ATE

Erin, world's most dangerous poet, teacher who assigns too much reading and not enough Jimi, bourbon connoisseur, Impressive Clergyman and all-around swell dame, has tagged me, y'all. The mission, should I choose to accept it (and I do): to write about certain topics in blocks of 8. Here's the results:


8 passions in my life:

Comics - even the long underwear stuff that intellectual nerds like me aren't supposed to like
Great breakfasts on Saturday mornings (and Sundays, too)
Creating the perfect pot of chili
The oddball roadside attractions and greasy-spoon diners of America
Art - makin' it, lookin' at it, talkin' about it, thinkin' about it...
Reading the first page/paragraph/sentence of a book that makes you realize right off the bat that it's going to be great
Looking up at the sky and every time coming to the strangely-always-new realization that the universe is far more vast than my mind can possibly comprehend, and I am correspondingly far more tiny than my egotistical human brain can possibly comprehend (all of which happens pretty much every time I do this). Astronomy, in other words
Going along with that last one, sitting around a campfire and drinking ("which really hasn't been topped in several millennia of development of leisure activities." - my brudder).

8 things to do before I die:

Publish my comics (in book form, preferably not at a vanity publisher)
Skydive
Climb Mt. Fuji
Qualify for and run the Boston Marathon
Win a chili cookoff
Own a show-worthy '67 VW Beetle
Appear on "Jeopardy!"
Own a big hunk of ground someplace in Wyoming or Montana

8 things I often say:

"Those're swell!"
"Oh, for fuck's sake..."
"Meep?"
"The waiting game sucks. Let's play Hungry Hungry Hippos!"
"What do you want for dinner?"
"Let's shall."
"You're a kitty!" [or any other of an ever-increasing number of inane things we say to our cats on a regular basis]
"I like pie."

8 books I read recently:

"The Android's Dream" by John Scalzi
"Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters" by Courtney E. Martin
"Book One: Work, 1986-2006" by Chip Kidd
"Empire of Ivory" by Naomi Novik
"The Lies of Locke Lamora" by Scott Lynch
"The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl" by Barry Lyga
"A Feast for Crows" by George R.R. Martin
"The Hobbit" by JRR Tolkien (for the millionth time)

8 songs that mean something to me:

"If I Had $1,000,000" by Barenaked Ladies
"Particle Man" by They Might Be Giants
"What Would You Say" by the Dave Matthews Band
"In the Garage" by Weezer
"Watchin' the Wheels" by John Lennon
"Yeah" by Usher
"Uncle John's Band" by the Grateful Dead
"Take it Easy" by the Eagles

8 qualities I look for in a friend:

Sense of humor
Good tippers
Has at least one good drink he or she makes very well or knows a lot about
Likes playing games of some sort - not necessarily D&D or nerdy boardgames with hundreds of parts and thousands of rules, tho those are nice; the ability to play and enjoy poker or gin or cribbage will do just fine
Shares willingly and happily
But on the other hand, doesn't drink all my booze
Is awesome in some way shape or form
Knows the proper response to "I'll be careful..."*


8 people who I’m passing this on to:

Nah.





* That would be, "You'll be dead!" in case you didn't know

For Your Consideration on Thanksgiving Eve

It is easy to forget about the Pilgrims. They have become just another bit of cultural/historical ephemera, just another bit of standard Americana with no more real meaning than Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny or Ronald McDonald, dour black-and-white clothing and funny buckled shoes serving the same purpose a "Ho ho ho" and a bag of toys or a red afro wig and a set of Golden Arches. The Pilgrims are today as much a gaggle of third-graders in construction paper hats sharing watery fruit punch, carrot sticks and cookies with a matching gaggle of third-graders in construction paper feathered headdresses as a real part of our shared history.

Thanksgiving is about gluttony and football in the year 2007. We'll maybe go once around the table before passing the dark meat and the gravy in order to pay lip-service to the nominal reason for the feast and each say one thing for which we are thankful. But will we really stop and think about it? Or will we just say, "Uh, yeah, friends and family for me, too, pass the stuffing, would you?" and turn back to the TV with the dim hope that the Jets are somehow beating the Cowboys?

We forget that the Pilgrims were not gathering to give thanks for "friends and family," or for Brett Favre's sudden rejuvenation. The Pilgrims were giving thanks for a year in which they didn't die. They were giving thanks to God for their very survival. And not just survival - they were celebrating their good fortune in having more than they needed.

If you know me, you know that this isn't meant as some sort of rose-tinted nostalgia for the Good Old Days When Thanksgiving Meant Something, or a "Why does nobody give thanks to God on Thanksgiving?" polemic, because honestly, I'm as prepared to believe in Santa Claus as I am a God who gives a flying fuck whether human beings are giving thanks to him or not. This is certainly not an anti-football thing, because I'll be watching it, too. This is merely an exhortation for each of us to consider what we really have to be thankful for.

Give thanks for plentiful food, for living in a country where a feast such as the standard Thanksgiving dinner is possible. While you're at it, give thanks for clean, safe drinking water, gallons and gallons of which are to be had just by turning a knob in your kitchen without ever leaving your house.

Give thanks for good health. There is no doubt that the health care system in the United States is a mess and desperately in need of overhaul. On the other hand, we are not dying of typhoid, of cholera, of measles. We live in a world where smallpox, a scourge of mankind throughout history, has been essentially eradicated.

Give thanks for easy and safe travel and communication. You can fly or drive or take the train to see your friends and family on Thanksgiving, or, failing that, you can call them or text them on a phone you carry around in your pocket or email them with a computer you can carry around in a briefcase. With Skype and a $30 camera, you can talk to them for free on what amounts to a "Jetsons"-style video phone.

Give thanks for Black Friday. No, you don't have to like consumerism, you don't have to like the appalling excess, you don't have to like parents having screaming, clawing battles to the death over Cabbage Patch Kids or Power Rangers or Bad Touch Elmo or whatever is the season's "must-have" Christmas toy. But it is worth pausing to remember amongst all the outrageous consumer insanity that will have officially kicked off less than 48 hours from now that we live in a nation where basically anything we need or want is available with a trip to the Jimget or a few clicks on Amazon 24/7.

Millions upon millions around the world don't have these things. They don't know where their next meal is coming from, they have to trek miles from their homes to find drinking water that is reasonably close to safe, they do die of diseases we can't imagine having at all, they are cut off from anyone more than a few miles away, they have almost no material possessions to speak of and no way of acquiring simple things like new clothing or basic medicines and toiletries, much less books and DVDs and iPods and fancy kitchen gadgets.

This isn't meant to be a guilt trip. Nor is it meant to be a blinkered view of the United States of America, in which there is undoubtedly still poverty, hunger, disease, loneliness and isolation and all the rest. This an age in which the gulf between the "Haves" and the "Have-nots" is vast orders of magnitude wider than at any previous point in human history. And despite what we may think when we play keep-up-with-the-Joneses, most of us here in America fall quite squarely on the "Have" side of that gulf, all things considered.

And that is something for which to be truly thankful. We must feel gratitude for our luck to have been born on this side of the gulf and to have all of these things. We must not take them for granted. We feast not just out of gluttony. We feast because we lucky enough to be able to feast. Like the Pilgrims, we feast to celebrate our good fortune.

Now, let's eat.

So THAT's why he's called The Count!

Found via Mighty God King: A Sesame Street video in which no rock stars from Athens, GA were harmed.

Top Five - Film This Book!

