"When the Emperor passed by we had to bow our heads very low. We were made to believe that the Emperor was too awe inspiring for ordinary humans to look upon directly."Hirohito was the last to sit on the Chrysanthemum throne and be considered a god upon Earth. It used to be taught to every small child during the long centuries of Imperial Japan that they must not dare look at the Emperor... else they would be struck blind. Many among the Japanese were still gripped by that sense of fear and awe, even long years after Hirohito relinquished any claims of divinity following Japan's surrender to the United States after World War II.
(The Emperor is still a big kahuna over there though. You know he's the ONLY person in Japan who by law cannot eat fugu? I think that's pretty neat... well unless Akihoto really WANTs to eat a fish loaded with lethal neurotoxin. But anyhoo...)
It took sixty years but I think we've finally done the Japanese one better here. Ya see, we aimed guns at them and told them to look. Now we aim guns at ourselves and are told not to look! Here's the lowdown from Scripps-Howard via The News-Herald newspaper...
01/11/2005I can see it now: some private-security muscle escorting a group of adults to a potty break while his hand's resting on his holster. Let's make them walkin in line hold each other's hand while we're at it. But what do you expect from a President who "sees America as we think about a 10-year-old child"?You're invited?
By: Joan LowyBe ready for metal detectors, personal body searches and the highest security in inauguration history
WASHINGTON - The nation's 55th presidential inauguration, the first to be held since 9/11, will take place this month under perhaps the heaviest security of any in U.S. history.
Dozens of federal and local law enforcement agencies and military commands are planning what they describe as the heaviest possible security. Virtually everyone who gets within eyesight of the president either during the Jan. 20 inauguration ceremony at the U.S. Capitol or the inaugural parade down Pennsylvania Avenue later in the day will first go through a metal detector or receive a body pat-down.
Thousands of police officers and military personnel are being brought to Washington from around the country for the four-day event. Sharpshooters will be deployed on roofs, while bomb-sniffing dogs will work the streets. Electronic sensors will be used to detect chemical or biological weapons.
Anti-abortion protesters have been warned to leave their crosses at home. Parade performers will have security escorts to the bathroom, and they've been ordered not to look directly at President Bush or make any sudden movements while passing the reviewing stand...(snip)
Thousands of performers - marching bands, color guards, pompon dancers, hand bell-ringers, drill teams on horseback and Civil War re-enactors - will be bused early in the morning to the Pentagon parking lot across the Potomac in Virginia. While performers disembark and go through metal detectors, bomb-sniffing dogs will search the buses.
Then everybody will get back on the buses for a trip to the National Mall, where they will spend most of the day in heavily guarded warming tents. Participants have been warned that they will not be allowed to leave the tents except to go to portable toilets accompanied by a security escort.
Other instructions given performers include a warning not to look directly at Bush while passing the presidential reviewing stand, not to look to either side and not to make any sudden movements.
"They want you to just look straight ahead," said Danielle Adam, co-director of the Mid American Pompon All Star Team from Michigan, which also performed in the 2001 inaugural parade.
"Last time we went security was really tight," Adam said. "This time we got almost like a book of things we needed to fill out beforehand."
What the hell kind of employee of the American people - that we pay the salary for, by the way - is it that tells us, any of us, not to look at him?
Come to think of it, what kind of employee spends $50 million to celebrate getting a job that pays only a couple million or so over a span of four years?
They don't have to worry about whether I'm looking or not, 'cuz I won't be tuning in for this thing anyway: got better things to do than watch an orgy fit for Bacchus.
Tron is one of those movies that, yeah it didn't make all that much money at the box office and it's not quite a cultural classic but you don't want anyone to mess with it either, because to enough of us it is a classic. Why that is, I can't explain but I think part of it has to do with the children of the first Star Wars generation, in the years after Episode IV: A New Hope and kids used to stare up into the night sky at the stars and wonder if fierce battles really were going on up there. Tron was like that but in a way more intimate: instead of far-out space it make you look at your desktop PC and wonder what really went on inside it: for all we knew, there WAS a teeny-tiny world behind the monitor where good and evil programs hashed it out. It was a neat thing to imagine, anyway. Personally though, Tron was the very first time I saw a movie on a VCR, over at my best friend Chad's house, and that's the kind of "techy first" that stays with a guy for life.
And if they really want to get particular about it, they don't have to re-invent the wheel at all because the world of Tron has already been brought into the 21st century from the dark ages of 1982: 
Lots of places have the news but 
You can click on the link to Chad's blog for info on where to order VHS/DVD copies of the film and that might be wise if nothing else than to have as a collector's item 'cuz reliable sources have informed me that one of the "Voices of North Carolina" will be none other than Maggie Valley, North Carolina's very own legendary moonshiner/bootlegger/author of Me and My Likker/collector of curios/several other things that I've been sworn to silence on: 
"Submitted for your approval."
