Slim Jims and Falling Men

What is the good of kissing a girl if she does not feel it? 


This and other pertinent questions about love were addressed in a movie I'd never even heard of but saw tonight at VMFA called "Stairway to Heaven" from 1946.


The film had an unusual disclaimer showing what I took to be the dry British wit:
This is the story of two worlds, the one we know and another which exists only in the mind...of a young airman whose life and imagination have been violently shaped by war.
Any resemblance to any other world, known or unknown, is purely coincidental.


It also had a credit for "Motor Bike Shots," apparently a distinct skill set in 1946.


Filmed in glorious Technicolor which practically made color one of the characters of this English film, it told the story of a WWII flyer who had to jump from his plane without a parachute to avoid being burned to death. 


He radios this information to the ground and it's received by a young American woman who is as taken with his voice as he is with hers ("I could love a man like you, Peter.").


And while he should have died, he didn't and coincidentally lands near where she lives. From their first meeting on a beach, they're in love, but Heaven isn't so quick to give him up. 


He was scheduled to die and cheating death isn't allowed, a good thing to know on the night before the end of the world.


Most of the movie was devoted to him making a case (and his eventual trial) for being allowed to live now that he's smitten ("I've fallen in love with her. Her accent is foreign, but it sounds sweet to me. We were born thousands of miles apart, but we were made for each other").


Not surprisingly, the movie attracted mostly couples (there were a lot of hands on each other's thighs), not that a single couldn't enjoy the sheer romance of it (when asked to prove his love, Peter responds, "Well, give me time, sir. Fifty years will do").


The hopeless romantic in me needed to come back to reality after that, so I went to Sprout for dinner and music. After a laughable recommendation from my server for the tofu salad, I got the steak salad instead and devoured it will chatting with the evening's headliner.


The topic du jour was the death of somebody I'd never heard of, but it had resulted in a shot called the Macho Man that purported to taste like a Slim Jim. 


Those brave enough were required to say, "Oh, yea!" before downing the dark brown shot. Of the three people I saw take one, to a man (no female was so foolish) they drank and then said, "That does taste like a Slim Jim."


The only thing I can attest to is one guy's breath, which reeked of Slim Jim.


All three bands played hard and fast, beginning with Precious Fluids, a fraternal duo, who covered Neil Young, the Beatles and Dylan in a nod to his 70th birthday on Tuesday (yes, he's a Gemini, too).


Who Are the Southern Baptists? played next and with their raspy-voiced singer, they covered the Grateful Dead, which got some girls dancing, and mercifully declined to cover "Free Bird."


Paul Ivey vs. Board of Education had a new guitarist tonight, but she admirably held her own and had a clutch of friends and fans cheering her on.


They covered "Both Sides Now" and the Clash and did a tribute to the Rapture but it was the song "Crushed Glass Pastry" about the difficulties of love that closed their energetic set.


As Paul had mentioned during our dinner chat earlier, despite years of experience, relationships are still tough to figure out at any age.


If only it were as easy as talking to a man on the phone and then having him fall out of the sky from a burning plane. I'm confident I could make the most of that.


I've got a birthday coming up and I'm not getting any younger, after all. I need to get started on that fifty-year plan as soon as I can.