The Onion A.V. Club offers 21 good books that need to be great films...like, now (and while you're there, check out 20 Good Books Made Into Not-so-Good Movies), some of which I nodded in agreement with (e.g. The Time Traveler's Wife, which is kind of cheating because it's already in production with Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams in the leads, and Don Rosa's The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck), some of which I wondered how they think anyone could possibly make a good movie from (e.g. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, a great, brilliant, wonderful book which is also the textbook definition of "unfilmable" if anything is, and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, another great book that is great largely because of the unique voice of Dave Eggers, which again doesn't really seem to translate to film).

Anyway...here's a few additions to that list of my own:

1. Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett: Terry Gilliam has been trying to get an adaptation of this off the ground for years. I don't suppose it's really all that surprising that a movie that would draw the predictable outcry from the usual suspects about boycotts and how Hollywood has no respect for Christians and how it's a sign that Christians are a persecuted minority in this country can't get funding. Still, the potential exists here for something that's smart, exciting and funny all at once. I've long imagined John Cleese as Aziraphale and Robert Carlyle as Crowley, though lately it's occurred to me that it seems like a perfect opportunity to re-team Stephen Fry (Aziraphale) and Hugh Laurie (Crowley).

2. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon: This is supposedly in the works as well, helmed by Stephen Daldry, director of Billy Elliot and The Hours. I'll admit this one is a tough nut to crack, in cinematic terms. There's not all that much of a plot, but it's dense and complex in terms of characterization. The easy way out is "Poor kids make good with comic books," but there's so much more going on here. Casting will be a bear as well - to do it right, you've got to get a couple of kids around 18-20 years old for the leads. And not The CW/"Gossip Girl"-types, either. David Krumholz would have been perfect as Sammy a few years back, but he's far too old now. A header on an IMDB message board posting offers this nugget of joy: "How about Zach Braff as Joe Kavalier?", which made me throw up in my mouth a little.

3. His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik: Peter Jackson's company has optioned this series, which seems like a good fit. I hope it actually gets made. The story is thoroughly cinematic, and it would be a great opportunity for the Weta Digital artists to go nuts, creating dragons of all sizes and descriptions. It could be like Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, only with a much better title (and seriously, that's a great title, y'all). Sequels are built-in, as there's already three more books in the series with at least one more on the way - and they only get deeper, better and more exciting as the books go on. It's a shame that Ioan Gruffudd has already played Horatio Hornblower, because he'd be about dead perfect as Capt. Will Laurence.

4. The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller: Some of the things I've heard about The Dark Knight, next summer's Batman Begins sequel, lead me to believe that this is the ultimate goal that Christopher Nolan and David Goyer have in mind, not least of which is the title. If so...how frickin' awesome would that be? It's got its problems, no doubt. The studio might balk at the R-rating some of the more explicit violence would assuredly draw...but that could be toned down to a nice PG-13 level. And they might not be thrilled with the way Superman, one of their other franchise heroes, kinda-sorta plays the part of a villain in this story. Still...a nerd can dream, right? I think Kurt Russell in a sort of Snake Plisskin-ish mode could probably do justice to cranky old Batman. Throw in a cameo appearance from David Letterman, and you've got it made.

5. Conan by Robert E. Howard: I believe that the Governor of California's original turn as Conan is generally a bit underrated. That said, you can't tell me it's not high time for a new, truly great Conan movie. A movie that gives us a Conan who is cunning, as shrewd and quick-witted as he is strong and handy with a blade, rather than the monosyllabic goon in previous adaptations. Howard's Conan is superstitious and mistrustful of cities and "civilized" life...but he's not stupid. "The Tower of the Elephant" might be a little too far on the weird side for a mass audience to accept - but why not borrow the good bits from "The God in the Bowl," "Rogues in the House" and "Red Nails"? Instead of some generic warrior woman or helpless princess, why not give us Belit, Queen of the Black Coast as Conan's love interest? Why not give us that long-promised "other story" about how Conan came to be King of Aquilonia by his own hand? Why not give us a Conan movie with a hero who can actually deliver dialogue instead of grunting in a heavy German accent? Find an actor who is strong and athletic, but not just another body builder. Finally pit him against Thoth-Amon, who fans of the stories and the comics have been dying to see on-screen for ages and ages, perhaps. Whaddaya say, Hollywood?

Like a Sturgeon

The Hollywood writers have been on strike for nearly a week now. It has been a subject of much discussion on this here internet, unsurprisingly. There have been many displays of support, an awful lot of questions, and no shortage of pure stupidity.

This stupidity has run the gamut, from what you normally see during just about any kind of strike (i.e., pure, unadulterated anti-union stupidity (because, you see, unions are useless in this day and age, not to mention being for-all-intents-and-purposes Communism, and apparently the Powers that Be are pretty likely to give their employees a fair shake out of the goodness of their shriveled, blackened hearts, and, "Why, I work in [x modern white-collar industry] and we don't have a union and we don't need one, so obviously no one needs a union!")) to the kind of stupidity that's really more ignorance of the real issues involved in this particular strike than stupidity per se (i.e., "Does a [insert completely unrelated and dissimilar job or profession] get paid extra every time someone buys [product or service produced by completely unrelated and dissimilar industry]?").

The kind of stupidity that really blows my mind, though, is the kind where someone makes jokes like "Hollywood writers are on strike...how can anyone tell?" or just purely idiotic comments like, "How can they claim they deserve more money when they produce dreck like [insert name of phenomenally uncreative movie or television show]?"

Here's why that argument bugs me so much: Yeah, there's a lot of crap coming out of Hollywood right now, from terrible TV shows like "Two and a Half Men" and all forty of CBS's iterations of "Science Cops" to wretched movies like Shrek 3 and Transformers. The thing about that, though, is that there has always been a lot of crap coming out of Hollywood, and there always will be a lot of crap coming out of Hollywood. Movies have been shining gems surrounded by manure for as long as there have been movies. Television has been a few bright oases in the midst of Newton Minnow's "vast wasteland" for as long as there has been television. That's just the way it works.

We think of the 1930s and '40s as the Golden Age for American Cinema, and I'm not going to say it wasn't. But when we think of movies from that era, we think of The Bride of Frankenstein, The Wizard of Oz, Gone With the Wind, Casablanca, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Citizen Kane, you know...the stuff that has (so far) stood the test of time, the stuff that people still watch sixty or seventy years later. It's not that Hollywood wasn't producing crap at the time - it's that nobody remembers the crap because nobody's watching it anymore.

There's a similar perception about television. People still fondly remember and still watch "M*A*S*H" all the time. As long as there's television, you'll probably be able to find an episode of "M*A*S*H" airing on some channel somewhere 24/7. Same with "Cheers." But "M*A*S*H" and "Cheers" were surrounded by truly horrendous shows that are remembered now only as, "Wow, that show sucked," and in another twenty years won't be remembered at all. Case in point - as Boomer/Gen-X nostalgia fades over the years, do you really think anyone is going to remember "The Brady Bunch"?

It's called Sturgeon's Law, coined by science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon. He was defending his genre from its reputation as "that 'Buck Rogers' stuff." His defense? "It's true that 90% of science fiction is crap. But then, 90% of everything is crap." To make an analogy, for every one Mozart composing beautiful and timeless music at any given time, there's at least nine Salieris out there composing utter crap.*

90% of everything is crap. Words to live by. Television and movies weren't better in eras gone by. You've got the same 9:1 ratio of crap to non-crap today as you had in the Good Old Days. Always has been, always will be. And it's certainly no reason to deny the people who work hard on churning it out a fair share of the profits that crap earns.


*It is my understanding that, in using Antonio Salieri as his figure of envy and inadequacy in Amadeus, Peter Schaffer created an unfair impression of Salieri and his work for modern audiences. Be that as it may, I think you get my point.

