Author: Ridley

“That’s all I’ve tried to do — leave bits of shrapnel in them like I’ve had bits of shrapnel left in me from other films. We entertain as best we can, but we also try to reach people.” That’s from a Gizmodo interview with Terry Gilliam that came out about when The Zero Theorem was released. It’s not new, but it’s really, really worth reading. Some people struggle to add anything of interest when discussing their art, but Gilliam is not on that list.  I’ve seen Terry Gilliam’s The Zero Theorem three or four times now and it’s one of the stickiest movies I’ve ever seen. I mean this in the sense that I keep thinking about it, and about how bits of it connect to reality in weird and unexpected ways. Gilliam describes himself as a cartoonist, someone who’s showing reality in a distorted way in order to make his point. He’s also a poet, in that he uses visual metaphors that on the surface make no sense (try to describe Qohen’s job to your friends and see how mad you sound), but which can be easily understood by watching his films.  I love the idea of art leaving shrapnel in people. I get that, and he’s a master of it. His Brazil was the first film I can remember that hit me that way. It was also the first film I remember having to see multiple times before I “got” it.  It’s not just Gilliam or even films that do this to me. The first time I read John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, I wasn’t able to sleep for a couple of days because it messed up my worldview so severely (and, just for the record, for the better). Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet lit up several of my blind spots, not the least of which was I had no idea hip hop could be that powerful. Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles, especially volume three, still mess me up. Obviously, “Black Mirror” is designed specifically to be this kind of weaponized art, and it succeeds more often than not. There are more, of course, but I didn’t want to turn this into a “list post,” I just wanted to share Mr. Gilliam’s insights. Again, I can’t recommend reading the whole interview strongly enough.  -RK

I just reading a couple of books that came highly recommended. One was cleverly-plotted, full of witty dialogue, quick pacing, and well-drawn characters; the other was Ready Player One.  The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett isn’t considered his best work and the ending is unsatisfactory, but it’s such fun to read it doesn’t really matter. Nick and Nora Charles banter is the sort of thing that could (and did) launch a series of films based on the characters and increasingly distanced from the source material. It’s both light and literary, and there aren’t many authors who can pull that one off. The cover blurb, appropriately enough, is provided by Raymond Chandler “Hammett…wrote scenes that seemed never to have been written before.” I think that’s exactly right. The dialogue sequences, with the light banter mixed in with some serious sleuthing, are peppered with side-glances and ambiguous but significant facial expressions. It’s vivid without being verbose, which is one hell of a trick.  The story itself is gripping enough, but the fun is in the telling. I still struggle with describing myself as a fan of detective fiction, but, having finally read Chandler and Hammett, I’m starting to come around. I know that’s kind of like being a Bob Marley fan and saying you like reggae, but so be it. Hammett lives up to his reputation. I’m late to the Ready Player One party, in no small part because it’s a book so obviously aimed directly at me. I’d heard so much about it and about how I just had to get it that picking it up and reading it seemed kind of redundant. A cyberspace book with a lot of pop culture Easter eggs thrown in? That’s my wheelhouse all right. Having read it, I can see why it’s such a polarizing book. It’s a tween-ish hero story in 80s drag which makes it a very odd bird indeed. Are people may age, for whom the window dressing is suited, going to get into what is an extremely simplistic story, or are teens going to think that the 80s are just. that. cool? The story itself is fine for what it is. It could just as easily be set in Camelot, or Sherwood Forest, or Azeroth, or any stock fantasy setting. It’s extremely linear, with no real sense of menace and no real growth on the part of the main character other than an almost instant about face regarding the McGuffin. This happens, then this happens, then this happens, until you reach the end.  Of course, the story isn’t the secret sauce here, it’s all of the extremely detailed references to my high school years. The lists of favorite movies, bands, video games, and TV shows take up pages and pages of the novel. It’s not really an “Easter egg” if the author is showing each reference in your face and saying “Look at this! Isn’t this cool?!?!”  Reading it was slow going until I got about halfway through and I found myself just skimming the lists and details like “here is the hero played a perfect game of this video game,” and “this character has memorized every single line of dialogue in this film, here, let me show you!” It skipped along briskly once I stopped paying attention to what it was that made this book special. Take that for what it’s worth, I guess. To sum up, I’ve just started reading The Maltese Falcon and don’t plan on pick up Ernest Cline’s follow up novel, T̶h̶e̶ ̶L̶a̶s̶t̶ ̶S̶t̶a̶r̶f̶i̶g̶h̶t̶e̶r̶  E̶n̶d̶e̶r̶’̶s̶ ̶G̶a̶m̶e̶ Armada.

