Sex is always such an interesting topic, but what's left to say.  What's left to know....  And then along comes Esther, sounding like she's with a cabaret audience...  The rest of her offerings, on her website for example, are not nearly so compelling, but this adds something.

The Rushbot insists that the majority of Americans agree with him.  It's always the majority that hates the president, longs for guns, fears healthcare, ridicules sequestration, bucks the debt ceiling, dismisses immigrants and gays.  "The majority of Americans feel this way," is always his mantra. "It's just the state-run media and low-information voters that don't know that."

I'm suggesting a moratorium on public opinion. (This included). A stoppage for two weeks of everything.

But also, what about a new show for reality TV. "Four Amigos". The Rushbot, Hannity, Savage and Levin. In diapers. Behind glass. In an infant ward. Four adult-sized cribs, each with mobiles and suckers. And then we can watch the amigos be with each other.  Of course, there's an app to hear them live. Or you can just watch. Any time of day. They don't have phones, micro or otherwise. They have only themselves to convince or destroy.

How would the conversation change. With something other than Obama to talk about what would they sound like?

This is worth looking at, if you haven't seen it orbiting the Internet: A blue speck in the great nothingness: An old view revisited (my title) The old view is of the earth from Apollo. The revisionist view is simply a reminder that the earth is finally fragile and the arc of the story is from me to we.  We're moving from I-earth to We-earth.  Slow as that is.  The actual title of this is, "Some Strange Things Are Happening to Astronauts Returning to Earth."

Here is a corrected version of a wikipedia entry that I was unable to edit online. I was also unable to reach a talk page to suggest proper changes.  My hope is that at least search engines may find this.  For those interested in the case please contact me at macnamband@mac.com

Doug Clark (serial killer)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other uses, see Douglas Clark.

Doug Clark
Background information
Birth name	Douglas Daniel Clark
Also known as	The Hollywood Slasher The Sunset Strip Killer The Sunset Strip Slayer
Born	March 10, 1948 (age 64) Pennsylvania
Conviction	Murder
Sentence	Death
Killings
Number of victims	7
Country	United States
State(s)	Burbank, California Los Angeles, California
Date apprehended	August 1980

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For other uses, see Douglas Clark. Doug Clark Background information Birth name Douglas Daniel Clark Also known as The Hollywood Slasher The Sunset Strip Killer The Sunset Strip Slayer Born March 10, 1948 (age 64) Pennsylvania Conviction Murder Sentence Death Killings Number of victims 7 Country United States State(s) Burbank, California Los Angeles, California Date apprehended August 1980 Douglas Daniel Clark (born March 10, 1948) is an American serial killer.[1]
Clark and his accomplice Carol M. Bundy are known as the "Sunset Strip Killers". They were accused and subsequently convicted of a series of killings in Los Angeles. Clark, a boiler operator in a Jergens soap factory, previously worked at a San Fernando power station, but was fired due to a high rate of absences and threats of violence made against his coworkers. After his marriage failed, he met Bundy in 1980 and began living with her.[2] According to Bundy, Clark's relationship with her became physically and mentally abusive, and he also began paying less attention to her. She also claimed he began to share his violent fantasies with her.
In June 1980, Clark, by himself, or with Bundy — or Bundy with another lover named Jack Murray whom she had known for several years — made their first kill.[3] The majority of victims were prostitutes who, according to Bundy, Clark killed during or after sex. Clark has always denied he killed anybody, although he admits to other crimes. He claims he had been having sex with prostitutes for many years and had no reason to suddenly begin killing them. Bundy told police investigators that Clark was striving to fulfill his fantasy of killing a woman during sex and feeling her vaginal contractions during the death spasms.[1] In one of the murders, in North Hollywood, Bundy bought a young prostitute for Clark's birthday. Bundy's story was that she was in the back seat of a car, Clark and the prostitute in the front seat, and while Clark was receiving an act of fellatio Bundy placed one of two identical guns the couple owned in Clark's open palm. Bundy claims Clark then shot the girl in the head. Clark's story is that he was in the back seat, Bundy in the front seat, and it was Bundy who took one of their little silver guns out of the glove compartment and shot the girl in the head.
In one of her most improbable assertions Bundy once claimed Clark told her that if either of them were apprehended, he would take the blame in the hope that Bundy would be allowed to go free.[4] Clark has always claimed that shortly after they began living together he began to loathe Bundy and endlessly berated and humiliated her. On one occasion Clark and Bundy allegedly saved the head of one of the murder victim and stored it in a freezer for use as a sex toy.[5] They later put it in a hat box and left it in an alleyway.
After his arrest in August 1980, Clark acted as his own defense, insisting that he was being framed by the prosecution for the murders. In fact, almost all the evidence against him at trial came from Bundy who initially claimed to investigators that she only knew about the murders through Clark — except for the murder in North Hollywood, which she admitted to having been an accessory.
But there were disturbing parts of the case that were never resolved. For instance why did Bundy kill Jack Murray, a married apartment manager who she had known before meeting Clark. Bundy shot him, stabbed him, and cut off his head — to make police think it had been the work of a "Manson like group". Clark has speculated that Murray was perhaps becoming skittish as Bundy's partner in the murders and killed him to protect herself. Bundy would claim she murdered Murray because he had asked her to arrange a sexual liaison with a 13-year-old girl that Bundy knew and who had been sexually abused by Clark. No forensic analysis was ever done of the bodies of Jack and the prostitute who had been beheaded to see there might be some similarity. Bundy claimed she knew nothing about the beheading of the prostitute, although she admitted finding the head in the refrigerator. And finally there was a piece of bloody scalp found in the air vent of Jack's van. It's not clear whether that was ever analyzed to seek a match with any of the victims.

