What Hollywood gets wrong (and right!) about protecting the Earth from asteroids
In the 1998 movie, “Armageddon,” an asteroid the width of Texas is about to hit Earth. The heroes who stop it in just the nick of time are a group of orange-suited Americans, all men.
Life isn’t always like the movies.
Not that an asteroid couldn’t slam into Earth, mind you. Asteroids — mostly tiny ones — pass by our planet virtually every second. But the people charged with stopping the big ones aren’t reaching for their spacesuits with mere hours to spare.
And spoiler alert: They also aren’t all men.
“I would say the number one question I get when I tell people what I work on, is ‘Oh, like ‘Armageddon?’’ And it’s nothing like ‘Armageddon,’” says Lawrence Livermore National Lab physicist Kirsten Howley, whose day job includes defending our planet from asteroids.
Howley doesn’t have an orange jumpsuit at hand, but her job is serious business. She and her team of planetary defenders specialize in how we might deflect an asteroid that poses a threat to Earth.
(I wrote all of this to post on Facebook and figured I’d SYNERGIZE™ it.)
1.)Armageddon(1998)
[First Viewed Circa 1999]
Michael Bay’s star-spanglin’ dick-swangin’ Paris-obliteratin’ ode to Average Joes saving the world from a big-ass asteroid served as an important mile marker in my development as a film fan: it was the first film I ever watched and thought, “That was bad.” See, when I was a kid, I emerged from every film I saw with the same take, something roughly akin to, “It’s got a good beat and you can dance to it.” I was vaguely bewildered whenever I would see a film with some of the impossibly erudite elders of my neighborhood kid gang (some as old as 13 or 14!) and they’d spend the car ride home pointing out how terrible the film we just saw was. So naturally, the distaste I had for Michael Bay’s “Budweiser commercial directed by Leni Riefenstahl” style came as a massive relief. I wasn’t stupid! I could dislike something! And lemme tell you, dear reader, I haven’t stopped disliking things since.
2.)Monty Python and the Holy Grail(1975)
[First Viewed Circa 1999]
Given the fact that I watched this film at least once at any sleepover from roughly 1999 to 2004, Monty Python’s digressive, and deeply, deeply silly magnum opus is still the film that I’ve watched more times than any other. It was the first movie that I was obsessed with, which is not surprising given that it’s the exact sort of film that rewards obsession. It’s filled with absurd background details you only catch on the fifth viewing (the countless extras beating cats against walls), long streams of absurd riffs ripe for memorization (the list of animals vanquished via the holy hand grenade), and the sort of nonsensical humor that makes you feel like you’re part of a special group of those who Get It (…the whole film, really). While this whole list is full of films that defined my taste in film, this is the only one that feels like it defined who I am.
3.)Signs(2002)
[First Viewed Circa 2002]
Most people remember Signs as the last good M. Night Shyamalan film. Or the first bad one. Or the one with that really good scene where Joaquin Phoenix freaks out watching TV and not much else. I remember it as the first time I ever thought, “That was a cool shot.” It comes at the end of the film, where Joaquin takes baseball bat to an alien who falls backwards into a table, knocking over a glass of water, the liquid we’ve spent the whole film learning is poisonous to this breed of extraterrestrial. But what was cool was that Shyamalan shot it from the alien’s perspective. Looking back, it’s not exactly the bone-to-spacestation match cut, but it was the first time that I found myself actively aware of the man behind the curtain, and the first step in my journey to be one of them.
4.)Rear Window(1954)
[First Viewed Circa 2003]
During my middle school years, most every weekend involved a trip to the video store with my mom. Our local store was End Zone Video, named in honor of the fact that every facet of life in Knoxville, Tennessee, must revolve around University of Tennessee football. Each week I’d comb the aisles, careful to avoid looking directly at the covers for Evil Dead 2orApril Fool’s Day, and select a tape to rent. Sometimes, though, Mom would suddenly realize I hadn’t seen a film that she’d call a classic and decide we needed to rent it RIGHT NOW. So, the two of us either wound up watching a recent film for which she had an irrational amount of affection (Ever After,Sliding Doors) or an older film that was part of the Official Canon. Rear Window was the first of these older films that snuck up on me and hit me over the head with a sock filled with batteries. (In a good way.) One minute my mom was explaining how the fact that we could see Miss Torso strip down to her slip was once scandalous, and the next I was asphyxiating because Grace Kelly didn’t know that Thorwald was right outside the apartment she was searching. From then on, I was allowed two movies, and one of them was always a Hitchcock.