Boston Red Sox Yankees Junior Logo

Here's the new Boston Red Sox/Yankees Junior logo I wanted to make a couple of weeks ago but didn't have the energy to do. Should be a big seller on T-shirts in Beantown, no?

Up next, "Battling Seizure Robots"

Okay, so this was featured on the Yahoo front page the other day, so you may have seen it. But if you haven't, you really owe it to yourself to check it out. It's yet another piece of proof that, though Americans may have invented television, the Japanese perfected it.

Enjoy.

Movie Meme

I don't go in for memes much, but I like writing things about movies, so I'm going to do so, and you're going to like it.

(From Sara via Mle, in case you didn't know)

Movies I've seen are bolded, movies I've seen more than once are *asterisked, movies I couldn't finish are struck thru.

AFI Top 100 Films

1. Citizen Kane* (1941): I wouldn't say it was my favorite movie, but it's definitely Top Ten, and I honestly believe it soundly deserves its reputation as the Greatest Movie of All Time. Brilliant, innovative and every bit as good today as in '41.
2. The Godfather* (1972): I think my testicles would be revoked if I didn't love this movie.
3. Casablanca* (1942): The Hollywood studio system at its apex. Also, Ingrid Bergman? Appears in the dictionary beside the phrase, "Drop Dead Gorgeous."
4. Raging Bull(1980): I don't think this one is even Scorsese's best, but a great movie nevertheless.
5. Singin’ in the Rain (1952): Earns its title as the best Hollywood musical over its nearest competitor by a country mile.
6. Gone with the Wind* (1939): Seeing a beautifully restored print of this on the big screen for the 60th Anniversary re-release in '99 was absolutely awesome.
7. Lawrence of Arabia* (1962): I like this movie in any format, but ultimately this is one that really only works on a big screen.
8. Schindler’s List (1993): I'm with Mle on this one, though I did actually buy it on VHS back when I was working at Ballbuster Video, being a huge Spielberg fan. Never actually watched the tape, though.
9. Vertigo* (1958): One of the best directors ever in his prime.
10. The Wizard of Oz* (1939): One of a very small handful of movies that absolutely everybody has seen.
11. City Lights (1931): I know film buffs are supposed to love Chaplin, but I just can't get into him for some reason.
12. The Searchers* (1956): Unavoidable, as this was one that my Dad would watch basically anytime it appeared on AMC when I was a kid, which was usually two or three times a year. And well worth the watching, too.
13. Star Wars* (1977): Second on this list of the small handful of movies that absolutely everybody has seen.
14. Psycho (1960): I imagine what my opinion of this movie might have been had I seen this without knowing the Shower Scene was coming.
15. Sunset Blvd. (1950): Ah, Billy Wilder...maybe the best writer ever in Hollywood. "I'm still big! The pictures got small!" = a lifetime of delusion and psychosis summed up in seven words.
16. 2001: A Space Odyssey* (1968): Took me a few tries to get into it, but once I did, endlessly rewarding.
17. The Graduate (1967): Has not aged well.
18. The General (1927): I like Keaton better than Chaplin.
19. On the Waterfront (1954): To borrow a line, "I know."
20. It’s a Wonderful Life (1946): Third on the list from the Small Handful.
21. Chinatown (1974): People usually talk about the writing and the direction, but often ignore the fact that Jack Nicholson is just awesome here.
22. Some Like It Hot (1959): Billy Wilder again. That the same guy is behind this as Sunset Blvd. is pretty amazing.
23. The Grapes of Wrath (1940): Good, not great in my opinion. Not as good as the book, as they say.
24. E.T. The Extraterrestrial* (1982): Fifth on the list from the Small Handful
25. To Kill a Mockingbird* (1962): By contrast, every bit as good as the book, and maybe better.
26. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
27. High Noon (1952)
28. All About Eve (1950)
29. Double Indemnity (1944)
30. Apocalypse Now (1979): Maybe it's just me, but I find this one highly over-rated. And it collapses under its own weight (and Marlon Brando's) during the last act.
31. The Maltese Falcon (1941): Certainly my favorite hard-boiled detective movie.
32. The Godfather Part II* (1974): Unlike most, I wouldn't say it's as good or better than Part I. Still great, though.
33. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975): Overrated - but Nicholson is awesome.
34. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937): I know I've seen it all the way through, but my memories of it are vague.
35. Annie Hall (1977): Never been a Woody Allen fan.
36. The Bridge on the River Kwai* (1957): A revelation to me after a lifetime of seeing Alec Guinness only as Obi-Wan Kenobi.
37. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
38. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
39. Dr. Strangelove* (1964): Peter Sellers = Comedy God.
40. The Sound of Music* (1965): One of only a few movie adaptations I can think of that improves on the stage version.
41. King Kong* (1933): I loved Peter Jackson's remake, but this packs more into 90 minutes than Jackson did in 180.
42. Bonnie and Clyde (1967): Violence as poetry.
43. Midnight Cowboy (1969): I think the reason this movie left Mle feeling sad is because it's an incredibly depressing story. But that's just a guess.
44. The Philadelphia Story (1940)
45. Shane (1953): Iconic, and did as much by itself to mythologize the American West as the entire career of John Wayne.
46. It Happened One Night (1934)
47. A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
48. Rear Window (1954)
49. Intolerance (1916): I suspect this is here as a placeholder for Griffith's Birth of a Nation, which voters were probably uncomfortable with.
50. Lord of the Rings : The Fellowship of the Ring* (2001): I seem to have a vague recollection of having seen this one a time or two.
51. West Side Story* (1961): Much like The Sound of Music, improves upon its source material.
52. Taxi Driver* (1976): And here's Scorsese's best, only 48 spots lower on the list than Raging Bull.
53. Deer Hunter, The (1978)
54. M*A*S*H (1970): Has not aged well.
55. North by Northwest* (1959): Without question the best of Hitchcock's "Wrong Man" movies, and by far my favorite of his entire filmography.
56. Jaws* (1975): "You're gonna need a bigger boat."
57. Rocky* (1976): Tends to be underrated because it produced so many awful sequels.
58. The Gold Rush (1925)
59. Nashville (1975): I've tried to like Robert Altman, but he just leaves me cold.
60. Duck Soup* (1933): The mirror scene is the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life.
61. Sullivan’s Travels (1941): Deserves praise if nothing else for giving us "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"
62. American Graffiti* (1973): Like "Happy Days," only good.
63. Cabaret (1972): One of a very few films that I had never seen that Mle showed to me - role reversal.
64. Network (1976)
65. The African Queen* (1951): See comments on The Searchers above.
66. Raiders of the Lost Ark* (1981): I was Indiana Jones for Halloween this year.
67. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
68. Unforgiven (1992): Hard to believe, but this isn't even Clint Eastwood's best.
69. Tootsie (1982)
70. A Clockwork Orange (1971): Great movie, but the Alex/Droog Halloween costume is way past played out. It must stop.
71. Saving Private Ryan* (1998): Take away the stupid framing sequence, and you've got something truly incredible.
72. The Shawshank Redemption* (1994): Sixth on the list of the Small Handful.
73. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid* (1969): The movie is still great...but Robert Redford has not aged well.
74. The Silence of the Lambs* (1991): Much like Rocky, it's becoming hard to remember how great this movie is as Hannibal Lecter has over the years become more and more of a cartoonish slasher, indistinguishable from Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees.
75. In the Heat of the Night* (1967): Everyone talks about Sidney Poitier, but Rod Steiger holds his own opposite him, which is no mean feat.
76. Forrest Gump* (1994): Say what you will, but Tom Hanks inhabits this character.
77. All the President’s Men (1976)
78. Modern Times (1936)
79. The Wild Bunch (1969): That it's ranked lower on this list than Unforgiven - which owes this movie a pretty big debt - seems kind of odd to me.
80. The Apartment (1960)
81. Spartacus* (1960): Worth the price of admission just to hear Tony Curtis describing himself as "a tellah of tales from laaaawn gago."
82. Sunrise (1927)
83. Titanic* (1997): Final movie on the list from the small handful; not as great as the hype but also not as bad as the backlash. And Kate Winslet? Appears in the dictionary alongside Ingrid Bergman under, "Drop Dead Gorgeous."
84. Easy Rider (1969): Has not aged well.
85. A Night at the Opera (1935): I would never willingly subject myself to the Three Stooges...but I'll watch the Marx Brothers all day long.
86. Platoon (1986): The only Vietnam movie worth a damn, if you ask me.
87. 12 Angry Men (1957)
88. Bringing Up Baby (1938)
89. The Sixth Sense (1999): I figured out The Secret about halfway through. Still liked it.
90. Swing Time (1936)
91. Sophie’s Choice (1982)
92. Goodfellas* (1990): Inspired one of the less good bits of "Animaniacs."
93. The French Connection (1971): Has not aged well.
94. Pulp Fiction* (1994): A couple of sentences cannot adequately sum up my relationship (yes, relationship) with this movie. Remind me to tell you about it sometime.
95. The Last Picture Show (1971)
96. Do the Right Thing* (1989): Criminally underrated by being this low on the list. Should be Top Ten for sure. One of the best movies ever.
97. Blade Runner (1982): "He say you Brade Runner!"
98. Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)
99. Toy Story* (1995): Very good, but doesn't really stand up to Finding Nemo, The Incredibles and Ratatouille.
100. Ben-Hur* (1959): The opposite of the Little Old Lady from Pasadena - it makes a Roman chariot race look like the Indy 500.

