Lewis

I saw Lewis driving a bus today. In Shropshire. Lewis the detective: not cuddly, man-next-door-watering-his-lawn, slightly bewildered Lewis of Oxford, the down-trodden sidekick of Inspector Morse; the Lewis who manned-up and got a promotion and his own TV series after Morse sprang his mortal coil; the Lewis who now has his own sidekick, a more wooden version of Boris Karloff. Not that Lewis.

I’m talking about the Lewis from a much tougher place than leafy Oxford. A much tougher time than the pampered Occidental turn-of-the-millenium. I’m talking about Lewis from the future, from Detroit/Delta City. I’m talking about the cuddly, girl-next-door-hanging-her-smalls-on-the-line, slightly embattled sidekick to Robocop, the mechanised policeman from Paul Verhoeven’s classic dystopian future nightmare, circa 1987.

The Chemical Man

B-Movie #10

Hollywood, 1953:

Harvey’s Wash-a-teria in Fairfax is no bad place to work. You get a bicycle for delivery: a Schwinn, no less. The boss is a good man – tough but fair. Prospects are good too – there is talk of expansion, maybe a supervisor’s position. Sergei Matrossov can see the positives in a career in the laundromat business. He doesn’t need much. A cheap apartment, work, one or two friends. The community is close-knit and supportive. A young immigrant could do worse. At the next-door pharmacy there is a typewriting machine whenever he needs it. Belongs to the pharmacist’s nephew, a poet doing some self-discovery trip and his own kind of pharmacy in Tangier for an indefinite period of time.