Thursday, December 06, 2018

The Month That Was - November 2018

A lot of activity this month. I traveled twice, once to Chicago for weekend and a showing of Hamilton, once to Florida where I also saw a play, The Music Man. Both are reviewed below. But travel is over for the year, mostly because I have no vacation time left.

Every year for the last, oh, 10 or so I have run a half-marathon. It takes me the bulk of the year to work up to being in shape for it so it's been a kind a benchmark for me. As long as I get a half in at some point during the year I'm not backsliding or going easy on myself. This year, events conspired to prevent me from doing anything organized but I still did it -- just unofficially, on my own: I ran circles in a local park until my GPS watch read 13.1 miles. Hopefully I get something more interesting done in that vein next year. I have one race left -- my local 5k right here in Dexter -- then running is over for the year.

Writing is never over. I did make some progress. I'm barreling to the end of the first draft of my next novel, which I will not discuss as a matter of policy, except to tell you the working title is The Hawk Sahib, which means nothing to you but when future historians search for the earliest mention of this book, they'll land right here.

[Dexter, Ann Arbor] Oh Deer
[Arts] Musical Wordplay
[Books] Book Look: The Third Policeman
[Movies] Flick Check: A Star is Born

[Dexter, Ann Arbor] Oh Deer

So here's what happened. A couple miles from where I live in Dexter, a deer got hit by a car. It was injured but not killed. In its traumatized state it managed to make its way to a local school where a school bus driver, seeing the state it was in, ran his bus over it to put it out of its misery. Worse, this happened in view of some of the kids.

Deer are a serious problem in these parts and not just as traffic hazards. They eat everything you plant, whether it's my tulip bulbs or a farmer's corn crops. They have no serious predators left around here; there are a scattering of hunting grounds, but for the most part I live in an exurban world , which means old farmhouses, some with actual farms,Arts & Craft-style McMansions with multi-acre lawns, and huge open wetlands and wilderness areas. It's really deer heaven around here. Naturally their population has exploded. It is almost certain that there are more deer in Michigan than there ever were in all of history or pre-history. The food supply is endless and predators are rare.

Next door in Ann Arbor, one of the most liberal, environmentalist populations in the country, it was so bad they instituted a cull. That is to say, they hired hunters to come in and kill a bunch of deer. This process was, of course, subject to much debate and very tightly controlled as to time, place, and count. The venison was donated to the Food Gatherers charity. Still, there was a good deal of outcry about this, as you would expect from that particular demographic but, even in the name of Gaia, they couldn't deny the reality of the situation. To minimize the need for culls another group has arranged to trap and sterilize deer. This has no effect on the current population obviously but it is unclear how much it will affect the future population. However you approach it, no one denies there are too many deer.

In Dexter, the relationship with deer is equally complex. In years past (although not in long while) Dexter had a prominent buck pole right in the village commercial center. A buck pole is a well, tall pole, say 10 feet or so, with a cross-member. After a successful hunt, one would hang his buck (male deer, you can only hunt doe in special circumstances) carcass on the pole for display. Among deer hunters this was a social activity, you could swap stories and back-slap -- like fisherman in the bar at the end of the day. The business that erected the pole each season folded or moved a few years ago, but a recent post on a local facebook group reminiscing about good times around the buck pole prompted strongly contrasting opinions some calling it a horror and disgusting, others offering to educate them as to the source of their hamburgers, as so forth. (I am so glad I was an early deinzen of internet forums and so learned sooner than others to never argue on the internet.)

But back to the bus driver incident. Naturally this got picked up by news outlets in places where they can't imaging deer are anything but friendly bambis that eat out of your hand. Inquiries were called for, position statements were issued, moral self-identification opportunities were taken. But here in town, apart from a couple of hand-wringers, pretty much everybody supported the regrettably necessary actions of the bus driver. A wounded deer is a dangerous and unpredictable thing. It's a shame that the kids saw that, but it would be a different story if one of them took a hoof to the temple. Then the outrage would have been about why NOBODY DID ANYTHING, followed by calls to arm bus drivers. (I kid. Maybe.) In the moment, it really was the right thing to do. As gruesome as it seems, it did end the deer's suffering and it protected the kids.