Remember, Remember

Remember, remember, the 5th of November
The Gunpowder Treason and plot ;
I know of no reason why Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.

Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes,
'Twas his intent.
To blow up the King and the Parliament.
Three score barrels of powder below.
Poor old England to overthrow.
By God's providence he was catch'd,
With a dark lantern and burning match

Holloa boys, Holloa boys, let the bells ring
Holloa boys, Holloa boys, God save the King!

Hip hip Hoorah !
Hip hip Hoorah !

A penny loaf to feed ol'Pope,
A farthing cheese to choke him.
A pint of beer to rinse it down,
A faggot of sticks to burn him.
Burn him in a tub of tar,'
Burn him like a blazing star.
Burn his body from his head,
Then we'll say: ol'Pope is dead.

I know it's a British thing, but, hey...happy Guy Fawkes Day, everybody.

And remember, V for Vendetta is about a million times better as a comic than a movie.

44-7?

Sigh...

It's a tough year to be a sports fan in Colorado. The Rockies got crushed in humiliating fashion in the World Series. The Nuggets have a shot, but look as iffy as ever. The only thing worse in the state's collegiate athletics scene than the Colorado Buffaloes' thoroughly mediocre football is the Colorado State Rams' thoroughly awful football. Okay, the Avalanche have started strong, but three quarters of the country doesn't notice or care what's going on in the world of professional ice hockey anyway. Besides, they look like a potential playoff team, but not like a potential Stanley Cup team.

And then there's the Broncos. The much-beloved Broncos, always #1 in the hearts of every Colorado sports fan, the source of the Orange-and-Blue blood of diehards up and down the Front Range, all across the Centennial State and throughout the Rocky Mountain region.

And they just flat-out suck.

They got walloped today, scoring only one garbage-time TD as the 4th quarter expired. They got beat down by the Detroit Lions, of all teams, an ass-kicking that you just can't sugar-coat.

And this is the second time this season it's happened, after a losing in similarly ludicrous fashion, 41-3, to the San Diego Chargers in week 5.

To be fair, Broncos' starting QB Jay Cutler left the game with an injury early in the 2nd quarter, which is bound to hamper the offensive scheme and execution of any football team.

To be honest as well as fair, though, there has been no evidence to date that Jay Cutler is anything more than a moderately skilled journeyman QB.

Not that you'll convince anyone in the Denver media of that. Broncos radio play-by-play man Dave Logan said as Culter was headed to the locker room after the injury, "This could be an absolute disaster for the Broncos." Hearing this, I'm thinking, "How's that, exactly?" How is there any discernable difference between Cutler and backup QB Patrick Ramsey? What does Cutler contribute that Ramsey can't? A disaster is, "Peyton Manning is injured early in the 2nd quarter and Jim Sorgi has to take over." A disaster is not, "The fair-to-middling starter is injured and the probably-middling-at-best backup QB has to take over."

The true disaster is this Broncos season. I've watched a lot of different Broncos teams over the years. They've ranged from perhaps-among-the-best-teams-ever (The 14-2 1998 repeat Super Bowl winner) to not good (the 6-10 1999 post-Elway-retirement, Terrell Davis' career-ending-injury fiasco season). I've never seen a Broncos team this bad, one to be ranked among the worst in the NFL.

They've won three games this season, squeaking each one out on last-second field goals. They still have to play in Kansas City, in Oakland and in San Diego, none of which they're likely to win. They're going to lose to Tennessee at home, could easily lose to Kansas City at home, and are pretty likely to lose on the road to Chicago and Houston. They might have a decent shot at beating Minnesota at home to close out the season. They could easily finish 4-12, which would be only their 7th losing season since the NFL/AFL merger in 1970. Of course, they could also easily finish 3-13, which would be their lowest win total since 1967. The point is, this is a historically bad Broncos team.

All I've got to keep me interested in football this season is the vague hope that someone will stop the New England Fucking Patriots (that team's new official name) from winning the Super Bowl, so as to bring a couple of months of blissful silence from the smug, self-satisfied asshole Boston sports fans of the world. On the other hand, it would be nice in its way to see the Patriots go undefeated all the way through, so that we never, ever again have to endure footage on "SportsCenter" of the 1972 Miami Fucking Dolphins (long since that team's official name) having another goddamn champagne toast.

Grr...I'm grasping at straws here. As far as I'm concerned, this season is pretty much over.

Because I Have No Other Demands On My Time...

I have done something highly illogical.

I signed up for National Novel Writing Month.

What are the odds that I'll actually manage to write 1,600 words a day for the next thirty days in between all the other things placing demands on my time?

Probably pretty much nil.

But I figured, "What the heck?" Maybe getting emails from the NaNoWriMo people will motivate me to do it. Maybe I'll actually write a novel this month.

Maybe. I'll keep you posted.

I Bet Those Grapes Were Fucking Delicious

As I expected, a Boston fan - the estimable Yank in Texas - has accused me of being a sore loser after my previous post.

I resent that. Really. In any contest, whether as a participant or an interested spectator, I pride myself on being a good sport. I feel I went out of my way not to be a sore loser, to simply and honestly express the way I was feeling after what were up until now my two favorite teams played one another in the World Series. Back in 2004, I was rooting for the Red Sox to win when I went to see them at Coors Field, because in deciding between two teams I loved, I chose the one that was in the midst of a Wild Card chase and had a shot at the division title, the playoffs and the World Series over the one that was wallowing in craptacularity and headed for its third straight 4th-place finish in the NL West.

In the days leading up to the Series, I really expected that if the Red Sox won, I would come away from it thinking, "Well, the Rockies may have lost, but at least the Sox won." Over the course of five days and four games, I really surprised myself by coming to despise Boston (the team, not the town, which remains awesome) and, to borrow a line from an e-mail from my brother, "wishing them ill."