I keep staring at this page, thinking “I really need to post,” but my follow-through has been lacking. but there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. I’ve resigned from one of my three big responsibilities, probably later than I should have, but that will free up five to ten hours I found myself missing. The other side gig has settled into a nice rhythm that feels sustainable to me. The main job remains a little out of control, but that’s the nature of the gig and it isn’t likely to let up.  I’ll deal with that one later. I’ve also made my doctor cross with me. My blood pressure isn’t where it needs to be. We’re not to the point of prescribing medication yet, but diet and lifestyle changes are in order and they need to be pretty draconian. Apparently, my 2-pots-of-coffee-a-day habit isn’t what a doctor would call “smart.” So, minimal caffeine and no foods/snacks/drinks with added sugar. Oh, and I get a neat blood pressure cuff too. I knew things weren’t quite right, so I can’t say I’m surprised and, honestly? It could have been worse. Rather than complain about the fact I can’t drink so much coffee, better to just put my head down and make sure I don’t have to go on any meds. The one factor that worries me is that stress is a big player in the blood pressure concerns, so….how does one de-stress? Well, ditching one of my responsibilities is a good start.  Cats, too. Cats relieve stress. Not this one, but in general. The stress is going to be the hard part. Both my wife and my boss have encouraged me to stop acting like the world will collapse if I don’t get on it now now now. They’re both pretty smart, so I’m going to try to take their advice to heart. Easier said than done, of course, but hey, I can turn off work notifications on my email! I can even not log in to my work email at night at all. What an idea!  Writing here, too, is a way to slough off stress for me.  So, pretty soon, I’ll be back to the writing about books that have already been reviewed a zillion times, shaking my tiny fist at politicians, answering questions that were meant for other people, and, during the best of times, travel adventures with Nicole. Those are the best. Thanks for bearing with me on this one.  -RK

I’ve never seen it get this bad. Have you? Like I’ve said before, I vaguely remember Watergate, and this is nothing remotely like Watergate. At least Nixon was in control and the scope of his criminal activity was limited. Watergate was a trickle; this is a flood. It’d be easier if Trump himself were the only problem. Removing him from office would solve the problem and everything would go back to something resembling normal. Unfortunately, his complete inability to lead and govern* has created a vacuum of power that has allowed other bad actors to operate unchecked and sometimes unnoticed because of all the noise the White House is generating. One of the many, many things that bugs me about people who have “the answer” is that they will say “X is just a distraction from the big problem. While you’re worrying about X, then Y is going unchecked!” First of all, by some strange coincidence, “X” is a social justice issue that doesn’t directly affect this person, and “Y” is something that does. Every. damn. time. And you know what? There are a LOT of legitimate, big problems that need to be addressed. We don’t have the luxury of fighting this war on one front. The President is sympathetic to Nazis. Congress is trying to gut health care to give their donors tax breaks**. Many states have taken the emptiness of the office of the President as an opportunity to gut women’s rights, LGBT rights, rights for people of color, as well as the programs that assist the poor of all demographics. The Russians have attempted to co-opt our elections for their own benefit, as well as to undermine NATO. The police are killing people of color without any apparent reason without any consequences. Oh, and dumbass is still rattling nuclear sabers. My point is, don’t tell me that the focus needs to be on one of these problems and the others will be addressed later. We don’t have a single hole in the dam; we have a whole batch of them, and each of them will hurt and kill people. This ALL needs to be fixed, and saying we should only focus on your pet issue is not helpful and really patronizing. -RK     * I understand that if he were even slightly effective as a leader, he would create a whole different and possibly worse set of problems, but at least the source of the trouble would have a single address. ** OK, I could do a whole post on this, but the real reason for the panicked rush to repeal Obamacare is a lot simpler and more evil than tax breaks. One of our two political parties has hitched their wagon to the premise that the government can’t do anything right and everything should be privatized. A successful, popular health care program is a threat to their very existence in the same way social security is. That’s why repeal-without-replace was on the table. 