Unlike some citified newsroom flunkie, we know this. We know from deer 'round here.

[Arts] Musical Wordplay

I saw Hamilton in Chicago. I liked it. It was excellent. Unless you have been living in a cave you probably know of it, if you haven't already seen it, but short shrift is that it is a hip-hop/rap musical about the life of Alexander Hamilton, his rise, his fall in what we would today call a sex scandal, and his death in a duel with Aaron Burr. It is a wonderfully told story and is very nearly an opera. There are very few spoken passages, but perhaps because much of the "signing" is rap it doesn't strike one as operatic.

To get this out of the way, virtually all the music is in the style of rap and hip-hop, with a ballad or two mixed in, and 95% of the cast, include all the Founding Fathers, are portrayed by black actors. In truth, nobody much cares about that beyond noting the fact as an observation, but the limited vocabulary and cognitive facilities of our current culture means this must be a "controversy" and require positioning in our hierarchy of virtue. Whatever. I'll just say that Hamilton was not an exercise in political correctness and everyone in the cast was a spot-on match for their role from an acting perspective. (Although I would have wished Hamilton was a little taller.)

Only a few years old, it's hard to say if Hamilton will be one of those eternal classics, but it wouldn't surprise me. Although the setting was in political, the drama is essentially personal, not social, so it should hold up well over the years. The music was enjoyable. The songs didn't stick with me, but that's probably me. I am too attached to the age of melody-based music; the rhythm-based songs of the current style leave me cold. If you get a chance you should see Hamilton, no doubt about it. I would gamble it becomes an American classic. Although, as I think about it, that might depend on the quality of the inevitable movie. You'll spend hundreds to see it on stage so the movie will likely be the first impression for most people. A lousy film could stop it in its tracks. Glad I got to see it on stage first so I don't run the risk of forming a bad opinion.

Later in the month I saw a revival of The Music Man at the Asolo theatre in Sarasota. The Music Man is already an American classic (first performed in 1957). Of course, we all know the movie -- one of those rare cases where the movie enhanced the reputation of a play. It is old-timey, from the era of the middlebrow, with cultural references that will likely me nothing to anyone under fifty -- "I hope, I pray, for a Hester to win just one more 'A'"; "Like to see some stuck-up jockey boy sittin' on Dan Patch?" -- you don't know what those mean, do you? The choreography is both traditional, much of it tap, and clever. The acting is perfectly exaggerated, as it should be for the material. All in all, it was delightful. Also, high marks for the Asolo Theatre. Music Man is a must-do if you find yourself snowbirding on the Gulf.

You would think the two plays would have nothing in common, but they both feature passages of rhythmically spoken words -- what we now call rap and what used to be called a song's verse, as opposed to refrain. The "rapped" passages often blend seamlessly into, or are interspersed within, proper songs. You can see it when Harold Hill is counting out 6 pockets in a pool table, and when the Hamilton company is counting out the Ten Dueling Commandments. Everything old is new again.

[Books] Book Look: The Third Policeman, by Flann O'Brien

I don't remember why I chose to read The Third Policeman. It has been on my reading list (which I keep in an amazon wish list) for a long while. I suspect I stumbled on recommendations from one or two trusted sources during my random internet ramblings. While it had points of interest, for me, it didn't pay off.

It is difficult to describe. Set in Ireland, the unnamed narrator is a naive man -- an amateur scholar of a fictional philosopher/academic named deSelby. He has written what he believes to be a authoritative account of deSelby's life and works (we are deluged with footnotes on deSelby throughout the book) but does not have the money to publish it. The narrator maintains a codependent relationship with a liar/con-man/thug named Divney who runs his failing farm for him. At Divney's suggestion, they plot to rob a local man who is thought to have a horde of cash. The robbery goes bad and the victim is murdered.