To be a sore loser is to say, "We deserved to win" and make excuses for why we didn't. To say that the grapes were probably sour anyway, as it were. Eric Byrnes was being a sore loser during the NLCS when he griped about how the D'Backs were outplaying the Rockies but still losing.

The Rockies were outclassed and outplayed by a vastly superior baseball team, and I'll make no bones about it. Yankees North were the better team by far and deserved the win.

But they're a long way from the feel-good story of 2004. There's nothing to feel good about here, no breakthrough for the long-suffering underdog, no triumph for a team that did anything more noteworthy than pay more than anybody else. For fuck's sake, they paid $3 Million less than the Rockies' entire payroll for the season just for the right to talk to Dice-K, and that number doesn't even figure into their actual payroll total.

There's an immense dishonesty in the way Boston continues to sell itself - and, more to the point, the way their fans continue to see the team - as the Anti-Yankees, when nothing could be further from the truth. The ghosts of the past have all been exorcised, whether you were a believer in the Curse of the Bambino or just one who marveled at how one team could find a way to bungle every World Series appearance for 86 years. Boston fans will no doubt continue to see their team as a scrappy underdog always struggling to beat the Evil Empire from the Bronx, but it just ain't so. In their desperation to beat the Yankees, the Red Sox have become the Yankees. Nietzsche said, "Whoever would fight with monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster." Boston failed that test; they're the Evil Empire, too, now, just as much as Steinbrenner's pinstripes.

I congratulate them for winning the Series, fair and square. But I can't be a fan anymore. That's all. No sour grapes, no protests that they didn't deserve to win, no accusations of cheating. Just a sad realization that a team I loved doesn't exist anymore.

A Pair of Open Letters

Dear Colorado Rockies,

Let me start by saying that you broke my heart. I am, however, prepared to forgive you. That's kind of something you had to learn growing up in Colorado in the late '80s and early '90s. Watching John Elway, who you love like he's a member of your own family, getting his butt kicked in three Super Bowls in four years, you learn to deal with heartbreak and you learn to forgive. Here's the thing, though: I'm only currently going so far as to be prepared to forgive you. You guys have to meet me halfway.

Look, it was a great season by any measure, far greater than anyone could possibly have expected or predicted back in April. Very few people in Colorado thought you'd even be a serious player in the Wild Card chase, let alone win the damn thing. If anyone says they thought you'd even win a round in the playoffs back in April, much less win the NL pennant, they're lying like a no-legged dog. But you proved everyone wrong and made it all the way to the World Series. Sure, you played like the goddamn Bad News Bears once you got there, but getting there was a worthy achievement all by itself.

After all, it's not like you're the New York Mets or the Los Angeles Dodgers, much less the New York Yankees or the Boston...well, we'll get to Boston (see below). You had the 5th-lowest total payroll in Major League Baseball this year. You made the series with a roster full of former Asheville Tourists, Modesto Nuts and Tulsa Drillers. That's awesome. In the era where the Hired Gun is king in baseball and we're all essentially rooting for laundry, a roster full of homegrown talent like Helton, Holliday, Tulo and Francis is the cat's pajamas, man.

I probably don't really have any right to be unhappy with your performance in the World Series. You got some bad breaks and you're at an inherent disadvantage because you're representing a league that still plays real baseball instead of 10-man pussyball. But I'm unhappy nonetheless, because I really believed you could do it, and not only did you not do it, you failed to do it in truly spectacular fashion, making all the asshole Sox fans who laughed about you being a bunch of no-names who got where you were based on nothing more than dumb luck appear to be right.

But, like I said, I can forgive this heartbreak. Here's how: If you, as an organization from the top down, don't for a nanosecond think that you've now got some laurels you can rest on. If you go out there next season and play like the team that scrapped and fought to get into the playoffs, like the team that won 21 of 22 and swept through the National League playoffs. If you don't think, "Well, we won one pennant, which is more than anyone ever expected of us, that's enough to coast on for a few more years." If the owners and the GM do what it takes to keep that awesome homegrown talent around.

That's the key - pony up the dough, Monforts. Make those guys happy, O'Dowd. I don't think I can hang in there if, in a few years, I have to watch the Rockies returning to perennial Cellar Dweller status and see Holliday playing for Boston, Francis on the mound at Shea Stadium and Tulo in Yankee pinstripes. Do what it takes to keep these guys, do what it takes to stay in contention for the playoffs every season, play like you want to win for yourselves and for all those fans whose loyalties you've reawakened this fall. Don't return to being a team that's content to sell 25,000 tickets to each game and just enough merchandise to keep your Dugout Stores afloat.

Do that, and I'm yours forever. Well, I'm always going to be a fan. But doing that will go a long ways towards putting this World Series debacle out of my mind.

XOXOXO,
Me

----

Dear Team Formerly Known as the Boston Red Sox,

I've been a fan of yours for quite a few years now. It is with some small measure of regret, therefore, that I must inform you that we're through. I can no longer in good conscience support you.

Oh, I suppose I'll always have fond memories of the times we've had together...watching Pedro Martinez come in, injured, and pitch five perfect innings against the Cleveland Indians in the '99 Division Series. Pounding on the bar at Old Chicago in front of the idiot Yankee fan bartender during the '99 ALCS and chanting, "Where is Roger?" (thump, thump, thump-thump-thump) "In the shower!" after you ran Clemens out of Game 3. Watching your amazing comeback in the '04 ALCS against the Yankees. Good times, good times.

But it's gotta end. Why? Well, because you've become everything you once stood against. You've gone from that loveable, charming underdog, the American League's perennial hard-luck losers, to just another Big Moneyball team, winning because you can afford to pay more than anyone else. You're not the Red Sox anymore, Boston team. Who are you? You're just Yankees North.

Congratulations, Yankees North. You had the best team money could buy this year. I hope you're proud of yourselves. Over the next few years, you'll no doubt buy yourself a few more championships, and the people in New England will love you as the rest of the country continues to despise you more and more. You'll attract ever greater numbers of bandwagon fans and celebrity hangers-on. Hey, you've already got Dane Cook, and he's one of the most annoying human beings on the planet...so that's pretty good, right?

People from all over the country will continue picking Yankees North as their favorite team, not because of any genuine love but because everyone loves a winner, and you'll sell Yankees North hats and t-shirts by the metric asston. But me? I'm done with you.

It's not just you and your new status as Yankees North. Mostly, but not entirely. I've come to realize that I generally dislike American League baseball overall, with its sissy 10-man rule and the over-emphasis on caveman-like bashing of the ball, where essentially useless "players" like Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz can be superstars even though they can barely play in the field, just because they can hit a ton. I'll probably throw some half-hearted support at the Oakland A's...though it's going to be tough in a couple of years to even care all that much about the Fremont A's or the San Jose A's or whatever the hell they're going to become.

Anyway, this isn't really about the DH or the A's and whatever south-easterly Bay Area community will eventually become their home. This is about how you've lost yourself more than one fan for good, Yankees North. I know it won't really matter to you, but that's what I'm feeling, and I had to get it off my chest.


Much hate,
Me

Hang On, Snoopy

Here's another review of the new Schulz biography, this time from the New York Times' Randy Kennedy. This one takes as its focus the strange Euro/American preoccupation with the concept of the Tortured Artist. Once again, plenty of food for thought.

Kennedy quotes University of Minnesota professor Patricia Hampl, who offers a nugget of what I believe to be truth and wisdom:

“People don’t want to believe that someone like them could just sit down at a typewriter or a desk and create something great or timeless,” she said. “It’s got to be the product of a lot of misery and angst.” She compared the impulse to that of conspiracy theorists and their reluctance to believe in the banality of evil: “It’s hard to accept that a guy could just go up into a building and shoot the president.”