In which I discuss the ways I’ve over-extended myself, as well as an almost good film The list of emotions which make me want to write is a long one, but “stressed out” is absent from it. Is “stressed out” really an emotion? It is for my purposes, so just go with it. Anyway, I am currently working the equivalent of three jobs. Two of them are part time and don’t pay, but the third makes up for it by being more than full time but paying well.  Something has to give. I am not a workaholic by any means (ask any boss I’ve ever had), but I’m insecure and have difficulty saying “no.” I can juggle it all for a limited amount of time, but when it starts to poison my time away from work with worry and fear, I have to back away. That’s not strictly true; I usually just disappear from one context or another, but that’s not really a good option at this time.  The good news is that one of the side gigs is now proceeding nicely and has the potential to turn into a paying side gig, which is among the best sort of side gig. I’ll share more about it as it gets a little more solid, but it lives at the intersection of two things I love and it feels like a really good fit.  We saw Valerian the other night and I loved it on some levels and couldn’t have been more annoyed on others. It is flat-out gorgeous, with the kind of outrageous visuals you’re only going to get from Luc Besson. Everything on the screen was carefully designed and photographed. It’s right up there with The Fifth Element in terms of eye candy. I didn’t even mind the story as much as some of the reviewers did. It’s a little obvious, but for space opera? Plot-wise, it’s miles ahead of the similar but inferior Jupiter Ascending. Sure, you know 90% of the resolution within 15 minutes, but that’s hardly a fatal flaw. Where the movie tripped over its own feet was….well, let me ask you a couple of questions. Did you like The Fifth Element? Ok, would you still have liked it if, instead of Bruce Willis, the lead actor was a guy who looked more like a teenager in a Manchester club listening to The Smiths? Dane DeHaan may have a brilliant career ahead of him, but he never caught fire in this role. And fire would have been required, because some of the dialogue was clunky and cringe-worthy. A breezier performance might have gotten away with we never got any sense of who Major Valerian was until it was literally explained to us near the end. “You always follow the rules.” Wait, what? We never saw any of that. It seemed interminably long as it creaked towards its telegraphed conclusion. I don’t recall that being an issue with The Fifth Element, but the earlier film was only ten minutes shorter at two hours and seven minutes. Maybe Valerian will wind up being revered after the fact the way other Besson films have. It’s visually stunning, maybe even his best looking film. It just would have been a lot better if it were an hour shorter and with a different cast. -RK

I find it hard to write anything here when I’m feeling down.* I’m buried at work, my body is not feeling quite right, and there’s the ever-present feeling that this country is free-falling into one or more disasters. The stress has wrecked my sleep schedule and seriously cut into my time with Nicole, who is doing everything within her considerable power to prop me up right now. Fortunately, she’s very, very good at propping me up.  This is a long way of saying that I haven’t been good for much anything beyond “showing up at work” over the last couple of weeks, although there have been a few tidbits of interest: We have learned that camping in triple-digit weather is a Very Bad Idea. Our pet snails are getting along worryingly well. One of my aliases** may have secured an interesting writing gig on the side. “Burn Notice” was a damn fine show for three seasons.*** Warren Ellis completed the script for Fell #10 (#1-9 were insanely good). The gap between starting a long-term plan and seeing measurable progress is the worst. That last point concerns our long-term business plan. We’ve taken some steps forward, but the goal is still well over the horizon. It’s like starting an exercise program: The hardest part is the time after you’ve started it but before you start seeing measurable results. We’ll get there but it’s going to take a minute or two. I guess the long and short of it is that I’ve allowed myself to fall in to a rut. I do that as sort of a self-preservation technique (of highly debatable effectiveness) when I’m overwhelmed at work. The best way I’ve found to get out of these ruts is to wallow in ’em as long as I need to, and then to force myself to put one foot forward and do the things I mean to do but haven’t. Things like posting to this blog even when I don’t have a great deal to say.  -RK * In this sense, this site is the anti-LiveJournal. ** If “pseudonym” is correct, then shouldn’t “alianym” be acceptable as well?  *** Did you know that, before he starred in “Burn Notice,” Jeffrey Donovan was in Blair Witch 2? In fairness, I’m not sure anyone ever saw Blair Witch 2, but still..