Sentenced to death in 1983, he sits on California's death row.[2][3] Bundy plea bargained and, in return for her testimony, received a life sentence. See also

   "You could say that, Matty — you could very well come to that conclusion — but I couldn't say that."
   The eerie refrain of Francis Urquart (pronouced 'Irkit'), with his signature smile, the infamous FU, Ian Richardson's right wing, great white shark, ever on his way up, and less for the sake of power, as compelling as that is, his wife always reminds him. No, he's in it more for  the game, being an addict of mischief, the way some small boys take the finest pleasure in burning up small animals.
   But what better portrait of evil incarnate.  And how precise his strokes, from bemused to infuriated in an instant, from wise to churlish in an instant, as though his character has no foundation, which of course it doesn't.    
   He accompanies his evil; he doesn't lead or follow it.  They are a brace and they look at each other with that knowing ironic look.  And so the asides to the camera, because of course we are the accompanying evil.
   "You might very well think that, Matty, but you know I couldn't say that."
   It is also the powerbroker's cliched way through the thicket of non-denial denials, and the euphemism of 'on background only.'
   I mention this by way of contrast to the less refined FUs 20 years later, in America, one of the Texas GOP delegates, perhaps, one of those who last July voted on an educational platform to deny the teaching of critical thinking skills.  That you could say is Urquartish, but without his cleverness. He would have disguised the whole thing.  Or Florida Gov. Scott, reversing himself on Medicaid.  Or John McCain with some of his reversals.
   There are countless examples these days on the eve of sequestration — which sounds so much like a word that means, "the next to be castrated." But who is FU's equal these days in America? No one. We don't have a character so sophisticated, or interesting.  Ah, but what about Ted Cruz? He has that look and pedigree.  William F. Buckley was a kind of FU, although more pompous than cruel.  The real FU would have done him in, found some adultery or addiction and forced him to cower.
   Maybe Nixon would be the equivalent.
   Now we have only the likes of the Limbot, Boehner-boner, and the Koch heads.   No match and yet just as calculating, just as evil. Which is not to indict solely conservatives.  After all, there was LBJ, and you could argue that Bill Clinton  in office was the most Urquartish of all.

Vinny had just gone to see Stand Up Guys.  "Loved it," he said sitting in his new wheel chair. "Just loved it."
   I hadn't seen him in such a good mood in ages.  "I am Alan Arkin," he said, adjusting his oxygen.
   "What else is new?" I asked.
   "Just got my 'I-Cremation'."
   "What's that?"
   "Special deal. Pay now; you don't have to worry later. Everything's taken care of.  You fill out an online form: where you want the ashes spread: sea of somewhere, top of a mountain, the backyard, in your old out basket, or get this: they put a lil'-dab'll-do-you in envelopes to your family and friends on the very next Christmas.  Or on your birthday for years to come.
   "So you never go away."
   "Well, isn't that the fear: A few months later no one remembers you were even here much less gone. Plus it goes with my I-Phone, my I-pad...  My 'I'.  Forget this 'we and our' shit. I got my I."
  "Gotta go," he said and rolled off down the street.