Very true, I think. this is related to a concept about which I've ranted before, the idea of Art as a Standard, which leads to the boneheaded idea that, "Well, I could do that!" is a valid criticism of a piece of artwork.

Kennedy also quotes City University of New York professor Morris Dickstein, whose comment is every bit as idiotic as Hampl's is insightful:

“People who have always had a happy life and lived on an even keel and haven’t had a lot of misfortune really don’t tend to be creative people.”

That's just pure horseshit, and if Dickstein doesn't know he's spouting pure horseshit, he doesn't really have any business teaching at CUNY. It's this myth and people like Dickstein who spout it from the bully pulpit of academia that leads plenty of young and talented musicians, artists and writers to any number of addictions and self-made miseries, simply because it's viewed as some sort of requirement for greatness.

Miles Davis shot heroin and Johnny Cash popped pills, Hemingway and Fitzgerald were self-destructive alcoholics, van Gogh was bat-shit insane and Picasso was a self-loathing womanizing asshole. Doesn't mean it's a requirement for creativity. It certainly doesn't mean that English professors ought to go off half-cocked, claiming that creativity = misery, and that people who aren't miserable can't be creative.

I Got a Rock

If you have any interest in comic strips at all, do yourself a favor, take a few minutes and read Bill Watterson's review of the new Charles Schulz biography from the Wall Street Journal. First of all, it may pique your curiosity like it did mine and make you want to read the book.

More than that, it's interesting to me because of what it is. I am generally fascinated to hear or read artists discussing other artists. Publicity interviews with guys like Steven Spielberg or Martin Scorsese where they're just plugging their latest movie are usually dull, rote affairs. But in-depth discussions with them, the times the interviewer is able to get them waxing rhapsodic about Billy Wilder or John Ford, that's pure gold. Such a discussion allows you to see the films of both Spielberg and Ford in a new light.

And so it is here. Watterson is, of course, the creator of "Calvin and Hobbes," widely considered the best comic strip of its era. In the WSJ piece, Watterson makes it quite clear that he is one of the legion of cartoonists who learned any number of important lessons about the art simply by absorbing "Peanuts" as a kid. That "Peanuts" was influential goes without saying, but the direct influence of Schulz on Watterson becomes clear when Watterson explains it and gives you the opportunity to think about it. Look at that "Peanuts" strip above - could it not just as easily be Calvin (in a more sour mood, perhaps, than Charlie Brown) delivering the line in panel 2, and Hobbes, in some ways the comics page's philosophical heir to Linus van Pelt, delivering the line in panel 4?

The piece is also interesting for what it does not say. Obviously, this is a book review, so Watterson has to limit his editorializing. He is, however, able to slip in a few things between the lines. There is a certain wistful sadness lurking in there, but Watterson, who famously battled with his syndicate over licensing rights to "Calvin and Hobbes," is not able to say explicitly how he feels about the role of "Peanuts" as the progenitor of every "Dilbert" doll, every "Far Side" calendar and coffee mug and every single awful, soul-sucking "Garfield" poster with which awful middle school teachers wallpaper their classrooms.

Still, the admiration Watterson continues to feel for Schulz's work shines through. I'd love to read more from popular cartoonists of the present discussing, in greater depth, the work of popular cartoonists of the past.

Why I Hate SoCal

I was riding the shuttle back up the 16th Street Mall yesterday after a trip to LoDo get some footage for my video art class. Also aboard the shuttle bus were a gaggle of San Diegans in town for the travesty of a Broncos/Chargers game, heading back to their hotel after leaving the stadium.

Two in particular caught my attention, a fellow in a LaDainian Tomlinson jersey worn over a sweatshirt and a chick in a pink Chargers cap and fur-lined parka. Their conversation, held in loud, "Hey Everybody, Listen to Us" tones, was amusing.

He: I'm just not used to this cold weather!
She: I know! It is freeeeezing!

Yesterday's Denver weather: Overcast, occasional light rain showers, high temperature of ~55˚ F.

He: It's sunny and 75˚ in San Diego right now!
She: I don't know how these people stand it!


Yes, we get it, SoCal People. The weather where you're from is beautiful all the time, and us hicks are just too stupid to figure out how to make the weather here nicer, or to move someplace where it is.

Here's an idea - if San Diego is such an idyllic paradise, stay there. Don't come here and dress for the fucking Iditarod and complain about how cold it is on a mild Fall day and then go home and tell everyone about how you braved the arctic temperatures of a day with perfect football weather. Stay home and enjoy your perfect weather. You'll obviously be happier, and I guaran-goddamn-tee you that we here in Denver will be happier, too.




There does, of course, exist the tiny possibility that I'm just bitter about the embarrassing ass-kick the Bolts laid on the Broncos and disinclined to be charitable towards San Diegans and their weather woes.

Remember, the "E." is for E. Coli

It's a bit long, but if you have ten minutes to spare, I guarantee you that this will be simultaneously the funniest and most frightening ten minutes you'll have all day.

Enjoy!

Wonder of Wonders, Miracle of Miracles

Today is the 2nd of October in Denver, Colorado. Two days ago, the Denver Broncos played what has over the last few seasons become their usual brand of mediocre-at-best football and were thoroughly trounced by the Indianapolis Colts. Denver is, without a doubt, a football town; people here live and die with the Broncos and the whole city is usually just a bit bummed out after such a humiliating loss. Amazingly, nobody cares right now about how the Broncos kind of suck, because the Colorado Rockies are going to the playoffs.

Today is the 2nd of October in Denver, Colorado, and the sports fans of this fair city and fine state are abuzz about baseball, which absolutely nobody expected back in April when the season began. Nobody is talking about how, in our desperation for the Second Coming of Elway, we perhaps ever-so-slightly over-estimated the abilities of our untried young QB, Jay Cutler. Nobody is talking about how, in all the talk during training camp about the Broncos' loaded secondary, we all merrily overlooked the fact that the D-line can't stop the run to save their lives. Nobody is talking about how the Broncos only just barely beat the Buffalo Bills and the Oakland Raiders, two simply awful teams.

Nope, everyone's talking about heroic triples and game-saving double plays and how Garrett Atkins was absolutely FUCKING ROBBED of a home run by inept umpires and therefore it doesnt, in a karmic sense, matter so much whether or not Matt Holliday actually touched the plate or not. They're not talking about Cutler and Champ and Travis Henry, they're talking about Holliday and Tulo and Todd Helton.

The "humor" columnist in the local free weekly rag wrote a week or so ago about how he would gladly trade a good Broncos season for a Rockies playoff run. Looks like he got his wish. And it looks like everyone in town agrees with him, too.

Including me. Go ROCKIES!

'Tis Not Yet The Season

Dear Hollywood Fucks,

Yesterday was, as you may be aware, the 28th of September. This means that summer has officially been over for less than a week. This means that people are thinking about baseball pennant races, football games, maybe hoping to get a few last tomatoes off the vine before the first frost, that sort of thing. Eager sorority girls are starting to think about whether they'll dress as a sexy nurse, a sexy schoolgirl, a sexy witch or a sexy cat for Halloween and whether they should serve cherry or strawberry Jello shooters at the Theta Beta Zeta Halloween party.

So explain to me, you Hollywood-types, why IN THE NAME OF JESUS FUCKING CHRIST IN A SMOKING BIRCHBARK CANOE I saw an ad on television last night for YET ANOTHER GODDAMNED PIECE OF SHIT CHRISTMAS MOVIE!

I mean...

I mean...

