Day After

This week I revisited an old classic, The Day After – that 1983 TV movie depicting a nuclear holocaust in the Midwest. The scenario has Kansas City obliterated by multiple bombs, leaving Lawrence, Kansas with the only surviving hospital for a hundred miles.

Most of the movie was filmed in KC and Lawrence, and its broadcast was a huge event here in Missouri. It was very powerful for me because I grew up among the minuteman missile silos scattered throughout west-central Missouri. The closest was only about a mile from our house. The movie had several very compelling scenes for us locals. One is a decimated Mass. Street in Lawrence. Another is Jason Robards standing in the pile of rubble that used to be the Liberty Memorial, looking out over a moonscape that used to be Kansas City. Then there is a soldier walking along what appears to be 50 Hwy outside of Holden, asking a passerby about Sedalia and Whiteman AFB. The reply is simply “there ain’t no Sedalia. No Green Ridge. No Leeton. No Nothin.” And then Arrowhead Stadium full of Chiefs fans watching missiles launching out of the ground around them, even though I don’t think there were really any silos inside the city.

Then there are the inaccuracies that are probably inevitible. For example, the movie places the KU Medical Center in Lawrence instead of KC and Whiteman Airforce Base in Sedalia instead of Knob Knoster. It also uses the fictional Sweetsage, MO, even though it includes other real towns like Harrisonville, Joplin, and Sedalia. Plus, the picture quality sucked, especially for a blockbuster event. The picture was fuzzy and grainy at the same time, and the colors were terrible. Did all TV look this bad in the 80s?

A new reaction to the movie was the similarities with the current tsunami disaster in southeast Asia. There were thousands of people with homes or even towns to return to. Literally nothing left. No hope of finding family or loved ones might have been just one or towns away when the bombs hit.

   

Posted in KC, Missouri, Movies | Comments (3)

Visiting the asylum

This weekend Michelle and I trekked up to St. Joseph to spend the day in an insane asylum. Actually, it was the Glore Psychiatric Musuem, a temple to the history of mental health. It has four floors of Ripley-esque artifacts from the adjacent St. Joseph State Hospital, formerly Missouri Insane Asylum #2. It’s one of the more bizarre, but fascinating, things I’ve seen recently.

The creepiest part of the museum are the mannequins posed in and on the various contraptions like fever cabinets, straight jackets, etc. Overall, the place had some similarities with The Road to Wellville, the book and movie depicting a turn of the century health spa run by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg.

We also hit the Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art and the Pony Express Museum, just a couple of the dozen-plus museums in this little river city. If you visit, be sure to push past the fast food and strip malls ringing the city and explore the dozens of historic neighborhoods and well-preserved downtown.

Here is the photo gallery…

Posted in Missouri, Photography | Comments (2)

Quotable

On the wall of the 54th Street Grill on NW Barry Road…

Work is the curse of the drinking class.

Posted in Fun | Comments

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents America the Book: A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction

I already get most of my news from The Daily Show, and now I can get my reading there as well. Be sure check out the audiobook, read by Stewart and the cast of the show.

Janet Maslin – The New York Times
� the devil’s own comedic handiwork, a side-splitting guide to the abuses and absurdities built into our political processes and institutions � America can be opened at random, the way it will be in college dormitories when it becomes much loved and indispensable. But it can also be read straight through, thanks to sustained clever writing and a smart, durable premise.

Posted in Reading | Comments (1)

Wanted: Barber

Guys, I need some help. I’m looking for a real, old-school barber. No stylists or salons. Anywhere between Downtown and Waldo. Northtown would be OK too. This is becoming a yearly quest. For various reasons every time I find a good barber, it never lasts.

Update: 3/22/2005 Today I checked out the Esquire Barber Shop, 3535 Broadway, between Cafe Trio and Planet Cafe. It’s a great Italian family-owned place with a father, son, and and uncle. $15 includes the groovy massaging thingy.

Posted in General | Comments (6)