Then things get weird. The narrator encounters the ghost of the murdered man, crosses paths with a one-legged stranger, his conscience becomes an entity in itself who he calls Joe, he stumbles into a police station where they concern themselves of little else except bicycles: the theft of them, the nature of conscious connect with their owners, their variations and value. The cops also seem to have abilities to create paradoxical objects and events. In time, the narrator is sentenced to death by hanging, but is rescued. It is not too much of a spoiler to say that the hope that he gains after his rescue is dashed when it is revealed that he is actually in Hell and will be re-living the strange and terrible events of the book for eternity.

From a stylistic perspective a lot of the writing here is quite interesting. The early stretches of the book are written in as almost a recitation of facts of his early life. After that the prose in more engaging. There are some good humorous passages. The use of the fictional deSelby is almost Nabokovian. But overall the best way to describe this is that it is like the TV show Twin Peaks; it can grab your attention by challenging your expectations, but in the end you walk away only thinking "Well, that was different." Like the David Lynch creation, you won't get any real clarity of purpose. You will get flashes of brilliance, but mostly confusion, often of the sort where you get the sense that there may be more conventional meaning there and you are just missing it.

You're not. The point of these sorts of works is the experience of the work and not that you should get anything concrete out it. Should you read The Third Policeman? Probably not. It is thoroughly post-modern, mostly cryptic, and occasionally avant-garde. It is best for the dedicated reader looking for something out of the ordinary. Most folks are lucky to read four or five books a year and so don't have the time for something so far out on the edge of reason.

[Movies] Flick Check: A Star is Born

It is not something I would do under normal circumstances. I will not go into details about how I ended up seeing A Star is Born in a movie theatre, but I did. Let's leave it at that.

This is the fourth version of this movie. The first was back in the '30s I think (I'm feeling too lazy to look it up and I don't really care anyway). All are the same plot: an over-the-hill music star takes a younger talent under his wing. She eventually outshines him and he dies in some heartbreaking manner.

Bradley Cooper is a talented guy. He did a good job of playing a genial, well-meaning alcoholic but the script eventually called for that alcoholic to go off the deep end and, given the way he played the role, it ended up seeming out of character for him to do so. More impressive is the work he must have put into his voice, since he actually does all his own singing. That is best thing I can say about this movie.

The worst thing is the music. Cooper was apparently supposed to be some sort of hard rock guitar player/country music idol. I have no idea what sound they were looking for out of the music his character is given. This movie was big on stereotypes so I guess they wanted the washed-up white guy to be a country singer, but they also needed him to have a groupies and snort coke like rocker so they just sort of mashed it up. It was some sore-thumb weirdness. Within the scope of the movie, the lyrics of his songs could be interpreted as poignant, but just about any song can be relevant to anything if it's generic enough.

The up and coming talent is played by Lady Gaga, who is a thoroughly contemporary diva-style singer. What does it mean to be a thoroughly contemporary diva-style singer? There are two common qualities: 1) Narcissism and 2) Volume.
  1. Your garden variety Contemporary Diva is enthralled with herself. Nearly all the songs are about her personal empowerment, how no hardship can stop her, how she won't let anyone stand in her way. The ultimate prizes are fame, validation, and personal status. She may occasionally sing about love, but only to the extent it demonstrates her fierce drive for self-fulfillment. She may occasionally sing about social justice, but only to demonstrate that it's OK for her to be self-absorbed because she is so good and woke.
  2. Whatever emotions your garden variety Contemporary Diva is trying to express, it is done with volume. Whether she needs to express heartache, anger, despair, joy, regret, glee, ennui -- you name it, it is done by increasing the volume, exaggerating the sustain, and wavering the tone haphazardly. This is understandable, I suppose, given the limited range of subject matter there just aren't that many emotions to convey. It is the sort of thing that causes the judges on those excruciating American Idol-type shows to gush.
When one of these women releases an autobiographical album entitled "Howls About Me" we can assume a peak will have been reached.

