The History of Superheroes in America: 1934

Edmund O'Hurley took a break from crime fighting during the winter of 1933 and the beginning of '34. Work at the shop had slowed considerably, and he was forced to look for work doing odd jobs where he could find them for half the week. It was an incredibly tough winter. There wasn't much to eat. The cold and sadness of the harsh winter was creeping in on the small family. They made it through to see spring, but not by much. Another winter like that and who knows where they'd end up.

Spring came, and with it came an increase of work back at the shop. But not by much. The machinery of the Great Depression was in full swing now, and there weren't many people worrying about cars in 1934. O'Hurley's boss, a man of great integrity, wanted to keep Edmund on as long as he could. He liked Edmund (as most people did) and knew his family would have a rough go of it with Edmund out of a job. But the way things were heading, there wouldn't be a way to keep anyone in a job.

But with the increase in work (for the time being), came the opportunity to don the armor again. The people of the neighborhood had grown used to seeing the metal giant striding down the sidewalks a dusk. It was a comfort to everyone to know that even when everything else was falling apart, there was one man fighting for the good of everyone. And this was Edmund's biggest motivation to continue his fight. By the time summer began to creep in, there weren't many fights to be had. But he continued his beat anyway, knowing what hope it brought to those around him.

Then, something incredibly significant happened. Of course then, it probably seemed like something rather ordinary. Plain, even. But an event that would change the shape and course of America as a whole.

A young man was walking down the street. As he turned the corner, he saw a child run off of his front porch and down the sidewalk. The child zoomed past him and kept going. The turned, finally seeing the object of the child's attention. O'Hurley. Or, rather, the "metal giant" as people in the neighborhood called him. The child ran up to the giant and knocked on one of the plates on his legs. The giant looked down and smiled at the boy, ruffling up his hair. At first the young man wasn't sure of what he was seeing. But after a moment, it all clicked. He realized what O'Hurley was, even more than O'Hurley did. He realized that this was the man that was going to change everything. That this was the idea that was going to save America. It takes a very special man to put things together like that. He was brash. He was unafraid. He was 21 years old. He was Cyrus Foley.

From Foley's autobiography, "Creating God":

"He sparkled in the sun. It's a queer way of putting it, but it's true. The light reflected off of all of those metal plates and he absolutely sparkled. He was like a brand new Caddilac, but the difference was, no Caddilac in the world was going to walk and talk and save the nation. That's right. Even then, even right then standing on that sweltering street corner in Queens, I knew that he was going to be the thing that changed it all. He was going to be the deal maker. With him, with this idea, with this whole package I was going to change the world and I knew it in an instant. I walked right up to him, looked him dead in the face (now mind you, he was a good foot taller than me, and I was no midget) and I asked
"Hey guy, you got a name?" He looked a little puzzled.
"A name?"
"Yeah. A fancy name to go with that fancy suit."
"Well...no, I guess I don't."
"Well my name's Cyrus Foley. And the first thing we need to do is get you a name.""

That started one of the most famous collaborations in United States history. Edmund O'Hurley and Cyrus Foley. Combining passion and precision. Brawn with brains. They would start something unlike anything the world had seen before. The business of superheroes.

It would take all the rest of that year to create and fine tune the plan for O'Hurley's arrival onto the world stage. It was to be a finely orchestrated affair, with every cog of the machine in it's perfect place.

But by late December, everything was ready. The suit had been reworked, cleaned, painted. There was a name. A mission statement. Press releases. Photographs. The whole plan was put together and ready to explode.

And explode it did.

The History of Superheroes in America: 1933

So this is some back work related to my big fat project I am working on now. Enjoy.



The summer of 1933 was hot. Unbearably so. The burrough of Brooklyn was absolutely melting under the summer sun. Between the heat and the Depression, tempers were growing hot. Tensions were beginning to rise. Violence was becoming more common. Looting. Stabbing. Rape. Brooklyn was nearing it's breaking point.