“It has always seemed strange to me, ” said Doc. “Things we admire in men, kindness, and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.”  “Who wants to be good if he has to be hungry too?” said Richard Frost. “Oh, it isn’t a matter of hunger. It’s something quite different. The sale of souls to gain the whole world is completely voluntary and almost unanimous-but not quite. “ from Cannery Row by John Steinbeck I just finished reading a couple of Steinbeck’s shorter novels, Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row. They’re both fun reads but they’re not without their problems. Some of Steinbeck’s attempts at dialect have aged poorly, and his depiction of the paisanos of Monterey, California are well-meaning but come across as patronizing (at best). My favorite Steinbeck novels are his most focused. East of Eden and Grapes of Wrath are not just great stories; they’re works of enormous philosophical depth. Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row, on the other hand, are just good yarns. They’re well-told slice-of-life stories, funny ones, but not a great deal else. I’ve seen more than one contemporary reviewer who claimed that Steinbeck’s prose was so lacking in art that his books are effectively unreadable. I don’t get that at all. I’m hardly an expert, but I find his style more readable and enjoyable than, say, Hemingway’s forced minimalism or Faulkner’s showboating. I’m not saying that anyone who prefers those two is wrong, but I prefer Steinbeck. If that makes me pedestrian, well, it’s hardly the first time that label’s been applied to me. When I tell someone that Terry Pratchett’s Small Gods is one of my favorite books, the most common response is that they, too, love The God of Small Things. I’ve heard this often enough that I’m reading The God of Small Things now.  I’ll let you know what I think when I’m done, but so far? I’m hooked. -RK

Well this is nice. Nicole decided that we should go camping this weekend so that’s exactly what we did. We’re extremely fortunate in that there’s a state park with overnight camping less than ten miles from downtown.  We got married here, so it also has that going for it as well. We haven’t been camping together in the six and half years we’ve been a couple and, truth be told, I haven’t been camping in the sense that wouldn’t have a “gl” instead of a “c” in a couple of decades. No reason to let that stop us, though. What does one really need? A site, of course. A tent and some sleeping gear, some fire-safe cooking utensils, some camp chairs if you like, some clothing you don’t mind getting dirty, an ample supply of toilet paper, and you’re set, right? Well, it turns out that several bags for trash, some additional light sources, maybe a cooler, oh, and a knife you don’t plan on cooking with are all excellent things to bring. We’ll be sure to remember those next time. We did remember to bring some less-than-primitive niceties. Nicole has been streaming Marfa public radio, we have a box fan because it is Texas in the summer. We borrowed a marvelous shady amphitheater thingie because we’re it’s really nice to have. Oh, and I have this laptop, but there’s nothing resembling an internet connection. My phone keeps stubbornly trying, but it isn’t having much luck at anything beyond “draining the battery at an alarming rate.” It’s quiet out here, so quiet that the crickets seem loud. It’s dark enough that this dimmed screen seems blinding. There’s a raccoon that thinks he’ll sneak a meal when we aren’t being vigilant, but we have encountered raccoons before and we are prepared. You can’t scavenge for firewood here, but we brought some in (and by that I mean “purchased at the rangers’ stand) and we found a little fortune in the form of two large, pristine logs in our fire pit.  