For fuck's sake, people. First of all, even if it were being released at a reasonable time, Thanksgiving weekend, maybe, this Fred Claus thing looks like about as much fun as cleaning up my cat's hairballs. We've got Vince Vaughn, who has officially reached the Ben Stiller "Oh God, Him Again?" Level. We've got a slumming Paul Giamatti, wearing the "You're Paying Me in Cash, Right?" look on his face. It's all cutesy and heartwarming and by the end, ol' V.V. is going to learn a special heartwarming lesson about the True Fucking Meaning of Christmas and Giamatti is going to learn a special heartwarming lesson about how There's Nothing in the Entire Universe as Important as Family or somesuch bullshit like that. Actually, I think the official Hollywood line on the matter is that the True Fucking Meaning of Christmas is that There's Nothing in the Entire Universe as Important as Family. Anyway, I'm sure it's all going to be very special and heartwarming.

Whether it's a good movie or not (though, as it's a Christmas movie, my money's on not), the important factor here is that it's the goddamned 29th of September and last night I saw an ad for a Christmas movie.

It's enough to make me want to go on a multi-state killing spree. Please stop, Hollywood Fucks. Please don't shove your inane Christmas bullshit down my throat earlier and earlier every year. Last year it was mid-October. Now it's late September. Next year it's going to be Labor Day, isn't it? By 2010, we'll be expected to start getting "into the holiday spirit" by the 4th of July, won't we?

Please make it stop. Please.


Not to proud to beg,
Doola

Numismatics

I got a Wyoming quarter in change today.

The designs of the state quarters have hit-and-miss at best. There have been a few pretty sharp designs - New Jersey, Massachusetts and Ohio all spring to mind - amongst the dull and the uncreative. Texas' entry was particularly uninspired: an outline of the state and a big star. But the Wyoming quarter is a new low. It seems to be the answer to the unasked question, "What's the least amount of effort a state can put into its quarter design?"

It appears that a couple of guys, assigned to the task by the governor or the legislature or whatever, got together for coffee (a very small cup of coffee), said, "Well, what about that same damn cowboy-and-bucking-horse silhouette we put on every gawt-dam thing with the word 'Wyoming' on it?" and called it a day.

Behold, I Bring You Novelty Facial Hair!

Readers, pause now to contemplate...

The Imperial!

The Hungarian!

The Chinese!

The Musketeer!

The Garibaldi!

These are but a few of the winners of the 2007 World Beard & Moustache Championships. I'm thinking about buying a case of moustache wax and going for the 2008 top award for the Dali.

When is International It Was Vaguely Amusing Four Years Ago Day?*

Seriously, Internet. This was sort of cute once. Now it's just sad. Let it go.




* Curiously, it's 19 September, 2007. What are the odds?

A Plea

Robert Jordan died this afternoon at the age of 58. Once, a few years back, I took a crack at his fantasy epic, The Wheel of Time. I had a hard time getting into the first book. On a trip to the bookstore, I looked at how many books were in the series (nine at the time, with no end in sight) and decided that I just didn't have the time or energy for it all. Still, that's just me, and Jordan leaves behind a vast legion of devoted fans and an uncompleted 12th-and-final book in the series. It's a great loss not just for his family and friends, but for all those fans, too. I'm sure that Jordan dearly wished to be able to finish that last book, both for his own satisfaction and for his fans.

I learned of Jordan's passing from George R.R. Martin's LiveJournal "Not-a-Blog." And this brings me to my real point. George - I write, as if he's reading this - I implore you, I beg you, please work hard on the remaining volumes of A Song of Ice and Fire. Please try to eat right and get some exercise and visit a doctor regularly. The disease that struck down your friend Robert Jordan was, as I understand it, a one-in-a-million thing, unpredictable and unpreventable. Even so, try to stay healthy, George.

Also remember that as much as all fantasy fans and fantasy authors are enamored of Tolkien's famous turn of phrase, "This tale grew in the telling," that isn't license to let absurd bloat creep into your stories. Your Song was, by your own reckoning, originally intended as a trilogy, which soon turned to five, then six and now a projected seven books. Don't make it eight, George, please. Your loyal/devoted/addicted readers love this story, not least for its epic scope, but stories are only as good as their endings. It follows, then, that a story without a proper ending can't be much good at all. This goes for all authors of fantasy and science fiction, really. "Epic" is a wonderful quality, but remember that readers need a great ending just as much as they need a captivating beginning and an exciting middle.

Your loyal readers are just dying to find out what happens to Dany, Jon and Tyrion in A Dance with Dragons, let alone how the whole shebang is going to end. Don't leave us hanging. Pause every now and then to think about those people who have stuck with The Wheel of Time since 1990 and are never going to get exactly the conclusion that your friend Robert Jordan imagined. Surely, Jordan must have left behind enough material that a reasonably satisfactory pastiche of Book 12 will ultimately be produced...but those devoted fans are never going to know for sure what Jordan's Book 12 would have been.

Work hard, George. Your loyal fans want to see "A Dream of Spring by George R.R. Martin" on their shelves - not "...assembled by others from the notes of George R.R. Martin." Please.

Telling Lies

Writing a good fantasy novel is much harder than it looks. Creating something that is sufficiently original, entertaining and memorable is no mean feat. Fifty years later, people are still ripping off Tolkien. More amazing is that fantasy readers are still eating up the Tolkien rip-offs like there's no tomorrow. Those authors who aren't ripping off Tolkien are instead lifting from George R.R. Martin these days. Rare indeed is the new fantasy novel that really feels like something unique. About once a year I get the opportunity to read one of these, and it's always a treat. Two years ago, I discovered Garth Nix's brilliant Y.A. fantasy Sabriel and its sequels. Last year it was Naomi Novik's absolutely terrific Napoleonic-Wars-with-Dragons Temeraire series.

Back in July, we were poking around a nice little bookshop during our trip to Louisville, and a cover in the sci-fi/fantasy section caught my eye. I didn't buy the book then, but I devoted the evocative title - The Lies of Locke Lamora - to my memory, and resolved to pick it up at some later date. Pick it up I did, some weeks later, and am I ever glad I did. It is every bit as good as I'd hoped. I'm going to have a hard time waiting for the sequel - Red Seas Under Red Skies - to come out in paperback.

Author Soctt Lynch has created a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup of a novel - two great tastes that taste great together, that is. He has combined fantasy with the caper picture, in the vein of The Sting, Ocean's 11 or The Italian Job.

World-building doesn't appear to be Lynch's greatest interest, though admittedly he shows us only a single location in his fantasy world. That location is the city-state of Camorr, a thinly-veiled copy of Venice in a thinly-veiled copy of Italy. There are deeper mysteries hidden in the setting, to be sure, but the important details are a city-state which has canals instead of streets and which is populated by powerful nobles, wealthy merchants and a thriving underworld.

In the midst of this milieu are the Gentlemen Bastards, led by the titular Locke Lamora (by the way, if you're a Firefly fan and you can get through the entire novel without imagining Nathan Fillion as Locke, I'll be amazed). By the time the main action of the novel occurs, they are already fabulously wealthy, but continue to pull elaborate cons on the wealthy nobility because, to borrow a line from Michael Mann's Heat, they don't know how to do anything else, and don't much want to, either. They pay their monthly tribute to the local equivalent of the Godfather, putting forth the appearance of being moderately successful burglars, and everyone's happy.

Happy, that is, until the arrival on the scene of the Gray King. The Gray King and his associate, the Falconer, are the villains of the piece. Villains in caper stories are tricky, as the heroes are, by definition, criminals and outlaws themselves. So the villains in such stories are the ones who don't want to play by the well-established rules and courtesies of the underworld setting. The ones who throw a monkey wrench into the works. The Gray King does just that, disrupting not only the Gentlemen Bastards' carefully planned con game, but the whole of Camorr's criminal society to boot. And he does it in such a spectacularly evil and theatrical way that you just can't help but hate him.

