Did you hear the one about the Angry Lezzie Astrodyke who dicked around with her estranged Wife/Husband/Whatever’s bank account from the International Space Station (which she denies)? Sure, you did, Drudge had her up for long enough to make you go – thank God, I didn’t marry someone like either of those two—

Years ago, an IP Lady Lawyer in synchronous orbit of mine quipped, “That’s what I told one of my gay friends. The only people that are going to win out of this gay marriage thing are the lawyers.”
Now don’t get Paladin wrong—every red-blooded American Male LOVES Babes in Space, any make, model or style as long as they don’t carry a Y Chromosome. And hey, on a long voyage to Jupiter for gas mining – who knows? Might even jump the fence and go rogue on that.

But this lurid tale has facets. Colonel McClain is an awesome member of our armed forces, with an outstanding education in hard sciences and an outstanding military career . A Cavalry helicopter pilot—she had me at 216 combat missions over Iraq. I don’t give a wit if she flew cover over a Green Zone Starbucks, so many things could go wrong in that place this country is blessed we got her back in one piece. Know guys that weren’t so fortunate. She’s top command material for the United States Space Forces.

Here’s the problem: for a guy who’s had three marriages and no lawsuits—Paladin can honestly say—Colonel, you win the Wrong Stuff Spouse Award.

Her Wife/Husband Summer Worden had previously denied McClain’s attempts to adopt Worden’s biological son. Another bad call, Colonel. You’re messing with blood ties and the Judgement of Solomon.
If you TRULY felt the child’s mother was unstable, you had a duty to abandon all else to try and wrest custody. You can go after the kid while working a nine-to-five job like the rest of us—or you can go after the stars. You can’t do both. If you want to ride the rocket—your duty to your duty takes precedence over human travails.

Personal life always has to be a distant second in a job like yours. That’s the sacrifice you make for the life you choose to lead. A terrible consequence of excellence. Having the Right Stuff means you can’t have it all.

And you can see The Wrong Stuff in every aspect of our culture. Consider the original movie. “The Right Stuff” —it spawned great myth making and a generation of dynamite actors that ran through the 1990’s & 2010’s.

Charles Frank, Scott Glenn, Ed Harris, Lance Henriksen, Scott Paulin, Dennis Quaid, Sam Shepard, Fred Ward, Kim Stanley, Barbara Hershey, Veronica Cartwright, Pamela Reed . . .
Their bios define the entertainment industry before the Matrix’s flying ninja crap made every major motion picture a Marvel comic. And the damn thing was shot for a mere $27 mil.

Now compare it to the recent Clint Eastwood film, The Mule— $50 mil. budget. Inflation costs plus inflated star salaries—even if they’re working half salary for a star turn with the legendary Eastwood. The picture is essentially a TV movie from the 1970s, with a pretty good pair of tits half-way through. A maudlin ending makes it “intellectual”.

Alas, basically a riff on getting older and the young punks not paying enough respect. A film of its times making you realize how incredibly overrated Bradley Cooper is. Not to mention the unfortunate decrepitude of Andy Garcia and Lawrence Fishburne. Eastwood was supposed to look old.

See . . . when people are fed pizza it’s hard to recognize steak anymore, take Aquaman— Paladin half watched it while playing iPhone chess—zoning in just enough to hear the squalid dialogue and zoning out during the action sequences which looked like a moving Jackson Pollack painting.

No. 5, 1948 – The title alone giving a clue to its essential confused/confessional emptiness. I’ve had many days like that Pollock painting, but I try to have less and less as I grow older. The guy found a gimmick and the WWII generation left a lot of people broken. Pollock could be said to have the Right Stuff if only for fighting his own internal battles. Andy Warhol, who added humor to dreck was way more fun.

Yep, Warhol got it. By the 60s—Art was canned.

So, Colonel McClain—listen up—make your choice—
Canned soup or canned heat—you can’t have both. Or, you can win the Wrong Stuff Spouse Award.

Photo credit: Anne C. McClain, NASA astronaut candidate class of 2013/

Image 2: Jackson Pollack/#5 1948/Fair Use

Image 3: Sergio Calleja/flickr.com/ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)/cropped/resized

Paladin is an Entertainment/IP Warfare Rōnin and self-identifies as a Y-chromosome Victory Girl.
Public Domain/NASA