So, yeah, Lady Gaga: not a fan. There is no accounting for the ebb and flow of musical fashions and the world is not obligated to be ordered in alignment with my tastes, but the state of commercially successful music is atrocious. I don't want to be one of those grouches who rants about how everything was better back in the day. Crappy music has always been with us and I should acknowledge that good and creative music is still being produced everyday. But you gotta look hard for it -- it's all niche and obscure. Alas.

Back to the movie.

Apart from the music the other horrible thing was the overall milieu. Every insipid aspect of popular culture was on display and exalted. The presentation of queer folks and self-styled rebels as inherently good, and common proles as dolts; the worship of celebrity and the elevation of their privilege and nobility; all the thoughtless stereotypes -- it was just...wearying. Every minute was another gut-punch of trite, pop cultural arrogance. In the end, the only emotion I was left with was exhaustion. And relief that it was over.

Aside: If you want a starting place to look for good music, you could do worse than Ted Gioia's best albums of the year. The cross all countries and genres, including some you didn't know existed (including things like "Three-Voice Appalachian Rural Polyphony" and "Hot New Bands from Serbia"). None of this will you hear on the radio or America's Next Pop Star. This is how you find good music nowadays. Pour over lists like this, investigate what sounds interesting, use AllMusic or something other source to see what is related. You would think in the age of Google there would be an easier way to do this, but I haven't found it.

Thursday, November 01, 2018

The Month That Was - October 2018

I guess we can kiss another summer good-bye. Theoretically, El Nino should bring us a milder than usual winter and perhaps keep the Arctic Vortex at bay. Whatever. October was a slog. I did no travel, and pretty much nothing out of the ordinary. Just lived day-to-day, trying not to completely surrender to sloth.

Surprise, surprise: I did get some writing done. I sense I'm coming into the home stretch of Draft 1.0 -- I am nearing the end of the beginning. I justifiably remind myself that rewriting is immensely easier than writing. But neither get done when you're binging TV shows.

[Baseball] The Tigers of '68
[Rant] Sears and Fears
[TV] Fallen Defenders

[Baseball] The Tigers of '68

Fifty years ago. Good lord, that's a long time. I had just turned 8. I didn't know nothin' 'bout baseball, but everyone was talking about it. My mom had to explain it to me (she was Red Sox fan). When I first played with the kids in the neighborhood, they positioned me at shortstop, a word I had never heard and thought was made up out of pity to give me, the smallest kid in the world, a place to play where I wouldn't cause problems.

Things were very different then. The old folks who always tell stories about how when they were kids they just went off alone all day, fending for themselves, parents not bothering to keep track of them. They (we) aren't lying. It really was like like that. Maybe around dusk your mom would start to wonder where you were and yell out the back door for you to come to dinner.

We played a lot of tag; wandered the woods across the street catching tadpoles and garter snakes. Occasionally we would get enough kids together for a sandlot game, but usually we played a game we just called "500". One kid would bat (by tossing the ball in the air himself and hitting it), the others would go out and field. A grounder was worth 10, and pop-up was worth 50, and liner or fly was worth a 100. Once one kid got to 500 he got to be the new batter.

Baseball was different too. There were no divisions, just a bunch of teams in the A.L. and N.L. They never played each other during the regular season (other than during the All-Star game) and after 162 games, the teams with the best record in each league played for the championship; no such thing as playoffs. The games all started at 1pm local time. Since the Tigers opponents, the St. Louis Cardinals, played in central time, the 2pm Eastern start time meant I could run home at top speed from school (a little over half a mile) and catch the end of the game on TV. Otherwise, you were stuck sneaking updates from the transistor radio you snuck into school with you.