5.)Fight Club(1999)
[First Viewed Circa 2006]
I first watched Fight Club with Jen and Samantha while lounging on the massive sectional in Jen’s basement. Before we started it, Sam turned to me and said, “Taylor, this is the day you become a man.” And, folks, she weren’t wrong. For a lot of people of a certain age, Fight Club was one of those movies that landed in your lap like an A-bomb. It wasn’t just a movie—it was a life event. It gave you a whole new definition of nihilistic macho cool. It pulled the rug out from under you with a twist that made you salivate over any movie described as a “mindfuck.” It made you post pictures on MySpace of yourself with a stage-make-up lye-burn on the back of your hand. And it was only years later that you realized that hey, maybe we’re not supposed to like this Tyler Durden guy?
6.)The Royal Tenenbaums(2001)
[First Viewed Circa 2006]
I become aware of a thing called indie rock sometime in the summer of 2003 when my ex-girlfriend changed her AIM buddy icon to a picture of Death Cab For Cutie. About three years later, I found my cinematic Death Cab buddy icon in the form of Wes Anderson’s third film, playing in the middle of one Saturday afternoon on Comedy Central shortly after my dad finally caved and got cable. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen, fussy and formalist and packed to the gills with bespoke flourishes (dalmatian mice, the 375th Street Y, etc). The characters didn’t look or act or sound like real people, but somehow one of them saying “I’ve had rough year, Dad,” could drive me to tears. I’d taken fledgling steps exploring the world of film, and this was the movie that made me realize that there was this entire other world that I’d never glimpsed before.
7.)Hostel(2005)
[First Viewed Circa 2007]
When I was in kindergarten, we watched a children’s VHS entitled There’s A Nightmare In My Closet. Based on a book by Mercer Meyer, it told the story of a boy who learns that the monster in his closet is actually nice and just wants to be friends. The horrific implication of this was that A) monsters are real, and B) nice monsters are definitely not the norm. I slept with the lights on until middle school. Growing up, even the VHS box of most horror films would freak me out (April Fools Day,Evil Dead 2). In short, I was a big chicken, even into my teen years. Then one day Sam, Travis, and I piled into Travis’s living room and put on Eli Roth’s infamous gut-ripper Hostel. I braced myself, determined to play it as cool as I could. (After all, I’d been sleeping in the dark for years at this point!) Then the movie turned out to be…not as bad as I thought? I mean sure, it had people getting their achilles tendons cut, and their stomachs chainsawed, and their eyes popped out of socket. But I survived. In fact, I enjoyed it. And thus a former chicken metamorphosed into an absolute horror junkie.
8.)Grindhouse(2007)
[First Viewed Circa 2007]
I don’t think I’ll ever have a better time out at the movies than I did seeing Grindhouse. For three hours, Sam, Travis, and I cackled our way through exploding zombie heads, fake British horror trailers, and guys getting off to car crashes. There were only a handful of other people across the aisle in the smallest theater in Downtown West, which only made it seem more obvious that this movie was made for us. For a bunch of movie crazy kids who got together to watch Robot MonsterandFaster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! back to back. It was like a gift from the movie gods. A movie that was every bit in love with the idea of movies as we were. No wonder every film we shot that summer wound up covered in fake film scratches and ‘70s R&B needle drops.
