The Real Indiana Jones
12-26-2003

Here it is the day after Christmas and the European Space Agency is waiting to find out the question of whether their space ship survived so that they can tell whether there is life on Mars.  But that is not the question, the question is whether there is intelligent life on Mars, because we have the other kind here, too.

Now I know that what I have to say is not fiction with dialog, or fiction with a plot, and parts of it are true, including my main theme which is the idea of Steve Martin playing Inspector Clouseau in an upcoming movie.  The truth behind this is that I heard Steve Martin himself recently say he was going to play Clouseau, on the Letterman show on TV, so it has to be true.

Clouseau is also based on truth, I think, like "the Real Indiana Jones" that everyone in Long Beach California is talking about.  Indiana Jones really existed, and was a Welsh physician and a trained Jungian psycho-analyst.  In a famous 1930's era dialog with the anthropologist Malinowsky, Jones tried to show that the Freudian ideas about Oedipal obsessions were the reason that even the most perfect Utopian society was never going to be placid and peaceful.  Too bad.

But Jones moved to America in the 1930's, and for all I know he taught at Indiana State or Ball State in Muncie where Letterman went to school.  I couldn't find out any information on the web about him except in University card catalogs, and I am too lazy to actually go to University Libraries and fight with the librarians and parking lot attendants there.  

But here is what the card catalog at Cal State Long Beach, where Spielberg graduated from, says about a recording about Indiana Jones that was made in Long Beach in 1978:

Author Jones, Ernest, 1879-1958.  
Title Focus on Ernest Jones. [Sound recording]  
Imprint [Long Beach, Calif., Long Beach Public Library, 1978] 
 
LOCATION            CALL #           STATUS  
Lower Level Media   Cassette 865     CHECK SHELF 
Descript 1 cassette. 2-track. mono. 
Note Discussion. 
 Duration : 28 min. 
 Taped from the 1969 Learning Plans recording. 
Summary A colleague of Freud discusses psychoanalysis and reality. 
Subject Freud, Sigmund, 1856-1939  
 Psychoanalysis  
 
This idea that Indiana Jones is based on a real person surely must seem like fiction to anyone who reads this.  Amazingly, Steve Martin also graduated from Long Beach, and has been my favorite comedian since he told the original hi-tech joke, about the Lawn Maintenance Supervisor and the Gangley Wrench.  Heh heh heh.  I don't think Martin ever lived in Indiana, and Spielberg is from Ohio, but I think it should ring true to my readers, if any, that Clouseau is actually a British detective trying to pass himself off as a Frenchman, just as Poirot is an American whose French is so bad he tries to pass as Belgian.  If that ain't fiction, I don't know what is.

So good luck Steve Martin!  Try to get some lessons on being Welsh from Indiana Jones' dad, Sean Connery.