Cure or Quintain?

Staycation almost over, wondering when journeys begin and services reopen. Temperatures soaring, already down to single ply cycling apparel. Repeatedly downplayed by current US administration, COVID-19 has claimed one third of global total in a country with only 5% of its population. Virologists predict American fatalities to double or triple by August, since warmer weather seems no deterrent. Freak out has barely begun. Every step is fraught with uncertainty, and grows increasingly dangerous. Death on the doorstep, you want to record history precisely yet take in everything simultaneously so as to miss nothing. From movies and videos you can absorb entire stories in short order, faster than reading. Speed seems elementary to deductive success. However, hurry results in errata, but histories will be revised anyway to suit some big shot’s agenda.

“Do you mind not being a Motaur? For those born to ride...” shouldn’t that be Bicitaur? In ancient jousting, quintain was a swiveling tee with a flat target and heavy weight on either end; should you strike target riding too slowly, weight would swing around to knock you off your steed. It’s like a medicine that initially soothes only to rebound with worse maladies, or rushing to reopen that costs many times more deaths than waiting would. Then again, pharmaceutical companies would be content to invent diseases that only they can prevent, thereby charge ridiculous prices everyone would begrudgingly pay to avoid lament and mortality. For decades they’ve eyed mutating influenza as an angle to produce vaccines for lucrative profits streams, but weighed downsides of heinous fatality, herd immunity, and hurtful verdicts. Lust for profits despite collateral damage of the unsuspecting may be the ultimate horror.

Over his short life of short story writing, penurious Howard Phillips Lovecraft was known to ply Providence streets by bike. Excerpt from The Picture in the House, 1920: “I had been travelling for some time amongst the people of the Miskatonic Valley in quest of certain genealogical data; and from the remote, devious, and problematical nature of my course, had deemed it convenient to employ a bicycle despite the lateness of the season... Now I found myself upon an apparently abandoned road which I had chosen as the shortest cut to Arkham; overtaken by the storm at a point far from any town... I did not hesitate to wheel my machine up the weedy rise to the closed door which seemed at once so suggestive and secretive. I entered, carrying my bicycle, and closed the door behind me.” Lucky for curious cyclist, a violent thunderstorm suddenly destroys cannibal host in decrepit house, and spares him.

Of the many writers who died believing they made no impression or were abject failures, none found more posthumous fame than Lovecraft: Penniless genius, possibly racist, rather resentful of folks who never missed a meal, and seriously possessed. Once considered a pulp hack, a century later Lovecraft has been called a major American author, compared equal to Edgar Allen Poe, and considered a huge influence on all genres of novels. Having survived the Spanish Flu pandemic, which undoubtedly distorted his notion of the unknown into dread, he nevertheless died young of intestinal cancer. Fans of Batman will know Arkham Asylum for Criminally Insane, which was loosely based upon Danvers State Hospital in northeast Massachusetts.

Tales That Witness Madness (Freddie Francis, dir., 1973) has two doctors discussing four cases. In one, Timothy (Peter McEnery), an antiques dealer, inherits a penny-farthing bicycle from his aunt, which seems to have time travel capabilities overseen by the haunted portrait of dead Uncle Albert. Albert gets him to sit on bike, whereby he’s conveyed to a simpler time and falls for a dopplegänger of his current fiance (both played by Suzy Kendall). Not the first or last time filmic bicycles permitted time travel says IMDB.com. In fantasy short Wreck Less Abandon (Baily Rose, dir., 2011) a female gang uses bikes and fashions to search for their missing lovers, who were captured by X-rays.

