Grainger vs. Olmsted

Back when I was an undergrad and really fond of grand theoretical syntheses about the nature of culture, I proposed that the basic granularity of society was flattening out in spacetime, so that change occurred more rapidly with time but everything was becoming spatially homogenized. This thesis was probably inspired by shopping center development in suburban northern Virginia, which, naturally, I took as representative of a universal trend in modern society rather than a universal trend in the nature of boom towns. It also had a nice pseudo-physical symmetry: Temporal Structure winning out over Spatial Structure, just as in everyone's favorite adventure serial:

PERCY GRAINGER,

NOTED COMPOSER
AND POPULARIZER OF TRADITIONAL FOLK MUSIC,

VS. FREDERICK LAW OLMSTED,

DEAN OF AMERICAN LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS!

Chapter XIV: The Behemoth Beckons!

"Criminy," said Percy Grainger's sexy she-companion and explosives expert, Boom-Boom, as they sped along I-95 in Grainger's Maserati. "That tune coming from your latest CD sure is pretty!"

"Pretty-- damn your eyes!" said Grainger in his devil-may-care Aussie accent. "Music is meant to agonize, not to entertain! This piece was based on an Irish folk ditty called 'When They Gouged Out Mama's Eyeballs.'"

"I! Like! The! French, Horns!" said 5iD0 the mechanical dog, from the back seat. His CPU's fans whirred gently.

"We must be getting close to Olmsted's mechanical monster," said Boom-Boom. Indeed, they could see it already, a black line on the horizon near Gaithersburg. As they came closer, they could see that the whirling blades along its front end were chewing up the few remaining forests, not to mention the attractive strip malls and parking lots in the vicinity. In its wake were naught but symmetrically placed reflecting pools, carefully composed brooks with Japanese bridges, and miles of topiary hedges. Armies of Olmsted's shiny brass steam-powered robots were planting cubical rose bushes. Soon the Northeast Corridor would be no more, unless something was done!

"He's setting up an Emerald Necklace," Grainger said. "I can see the broad outlines from here. Next he'll do an Esplanade in Silver Spring." He pulled over in the breakdown lane, got out of the car, adjusted the checkered terry bath towel wrapped around his head, and did a couple of somersaults. "I need to think." He sat on a Jersey barrier for a second or three, in a momentary imitation of Rodin's "Thinker," then announced: "Aha! Of course! It's absurdly simple."

The CD finished "When They Gouged Out Mama's Eyeballs" and started on "Stomp, Stomp, Stomp On A Human Face Forever In the Bonny Glens Of The Highland." Grainger got out his cell phone and dialed Lisa Frank.

The furious beeping from Lisa Frank's Crime Computer woke up the fluorescent green teddy bears manning the control board. They called up the talking dolphin who served as Lisa Frank's personal secretary. The dolphin paged Ms. Frank herself, who rode in from the Rainbow Farm on her flying magical unicorn.

"Frank here. What's the trouble?" asked Lisa Frank as soon as the dolphin handed her the phone.

"Grainger here! Olmsted's out of control! He's going to replace suburban Maryland with ordered, well-balanced spaces where the working man can stroll and think for a moment among the splendors of a reflection of Nature more perfect than Nature Herself! Apparently the work in DC proper wasn't enough!"

"Hmmm... I see where you're going. Olmsted's MO is order, balance, and above all tasteful decorum. So you want me to assault this guy with cowboy teddy bears and glowing blue cats with sunglasses? It's as good as done, old buddy."

"Even better," said Grainger. "Better than that."

Frederick Law Olmsted, dean of American landscape architects, grinned gleefully at the tabletop plaster-of-Paris model of his new Emerald Necklace, in the grand stateroom of his Land Behemoth. Occasionally, when the machine engulfed a particularly large megaplex movie theater or a whole strip mall, it would shudder a bit, and the otherworldly illumination from the curious apparatus of M. Rummkorff would waver on the brocade curtains and panoramic paintings of the Boston Fenway.

"And how is this land leviathan powered?" asked Peter Lorre, from his seat at the table, where one of Olmsted's robots served him fricasseed cuttlefish while another kept him from running away.

"By piezo-electrical selenium battery," said Olmsted, "except for the robots, who are steam-powered and pneumatic. The apparatus of M. Babbage serves them for a brain; I have reproduced it in micro-miniaturized form with the aid of the Oompa-Loompas on Deck G."

[Nota bene: Oompa-Loompas will no longer be mentioned in this story. - Ed.]

"But... What could possibly be your motive--" (here Lorre paused for breath) "--for destroying so many of the works of Man and Nature to-- replace them with monuments to your vanity?"

"Someday, the world will thank me," said Olmsted. "Someday, when a man can wander among vistas of perfection and look forth upon a scene of scenic grandeur bedecked with emerald vistas of scenic beauty and grandeur--" Olmsted stopped, momentarily startled by a distinct "clunk" somewhere in the machinery below him. "Whatever could that have been?"

"The towering yet vulgar advertising sign of a Texaco establishment?" suggested Peter Lorre.

"Think that worked?" asked the teddy bear named Winky, or maybe it was Pinky. 5iD0 could never get them straight. The three of them hung on for dear life to the undercarriage of the Land Behemoth, between two colossal sets of rumbling caterpillar treads. 5iDo disengaged himself from the whirling shafts of the Behemoth's main data bus.

"Never failed before," he said.

"No doubt. No doubt. As I was saying..."

Olmsted stopped again, at the curious sound of his robots... skipping?... out in the corridor. Then he shoved Peter Lorre brutally into the tunnel of the Land Behemoth's Maglev system! "To the rear bridge!" Olmsted shouted. "I suspect sabotage!"

But it was already too late! Upon arrival at the bridge, Olmsted looked through the brass-framed windows of lead crystal, only to see his beloved gardens, meandering brooks, and reflecting pools nowhere in sight-- instead, there was a hideously vulgar fantasyland of three-foot-wide Day-Glo flowers, rainbows with pots of gold, glowing blue icebergs with lederhosen-wearing polar bears, lily pads with frogs, winged dolphins, guitar-playing green tigers with wrap-around shades... and teddy bears in cowboy garb dancing to an elaborately polyphonic mishmash of "Camptown Races" and "Danny Boy."

"No! No! My own terra-reforming machinery... turned against me to create a nightmare world of unrelenting bad taste! I will not have it! I will not have it!" He shook his fist. "Someday I'll get that Percy Grainger... and snap him with his own bath towels!"

An explosion shattered the windows and sent Olmsted and Lorre hurtling across Maryland. Lorre was caught in the nick of time by a passing flying unicorn. Nothing was left of the leviathan but a fireball and a storm of robot parts.

"Lisa Frank always comes through when we need a diversion, eh, Percy?" said Boom-Boom, as she scrubbed the burn marks off 5iD0.

"Thank goodness the teddy bears were made of non-flammable materials," said Grainger. "Don't you think your bomb went off a bit early?"

"Think Olmsted will be back?"

"No doubt. Probably hideously disfigured with revenge on his mind. But we'll be there..."

PERCY GRAINGER,

NOTED COMPOSER AND POPULARIZER OF TRADITIONAL FOLK MUSIC,

VS. FREDERICK LAW OLMSTED,

DEAN OF AMERICAN LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS!

Chapter XIV: The Behemoth Beckons!

NOTED COMPOSER
AND POPULARIZER OF TRADITIONAL FOLK MUSIC,