On that note, they have a nice setup here that I haven’t seen before: The fire pit adjoins the grill, so that all the fire is in one area and you can have a nice, sit-around-it-and-do-not-drink-beer-because-that-is-forbidden fire and you can shove some of the coals under the grill and cook on that. Having good recipes for outdoor cooking and I cannot recommend the ones shown on the Almazan Kitchen YouTube channel highly enough. They post their recipes on their web site, but they’re rudimentary in that quantities are often estimated or absent and there are no instructions beyond the wordless videos. That said, I’ve tried three of their dishes now, the filet, the carbonara, and now the hunter’s steak with onion gravy, and they’ve all been successful (except for my attempt to bake my potatoes directly on the goals which went…poorly). Not only are they the most watchable relaxation/cooking videos I’ve ever seen, but I find them both informational and inspirational. We’re relaxing after dinner now in the little clam shell tent, listening to music, stretching our legs, and enjoying each other’s company. One of the things I most appreciate about Nicole is that, when decides she wants to do it, she just does it. We’ve gone from not even talking about camping to being here in the span of a week. This trait of her is about to become really, really important…soon (cue mysterious musical flourish). It turns out that we made a critical math error. Tent sizes tend to overestimate their dimensions, and the inverse is true with regard to air mattresses. The net of this is that our tent, which was in theory one foot longer and one foot wider than our air mattress, was neither of these things. Of course, the sides of domed tents are far from vertical, so while the mattress came close to fitting at the base, things got a little ridiculous further up. The tent door would not close.   We attempted a partial deflation of the air mattress which is a terrible idea and I feel bad for even trying it. That left us with three option: Completely deflate the mattress and sleep close to the ground without padding, pack up and go home, or tough it out. We decided to tough it out and, while it wasn’t exactly what I would call “comfortable,” we got through the night. Sort of. The less said the better. Pictured: Some kind of hawk We woke up at dawn, as one tends to do when camping and especially when one’s tent isn’t quite up to the task. All of the tent campers started stirring around the same time. The folks in the big RVs might have been up and about, but there would be no way of knowing. I kind of doubt they were as that would defeat the purpose of having an RV. Getting up unusually early was one of the main selling points of this adventure as we wanted to do a little hiking before it got obscenely hot. Goodness knows I can use the exercise. The trail around the park is about three miles long and they pack a lot of variety in that relatively short distance. We saw more interesting critters than I’d ever seen at the park. In addition to the raccoons (grrr), turtles, and rabbits, we saw a proper crow (as opposed to those annoying grackles), a painted bunting, a couple of cardinals, a hawk of some sort, a ringneck snake, some baby crawfish, and several cool bugs. Oh, and we saw McKinney Falls. Not only were we staving when we got back to camp, we were also severely coffee-deprived.It was at this time that Nicole did something amazing: She made coffee and breakfast while I tried to convince my weary bones to do something other than “sit in chair” and failed completely. In anticipation of this trip, she bought a real live, honest-to-God coffee percolator! I know, right? The magic of watching popcorn start to pop is nothing compared to watching the dome of the percolator when the water starts to boil and the liquid starts to darken. A percolator!  A percolator! Squeeeeeee! While the coffee was percolating, she lightly fried some toast in the leftover bacon grease from the night before and…

