in which the sidekick with the broken leg urges the hero to flee alone, saying "I'd only slow you down," but the hero tosses them over his shoulder anyway, carrying them to safety.

Buck isn't a hero. He flees, abandoning his former friend without a second glance or thought. He comes across as the kind of guy who would agree with the sidekick, "Well, if your leg is broken, you probably would only slow me down ..." Actually, he's even worse than that. Buck seems like the kind of guy who would bring this up himself:

"Your leg is broken, you'd only slow me down."

"Wait, don't leave me! I think maybe I can limp along, and ..."

"No, sorry, too slow. Gotta go."

** The ellipsis there is an invitation to help fill in the blanks. A comprehensive list of all of this books faults is probably not possible, but we can try.

Comments

[Chris]

Wow, the end of Left Behind. Congratulations! This is truly a tour de force of book deconstruction, interpretation, and translation (from the original Evangelistic). Thank you.

[someBrad]

And the haters said you'd never finish. Ha!

[JMiller]

Just as an FYI, today's "Sinfest" comic does a perfect encapsulation of what's wrong with PMD with Satan courting Seymour. http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=2936

[elise]

I've laughed at these posts and loved everyone's comments as well. I'm delurking to say thanks so much!

[Roadstergal]

This all has been tremendously interesting and insightful.

I used to wonder - how do people read this crap? Now I really wonder how people read this crap.

Like so many things in the world, it's funny if looked at in just the right way, and quite frightening to look at in any other way.

Are you doing the movie next? I have a feeling it would be great fun to MST3K, with enough booze onboard.

[hearshot]

** The ellipsis there is an invitation to help fill in the blanks. A comprehensive list of all of this books faults is probably not possible, but we can try.

Its emphatic insistence that there would, could, still be nonbelievers in a world where God stepped in and prevented a single Israeli death or injury in a Russian/Ethiopian all-out nuclear assault on Israel...

[damnedyankee]

Hokey smokes! It's... it's over? I'm feeling an inexplicable sense of loss. Yes, I know that there are sequels equally deserving of mockery, but in a weird way, I'm going to miss specifically poking fun at Left Behind. Is that strange of me?

Tell me that the super-powered last son of Krypton has come to earth, or that vampires are real, or that a wardrobe can be a magical portal to a land of talking animals and I'll gladly go along for the ride. Spin me a tale based on a time-traveling Gallifreyan, or a fleet of faster-than-light spaceships, or an alternate earth where 99 percent of the population is lycanthropic and I'll be delighted. A square protagonist in a two-dimensional world populated by geographic figures? Fine. Wonderful. Tell me more.

Oh, if any of that had happened, or at least anything on the scale of those feats of imagination, I could forgive L&J for their assault on literature. Sadly, it was just not meant to be.

[GailVortex]

"... people say we monkey arou-ound"

You know, Fred, I was doing ok with the Steely Dan earworm Jeff deposited. I didn't need the replacement (complete with visuals!).

[mcc]

Wow. And with the finish line reached, the amazing thing here is that Fred's refutations have turned out to be significantly more epic than the book they set out to refute. Even though the book in question starts with nuclear explosions.

That aside:

or an alternate earth where 99 percent of the population is lycanthropic

Wait, what's this one? That actually sounds pretty good.

[J]

Ah, a new thread. Fresh as a cheerleader's bottom.

So here's a puzzler: When you come upon "Left Behind" and company in "Religion" while shopping at the bookstore where do you re-shelve it?

I often can't decide whether to go for cheek and put it in "Science Fiction" (except I like science fiction too much), "Sexuality" or "New Age" (since, if books were living things those would be the sections that would horrify it the most) or "Humor" (because they're a joke, even if the authors don't know it).

[Joolya]

You are my Friday,
My LB Friday,
You make me happy
I've got to say-
You'll never know, Fred,
How much I read you.
LB Friday - every day!

[cjmr]

Ummm, Fred, I think you meant geometric figures? Geography has features.

*goes back to finish reading post*

[hapax]

A-a-and that's a wrap!

unless you're also singing "... people say we monkey arou-ound" while swinging your legs in choreographed unison

Hey, hey, we're the Trib Force!
We know we're on God's side!
But we're too busy 'phoning
To keep you from getting fried.