9.)The General(1926)
[First Viewed Circa 2010]
By this point in my life, I was well acquainted with classic film. I knew that The African Queen wasn’t a monarch, that The Thin Man wasn’t Nick Charles, and that The Maltese Falcon wasn’t a real bird. But even so, I was still an utter neophyte when it came to the pre-sound era. Sure, I’d suffered through The Birth of a Nation a couple of times in history classes, but the silent era was very much unexplored territory for me. So, when I settled down on my parents’ old couch in my college apartment and listened to Robert Osbourne introduce The General, I was expecting a night of eating my cinematic vegetables. But then, I found myself chuckling when Buster sat on the titular engine’s churning connecting rods, then cheering when he used one railroad tie to see-saw another off the track, then completely cracking up at the final (literal) twist of the cannon sequence. By the time Buster dropped the entire train in river, I was hooked. Fast forward eight years, and suddenly I’m the guy who’s not sure that the advent of sound wasn’t a mistake.
10.)La Jetée(1962)
[First Viewed Circa 2013]
All the movies on this list contributed to my love of film. They opened my eyes, whetted my appetite, and pointed me in new directions. But perhaps none affected me as profoundly as La Jetée. The other films on this list helped show me that film could make me laugh until my side cramped up, white-knuckle the couch armrest with terror, and gawp in amazement. They showed me what film can do. La Jetée showed me what film is. There is a moment (if you’ve seen it, you know it) that displays the truth it took me my whole life to realize: the moving image is nothing less than a miracle. And I’m forever grateful for it.
What will happen tonight on the Armageddon crossover:
Alex: I’m sorry that I came instead of Kara but she has finally decided to take some time for herself so her and Lena went on Argo for a short vacation, and I really didn’t want to bother them.
Barry: her and Lena? O.o
Alex: yep. They’re in love with each other but they don’t know yet.
What will happen tonight on the Armageddon crossover:
Alex: I’m sorry that I came instead of Kara but she has finally decided to take some time for herself so her and Lena went on Argo for a short vacation, and I really didn’t want to bother them.
Barry: her and Lena? O.o
Alex: yep. They’re in love with each other but they don’t know yet.
As a Christian, I find it hurtful when I hear the Lord’s name used as swear words. If I used sexist, racist, anti-Semitic or homophobic language as curse words, I might be garroted. So, it’s hard for me to understand why such swearing is acceptable when it comes to Christ. But the idea of confronting people about this makes me uneasy. Is there a better way to communicate my hurt? — DAINA
Dear Daina,
Perhaps we mere mortals are not meant to know why the all-powerful eternal being worshipped by you specifically is so incredibly pissy about the use of His name, being as He is all powerful and eternal and surely burdened with shit vastly more important than whether the kid behind the counter at Blockbuster mutters “Christ Almighty” under his breath when you pay for your rental in loose change. The Lord, as they say, moves in mysterious ways!
But to the crux (sorry!!!!!) of the matter: why are people allowed to do a cuss at Jesus, a cruel attack on a defenseless baby/the immortal Son of God and our Holy Redeemer and the Lamb of Vengeance who literally has the ability to damn humans to an eternity of unimaginable torment, but you can’t unleash a barrage of violent slurs on people whenever the mood strikes? How can it be that just anybody can string the words “god” and “damn” together, doing immeasurable harm to a helpless Supreme Creator who might, at any moment, begin unleashing a series of plagues upon the world to usher in Armageddon and put a final end to humanity as we know it like the good and loving sky-Parent He is, but you can’t verbally abuse people such that they fear for their safety and wellbeing?
I mean, where’s the justice in that? Nobody is allowed to use sexist, racist, anti-Semitic, or homophobic curse words these days without suffering horrible consequences, such as being invited to direct Lethal Weapon Five,while everyone is allowed to say mean things about your particular religion of choice, for example, authors are having their books ripped from the shelves of public schools if they even vaguely hint at the idea that people other than white, heterosexual, cisgender, Christian Americans exist. So your worldview definitely tracks with reality there!
Certainly what Jesus had in mind when He commanded us to love our neighbors was for good Christians such as yourself to release a battery of offensive slurs against our fellow community members in order to balance the scales of power, at last, in favor of the Almighty God The Creator of Heaven and Earth.