The world war was over, but by how many days I didn't know.   The streets were filled with debris. As we walked among the bombed out buildings, I worried about the danger of collapse.  We finally reached the hotel and went up to the apartment on the second or third floor.  It was the most gorgeous Mediterranean day, blue and warm.  There was a woman and her family walking small dogs; the dogs looked like Dobermans, and small enough to put in your hat.  The woman wore a long Russian coat and a fur hat.  I had a brand new, yellow tennis ball. I was going to throw it to the dogs but then it occurred to me I should ask her if she would like to throw it herself.  I asked. She was not as thrilled as I would have thought. But after a moment she smiled and reached out her arms.  I let the ball drop.  A year earlier she caught it and threw it toward the bay below the town.  The dogs gave chase but the ball went into the water and they stopped. The bay was full of activity: boats, balls, swimmers, people on boards and strange rafts with cabanas, and killer whales sounding. The Bay of Naples, by Vernet. Who knows. At first, the water was absolutely flat. We went out on a surf board, the boy and I.  Everyone was relaxed.  What if we're under one of those whales when it comes up, I wondered.  The wind picked up.  Just then someone, an authority I knew from somewhere, expressed the possibility of disaster and advised us to go back to shore.

The old man's head popped to the surface of the hot tub. The night was pitch black but the stars were dim and unelectric. He retook his seat on the stone bench under the water.  Lately, he has been saddened by this film, Amour.  He is a filmmaker himself and if he had been offered that script, he would not have considered it.  Not on your life.  Not even for a moment.  As beautiful as the film was.  As tender as they were to each other.  He was overwhelmed by the idea of such an ending.  Meanwhile, the night was strangely unfriendly; the moon, wordless.

They said today was the end of the world. I was half way down the fourth floor at 850 Bryant when I remembered.  Suddenly, the linoleum could not have been more sinister; the flickering neon light in the corridor was no white light.  
   A woman was looking at the 8 by 10 framed photos of cops that run all the way down the hallway.  You'd have thought she was at the Jeu de Paume, hand holding wrist behind her back, leaning in, looking this way and that. 
   I was on my way to pick up the week's arrest logs.  As I passed, the woman said, "you should see the reflection in those raybands."  I stopped and went back.  She was in her 30s, blue bandana, beautiful, voluptuous, from an island I felt, painted face, glassy eyes, long earings full of totems. I peered at the photo, but wanted to see her more clearly. 
   "Look real close," she said. "See it?" 
   "What," I said. 
   "In the reflection." 
   I looked long and hard. I could see there was something in the reflection, but I couldn't make it out. The image was too small.
   "I can't see it," I said.  
   "Yes, that's because they don't want you to see it. Things happening there they don't want you to know."
   "What?"
   We were close together now,  just outside this picture of two cops looking at something. 
   "Murder," she said. "That's what you're missing: murder." 
   She looked at me and back to the picture. I figured she was a forensic. I went and got the logs; 15 minutes later I passed her on the way out.  She'd moved to another photo: another cop wearing raybands. As I passed she said something, I couldn't make it out.  I paused my step. She knew it.  "You don't believe in anything," she said. "Too bad for you."

   On the last Tuesday of every month, the San Francisco Historical Association meets at the bottom of St. Philips Church in Noe Valley. There’s always a presentation. Doors open at 7 p.m., but the talking and the lights don’t die down until after 8.  Non-members pay $5.
   At a recent meeting, to celebrate the Golden Gate Bridge on its 75th anniversary, there were perhaps 50 people. A lot of singles, a lot of threes. Men wore safari hates, berets, bald heads and baseball caps heavy with pins from this legion or that. Women arrived in heavy sweaters and scarves and with looks of expectation. There was hardly a person under 50. Next to the sugar cookies and the two-buck chuck were the door prizes, including a 49er pennant and a vintage Giants pennant, along with The Great San Francisco Trivia Game.
   “Has anyone seen Richard lately?” Someone asked out loud in a New York accent.  Whoever Richard was, no one had seen him. Someone else said they thought he’d been ill. “I just hope he’s okay,” they said. “You never know.”
   At Association meetings personal history is as important as communal history....

