September 18, 2003
9/11/09

September 11th was a Tuesday. The anniversary was a Wednesday. The CNN sponsored rehashathon that was last week fell on a Thursday. Next year is a leap year, and you just know movie-marketing people were relieved they didn't have to deal with Friday September 11th, The Release Date, until mid-way through 2009. By that time, there may well be other days of mourning to observe. We won't have forgotten this was a day briefly said to symbolize the death of irony, and then, shortly thereafter, said to be its genesis. Will we be surprised to see the date on the poster for some romantic comedy along side the face of whoever is the pre-lip-injection Meg Ryan-of-the-moment? Will anyone be so silly as to raise an eyebrow if Bruckheimer ventures near, or be so dumb as to expect the whole industry to grind to a halt because of something terrible that happened once?

For now, with two wars and two anniversaries behind us, everything outside Kabul in lawless chaos, the only secular country in the middle east home to more maniacs with a working knowledge of pipe-bombs than at any other time in human history, with Donald Rumseld's constipated smile, Dick Cheney's reptile eyes, Osama bin Laden's kooky cool, and let's not forget about Joe Shmoe too!, the idea of September 11th as an international day of mourning seems more like a joke than I would have thought possible. Hopefully by 2009, 911 will have reclaimed some of its initial meaning, in the "get up or get get get down" sense of the thing, back when coppers were sodomizers, and we were young, if you know.

Posted by ÿ at September 18, 2003 02:56 PM
Comments

September 11th is also the anniversary of the 1973 Chilean coup that installed Pinochet as dictator (CIA-backed, incidenatlly). A harrowing time for those who lived it (link via mefi).

Pinochet, Pirate of Santiago: The Musical! Coming to theatres September 11, 2005

Posted by: marijke on September 19, 2003 10:39 AM .
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