We just wish we'd been Raptured
(But at least we get cheap rent!)
Seven years of Tribulation;
God's got something to vent.

Any time
Or any where
You experience anguish and suff'ring
We suggest this prayer...

[JRoth]

I can't wait for the first TF Friday, just 7 days away!

Unless one of your wedding vows precludes this, of course....

[cjmr]

I guess we can all go home now. Hapax has already won the thread.

[Geds]

I can't wait for the first TF Friday, just 7 days away!

I believe we're getting a treatment of the movie first. Fred needs to ease up on the old eye strain...

[Joolya]

@ mcc:
That's Praline's, aka Kit Whitfield's, book, called Bareback (UK) or Benighted (US).
Just want to say to Fred and all the commentariat: it's been a pleasure getting to know you in this weird little cyber community. And I think it's testament to God, the FSM, or the blind but humorous forces of chaos moving in mysterious ways that even a travesty of literature, a cesspit of morally corrupt and baseless doctrine, a black pit where the art of storytelling goes to be slaughtered such as Left Behind can, inadvertently, bring interesting, talented, and creative people together in a beautiful and meaningful way.
I've laughed, I've cried, I've had fits of cathartic rage, and I've learned a lot.
Thanks everybody. (sniff)

[Robb]

What a journey! Can't wait for the shredding of the film.

*****

Freeze frame, roll credits
...
[ striding four abreast, arms around each other's shoulders, knit with a common purpose.]

The only thing left to decide is what 80s classic will play as the screen fades:

"Waiting for the Night"
"Living On a Prayer"
or "99 Red Balloons"?

[Geds]

The only thing left to decide is what 80s classic will play as the screen fades:

"Don't Forget Me When I'm Gone."

[car]

I feel like I need a cigarette. And a good cry.
Bravo, Fred. Bravo.

[Vermic]

Ahhhh. Kudos to you, Fred. Please treat yourself to a healthy mix of fruits and vegetables (steamed and drenched with butter to taste) with a cup of non-alcoholic grape juice on the side. You've earned it!

I discovered this blog right around the time Dr. Dives made his appearance in the story. We have reached the end of Left Behind, but I hope Left Behind Fridays will continue on for a long time. The horrors which the sequels hold for us are no doubt, well, horrible, and I for one can't wait to meet 'em.

When his plane finally touched down, Buck hurried up the jet way and through the gate where he was joyously greeted by Chloe, Bruce and Rayford Steele. They all embraced him, even the staid captain. As they huddled in a corner, Bruce prayed, thanking God for their new brother and for protecting him.

In the post-Event world, tableaus such as this one should still be common. Airport terminals would be full of these little groups: reunited family and friends overjoyed to have each other's company, and thankful for another non-Eventful plane trip; or else tearful goodbyes as someone in the group prepares to depart, accompanied by fervent hopes for a safe flight. Either way, every corner in O'Hare should be filled with these huddling groups, and there would be a lot of prayer.

The task of the Tribulation Force ... was clear and their goal nothing less than to stand and fight the enemies of God during the seven most chaotic years the planet would ever see.

Significantly, this task which is so clear to them does NOT seem to include helping others, whether by spreading the word of God to those who can still be saved (i.e. everybody), or even providing simple physical comfort to those innocents doomed to share the Tribulation with them. No, it's all about Kicking Ass for the Lord -- the one person in all this who doesn't need help -- and seeing to their own little group.

That this book would end, and set up its sequel, on a note of hermetically sealed selfishness is ... well, perfectly predictable, actually.

[Me!]

I used to wonder - how do people read this crap? Now I really wonder how people read this crap.

You can enjoy Left Behind if you ignore the flaws, simply put. For example, if you just don't notice the plot holes and are in partial or total agreement with the dubious theology presented, it makes sense you could like it. Of course, that's in the same way someone could consider Batman & Robin to be a good film if they ignore the terrible usage of puns, plot holes, weak characterization, and all the other problems of that movie.

I do think some of the later books were better, though the last books were possibly worse than the first one. The pacing in "Glorious Appearing" (the penultimate book) was truly awful; the material in the last two books would've required a little stretching to be one book, let alone padding it out to two.