We all sit down to dinner a little nervously. The drama has been foretold and now the couple is finally here, after a long drive up the coast.  They sit together on one side of the table. He's 18; she's 40.  They seem comfortable, with each other and with the thought that they are being judged.  We've been warned that this is a tremendous scandal and that the boy's mother cannot even speak about it. 'It's beyond contemplation,' she's been telling friends, 'the young man's life is going to be ruined. The woman must be mad. How selfish could a person be? What must her husband be thinking' As the bread basket circles, I am reminded. Once upon a time I was in those shoes.  And the woman was just like this. Blonde, separated, with a daughter, a complete romantic, and reckless, a stunning blend of transparency and secrecy, with pale blue eyes and endlessly sensuous, endlessly adventurous, running off  this way and that, forever awaiting the Hodgkins disease she knew was coming to kill her.

Mark --

I'm about to go speak to the crowd here in Chicago, but I wanted to thank you first. I want you to know that this wasn't fate, and it wasn't an accident. You made this happen. You organized yourselves block by block. You took ownership of this campaign five and ten dollars at a time. 
And when it wasn't easy, you pressed forward. I will spend the rest of my presidency honoring your support, and doing what I can to finish what we started. 
But I want you to take real pride, as I do, in how we got the chance in the first place. Today is the clearest proof yet that, against the odds, ordinary Americans can overcome powerful interests.
There's a lot more work to do.
But for right now: Thank you.

Barack

I asked him what he thought of the film, "The Innocence of Muslims," this ludicrous film that turned out to be a trick on the actors as well as the audience.
   He was incensed. Actually,  I was a little surprised at how angry he was. At 18.
  "It's stupid," he said. "It's like what you see on Saturday Night Live. It's a skit. Nobody would believe that. Only the most ignorant."
   I said that wasn't true.  And whether or not it became, metaphorically, the fire or the smoke in the Benghazi riots that killed the US ambassador wasn't the point.  People across the Middle East had reacted to it,  and some were deeply offended.  That's not a justification, I added. But the point is that it was a propaganda film, which had its desired effect.
   "Well, he said, "they're ignorant. They should be able to see through it."
   I reminded him of the reaction against the cartoons satirizing Muhammed.  We had ring side seats in Morocco that year.  He shrugged.
   I urged him to see a documentary of the life of Viet Harlan, the reluctant Nazi film maker, whose film Jew Suss, won the Venice Film prize award in 1940.  Moreover, the film was seen by 20 million people in Germany, and became a Nazi anthem.  Goebbels closely supervised the writing of the script and the production.  He was looking for a propganda film that would help prepare the German public to endorse the Final Solution. Which, of course, no matter how you tell the story, they did.

     Game lost.  The team was flat; the kid was flat.  The air was dead.  And it all ended just as it started 10 years ago.  Out in the breadbasket of California, out in the grapes of wrath. And the same old truth: the ones that want it the most, get it the most.  And once more it was the Latinos who wanted it and the white kids, going off to college, nothing pressing on the mind or the wallet, didn't want it so much.  They had hope not drive.  Even after the harrangue they got at half time.  
     The kid had one goal late, off his head, into the upper right corner.  And almost another seconds later in the same place.  But that was it.  No great runs.  Nothing to compare with the day before, when the winning goal was his, when the whole field was his and as the game went on he just got better and better.  But no way to do that two days in a row.  And so that was the last state cup.  
     And the last trip to Turlock and Ripon and that whole cosmos of motels and games and more games, in summer and winter, all that driving, thousands and thousands of miles, at dusk and day break, up and down the 'meth highway', with everything at stake and nothing, and at the very beginning, with the Mission Black Panthers, those kids overwhelmed in their shorts.  
     And now as we come back into the MacArthur maze, it occurrs to me that this is the last time.  Now it would be busses and planes, on a college team, intense, impersonal.  Far away. We would not making any more trips like this. 

And now a word from Fr. Coughlin’s reincarnation, that good-old-boy by a previous hook-up, that master of sleight, the meister of foul, God’s voice on oxycontin high— El Rushbow, who today had a pronouncement—and he’s saying this just as Sean Peyton —Peyton, the lesser — is up in the wood shed on Park Avenue, and just as Gregg Williams is being heard on youtube telling his players on the eve of the Jan. 14, 49er game about how 'we’re going to fuck people up' and 'kill Frank Gore's head', and how we never apologize for the way we compete. 

     All that’s happening and the Limbot has a revelation, which is that sooner or later liberals are going to use this, and a lot of other stuff, to ask that professional football be forbidden. You watch, said the bot, the liberals going to try to shut this game down.

     Don’t we know it. It’ll be called “Occupy 280 Park Avenue” (15th Floor). There’ll be “sissies” as far as the eye can see. And you know what? It’s all the same people who believe in the “Magic Negro,” the people in old school who were in the drawing room taking violin lessons while the rest of us were out on those infernal fields pounding the sleds, and now all these years later the sissies are back, and not just trying to impose socialism the way it is in 16th Arrondissement, but trying to ruin the very thing that makes America great. 