Beleaguered 1950’s mom of nine kids Julianne Moore, wife of ne’er-do-well Woody Harrelson, enters contests and emerges as The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio (Jane Anderson, dir., 2005). Her first prizes consist of $5,000, which becomes a down payment on a home mortgage, and a Western Flyer bike, which replaces junk her kids are trying to fix. Knack and luck with jingles, mom’s happy outlook while facing hardship makes for a heartwarming story based on fact. Now, you may remember punk band Defiance, Ohio, whose song Bikes and Bridges (2008) seems to reflect this family’s desperate dysfunction. “...on the back seat of a bike and all my fears get washed away... It's been such a hard season, and the bridges we burned might be all we had to keep us from drowning. But at least we had this time; and I'd like to think we're better off for it... Hearts aren't made of glass, they're made of muscle and blood and something else, and they don't so much as break as bend and tear. We have what it takes to keep it together; and move on.”

Several scenes in We Are Legion: Story of Hacktivists (Brian Knappenberger, dir., 2012) show freedom fighters on bicycles. None was so gratifying as when Anonymous Chanologists targeted Neo-Nazi talk show host Nat Turner [shown], a plump chump shilling for wealthy oligarchs and white supremacists such as Trump. Beware that religious cults and repugnant fascism continue uncensored, whereas revolutionaries for democratic rights and free speech, who mount counterattacks through legal civil disobedience, will be beaten, censored, and prosecuted to the full extent of law. You can buy a mask or mug with a swastika, but you’re not entitled to expose crimes or learn where your tax tithing really goes. While convening on streets to protest may not be practical now, internet tactics are possible if questionably ethical. Just who your heroes are becomes debatable: Mean geeks, nameless freaks, paid agitators, or putative leaders?

How about international law enforcers and social welfare activists who fight the fastest growing criminal enterprise: Child sex trafficking? In these heroic roles portrayed in Trade of Innocents (Christopher Bessette, dir., 2012), Dermot Mulroney and Oscar winner Mira Sorvino play Alex and Claire Becker, who for Cambodian government are trying to rescue several of 1.2 million children who are trafficked each year according to UNICEF estimates. Claire, who commutes to a shelter by bicycle, befriends local bike shop owner, whose granddaughter has been targeted by a vicious pimp after he murders her older sister. Poverty forces some families to sell girls as young as 5 to brothels, while billionaires and millionaires make themselves comfortable ignoring such gut-wrenching outrages. Doesn’t silence invite violence? People who don’t do everything possible to prevent crime are equally culpable.

Low budget Christian thriller Seven Deadly Words (Eric Benson, dir., 2013) has bicycling pastor Roy Lynam fighting to revitalize a failing church against a privileged family intent on dominating decisions and funneling donations into pet projects. To trick playground hooligans into attending services, he bets them his flash bike he can shoot a basketball from downtown; when it doesn’t swish, he explains, “I said shoot, not make the shot.” There are a lot of empty promises throughout, but what did you expect?

Not quite done, 71 year old Harry Dunn (Steven Durgarn), with the help of his granddaughters, learns to ride a bike to attempt a ride across the country with his reluctant son (Mark Nash) in Old Dogs Never Die (Jim Dougherty, dir., 2016). Yup, people of means with good intentions used to embark on bionic adventures. Lately, cities have nightly curfews, so this would never work.

After putting down his infected father, James Boland continues baking and delivering Zombie Pizza (Mike Dudko, dir., 2017) by bike despite viral apocalypse. Reputedly, it’s the first feature film to be shot entirely without a camera, only GoPro digital action recorder used by BMX-ers and other sportifs. “Who in hell wants pizza now?” “Everyone.” Someone must shoulder production tasks; seems in these days of misplaced priorities majority expects to survive on diminishing handouts.

“Excessive wealth in the hands of the few means extreme poverty, ignorance, vice, and wretchedness as the lot of the many... Fully to know the evil is the first step towards reaching its eradication.” Rutherford B. Hayes, antebellum president, called “Rutherfraud” for winning election on smallest of margins, most liberal Republican in nation’s history known for personal integrity, who vetoed Democratic bills that supported Ku Klux Klan and suppressed black voting rights. Never what parties say, it’s what individuals do that matters.