In the middle of all of this madness was 29 year old Irish immigrant Edmund O'Hurley. O'Hurley moved his wife and son from Ireland in 1931. His father had been around during the potato famine, so when he felt the luck shifting in his homeland, he decided to move out of there before things got too bad. He figured that if there was anywhere that could be safe from this global depression, it would be America. The land of opportunity. The land that greeted you with lady liberty. The land where fighting for your rights and beliefs was part of the heritage.

But things hadn't gotten much better, as much as he hoped and prayed. America, for all its promise and reputation, was no better off than Ireland. He surveyed his neighborhood every day on his walk to work (he being among the lucky ones to still have a job). He had always been a whiz with his hands. There was very little he couldn't fix. Even when his jobs had gone from wagon wheels to car engines, he fixed them just the same. A man who could do so much with his hands was invaluable to those who still had things to fix. Those wishing to hold on to their lifestyle, even in the ruination of the Great Depression. He surveyed his neighborhood and watched as the repo men threw countless families out of their homes. Watched his neighbors turn into the legion of homeless. Watched his neighborhood turn to nothing but sorrow.

In the summer of 1933, people had had enough. And one of those people was Edmund O'Hurley. He'd had enough of the situation. Enough of the times. Enough of the repo men and the Depression and the sadness and fear that gripped America. He wanted to see the America that existed in his dreams. The liberty and freedom and hope that fell across his lips in his evening prayers. He was ready for change.

And change is what he did.

Working after hours in the shop, he began to construct, piece by piece, the engine for his new America. Turning scrap metal into hope. Bolts and rivets into justice and liberty. And on Sunday, August 6th, 1933, Edmund O'Hurley kissed his wife and son and became something far more than an ordinary man.

Edmund O'Hurley became America's first superhero.

People weren't sure what to make of this metal plated object that walked down the sidewalk at dusk. Many innocent people shied away, hiding in the shadows, fearing the worst. But O'Hurley expected this. These were people who were already afraid. So it would only make sense that they would continue being afraid, even when they were safe.

He recalled years later that the first "bad guy" he encountered was a pimp infamous for violence against women and children. "Everyone knew he beat up women" O'Hurley wrote in his memoir. "The damn spic had this pack of young girls, I mean real young. Still teenagers, they were. And you'd always see them with shiners from where he'd hit 'em. He was a mean bastard. And I knew he was the first guy I wanted to pick a fight with."

Armed with nothing but his metal outfit and his Irish temper, he tapped the pimp on the shoulder. The pimp turned and...well, Mr. O'Hurley says it all best.

"He turned, his eyes got as big as dinner plates. Didn't even know what he was looking at at first. But that changed real quick. 'Hey you!' I said. 'Get out of my neighborhood!' I had hoped I would say something better than that, but I really wasn't prepared too good. And you know, he laughed. I mean, I probably looked a damn fool out there in my metal suit. But he laughed just the same. And I socked him. Oh he wasn't laughin' then, I'll tell you. Socked him right in the jaw and down he went. Metal glove right in the kisser and don't you know he was sporting a couple of real shiners once he finally picked himself up. And you know, he packed up and got out of the neighborhood after that. By god, he did."

News spread fast in the neighborhood about the metal giant who fought for justice. Six days a week, Edmund O'Hurley worked as a mechanic. But on that seventh day, the nameless superhero roamed the streets. Fighting for good. For justice.

Fighting for America.

It's been quite a few days...

And I apologize for not writing. I'm sure there's at least one person who checks every couple of days, and I am sure they have ended up a bit dissapointed.

I have been a little under the weather the past few days. Still keeping busy. Doing a LOT of work. But been a little ill and not much in the mood to write. But I am working on something to post tomorrow. So stay tuned.

Well...actually, it'll be today, as the clock just rolled over to midnight.

I'm supposed to make this brief and go to bed. But I suppose it has been days since I've written anything. No reason I can't give the writing muscles a little workout, right?

I have been watching a lot of CSI lately. (The seventh season, to be exact) And what I notice is that serial killers are a hell of a lot of fun to write. And I think that's universal for everyone who tackles the subject.