[Mark Baker-Wright]

Wow. Almost exactly five years later, the series ends. I thought this day would never come, and yet, now that it has, I feel a little sad. How weird is that?

[lonespark]

I don't remember how I got here (seems reflexive to blame Pastor Dan, but I'm not sure), but I'm very glad I did.

Thank you, Fred. Now go take a well-deserved vacation.

[Bill S]

Oh Joy! The movie!
Could it be better than the book?
I don't see how it could be worse.
It features washed-up ex child actor Kirk Cameron and his wife. So it's at least got some camp value.
Has anyone seen it?

[Scott]

Thank you. This series was a true delight. Much as I am sure the results would be hilarious do not inflict the rest of the series on yourself.

[Myriad]

wait... what? it's over?! that's it? oh, gracious, I thought it would go on forever...

[thanks, Fred!]

[Carolyn]

I've been a dedicated LB Friday reader for--gosh, some time now. Since I live in the UK I've often hovered around the computer until late in the evening (or early in the morning) to read the post as soon as it appears (my friends tease, 'oh no, better keep an eye out for it because if you miss it it'll be GONE tomorrow'). It does feel as if we've come to the end of something that's been part of my life; Fred may go on to the movie, or the next book, but this is a milestone. I hope Fred is still thinking of publishing these essays as a book; as an aspiring novelist I'd certainly buy it. Thank you, Fred, for creating something so hilarious, insightful and useful.

[melty melty blarg]

@robb: I was picturing either "Working For The Weekend" or the theme song from "Perfect Strangers".

[The Old Maid]

Our smiling heroes walk, four abreast, toward the camera and the picture freezes, just like the ending of every episode of CHiPs or The Love Boat .... (unless you're also singing "... people say we monkey arou-ound" while swinging your legs in choreographed unison).

Pfft. It's sweet and sappy, something that's in short supply.

Also, what I visualize most of these posters doing to note the last page.

So which one of you is Davy, and which one is Peter Tork in the bedroom furniture being rolled along Main Street?

[Ursula L]

(unless you're also singing "... people say we monkey arou-ound" while swinging your legs in choreographed unison)

You're kinder than I am - my visualization of this scene involved the song "We Represent the Lollipop Guild..."

[Constantine]

Wow. I can't believe I've been following this LB chronicle of the first book as long as I have, and now it's finished.

I feel the need to add that people who walk slowly down airport corridors really get on my nerves: I'm trying to get someplace, people! Stay out of the way!

Left Behind disproves the very thing it sets out to prove. It presents an inadvertent but irrefutable case for the unreality and impossibility of all of the events that Tim LaHaye claims are prophesied to occur at any moment.

Brilliantly stated conclusion.

[SchrodingersDuck]

Just the other day, I was trying to think of the worst possible way to end a novel for a piece of IF I'm writing. Well, it seems Jenkins and LeHaye have managed to far outshine anything I could of. I'm going to have to find some way to work a few blatant shills into the text of my fiction [SchrodingersDuck, £0.00, 128kb] now.

People don't walk like this, especially not through crowded airport terminals and even more especially not if they're part of a secret resistance cell group facing "the gravest dangers anyone could face."

I think you're missing out on the sheer genius of this move. Any agents of Nicolae Carpathia are going to take one look at them and think "No way those guys could pose any threat. He must have meant someone else".

A square protagonist in a two-dimensional world populated by geographic figures?

It's funny how well that describes Buck actually (I think you mean "geometric", though, assuming you're talking about what I think you're talking about).

[bulbul]

Wait, this is really it?
Wow.
Thanks for all the Left Behind Fridays, Fred. And all the other days before that, too.

[SchrodingersDuck]

You're kinder than I am - my visualization of this scene involved the song "We Represent the Lollipop Guild..."

I personally was thinking a Can-Can style chorus line c. 1890 - with everyone wearing frilly petticoats and red silk dresses, of course.

[Dahne]

Wow! Congratulations! You have the tenacity of a saint measuring the viscosity while boiling in oil. Can we all pitch in and get something in commemoration? I don't know if you drink, but a bottle of something good seems called for.