The game itself was closer to sandlot games too. Nobody worked the pitch count, you grabbed a bat so you could hit. When a pitcher got the ball back they threw another pitch, they didn't dilly-dally. Pitch counts were unnecessary. It was like being on the sandlot, you didn't analyze everything for a statistical advantage, you just played. Runners stole bases and were thrown out. You moved runners along with sacrifice bunts and flys. It was all very instinctive. Don't think, it hurts the ballclub. The players smoked in the dugout.

I won't recount the details of the '68 Series, but it was epic, with astonishing performances and unlikely occurrences. The fact of the Tigers came back from a 3-1 deficit only heightened the experience, winning game 7 against the most frightening pitcher ever (Bob Gibson). It was like a living storybook to an eight-year-old.

I seem to be going down a path of wistful nostalgia, longing for the days of my youth, but I'm not. I would not want to go back to those times either in baseball or in life.

Being outside playing with the other kids was fine and all, but as often as not you found yourself maneuvering through a juvenile world that approached Lord of the Flies. Did it make us tough? Probably. Is it good that we needed to be made tough? Probably not. It may have been necessary, but it's not to be desired. As a small, overly-thoughtful, introverted kid, I can't imagine anything I wouldn't have traded back then for one day's worth of access to something like the Web.

Baseball is a vastly more interesting game now also, especially of late. It is slower, which is annoying, but the players are probably better overall and the strategies are much more varied and intricate (and, yes, statistically oriented). Longtime readers know I was on the sabermetrics train at an early stop. ESPN recently did a test telecast of an Amazon-supported project called Statcast. Instead of inane babbling about who "really wants a hit" and who is "not looking comfortable on the mound" we got primed with deep stats and graphic predictions and intelligent rational analysis in general. It was wonderful. And it was very well received. If MLB provided a cable package of games like that, I would pay for it. There are problems implementing it I'm sure since the skill set of announcers has got to be something more than "just keep the cliches coming" but I think that's a solvable problem. It bodes well for the future.

I watched little of this year's World Series since it was between two teams I don't like: the Dodgers from that execrable city Los Angeles and the pink-hatted Massholes of Boston. The highlight was game 3, a 7-hour 20-minute 18-inning affair that was the longest, and possibly most excruciating, game in Series history. Evidently instead of having to rush home from school to catch end of games, we now pull all-nighters.

Once again, I have droned on in a post without have a clear objective other than to note that since the '68 Tigers were my first exposure to baseball, have officially been a baseball fan for 50 years now. (Of course, it's also been decades since I swung a bat or wore a glove.) Baseball is where I first saw the battle of the objective versus the subjective and realized I am constitutionally predisposed toward the former, an aspect of my personality that has influenced me throughout my life, for better and worse. Although I only follow on the periphery these days, it still brings an image of verdant beauty. The last game I attended was a Tigers spring training game in Joker Marchant stadium in Lakeland, where there is a large green lawn where the left field bleachers would be most places. Sitting in the grass, casually watching the game in the perfect Florida spring weather was true detachment for me; one of those moments that sets itself deeply in your long-term memory.

On the other hand the best pitcher in the A.L. -- Justin Verlander -- and the best pitcher in the N.L.-- Max Scherzer -- both used to play for Detroit. Somehow, the Tigers managed to lose both of them in the course of their careers. Not unrelated, this year the Tigers barely avoided being 100 game losers. Baseball giveth and baseball taketh away. I should see if I can find an Al Kaline throwback jersey.

[Rant] Sears and Fears

There was much hand-wringing over Sears bankruptcy, but no surprise. Sears became a giant in the first half of the previous century by shipping goods directly to consumers and was subsequently put out of business by a company that became a giant by shipping goods directly to consumers.

(Note: there are a lot of references to the "end of Sears." Bankruptcy is not the end -- the name "Sears" may live on in some way but how much continuity there will be is questionable.)

