We may have a couple of these over the next week or two. Mark has much to do (including prep for WonderCon, weekend after next) and he (meaning me) may not be blogging as often as usual.
Kevin Drum summarizes my feeling about the current presidential gangbang election: The country is doing well and the people aren't as angry in reality as they appear to be on cable news. It's just that Mr. Trump knows how to turn it all into a highly-watched Reality Show.
I was wondering here yesterday what goes through the minds of those folks who lead the police on long car chases, running the risk of killing themselves or others with little chance of actual escape. My buddy Buzz Dixon wrote this to me…
I know Deron McBee, former American Gladiator/action B-movie actor/voice actor (and now turning into an artist), who was a deputy at the L.A. county jail prior to getting involved in show biz. I asked him once why so many guys put up a fight even when it's painfully obvious what the eventual outcome is going to be.
He said that happened frequently in jail, too (and while the guys on the street have a one in gazillion chance of getting clean away, ya gotta figure if you're already in jail, your escape options are even more severely curtailed).
Anyway, Deron said as best he could figure it, the guys knew they were going down and were determined to cause as much trouble for the arresting or detaining officers as possible, i.e., to make them pay in some way for chasing them or arresting them. Just another variation of "when you've got nothing, you've got nothing to lose." They know they're in for a world of hurt, they're just determined to share it with someone.
Now, we might say, "Perhaps if you didn't steal a car in the first place the police might not be chasing you" but alas these guys are not much in the way of long term planners…
In some cases, sure…but I wonder if this view isn't making the mistake of presuming there is logic and rational thought where there is none. Seems to me a lot of fleeing drivers aren't thinking. They're just panicking and if there's any mindset at work, it's that the longer you can delay arrest, the better the chances that something unimagined but lucky can happen to you. Most people who get into trouble with the law got away with something for a time. They're like a gambler who won a few hands, then began losing and they're sure that if they can just keep the game going, they're bound to start winning again.
A guy I knew at a TV show I worked on once went to prison for swindling people — fortunately, not me though he tried — out of large sums of money. He succeeded ten or twelve times, then a couple of his con jobs went sour on him and attracted the attention of the law. Still, he had an unwarranted faith in his ability to "get away with it" since he had in the past. All he had to do was not get tossed in the pokey. If he could somehow just avoid that, he was sure his proven ability to lie and some kind of "charmed existence" he believed he had would save him. It didn't but he went down swinging, blindly trying all sorts of things that were about as stupid as doing eighty M.P.H. in a residential area, fleeing from eight cops and three overhead choppers.
There have been dozens of TV shows and news programs airing chase footage. I can't recall that many or any of them ever did little follow-up segments, showing what became of those maniac drivers and perhaps asking them, in the immortal words of Jay Leno, "What the hell were you thinking?" Might be interesting. Better still, might be a deterrent for others who'll attempt such irrational lunacy in the future.
And speaking of irrational lunacy, I have to get back to a script. Later.