I was waiting for lycanthropy to show up in the list of premises. When you think about it, Benighted is a little like Left Behind's evil twin - instead of a socially catastrophic change with its effects on human beings completely ignored, it's one with its effect on a single person examined in brutal detail. It's an great antidote.

Actually, I would have loved to hear more about the world and its history. How did the world shift from the Inquisition system to the modern one? What was the tipping point, as the virus spread, that made the authorities so-to-speak have to change from hunting werewolves to regulating them? Was there some kind of point of decriminalization? How did the non-lycanthropic manage to hold onto power? Granted, if you put all that in, it would be a thousand pages, huh.

But that makes sense, too, because Benighted is interested in world-building, but, at least as it struck me, as a sort of secondary step to character-building. Left Behind doesn't really see world-building as necessary or desirable, because it would rather...go "ha ha I told you so?" But then, wouldn't you want to think through and explain all the results in detail, and go all the way in manufacturing in a world where you are completely right? You'd think that would be gratifying enough that they'd at least attempt it. Is even that much thought so anathema?

[Buffybot]

I want to go back and re-read all the LB Friday posts, like a really great book you didn't want to end.

[Zyzzyva]

A square protagonist in a two-dimensional world populated by geographic figures?

It's funny how well that describes Buck actually (I think you mean "geometric", though, assuming you're talking about what I think you're talking about).

That's what I was thinking too. And Nicky Gatineau certainly qualifies as a geographical figure...

[Jim Lund]

[ striding four abreast, arms around each other's shoulders, knit with a common purpose.]

Dorothy, Tin Man, Cowardly Lion, and Scarecrow.

"Look Emerald City is closer and prettier than ever."

"You're out of the woods, you're out of the woods..."

[SamLL]

High five for finishing the book. I've been following your blog specifically for this feature. Greatly looking forward to book 2!

[trevor]

Congratulations on heroically struggling through this entire thing. I only managed the first couple of paragraphs myself, but I've hugely appreciated this commentary on the book,and by implication, the broader church culture that it's rooted in.

Thanks so much for brightening up my Fridays for the last few years!

[Zyzzyva]

Oh, right, the book's finished. Almost forgot to add: Great job, Fred! See you at the Kirk Cameronathon coming up!

[bulbul]

Bill S.:
Has anyone seen it?
Believe it or not, I have, a few weeks ago. Well, at least a part of it - I was channel surfing one evening while at a friend's and one of the cable channels just started showing a movie where one of those cards with place and date read "Israel". I put down the remote and watched some pilot dude played by Brad Johnson leaving for work and fighting with his wife. Then they cut to Israel and Kirk Cameron showed up and I though 'no frigging way'. But sure enough, there it was, Left Behind - a sci-fi movie, according to the tv guide. We all ended up watching it, but I only saw about 20% of it. The rest of the time I explained to my incredulous friends all about PMDs and their theology.

[patter]

Buck seems like the kind of guy who would bring this up

Buck seems like the kind of guy who'd break the other leg. Friends like this nobody needs.

[bulbul]

with everyone wearing frilly petticoats and red silk dresses, of course.
I got the red silk dress right here, but Duane borrowed all my frilly petticoats...

[jamoche]

A square protagonist in a two-dimensional world populated by geographic figures?

Sure. Nicky Carpathia/Kilimanjaro/Pennines/Denali/Ayers/Fuji/Kangchenjunga/...

[Judith]

I'm not finished reading this yet, but how sad is it that I made it about six paragraphs into this post and then realized that *I* was talking on the phone while reading it?

[carovee]

Thanks, Fred. This has been an entertaining, informative, and terrifying tour into a worldview I know very little about.

[jamoche]

"striding four abreast, arms around each other's shoulders."

Sounds like they were going for a Badass Longcoat moment, without either the badass or longcoat.

[ThisIsNotHere]

striding four abreast, arms around each other's shoulders, knit with a common purpose.

For some reason, I picture the opening of Laverne and Shirley...

Schlemiel!
Schlimazel!!
Hasenpfeffer Incorporated!

Beautiful job, Fred...you are getting a one-man standing ovation in my office.