Noir World

For the most part, the present day bores me half to death. This is why I spend so much time lost in dreams of the fantastic, playing video games, reading, or writing. According to fiction novels and movies the middle-ages were a sword swinging good time. There was magic, Hobbits, and wildly attractive well groomed maidens waiting to be rescued. Of course, there were also dragons and dark overlords trying to enslave everyone and destroy the world, but such is the weather. Turn the page and you will be ushered into the future where space-travel, laser guns, and triple-breasted babes await anyone with the bravado to tackle evil empires and hostile alien races. Flip a coin; either one of those scenarios beats delivering pizza and filling out a census.


Recently I was introduced to another fine example of the fanciful: film noir.

In Noir World adventure can be found in the dark alleyways of a rain glazed downtown, in seedy underground bars, hopping jazz clubs, and raucous cigarette smoke filled socialite parties. Blackmail is the flavor of the day, and double-crosses are as common as the street rats and glasses of scotch. The heroes come in the form of fedora wearing, trench coat clad, hard boiled private detectives. The women are more commonly referred to as femme fatales, whose piercing eyes and beautiful features are matched only by their penchant for murder and mayhem. Yes, please!

"Build my gallows high, baby."

I love mysteries, thrillers, and speaking in double entendre, so a jaunt in Noir World would be almost natural for the likes of me. Sadly, I don’t get involved with as much of that as I would like, what with living in such a desensitized and loose world as this and all. The world of the 1940’s and 50’s was far more restrained—thanks to Nazi-like ratings boards and overbearing religious decree—and were the people of that era introduced to anything that you can find on broadcast television these days, it is highly likely the planet would have exploded in a cloud of bullet bras and nipple-high trousers. It is in the reading between the lines and examination of the psychological that Noir World truly shines.

Speaking of double entendre, any writer that can turn a casual conversation about racing horses into a metaphor for sex is genius in my book. See: The Big Sleep with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.

"I prefer to start out in front, work my way to the rear, and come from behind..."

To think that my parents came from such an awesome time; I am truly jealous. Philip Marlowe is a much more interesting character than any of the douchebags on film today. And ladies just aren’t built the same way these days as they were back then. Our genes and hormones are so screwy from all the genetically tampered food and drugs that our bodies are a far cry from what they should be, and the clothes we have to stuff them into are just as ill-conceived. Try wearing your trench coat like Robert Mitchum, or rocking some heels like Jane Greer; you will be nothing more than a sad pretender, and believe me: I suck at heels.

Compared to that golden age today is neurotic, nephritic, and definitely not cool. Now, I know what you are thinking—I am a super-mutant after all—and your argument of “those are movies, not reality” is bunk. We have had over fifty years to demolish and rebuild society to function as it does in The Maltese Falcon. The fact that we haven’t is proof of our glaring disregard for all that is virtuous; a mutilated figurehead of abject failure. Shame on us. Shame on us all.

We will never be this bad ass.

Love,
Smiley Grimm