“For Gene”
3/10/17, “We
the Living”
John F.
Kennedy International Airport, New York (JFK)
When I began
my last trip I dedicated the Day 0 entry to Gene, but this trip in its entirety
is dedicated to him. I am travelling to
California for his memorial service, and it is only fitting. The first time that I went to Los Angeles in
recent memory was also the first time that I met Gene in recent memory, as we
never connected during my trips to San Diego for Comic Con. However, we made up for it over the three
times we have dined and conversed together over the past five years. It was a friendship built through lengthy and
protracted email debates and cemented in those visits. I have written in great depth elsewhere about
Gene, and I do not wish to be repetitive, but Gene’s memory is worth honoring
in as many ways as possible.
He was one
of the last of his kind, representing one of the few people who had personally
interacted with Ayn Rand herself.
Through him, I am only one degree of separation from Ayn Rand. However, when the great schism occurred
between Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Branden, Gene, along with my father, was one of
the only people who sought the truth and stood by his principles, instead of
blindly siding with the woman many considered a goddess. It was a small group, and, six weeks ago, it
got a little smaller.
Few now remain
that remember those times, and it is for we the living to honor their memories
and the philosophy of that time. It is
for we the living to remember the stories as we preserve the knowledge we have
learned and the values we hold. Gene was
unique in many ways and a many of the highest intelligence and even higher
character. His memory never faded, and
he recounted to me the details of the 1960s, as if they had occurred
yesterday.
When he told Ayn Rand that
Nathaniel Branden had saved his life and that he could not abandon Branden, she
told him that he must follow his conscience.
This was a man that had conversations with Ayn Rand beyond a question at
a lecture or a cocktail party. He was a
patient of Nathanial Branden. These
stories he has related to me, and my father has related others. I remember them all. We the living can preserve the memories of
those who are no longer with us, of Ayn Rand, of Nathaniel Branden, and of
Gene. When I eulogize him tomorrow, it
will be with a speech that I have written from the heart, dedicated to a man
who made the world a better place over his 90 years. And, if this Travelogue is ever published,
the first words after the table of contents will be, “For Gene”.
Okay, so I do need to briefly describe what
has occurred hitherto on Day 0. It was
snowing when I woke up, which affected my morning. I had some leftover popcorn from last night’s
movie (Kong: Skull Island, which was amazing), and I brought that to the
office, taking a taxi, but I had eaten too much at the movie last night, and my
appetite had not yet returned. I had
about 20% of the bucket, but I had no appetite beyond that.
I did not eat lunch, and I worked through the
day, getting done what I needed to do before I left. I took a taxi to the airport, and there was
no line at security, which went quickly with my TSA PreCheck. I then went get some dinner. The only sit-down restaurant I could find was
Palm Too, and my appetite had returned.
I ordered a burger with all the fixings and fries, along with a club
soda. The food took forever to come, and
my appetite grew. The burger was
delicious, but it wasn’t enough, so I got a piece of chocolate cake for
dessert, not realizing how big it was.
That filled me up. I then headed
to the gate, where I sat down and proceeded to write this entry, which I will
now close, as we are about to start boarding.
Del Mar,
California
I suppose it could be said that my fondness for Gene is very similar to what Luke Skywalker felt for Ben Kenobi. To Luke, Ben was a legend, an old friend of his father’s from their glory days, the last representatives he knew of a hallowed philosophy. Luke only met Ben briefly, but their short time together made losing him all the more potent for Luke, as the guidance he had received from Ben would stay with him for the rest of his life. Those sentences work equally well for me and Gene as they do for Luke and Ben.
The
last thing we discussed was whether absolute truths exist, and we concluded
that they do, but we allowed that absolute moral values do not exist. Any fan of Star Wars will be familiar with
Ben’s words, “What I told you was true, from a certain point of view.” The dictum that, “You must do what you feel
is right, of course,” sounds just as appropriate in Gene’s voice as Ben’s. If this Travelogue gets properly published, I
will have Gene to thank. It was his
guidance and inspiration that would make this a possibility. That is what Gene meant to me, the same as
Ben meant to Luke.
Now, here I am at the
hotel where Gene and I shared our last meal together, and it feels like I am in
a place of a bygone era, and I can feel the community values here that Gene
held so dear, that he so valiantly fought to preserve. As I have mentioned elsewhere, we often
debated that point, about community values.
His belief that communities should be able to set their own values and
collect a tax to make those values a reality was at odds with my strong
libertarianism, but we both agreed that the federal government should take no
part in community decisions, such as education.
Those debates were never contentious, and I understand the soundness of
his arguments, even if I rejected the premise.
I will write more about Del Mar tomorrow, but I will now just briefly
record the journey that brought me here from Kennedy.
After I closed at the airport, we soon boarded,
and as I handed the agent my boarding pass, I learned, much to my delight, that
I had been upgraded to first class. I
instantly regretted appending that huge piece of cake to my burger, as I knew
that we would be served dinner in first class.
The bourbon and club soda was free flowing all flight, and I finished my
chapter of “Lord of the Rings” as we made our ascent. I continued to read during dinner, which was
bread and butter, pasta, and ice cream, followed by coffee.
After my chapter, I continued a discussion
with my friend from earlier. The
discussion was about how many weeks Walt Disney had a film in the top five at
the box office last year. It was
certainly most weeks, but we did not know just how many. We also wanted to know how unique of a feat
that was. He thought it was 41, and I
said that I didn’t think that was a unique accomplishment. I reckoned that the years Titanic and ET came
out, their studios easily matched that feat.
Since ET had spent 27 weeks in the top five, we looked at the numbers of
that year, 1982, to see how many weeks Universal had a film in the top
five. I said 45, he said 50. Either way, that destroyed the 41 weeks that he
claimed Disney had last year. His 41
number seemed too high, so I did my own count and got 35.
That was when we discovered that we were
using a variety of different methods in our calculations. He was looking at weekly numbers, while I looked
at weekend numbers. He was looking at
the movies that each studio distributed, while I was looking week by week. He was counting up from 0 from zero, while I was
subtracting from 52. We reconciled our
data and realized that 37 was the right count.
The biggest error he made was that he double counted some weeks where
Disney had two films in the top five, while I made an assumption that once a
movie fell out of the top five, it would never return to the top five. I also miscounted since 2016 had 53 weekends,
not 52 weekends.
We spent almost two
hours on this topic. We then started to
question if 37 weekends was an impressive feat at all, and we learned it was
not. Universal’s 46 weekends in 1982
beat it, and Universal had 39 weekends in 2015.
We noted that Universal, Warner Brothers, and Walt Disney all had a
realistic chance to beat 37 this year. I
surmised that the 1980s was the richest time, as it was when summer
blockbusters started to become a thing, but it wasn’t yet at the point where a
dozen blockbusters came out every summer. I suggested a protocol for us to determine how many weekends each major
studio had for each year in 1980. We had
already spent hours on this haphazardly guessing on our phones, and my protocol
would give us definitive answers for the whole decade in about an hour. That would have to wait, however.
When we landed, I was the first one off the
plane, which I always like, and I headed to take the rental car shuttle. After a bit of a delay, I was in my
convertible, which is my standard mode of transportation in California, as the
cheap rental car prices here make it priced the same as a sedan anywhere else,
and the year-round sunny weather makes it an enjoyable ride. I was soon at the hotel, and I recognized
fondly all the sites from when I drove here with Gene. They were happy memories, and it will make me
happy to eulogize him tomorrow. I
checked in and settled in to my small but well-appointed hotel room. I then lit up a Cohiba and went outside,
where I sat down and proceeded to write this entry, which I will now close so
that I can publish.
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