Facebook just tossed *this at me from my archives there on "FB".
New portraits of "Che's" little known twin brother Eddy.
Unlike his deranged brother Che. Eddy spent his life quietly. He was a school bus driver, and part-time accordion repair man in Dayton Ohio.
The most exciting thing that ever happened to Ed Guevara was his meeting Walt Disney in a gay bar in Berlin in 1958.
Mr. Disney paid Eddy two million dollars to keep quiet about their one night stand.
True to his word Eddy kept Walt's secret, and his money
Btw he gave most of the dough to his brother Che for the Revolution. Che put it to good use too.
So we can indirectly thank Walt Disney for Castro, the Revolution, with all of it's contradictions, and murderous faults, and generations of Che t-shirts.
Anyway this is why Leonardo da Vinci in Purgatory,...yeah he's still there. This with Oscar Wilde looking on is Lenny honoring Che's quiet, and unassuming brother with a series of Andy Worholesque portraits.
.
..imagine that.
*A Sydneytoons Production
8 comments:
Years ago I watched the Motorcycle Diaries an adaptation of Che Guevara's memoir. I loved the movie so much that I watched it several times. One of my co-workers took to calling me Fuser, which was Ernesto's nick name of the time.
I in a way understand your feelings. However this guy of whom I had a poster up in my dorm room was a mass murderer. His hobby was writing reams of death warrants, and witnessing any number of extrajudicial executions. One committed by Fidel's brother,...who is the current Boss down there.
They don't deny any of that either. Like all alleged "soldiers" they say they did what was necessary.
Revolutions produce such people. I knew what Che did we all did, but overlooked it for the greater good. Sort of like Germans overlooked the acts of certain of their past leaders.
With maturity I look back in horror at my then attitudes.
If our 1960's revolution has succeeded. The Black Panthers would have become our SS, and racked up by now millions in body counts of class enemies, and race traitors. The radical Yippies would have quickly morphed into a kind of fanatical Red Guard. Just as in our time line radical gays morphed into racist conservative stroller pushers.
Revolutions are nothing if not stews of unforeseen consequences.
If the Occupy Movement had not evaporated during spring break who knows where they would have gone. The cults of the American right are at least upfront with their dreams of "Blood, and Soil".
The part of the Sixties that I miss are the hippies. Those radicals you mention were mostly self-important assholes, just as you seem to be suggesting. Simply dropping out of the consumerist lifestyle would have been all the revolution that we needed, and far more than we ultimately got. It's also, I suspect, what the establishment was most terrified of - that millions of Americans would opt out of buying worthless shit, and let capitalism rot.
Z
The Motorcycle Diaries is a story of the young medical student who would latter become the revolutionary. The movie is very effective in showing the idealism of that young man. I knew enough about what came latter to think at the time that he would have done better if he had remained a doctor, and stayed out of the sort of politics with which he became involved. It was unlikely that he would have done so.
During the movie Alberto Granado and Ernesto Guevara visit the ancient Incan ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru. Guevara asks how its beauty could be destroyed by the creators of the eventual polluted urban decay of nearby Lima. He is interrupted by Granado, who shares with him a dream to peacefully transform South America. Guevara quickly retorts: "A revolution without guns? It will never work."
Even that statement, of his, does not explain what he became.
A friend of mine from school spent much of her childhood in Cuba. Her parents were visiting the country at the time of the revolution. Her father was an architect, and a Spanish citizen. According to my friend the Cubans decided that her father would not be allowed to leave. They needed his skills. And so she was born there...
She and her parents, I am sure, share your disdain for the Che.
I never heard of his hobby of signing death warrants. That is not to say that I don't find it perfectly believable.
Outside of Cuba, he was a curiously ineffective leader. Another aspect of the man which is not quite so heroic.
Not withstanding all that I still like the movie. The landscapes of South America, shown there, are astonishingly beautiful. The cinematography of Eric Gautier is more than up to the task of revealing that beauty. And the film's virtues do not end there.
As for why my friend called me Fuser, that has more to do with my fascination with motorcycles, than my politics.
"Simply dropping out of the consumerist lifestyle would have been all the revolution that we needed, and far more than we ultimately got."
Though I am not an Engineer there have been enough of them in my family that I have a more hard-nosed attitude. I am thinking here of Climate Change which is a problem that could be addressed, if we could manage to elect a Congress which was not the current lot of (words fail me) - would shit heads cover the case adequately?
Um,...fucking evil money grubbing Queer bashing elder abusing looting craven Nazi fuck face baby killing planet raping pawns of Satan shit heads is more like it. ...but yeah just "shit heads" for short would be okay.
For now.
Patrick thank you for reading, and commenting. Your company is welcome.
Uncle Sidney,
Your "fucking evil..." et cetera had me laughing out loud.
Thanks
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