Adam Raised Cain

Worst Bike Month Ever: Established by League of American Bicyclists 64 years ago, you'd think they'd promote this cycling tribute all the more given it's a chance for individuals to get crucial exercise and fresh air without risking gym visits during an epidemic. Instead they've postponed until September. Can't even offer to lead group rides because of liabilities of infecting people, though health policy surgeon Marty Makary explains that more people contract diseases indoors than outdoors, and urges fitness activities alfresco as long as you maintain distanced by 6 feet and remain masked on every street. Can't blame Labann, since recommend nothing; participation is your own choice.

Today would have been Bike-to-Work Day. Instead, dodged coronavirus, drove to market, swabbed all groceries, washed everything twice including self, then watched films, a full time occupation without gainful employment. Most fit general categories: Action/adventure sagas, biography/history pics, chick/date flicks, crime/detective dramas, horror/slasher films, romance/tearjerker melodramas, science fiction speculations, war/western nostalgia, and whatnot not so easily pigeonholed. For decades SyFy prepared viewers for viral contagion and zombie apocalypse as vicarious thrills. Not so amusing when life actually resembles worst of these nightmares. And what will new normal be after this huge time out? Businesses won’t recover? Desperate bash and grab begins? Entitlements and investments get eliminated? Reactions, sanctions, warfare?

Scanned through scores of Lifetime made-for-television movies. In their dumbed down world of petty jealousies and teen cruelties, characters barely ever go outdoors, bumble behind the fourth wall and within some privileged hall, so none displays bicycling culture at all, rather multiple ways to misbehave and mock moral protocol. Now understand how the unenlightened don’t pedal integral to living, though those portrayed seem more miserable than bicyclists in general, gladiators in a draconian arena. All films can't be equal or great, but low budgets don't necessarily mean bad acting or uninteresting ideas. In fact, you find more fascination, inspiration, plot twists, reality, and warmth while conversing with nobodies than in grandiose tales of make believe ideals. Fiction stinks of idioms, metaphors, morality, what could be, if only... Truth reveals itself in what people actually do, not what they say. Science collects such instances and creates strategies for sailing through inconsistencies, such as quarantining most vulnerable by numbers of infected among age, gender, and race, or whether inoculated with common influenza, then tracing disease back to ground zero to find cures, though advancements take lifetimes. Mankind merely exists within nature and will never dominate it no matter what Bible preaches or pundits espouse.

There’s no honor among thieves on Perfect Friday (Peter Hall, dir., 1970), when stuffy manager Stanley Baker plots to rob own bank along with a Lady (Ursula Andress) and Lord (David Warner). He sits apathetically as another London taxi forces a bicyclist into curb onto butt, and through an argument in which driver ridicules innocent victim as a “bleeder”. Can't trust bankers, but government relief will nevertheless wind up in their hands.

Black high school basketball star Rob Brown, after Finding Forester (Gus van Sant, dir., 2000), befriends and gets mentored by aging, agoraphobic, Pulitzer Prize writer William Forester (Sean Connery). Famous but reclusive, when establishment makes accusations of plagiarism, Forester goes to bat for Brown. In something of a reversal, not kid but O.G. is the bicyclist, as was Connery’s character James Bond back in the ’60’s, perhaps on same bike.

In remake of Carpenter’s The Fog (Rupert Wainwright, dir., 2005), Maggie Grace breezes back onto Antonio Island off Oregon’s coast, but soon becomes bogged down in a supernatural threat. She finds a journal that explains why townsfolk are being murdered, which leads back to crimes committed by founding fathers, whose likenesses were cast in bronze a century later, as shown. Turns out she herself belongs among these spirits as the reincarnated wife of vengeful sea captain, whose crew contracted leprosy and spread through entire colony while trading with China. Crimes of ancestors can haunt the living, though you can’t legitimately share glory or shame of those with same name.

Nobody paid much attention when Carriers (Alex & David Pastor, dirs., 2009) debuted. Brothers (Chris Pine and Lou Taylor Pucci) cross desert Southwest with girlfriends (Emily VanCamp and Piper Perabo) doing whatever they must to avoid inhaling virulent contagion. Delineates a crass descent to depths of indifference for anyone else, and Darwinian predation for dwindling resources in a dire struggle to survive. Could also restate Republican worldview, who'd have everyone injudiciously return to what they do to feed their greed and speed profits they need to retain power while minions bleed and cower. Kept latest email from Trump, who pathetically attempted to shame donors into coughing up $37 minimum for his reelection presumption. Deserted destination at least has a bicycle, something useful with fuel scarcity.

Charles Fihiol, a schizophrenic from rural Louisiana, considers Joan D’Arc, depicted in a New Orleans monument, as his Invisible Girlfriend (Ashley Sabin & David Redmon, documentarians, 2009). She has no complexion in the darkness of his mind. One winter he bikes 500 miles just to see her and a sexy barmaid named DeeDee he once knew and liked. As did Dorothy in OZ, he encounters a straw man, strong winds, tin man with a crutch, wizard, and witch.

Mona (Bailee Madison) questions her former math teacher, next door neighbor J. K. Simmons (narrator, Netflix’s documentary Coronavirus Explained), why he wears wax numerals as neck pendants, though she knows they represent his varying mood levels as An Invisible Sign (Marilyn Agrelo, dir., 2010). Decades later, as a reluctant teacher herself, Mona (Jessica Alba) learns to accept responsibility and be an adult who helps children with similar issues. Nether life or love is an equation; both defy qualification and quantification. Windows with teddy bears notwithstanding, what traumas will coronavirus pandemic visit on child psyches?

A family takes their 1929 summer vacation in UK’s Lake District, where mailmen still deliver telegrams by bicycle to Swallows & Amazons (Philippa Lowthorpe, dir., 2016), what children call themselves as rival crews of thus named sailboats. Skullduggery is afoot, and they bravely save the day among irresponsible adults who seem unaware of personal protective gear, such as life preservers for children camping and sailing unsupervised on one of England’s deepest lakes.

With global doom assured before dawn, artists Shanyn Leigh and Willem DeFoe do what they always did: Make love and more art, meditate, order Chinese takeout, and watch as events unfold in 4:44: Last Day on Earth (Abel Ferrara, dir., 2012). What else can you do? A bicycle sits idle as they perch in their loft overlooking New York City while humanity fritters away remaining hours. How did we arrive at this inexorable conclusion?

Horizontal mambo gets stale for urban couple Sylvia and Mark (America Ferrera and Ryan Willams) in X/Y (Ryan Piers Williams, dir., 2014). They seek advice and solace from friends, including bisexual bicyclist, expressionist artist, fashion model, and serious surfer Jake (Jon Paul Philips, shown), who gives Mark more than he expected.

Viveik Kalra plays a Pakistani youth who was Blinded by the Light (Guinder Chadha, dir., 2019) in late 1980’s small town England, who burns for a better life without fear of fascists and father, so finds magic in The Boss’s gift for lyric among songs that speak to him of victories less pyrrhic. As a consequence, he loses his shell, makes a friend (Aaron Phagura), and meets a love interest (Nell Williams), who break out together, dance through town, and ride their bikes to Springsteen cadences.

“You know it's never over, it's relentless as the rain. Adam Raised a Cain. You're born into this life paying for the sins of somebody else's past... Daddy worked his whole life for nothing but the pain. Now he walks these empty rooms looking for something to blame.” Bruce Springsteen from Darkness on the Edge of Town, 1978