Have you ever had a really bad fall, or crashed your car, or been knocked cold playing some sport? I don’t know about you, but the first thing I do when my wits return is take an inventory of my body, see what is and isn’t responding, checking for pain, check for numbness, and get a sense of the damage. I always do that, but it never really works. Sometimes I’ll go days or even weeks before discovering that, if I move my back just so, I’ll scream like I’ve been shot. Maybe there’ll be a bruise under my leg I didn’t notice. Or I’ll bump into a corner and discover, painfully, that I’ve fractured the end of my elbow. That’s my metaphor of choice for dealing with my father’s passing earlier this year.  I expected it to hurt, and it does, but it keeps catching me by surprise. My first reaction to each of the surprisingly numerous emails encouraging me to buy a Father’s Day gift is “fuck you.” I didn’t know how many of those there were, but damn, they’re everywhere, aren’t they? Stores loaded with Father’s Day cards are almost as bad.  Today? Well, you know, the day itself is…maybe because I’ve been bracing myself, I feel less “Oh my god, why is the world still turning, does it not realize that he’s gone?” than I’d expected. Or maybe it’s more because Father’s Day was never a big deal to do. My memories of him have nothing whatsoever to do with Father’s Day. I’m fortunate in that I had a father who liked to do things. He let me shift the gears on his car (a 64 1/2 Mustang) while he’d drink a Budweiser, which perfectly legal at the time. He’d take me to baseball games, and play catch with me, and go fishing, and take me to movies, and read with me, and help teach me math, and go on vacations, and he’d eat food he hated because he didn’t want for his kids to hate it without trying it first and…well, it’s a pretty long list. Those are memories. Not Father’s Day. Not really. Funny thing: At our fantasy baseball spring meeting (we have a serious league), there was a photo of my father at the front of the room. The picture was taken decades before anyone in the league other than his friend Norm and myself had known him. It was an outdoor photo of my dad in his late “outlaw country” phase; felt cowboy hat, leather, western cut jacket, western shirt, mustache of the push broom variety, and a big, toothy smile on his face. Our commissioner commented that he had “no idea who the hell that guy was.”  I knew him. He was awfully happy then. I can’t place the date, but he was probably recently remarried, early forties, and in one of the best times of his life. I would probably have been late teens, early twenties at the latest, and I’m pretty sure that we had some issues between us because, well, if you’ve ever met a teenage boy, you probably understand. But in hindsight? I really liked that version of him. So,  I’m not going to say today was great, but it’s an occasion to remember all the good things, to enjoy his memory. I miss you, dad. Thank you for pretty much everything. -RK

As I mentioned earlier, I just finished reading Hunter S. Thompson’s Kingdom of Fear. It’s nowhere near Thompson’s best work, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a more relevant writer in what I suspect will be regarded as the American interregnum. The 2016 election exposed many flaws in our of democracy, the most glaring of which was that our entire system is designed to present two candidates as de facto equals. The system doesn’t have a mechanism to cope with a candidate who isn’t at least minimally qualified. The press falls over itself to create a scaffold for this candidate with legitimacy in order to maintain an air of journalist objectivity. Dr. Thompson wouldn’t have played that game. He would never let objectivity get in the way of telling the truth. That was his greatest virtue, and it’s one we desperately need now. He wouldn’t have allowed the mythical “respect for the office” from letting the president have it with both barrels and then reloading. The phrase “This is not normal” is true, and it’s worth remembering, but “He is an ignorant, foolish monster would destroy us all if not for his own incompetence,” has a nice ring to it as well. The book itself is a bit of a mess; it meanders from an unlikely story to an obvious fabrication to an incredibly on-point criticism, but it never fails to be entertaining. I doubt there will ever be another Hunter S. Thompson* no matter how badly we need one. The lesson, however, remains:  “So much for Objective Journalism. Don’t bother to look for it here–not under any byline of mine; or anyone else I can think of. With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.”           * And no, Spider Jersualem doesn’t count.        * And no, Spider Jersualem doesn’t count.