My nostalgia for Sears extends to the big, thick catalogs they would send out and that I would peruse intently for items to put on my Christmas wish list when I was a wee lad. In reaction to the bankruptcy, the web filled up with images from those old catalogs. In the early days of the 1900s you could order a house or even a school from the catalog; build it yourself. Anything from underwear to motorcycles -- it truly was the Amazon of its time.

As much as anything else, the history of retail reflects the history of wealth and our reaction to it. For the longest time, all goods were difficult to get. At best, you could avail yourself of whatever the local settlement could produce and beyond that you had to be self-sufficient. In a few metropolises you had access to some stuff, but in a mostly rural world, you lived with what ever was nearby or available at a farmers market. That meant cutting your own lumber, sewing your own clothes, and slaughtering your own hogs.

With the industrial revolution things got easier. Stuff got cheaper and people got more wealthy and, thanks to Sears, instead of cutting down trees to build a log cabin, you could just order a disassembled house. Or instead of stitching together a Sunday-go-to-meeting dress, you could just pick one out of the catalog. You had to trust that little black and white drawing in the catalog and then had to wait for next month's train to deliver it, but it was still more convenient that doing everything yourself.

As wealth continued to grow, the stores came to you and buying stuff became even easier. Retail outlets spread, first mom-and-pop stores, then Woolworths and such. Even in small towns within reach of the rural communities it was possible go to the store, see what you wanted, and buy it on the spot.

This got ramped up in the last half of 20th century when we became a land of malls. These huge markets with a variety of goods once only available to the richest folks in the richest cities appeared far and wide. Shopping became so easy that it went from being a necessity to a beloved pastime. Folks hitting the mall not only got what they needed, they also found out that there was so much more that they needed than they realized.

Still, the business of driving to the mall, fighting crowds, finding parking, was just too exhausting. Relief arrived in the form of Amazon, which freed you from the trouble of leaving your home to get stuff. Is there something you want? Just press a button and it will appear on your doorstep in a couple of days. Even now they are working on doing away with the button press. They'll use your profile to ship you what they think you want. If you really don't want it you can send it back.

Thanks to Artificial Intelligence, this will get more and more accurate over time to the point where it will be rare that you don't already have anything you want. Not only will you no longer have to butcher your own hogs, you won't even have to realize you need bacon, your fridge will have already had it delivered.

Convenience is approaching its optimum. The entire history of retail has been to make it easier to buy stuff -- to reduce friction in the parlance of the industry. This leaves you more free time to play with your dog (yay!) and post rants on Twitter (boo!). If there is a law of success in the information age it's that Convenience Trumps All.

I engaged in a bit of hyperbole there, but you see where I'm going. Somewhere along the line Sears lost the thread. Like all the major department stores, they decided it was all about marketing -- brand positioning, product mix, promotion, and fractions of a cent in quarterly earnings, while Amazon was busy reinventing the catalog. Someone moved the cheese and Jeff Bezos found it.

Now, there is no avoiding Amazon. If you'd rather not deal with them you have to go back to the pre-Sears days -- go off the grid. I'm sure youtube has instructional videos on hog butchering.

[TV] Fallen Defenders

Marvel's Netflix franchises are dropping like flies. First Iron Fist was cancelled after two seasons. Next to go was Luke Cage. It pains me to say it makes sense. Iron Fist really had no redeeming qualities. Luke cage at least had the soundtrack going for it. I managed to watch both shows because, a) my half-century-plus of watching TV has made me adept at fast forwarding through superfluous expository dialogue, and b) I still have the soul of an 11-year-old boy buying these comic books off the spinning rack at the drugstore for 15 cents. But from a dramatic standpoint there was nothing worth saving.

Like the beleaguered denizens of Hell's Kitchen, our last hope lies with Daredevil whose third season dropped this month. (I should note I have not watched Jessica Jones so I could be missing something, but I doubt it). And the hope is realistic. With a new showrunner Daredevil has taken a step up.