With a serial killer, what you get to do is be as elaborate and descriptive and absolutely evil as possible. The more obsessive the killer is, the more interesting. The more evil, the more interesting. And, most importantly, the more human the killer is, the more we want to know about them. A serial killer who just hacks people up because he's a nutjob isn't very interesting. But if you can give him true motive, true skill, and a touch of panache, you've got yourself a compelling story. Just look at some of the more interesting movie characters of all time. Hannibal Lector. The Joker (Heath Ledger's of course). Micheal Corleone. Anton Chugar (If you haven't seen No Country For Old Men, go run and get it!). Ruthless, cold blooded killers yet we are fascinated by their actions and motives.

No one is too fascinated the transparency of Prince Valiant.

Or Superman, for that matter.


Till Later...

--Paul

My time in the Followspot...

Last night I had the privileged to perform for at the theatre of my friend and teacher Kestutis Nakas. He is the organizer of "Followspot Theatre", which is a performance art theatre here in Chicago.

I have wanted to perform for a few months, so I was absolutely thrilled to finally have the chance.

Below is a video of the entire evening. It is taken from a website of another performance artist. So about the video:

It will take a bit to load.

When it loads, you want to find a button that says "on demand". That will bring up a couple of videos. Clock on the one marked "live performance" (it has a picture of me on it, funny enough).

You will probably want to find the button that says "full screen" so it's not tiny.

My performance starts at about the 20 minute mark. Watch the whole video or just skip to mine. Either way, it's a good video to watch.

It will be a bit slow, but that's ok.





I have removed the video so the page will run faster. Let me know if you want the link.





Here is the original text for the piece you are watching.

(Music starts. Lights up. He is in the space. He carries a case. He opens the case delicately. As though it were full of fine glassware. He sets up his “temple of time”, arranging the clocks in a clock formation as he speaks)

I am at the grave of my mother. A place I have never been. The air is thick. The moisture clings to my lungs in this fertile ground. Her grave is well kept. (He scoffs) I kneel before her. I stare her stone effigy in the face. It is as cold as I am. Almost laughing, almost vomiting, I plunge my hands into the soft earth. My fingers digging deep, pushing past the worms and rich, pungent soil, breaking through roots and memories and time, I reach my prize. I wrench it from the earth and it makes fleshy sucking sound and I push back thoughts of horror. I turn the steel box in my hand, the moonlight catching, reflecting back on the flecks of dirt and blood that streak my cheeks. This is what’s left. All that fits inside this box. An eternity of heartache, broken down to its base elements. I pry the box open with my fingernails, not noticing the blood that runs down my arm. I tip the box, letting the ashes, soft like lullabies, flow into the open mouth of the hourglass. I place the cap and sit, watching the sooty seconds fly their course. For a moment, I am joyous. In this moment, the final success is mine. Then, in the next, I realize the agonizing truth. The ashes are hers. The seconds, mine. I gaze in horror as my time flies by, knowing that its end spells mine. (He places the hourglass, completing his temple.)

I have a very particular obsession. One that has followed me through my childhood, and continues to haunt my thoughts and dreams. Sometimes I feel as though I can sit and feel the seconds as they drift past me. Like an early spring breeze across my brow. But that’s not true. Because often, I feel like time is whirring past me, screeching like a dying bird and I can’t stop as my life spins out of control around me. I can do nothing to control time. And for that, I am obsessed with it.

When I was in second grade…no, before that, you have to understand a little something about my childhood. When I was growing up, we were poor. I mean poor. Dirt poor. Like, the only things we exchanged for Christmas were nervous glances. So in the second grade, there comes a day in class where we are going to learn how to tell time. And we’re all sitting on the big area rug, getting ready to learn, and the teacher’s aid pulls me aside, away from everyone else. She asked me what happened, and I don’t understand. She tells me my pants are ripped. I look down…I hadn’t seen it before. I had no idea. But my pants were…tattered. Rags. Eight years old and no one had told me before I left for school that my pants were full of holes. They sent me to the principal’s office, and then they sent me home. I didn’t learn to tell time that day. I didn’t learn for years.