     How? By making a big deal over the name of the game, over a few times when for a few bucks somebody put the lead in, and now these liberals are saying that’s weird and obscene, and unsportsmanlike. Not to mention the lawsuits from what is it now, 120 former players?

     These crybabies who claim Roger GODdell and his ‘fascist’ predecessors were hiding the evidence that the game was becoming more dangerous, and the helmet manufacturers knew all along that even with improvements, there was no way a few people weren’t going to be hurt, or maybe even killed. 

     Well, buddy, that’s the price you pay.  Don’t ever apologize for the way we compete. That’s the cost of living in the greatest country the world has ever known. And don’t you call that "social Darwinism."     

     That’s what the Limp-bot is saying: This Bounty Gate business is all a creation of The Washington Compost, The New York Slimes, and the state-run media. This is just another sign of the liberal intention to extend the nanny state to every part of our lives, the NFL included…It’s just like those people who believe in the Trilateral Commission and that black helicopters control the world.

     Now el Rushbot completely misses the irony that actually he’s the one who has politicized Bounty Gate, and of course you can always find somebody to say they targeted people over the years, but no harm done, and that’s the way the game is played, and if you don’t like it, don’t play it. 

     You can always find players to say that, but there's a lot of other players — even besides the ones who killed themselves or joined a lawsuit — other players who don’t think it’s right to go after opponents for money, who wouldn’t want that done to them, and at the end of the day they realize you don’t get to play this game for a long time, and the truth is you may have to live a lot of your life on what you make in those few years, and sure you want to make a great play and take somebody out if you can. 

     But not with a cheap shot, not for money, not to help some craven idiot of a coach named Gregg Williams. 

     As I was saying, I’m with Rushbow. He played football, right. He knows all about the game. He’s no sissy and he’s not political. He’s a Spartacus if there ever was. He only calls it as it is:  the NFL’s a production. What’s important is the brand. What’s important is that we never apologize for the way we compete.

The work of Billy Collins.  Interesting as well as pleasurable, although not heartwarming.  Not quite reassuring. The first may be the best.  It's all a caption for days when it seems everyone, just everyone, clerks of the court, the face across the table, everyone is angry and unsettled, done in, and now leaving home or husband or wife or sensibility and sense, and for what?  

     "No, that's not the way it happened at all," said Magnus's wife, looking around the table and then finally at her husband. "I remember it exactly.  She called you in the middle of the night, said they were at Pitcairn Island, and there was a problem with the boat."
     "His name is on the tip of my tongue," said Magnus.
     "Somebody Bixby found to sail his boat,"  The wife looked at the person sitting next to her for help, it was the neighbor of this woman once maroonned in the south seas.  But that person shook his head.
     "And didn't she say she'd been raped?" Magnus's wife went on.
     Magnus hauled up his worried expression. "I just remember I had to go down there and sail it back."
     Somebody else at the table spoke up. "I heard they stopped in at Bali. Isn't that partly muslim?"
     "Yes," said a young college graduate who had been silent all night, and added, "They never let a baby's feet touch the ground for the first six months of life."
     The somebody else waved that aside. "And the customs official did a search and found marijuana. I think somebody from the State Department to get them both out. But maybe she told people one story to hide the truth...."
     What about the boat? someone asked.
    "Ah ya, well you know it wasn't such a good boat," said Magnus. "Very long, 60 feet, but cheap materials.  You wouldn't want to go 'round the horn in that thing. That constant knocking, it would fall apart. Not like a Swan, not that quality at all."

Behold the coming of drone swarms.  Think what this will do for the rejuvenation of noir.  The aging detective with his fleet of quadrotors tailing the unfaithful spouse; the industrial espionage that will become so much easier; and with a larger version what a boon to drug smugglers; not mention a new way to carry out  bio-cyber-terrorism attacks. Think of how much more reason we'll have to be paranoid. On the other hand, no one will ever get lost; because everyone will be under constant surveillance. The slightest misstep will be recorded. People will become much more self-conscious. A new makeup perhaps. And there'll be 'droney', your assistant shopper-drone.  Drones will be ever smaller; and finally someone will slap their cheek thinking it's a mosquitoe when it's a drone. When people call you a drone it will have a whole new meaning.  "Why don't my drones do a flyby with your drones." Maybe for the ladies, a drone landing hat. Color-coordinated drones. Doppelganger drones. And twitter drones, and we'll be available to be seen at every moment, and how fascinating it will all be.....