To repeat like a broken record, THERE IS STILL TOO MUCH TALKING. It's not as bad as it used to be, but it became clear that the problem has not been solved right off the bat when episode one was about forty minutes of exposition followed by a fairly pedestrian street fight. Everyone who wants to create an action drama should be required to watch the first ten minutes of Avengers: Age of Ultron, followed by the first ten minutes of Avengers: Infinity War. If after seeing those, you are content with a script that starts with twenty pages of dialogue, please tender your resignation. Using my personal superpower of exposition-spotting I was able to fast-forward through at least half of all the early episodes and not miss a beat. That might have dropped to 25 percent by the later episodes.

I should also add, that despite the slow start, by the end of the season I was fully sucked in and invested in the characters, even the ones that were so previously annoying. The dialogue, though too wordy, was at least not at the level of the infantile exchanges in the previous seasons. But the acting and casting of the roles was excellent and many of the actors showed something really special. I do think it was the actors themselves that sold me on this.

Daredevil benefits from themes of guilt and revenge that, despite the uneven presentation, are actually coherent. Matt Murdock, for all his hand-wringing holiness, doesn't hesitate to endanger his friends in pursuit of the villian. He frets over his sins, as he should, but that doesn't seem to stop him. There is a cost to heroics and the hero gets is wrong sometimes and the hero can be a jerk -- it makes things more interesting.

The now legendary villain, Wilson Fisk, is once again brought to life by the mighty Vincent D'onofrio. If think you don't know D'onofrio, you probably actually do. An actor of remarkable range -- Private Pyle in Full Metal Jacket, the military dude in Jurassic World, he's also a lead in one of those excruiting Law and Order series so he's skilled in handling inane dialogue -- he just nails the menace and malice of Fisk, even in the quietest scenes. (Non sequitur: he once held a job as Robert Plant's bodyguard.)

Stepping up acting-wise is Debra Ann Woll. She has to spend the bulk of the series on the edge of a breakdown from her guilt over killing someone in season one, her being in danger from Fisk because of her association with Daredevil, and her anger/concern for Matt Murdock and all his double-edged actions. There is a scene where she tries to contact her family for support but her father only offers superficial excuses but not a drop more; Woll just kills this scene, then gets what is essentially an origin episode, which is Emmy-worthy.

Daredevil's signature moment came in the hallway fight scene from season 1. Arguably, the expansion of the whole netflix Marvel universe was kickstarted from that moment. Well the fight scene in episode 4 of season 3 makes that one look quaint. An extended tracking shot during a prison break, Murdock has to fight his way through a squad of hit men only to be confronted by their crime boss and has to negotiate to get an escort through the remainder of the riot to the outside. It is technically astonishing, not just the length of the tracking shot, but the constant physical activities of the actors. It's one thing the track Henry and Karen Hill walking through the back of the house of the Copa, it's another to have your actors choreographing flips and flying kicks through multiple minutes, hitting marks and timing in concert with the camera. I'll look forward to reading the analysis of how it was done. Like I said, a technical marvel and a tribute to the cinematographic and choreographic skills of everyone involved. Still, it was not emotionally affecting as say the final battle against Thanos on Titan. (Will this guy not shut up about The Avengers?)

So overall a big step up for Daredevil. They have now reached the level of quality that could keep a standard broadcast TV show going indefinitely. No word on how Netflix feels about that yet. If the trend continues, future seasons could be something special.

One wonders where Netflix is going to go with the Marvel series (if anywhere). They won't get the rights to any more characters from Disney, who will want to keep them for their own streaming service, so unless Iron Fist and Luke Cage are actual money losers, you would think they'd rework them somehow (Heroes for Hire?).

Marvel TV series from non-Netflix outlets have been better. Agents of Shield has pretty much spent six years at the quality level Daredevil just touched. Legion is a confusing but highly creative experience. The late, lamented Agent Carter has so far been the only Marvel series that was actually excellent. My guess is Disney will get in the game directly next. TV fits better with more intimate stories so that would seem to eliminate things like the now in limbo Fantastic Four or X-men variations. Spiderman might work but why on Earth would you do anything to risk that glorious franchise?