But there’s something very comforting about a clock. In the face of a clock, I am reminded that time is not always our enemy. In the gentle face of a clock, time runs round in circles. Time repeats. Time is unending. In this circular time, I can return to places I have been. Change the mistakes of the past. Live, even for a moment, in the happy meadows of memory.

I have a question for you. A real question, that I want you to answer in your heads. All of you. Everyone. If you could return to a moment in your past, good or bad, to change it or not, if you could go to a moment…what moment would that be?

Do you have your answer?

(At this point, the music will rise and I will take one clock and enter the audience. I will hand the clock to that person and have them sit where the clock was. Repeating this until there are twelve people with twelve clocks seated in the circle. One by one, they will share their moment.)

If I were to go back to a moment…three years ago, sitting at my computer, reading a message from a girl I do not know. Answering that message will begin one of the most terrible points in my life. Change that…and who knows what else changes. I don’t know what I would do.

But this is one of the harsh realities of our time. In our time, we cannot travel back to the past. We must make choices in the moment, living with the consequences for the rest of our lives. In this world, in this universe, time is not a circle. It is a line. A string. Elegant, certainly. But with a beginning and an end. This…this is what worries me so much. What keeps me thinking about it. Because what happens when the string runs out? What happens when all the time has slipped out of our grasp. When there are no more seconds and no more minutes, no more hours…what becomes of us? What happens beyond the cutting of the string? I do not know. And none of us ever will.

There is a simple elegance...

...in the Muppets.

I know. Seems odd, doesn't it? My last post was about cartoons. This is about Muppets. What am I, 12?

But no. I have been watching quite a bit of The Muppet Show lately. And thinking about the basic ideas in life that we can glean from it.



Sometimes progress is not always in the right direction. Just ask Dr. Bunsen Honeydew. Perhaps it's because your gorilla detector doesn't work. Perhaps it's the fact that exploding hats are fairly impractical. Maybe some clown put the all purpose softener on your table. In any case, we learn that progress is only worthwhile when it points us in a better direction. Countless studies about the television watching habits of albino squirrels do us no good. Not when there's cancer to cure, correct? And in a more literal sense, we see that pointless progress can have an immediate detrimental effect to those around us. Even those loyal and caring towards us. Right, Beaker?



Being different can be an incredible struggle. Now, if this were typical children's television, there would be a lesson about acceptance in here. But sometimes, there just isn't. Sometimes, you are always different. And sometimes, it's something that can't be fixed, and the best you can do is like yourself for who you are. Take Gonzo for instance. He's a...well no one is really sure just what the hell he is. Frankly, he manages to be weird in a world where everyone is weird (and things like Sweetums exist). He's wierd. And really, he constantly has to deal with the fact that not everyone accepts him. That he often sticks out and is single out for it. But, in the long run, he learns that loving yourself is the only way to be loved by others. And isn't that universal? Isn't the most important love the one we have for ourselves?



Comedy is hard. And this applies not just for comedy, but in a larger sense, for any time you have to put yourself out there and hope that people like you. Maybe it's a presentation at work. A marriage proposal. A seduction. A class. A performance. We learn hard and fast that selling yourself is a difficult business. And no one showed us this better than Fozzie Bear. Fozzie put himself out there night after night. And night after night, his act died in the front row. It was cathardic for us. Being able to watch another suffer and laugh because of it. We saw ourselves in every presentation. Every failed romance. We saw ourselves failing in front of a crowd, and were finally able to laugh because it was someone else. And the most fabulous thing about Fozzie was that he show that a true performer never dies. That as many times as he failed, it just made him more excited to try again the next night. Always deterimed to knock 'em dead.