This is where the story really gets going, and it just cracks right along. Nearly every chapter gives you a great "How are they going to get out of this one?" cliffhanger. There are a few genuinely exciting action scenes, which is hard to do with prose. There is a lot of humor, and a fair bit of pathos, too. We even get a gripping climax and, one of the hardest things to do, a satisfying ending.

All in all, it is a spectacular debut for Lynch, establishing him right out of the gate as an author well worth watching. Of course, if this doesn't sound like your kind of thing, I have a long list of Tolkien, um, "homages" for you...

Itly is Full of Eye Talians

For the last couple of months, we've been kicking around ideas for a trip to Europe during my Xmas break. We're talking about New Zealand as a honeymoon-ish trip at Xmastime in 2008/2009, but we also wanted to do a trip this year...sort of a pre-wedding trip, I guess.

Only moments ago, we booked airline tickets for two weeks in Italy. We'll be flying out of San Francisco on New Year's Day after spending Xmas with Emily's Mom and other family and arriving in Rome the next day. Yet to be determined is just how we'll get to Florence for the second half of our trip.

Having spent a good chunk of the last year studying the history of Western Art - which naturally places great emphasis on the Romans and on the Italian Renaissance - I'm quite excited. Emily's been to Rome before, but is excited to go back. And hey, just six-and-a-half years after we met on a backpacking-Europe message board, we're finally going to Europe together!

Woot!

Square the Squared Square

Emily has already posted a lovely tribute to the late Madeleine L'Engle over on her blog, and said a fair amount of what I would have said. Instead, I will say this:

Writing science fiction is always difficult. Writing science fiction for a juvenile audience, perhaps even moreso. Nobody can really set out to create something that will become "a classic" or something beloved of even a single generation of readers, let alone many. But L'Engle accomplished that where many of her contemporaries did not.

Consider, for example, Robert Heinlein. A large portion of his prolific output was what fans call "juvies." Stuff like Red Planet, Starman Jones, and Have Spacesuit, Will Travel was meant by Heinlein specifically for young audiences. Good stuff, no doubt, but Heinlein was clearly dumbing it down a bit. And it's all pretty dated, all rocketships, ray-guns and Martians.

A Wrinkle in Time, by contrast, continues to feel fresh and modern, in spite of having been published in 1962. It has a timeless quality that a vast amount of science fiction, especially science fiction of that era, lacks. Because there is nothing specifically grounding it in the early '60s, it is as easy to imagine it taking place in the '80s or in 2007.

And while it doesn't go into enormous detail about relativistic physics or space-time mechanics, the necessary concepts are explained clearly enough that a relatively intelligent 8-year-old can grasp what's going on fairly well. Let me put it this way: last fall, I took an astronomy class. At the point in the curriculum when it came time to explain some of the more esoteric concepts, the professor brought in a guest lecturer, her husband, who was a physics professor. He began explaining the idea of a fourth dimension, I realized it was something I'd heard before. He was not using the exact words, but his explanation was certainly couched in the same terminology as Mrs. Who and Mrs. Whatsit's description of the concepts to Meg and Calvin. I was stunned when, a few minutes later, he actually used the word "tesseract." I had always assumed it was a word L'Engle had invented.

As it turns out, it's a word she had merely appropriated. It's more of a geometric concept, really, than Wrinkle's teleportation/space-folding/wormhole-ish method of travel through space and time. Still, it was a not entirely incorrect word for the situation.

That's just amazing. Intelligent, timeless and entertaining, all in one package? A combination of high adventure and real science that creates a book that both space opera and hard sci-fi lovers can agree upon as a classic? What's not to love?

A Wrinkle in Time is one of a handful of childhood literary loves that Emily and I share. She's never quite gotten how it is that I reached adolescence without reading the Little House books, and I've never quite understood how it is that she got through adolescence without reading The Lord of the Rings...but A Wrinkle in Time occupies a similar space in both of our hearts and minds.

So long, Madeleine, and thanks for everything.

They Named it Twice

One of the internet's finest curmudgeons, Todd of Death Wore a Featherd Mullet, points us towards a typically atrocious piece of writing from the New York Post:

They mention a quote from the New York Post's Mary Huhn, regarding Louisville band Vhs or Beta: "They also chill by shooting hoops, going to a few concerts or hitting dive bars - about the only kinds of fun available in Louisville, Ky., where VHS or Beta formed in 1997 and still resides."

New York City is an endlessly great city. It has an inordinate number of world-class museums. It is the home of several of the world's greatest pieces of architecture. It has a list of incredible restaurants as long as both of your arms put together. It has a fascinating history. It's not even remotely hard to find great music and great theater in New York City. It has produced luminaries like the Marx Brothers, Bogart and Bacall, Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen and Spike Lee, Arthur Miller and Neil Simon, Jay-Z and Tupac.

The only real problem with New York is that it's absolutely swimming with fucking New Yorkers. Many of them assume that New York is not just a great city, but the only great city. That New York is the only place in the world - or certainly in North America, anyway - with great museums and restaurants, that no other city has a fascinating history or has ever produced a notable or interesting human being.

They assume that every other city in America locks the doors and rolls up the sidewalks at 11:00pm sharp. Many of them still spout that old chestnut, "Where else can you get a pizza at 3:00am?" Yeah, where else? Well, try, I donno...just about every other city of any reasonable size in the country, dipshits! You can get a pizza - a good pizza, too - at 3:00am in Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, Houston, Denver, Louisville, Seattle...you can do it in boring-ass old Greeley, Colorado, too. Late-night pizza availability is hardly unique.

They blithely assume that people who don't live in New York desperately want to. Us poor souls who don't live in the Big Apple sit around twiddling our thumbs and imagining what all those glamorous people in New York must be doing right now.

After all, what could there possibly be to do in someplace like Louisville, where they probably don't even have electricity or indoor plumbing, or Denver, where people ride horses around the unpaved, dusty streets?

On Obsolescence

Today, I developed film. That I find learning to develop film to be something akin to learning mammoth-hunting techniques or how to repair steam locomotives makes it no less cool to have developed my own film. I mean, who wouldn't want to eat a mammoth steak from a mammoth they personally killed?

It's a curious thing. A few years back, when digital cameras were first becoming popular and widely available, I swore I had no interest in them. I liked shooting on film just fine. Of course, I also swore, like many people back in 2001, that I would never own a cell-phone and look how that turned out, right? As I've seen more and more digital photography, I've changed my views on the subject substantially.

Above our non-functional fireplace, we have three 8x12" framed prints of photos from our trip to China in 2005. I took two of them with my old-fashioned 35mm SLR; I took the third with Emily's 3.2MP Canon PowerShot. To any but the most expert of eyes, it is impossible to tell which of these things is not like the others. Some of the most beautiful photos I've seen in recent years have been digital - check out Leah's photos, for example, or my brother's. If we accept the premise that digital image quality is as good as film (which I do), then photography in either format is about the same things: composition, color if you're shooting color, value if you're shooting (or converting to) B&W, and an eye for interesting images.

Still, developing film today was a powerful reminder of the reasons why there still exists a substantial number of photographers, amateur and professional, who prefer film. The process of shooting, developing and printing with film is delightfully tactile and enjoyably meticulous. The instant gratification of digital has its own pleasures, to be sure. But there's a lot to be said for the feeling of anticipation and the first glimmerings of excitement at what images you may have as you see your developed negatives for the first time. It was a reminder of what I always said when I argued for film over digital back in the day - any digital medium is a set of instructions which a computer will use to recreate a picture, whereas film actually is a picture.

Even so...I like digital a lot these days, and don't plan on going back to film photography on any kind of permanent basis.