Winding stairs lead up to the front door. It's half open. I enter. There's a brief ante way, and just to the right, a room, completely dark, save for a rickety looking little fire under the mantle. I call out. Suddenly, he appears in front of me.  He's smiling, always so jovial.
   We go into the kitchen where he has everything prepared. Fresh fish, cauliflower, an enormous pan with paella, bread, hummus, a Greek salad, naturally. "Would you like a glass of wine?" he begins. I shake my head. It's a work day, I say. He is undeterred. "This is excellent. Try it."
   He pours me a glass. "To my play," he says, and he goes on to tell me about how he has prepared the food, and asks if I like this or that. We go outside where he has several ovens cut into the rock. One for bread, one for fish. Finally, we sit down in his diningroom, which is cluttered with small boxes on chairs, stacks of magazines, and on the wall a relief of Aphrodite's head in profile.
   He chatters on, tells me his wife is somewhere about. A man in his 30s appears and disappears. I have no idea who it is. "I do what I want," he tells me, and from the beginning he's drinking quickly. "If I like someone I let them know. I may have them or I may not. You know at this age, you should be able to do what I want."
   Finally, we get to the subject of the play. "What do you think?" he asks me.
   The play is based on a true story of a woman living in a small town. Think of Kalavryta. Nearly 20 years ago she threw herself off a bridge. She was then in her 70s. Here is what happened. During the war, when the Germans reached her town the captain called the people into the square and said what a shame it was that the war had come to this and he certainly took no pleasure in this occupation, and he went on at great lengths to praise Greek culture.  He promised — many times — that no harm would come to the town's people.  His very warm manner was all part of his presentation, and he kept repeating that he would do anything he could to make this period pass without incident.  But of course, there were partisans and remnants of the Greek army; eventually several German soldiers were killed and then the captain called the people into the town square once more and this time his persona had completely changed and that was when the massacre started.

   And so this woman could never get over the way this officer had made her believe that everything would be fine.  She could never get over the way he changed and the way she had been so drawn in.

   "I think the story is extraordinary," I tell him.

   And now he brings a second bottle, and he doesn't want to talk about the play at all.  He wants to tell me he's going to have a pacemaker put in. Again and again he rubs his face with his hand.  As though he's going to stretch it into some new shape, some other identity, mold some new person without all of these problems.

   I draw him back to the play and make the point that perhaps the woman killed herself for some other reason.  After all, why would she wait 50 years?  Why wouldn't she be able to resolve this in that time? Or else kill herself much earlier. And what was the ignition? Something must have happened. I suggest that needs to be part of the play; that he needs to explore the psychology of this woman, not focus on what happened in the war.  And especially considering Greece now.  

   "Perhaps, there's some broader truth here," I tell him. "Perhaps, the idea of not being able to change has some sort of resonance."

   He shakes his head. He swirls his nearly empty glass. He looks at me for a long time. The plates are ravaged and empty. It's not about the play at all.  

   "I feel I am at the bottom of the void."

  

2012, the film, is based on "bad science", an inaccurate premise, and a silly script. Moreover, the subplot dialogue, between the protagonist and his ex-wife, as well as their children and her new husband, has the white-whine whinny of a forty-something quiche eater in a mall-gym confession. The subplot reminds you of Californication, that other disaster movie, literally and figuratively, but without the pornography or the depression bound hero, or the interest for that matter.
In 2012, the hero lives in Santa Monica, as opposed to Venice Beach, and lives in his head but after a few days on the edge of extinction, he finds his humanity. He also gets his wife back, his children, and the word family is preserved, we can see how suburbia will be emerge from the swamp of Namibia. But perhaps the film is worth seeing if you haven't thought about the idea of mass extinction lately.
There's a moment late in the film when the great flood has returned and an Indian couple is looking up at a monstrous tsunami, the heighth of several skyscrapers, and here they are, about to wash them away, and the multitude with them, like ants down the drain.
It's a stunning realization of the old disaster theme but perhaps a foreshadowing after all.  Because sooner or later there will be a meteorite, no bigger than a tennis court or half a tennis court, that will remind us of real calamities,  not hunger in Ethiopia, not war in Waziristan.  We have the lost any sense of real extermination, or fear from something beyond us, and yet we are thrilled by the possibility.