Sticking to your beliefs, right or wrong, is difficult in a troubled world. In our world today, we have a lot of people on opposite sides of issues. But often what we don't see is that there are many many people stuck in the middle. Choosing neither right nor wrong. Here nor there. People who are afraid to commit themselves to a decision. Afraid to stand up for an ideal. So it is noble to see someone who sticks to their guns and fights for their beliefs, even if you don't agree with their position. In a world full of liberalism, romance, chaos, and confusion we find Sam the Eagle. Pillar of conservatism. Made a bufoon by his hatred of all "wierdos". And yet there is something respectable about him. Sam does fight hard to maintain order. And he does it for all the right reasons. His love for the United States, his undying patriotism pushes him to action at all times. Of course, Sam also teaches us a lesson we here in America have sorely learned: blind patriotism can be a dangerous weapon. For there are those that would strike down the "wierdos". Who would rid the country of liberalism and confusion. Who would lead the patriotically blind into the depths of conservative hell rather than concede one point to the left. So Sam is someone to be respected and feared. Watched carefully. As long as he is a buffoon, what is the harm? Unless, of course, you elect that buffoon to president, hm?



Friends come and go. But when one sticks around, keep him till the end. Relationships don't last forever. Marriages don't (half, anyway). Jobs fail. Hell, whole economies fail. You may lost your wife, your house, your truck, and your dog (and end up in a country song), but chances are great that you'll never lose that friend. That person who sticks by you through thick and thin. We all have one. Haven't talked to them in two years? Just call them up. It's like you never stopped. Need a helping hand? A kind ear? A shoulder? There's someone there. And chances are, that person's just like you. So if you're a crotchety old curmudgeon, chances are, that person is to. Just like Statler and Waldorf. Funny enough, these two hecklers are two of the most popular and widely recognized muppets in creation. Perhaps it's because friendship truly is universal. Who among us hasn't sat with our friend and bashed the rest of the people we know. Our spouses. Our family. Our bosses. With this friend, we are safe in our lasting connection. That no matter what happens, we'll always have one person to call on. To sit in the balcony with and laugh at the comedians.



Love is painful. Hearts are broken easily. We find early that the only thing harder than comedy is love. And that first pain is always the most difficult. Love is always a struggle. People are different. People change. Hearts are always in motion. How can you maintain love with so much instability? But sometimes it happens. Sometimes it works. Sometimes you push through all the difficulty and all the pain and all the emotional baggage and you latch on to (and sometimes karate chop) the one you love. It's difficult. Difficult enough for people. Imagine if you aren't even the same species? Like Kermit and Miss Piggy. He pushes her away. She is overbearing. He is too focused on work. She spends to much time worrying about her looks. But how is that any different than all of the petty crap we do to the ones we love? How often do we treat the other like crap, even knowing that we love them? How often do we push them away, knowing that if they really left, we'd be heartbroken? How often do we focus on ourselves, hoping that the other will focus on us too? Love is hard. But if they can do it, why can't the rest of us?



And Finally...



It's not easy being green. I know. I ripped this one straight from Kermit's froggy lips to the page. But he said it better than i could, so it was no use trying to improve on it. Sometimes, you have to sit and think about your priorities. Maybe you have a great job. A lovely spouse. Fame. Fortune. Recognition. But even the best get lonely. Even the most celebrated can feel alone. Sometimes you have to sit and puzzle about it all. About how you fit in the universe. We all can find the peculiarities in ourselves. We can all see how we are different. Sometimes, that feels like a good thing. Sometimes, it just doesn't. Sometimes it feels like the barrier that prevents us from connecting to the world around us. Even if our unique qualities have their good sides, it is sometimes hard for us to see them past all the bad things.So we have to sit. Evaluate. Admit, once and awhile, that it's hard to keep going. That this can be a lonely world. And hopefully, at the end of that reflection, we come to realize that we aren't as alone as we thought we were. That we really are connected to the universe by our unique traits. That's what most of the versions of this famous song leave us with. Kermit, happy and content, knowing that green can be a great thing, and it's ok. But there's a reason I posted the version I did. Because sometimes, we come to the end of our reflection and realize that we are different. That sometimes we have issues no one can relate to. That the best we can do is open ourselves to our friends and loved ones, even if they don't have a solitary chance of understanding what's really going on with us. Sometimes, you go on because that is what's called for. You reconnect with the world because you have to. Sometimes you don't end up happy, but you hope for the future.

That's life. And that's the Muppets.





Till Later.


--Paul