The plane is coming in over Pt Mugu, with the characteristic, but always optimistically referred to, "golden hills" of California.
One last time.
It's been a long week, and I wonder if there is tolerance for yet another Reagan diary, I almost don't have tolerance but look who's guilty of doing it...
Snippets went by earlier of what is in amongst the plans for the final final movement of this week of strange orchestration, masterwork tho it has been. There will be a lone bagpiper playing, something will be presented to Nancy by no doubt a military man, he on bended knee. We will be spared the internment of the casket, that will be off camera.
A strange week and, it seems, a penultimate moment delivered by and from the moving image. Without the movies, we would not have Ronnie.
I wandered off and found this from David Ehrenstein on his Fablog.
It is very fin de siecle Ronnie, in fact it is simply fin de siecle. Some snips are copied out, farther down.
But first, already there is commentary over the TV that Pat Sajak is at the Pt Mugu airport, Mickey Rooney too. Johnny Mathis is there, Tom Selleck, they say Bo Derek will be at the Library. Merv Griffin, who always makes me think of the song, Myth of Fingerprints by Paul Simon, on the plane with the Baroness along. It reeks a bit, but so familiar.
Without the moving picture, we would not be here...
My mind wanders thru Paris, the Lumiere brothers, to New Jersey where movies were briefly made, til more and more they wandered west, early, seeking the sun. I think of Nathaneal West, who in the inimicable American way, remade himself and wrote of the metaphors, the locusts and the mob that was already in view. I see them both, over and over.
I think, finally, it is impossible to dislike Nancy, this declawed (yes, by comparison, she and Ron both are largely spent) vision that is now presented, unless one watched them rise to power, and in the Sixties, the very decade during which so many of our leaders, black and white, were shot from us. Shot and shot and shot again. They scarcely left anyone alive, none possessing essential and near miraculous charisma were left untouched, that overused overheated word... and mostly they shot more than once, lest it fail. 35 and 40 years later, 41 counting from the actual JFK, it was never a fair fight again in my life. Not really.
But even I, I could see and sense her grief, it was that palpable. It really was extraordinary.
Here are bits from David Ehrenstein's Fablog from June 6:
''[I]t was all Hollywood.
Signed in 1937 by Warner Bros. Ronald Reagan was not, as Gore Vidal has pointed out on several occasions, a "B actor," Girls on Probation aside. He appeared in many "A" features other than King's Row , and came to be regarded as a valuable utility player who never quite made it to the very top ranks. Obviously the fact that 1951 found him starring opposite a chimp in Bedtime for Bonzo has been much remarked upon. But his co-star was the lovely Diana Lynn and the director the fabulous Freddie DeCordova.
Besides, who are we to look askance at Bonzo when we've got a chimp in the White House?
Clearly Reagan's most curious, and oddly convincing, performance was as a gay lounge lizard in Dark Victory , the Bette Davis classic directed by the estimable Edmund Goulding.
That film's title was purloined by muckraker Dan E. Moldea for his Dark Victory: Ronald Reagan, MCA, and the Mob, the best study of how with the help of Lew Wasserman, Reagan parlayed a fading acting career into blooming one as a television "host" and corporate mouthpiece, inevitably leading to Republican politics. Kitty Kelly's marvelous study of his Hellcats of the Navy co-star Nancy neatly fills in the rest of the story.
Reagan's last, and greatest performance in Don Siegel's 1964 remake of The Killers , was largely done as a favor to most important business partner, Wasserman. As a mob boss who memorably smacks Angie Dickinson upside the head, he was perfectly cast. Made for television the film was considered too violent for "prime time" broadcast, and released theatrically instead. But who better to play a cheap thug than the cheap thug whose "Freedom Fighters" (ie. "Death Squad" goons) left a mountain of corpses in Central America.
...
But before all ambulatory activity became impossible, Reagan continued to maintain a schedule that brought him nearly every day to his office at the Century Plaza hotel -- home to many a Republican "fund-raiser."
And you can always tell when the RNC is in town because the Central American hookers and their pimps line up in the parking lot just outside the building.
The Century Plaza and 20th Century Fox share garage space. One day Fox lawyer Bob Cohen found himself arriving a bit late in the morning. Pulling into his space he suddenly saw a limo rushing in, followed by other cars. There were Secret Service agents around it, meaning only one thing -- Ronnie was there.
He was alone as he stepped out of the limo, and raising one hand he waved to the crowd he must have spied in his decaying mind.''
The long line of funeral vehicles is on the 405 heading for the Library. I'd love to say, soon it will be over, but I wonder.