The TRIUMPH

"You can't use the E&S to design a city!."

It was good to see John Grower again. I gladly forgave him for the above quote and my favorite:"OK Sterling... you're having way too much fun...", when he introduced me as "one of the first Abel Artists". JG's job was to rein me in and he did it well.

Spiderman 3's CGI New York was decades in the future, but "This IS a business Michael..." was just around the corner. DOA 2007 gave us both the chance to realize that both our instincts were right on right when they were needed.

Grower was on his way to way too happy by the time we recognized each other, and as he went on to describe how I always wore black - except for the day he swore I wore all white - it seemed to dawn on him he was seeing me for the first time. About that time I found myself thinking that all that was missing were Michael Gibson, my light table, and the lupe in the upper left corner one of us always kept our eye on.

All that is gone, replaced by a patio of people in black and a Starship's shadow cast by the eclipse at it's six - the victory roll that may be all Gene Roddenberry ever wanted - a perfect example of asking "What if?", while paying attention to every detail... in order to produce a HERO that all ABEL DOGS can share in.

I was proud to be at the Solamar, and glad to have taken the path that had led me there. It's been more of a Gift than a burden to create these pages, but it's time to land and book-end this thing.

To paraphrase Merlin: "I believe I've one more Story in me*."

A word about "TAKEN"...

One of the last things I did for Bob was to almost lose the "TRIUMPH" job for him.

Hired back to design as apparently only I could, I spoke up one meeting as perhaps only I do; telling Michael Jackson that it would be wrong for him to end his Special FX video by stepping down from ABOVE like God to dispense healing balm to a circular crowd of onlookers at some remote site in a fantastic desert that I would ultimately create out of some eroded cliffs along PCH north of Zuma.

It's not just little girls who can stop Time.

No one in that room breathed for 30 seconds until the Man In The Mirror; to his everlasting credit took the suggestion that IT should be a SYMBOL instead, simply said in that wonderful voice of his: "You mean like a Peacock feather?"...

TUT could not have been wiser.

Plop, Plop, Fizz, Fizz has got NOTHING on THAT Moment!

Went on to have "too much fun" and left when it just wasn't fun anymore.

Jackson did however, show the finished "TRIUMPH" to Steven Spielberg. It had an extra 12 minutes that Bob himself had directed and added. Those 12 minutes made little sense to us then, but blow my mind today. I had watched parts of "TAKEN", and had come to several conclusions. First that it was cancelling out the entire "RESEARCH / LECTURE" Industry that had grown up around the FACE on Mars (still there). Second, as I noticed that EVERY DETAIL was PERFECTLY realized (though overdone into the ground), I began to wonder if the sets weren't "sets" at all, and everything we were being shown was REAL, and that THAT was the true Disclosure whatever deal had been cut had been cut to bring about, for whatever, or whomevers reason. THAT went out the window when they showed the crashed saucer boundary...

:(

BUT... aside from the Art Bell / Hoagland VINDICATION (was that GREAT, or what?!), I REALLY started to pay attention during the final scene.

Started to choke up when I saw that our scene wasn't "Our" scene any longer, and began truly losing it as the collective emotion began to build as a result of the "Aliens" alien action.

Smiled as I realized that THAT was the POINT, and the Goal all along. Chuckled at the thought that though it was "All matted in", it was still EXACTLY what it appeared to be and the Human Race was being tapped through a simple broadcast viewed by millions for the very tears that began to appear unbidden in my all too dry for way too long eyes.

Laughed as I reached for the Kleenex as I realized that the WHOLE THING was a TRIBUTE to Robert Abel and his Son Josh, who Bob insisted on as THE CAMEO.

THAT, is ART.

Art that didn't have to be sought out.

Art that found you whether you were hidden in a cave, or just out for a walk in the woods...

...or a Crater.

Win Without War

MS

* I know, some of you have seen this before but 2002's PANIC ATTACK: VSNRY is a very long page, so some may not have made it to the bottom.

But I do have one more Story in me... about a Guitar Player.

GO2GLO