I have no idea where all this is going, but wherever it goes, THERE NEEDS TO BE LESS TALKING. My fast-forward thumb keeps going into spasm.

Friday, October 05, 2018

The Month That Was - September 2018

Turning 58 (on the 13th) seems to be proof that I am not demonstratively bothered by my advanced age. At 58 you can no longer legitimately round down to "mid-fifties". You are now officially "pushing 60". And yet, I feel no particular crisis is upon me beyond that ongoing steady drop in enthusiasm for familiar activities that has been a persistent in my psyche for the last 10 years or so, and which I have written off as either the natural aging process or a growing sense of familiarity with, and therefore a certain contempt for, the ways of the world.

Accompanying this is also a growing resignation to myself and my limitations. My running pace, like my writing pace, seems to steadily dwindle. I like to take naps more than ever. I no longer delude myself that I can catch the eye of a young woman (it would be more easy to convince her I'm rich). But I am alert as ever and still fairly quick-witted. And healthy for the most part. I'm also good on the most important thing in life: maintaining a strong sense of absurdity, especially your own.

[TV] Toob Notes: Quick Takes
[Movies] Flick Check: Franchise Fodder
[Travel] Austin, Not So Weird
[Rant] Dave the Builder

[TV] Toob Notes: Quick Takes

Just some quick comments of what I've been watching.

Better Call Saul -- Remains the best show on television but this season has started a bit slow. The show lost quite a bit when the Chuck-Jimmy conflict ended. You can tell because perhaps the most striking dramatic moment of this season (so far) is when Jimmy realizes he's not getting reinstated because he couldn't bring himself to mention his brother's name. Things are coming to head, however, for Jimmy, Kim, and Mike. I expect a full on race to the finish starts now.

Lodge 49 -- Self-consciously bills itself as Lebowski for the small screen, and that's a good description, but I see a lot of John from Cincinatti in there too. Dysfunctional brother and sister make their way the weirdness of life and characters in Long Beach, CA. I don't know where it's going or what to make of it yet, and that may be the creators intent, but it is engaging and intriguing enough for me to come back every week. Strong cast, especially Sonya Cassidy. You need to be of a certain type of mind to appreciate it. I, evidently, am.

Rewind: Justified (2, 4, 6) -- Rewatched the even seasons, which were the best, but all are worth seeing if you missed it first run. So many great characters, so much wonderful dialog. Why can't all shows be written this well? I hope they never revive it, like...

...Magnum, P.I. Yes, they rebooted Magnum. It serves a purpose. It captures the good-natured, cheese-and-corn-on-a-tropical-island tone of the original and reminds us of how bad TV used to be (by comparison) and demonstrates that we watched it because there was nothing better. Also interesting are the casting decisions. Higgins is a hot chick and Magnum, well, I guess they figured there were no modern day Tom Sellecks so they went in the opposite direction and cast a small, pretty, hispanic boy. Oddly, they do pull it off to a certain extent. If you we're really hoping they'd bring more shows like Magnum P.I. back, well, wish granted. There are worse ways to spend an hour.

As for me I can't get over the contrast of a good '80s cop show (Magnum) with a good contemporary cop show (Justified). Night and day, my friends. Despite what you read, some things in this world get better.

[Movies] Flick Check: Franchise Fodder

A couple of recent entries in recently restarted blockbuster franchises became accessible on the small screen, so I checked them out. From the Star Wars universe we have...

Solo -- Overall, not bad, which puts it near the top for this franchise. A good origin story, if unoriginal. Ron Howard is nothing if not solid and reliable moviemaker. There were some minor struggles in tone with Han himself, wavering seemingly randomly between emotional seriousness and scruffy-looking swagger. Lando was a bit of a let down; Donald Glover is too chill for his own good sometimes. But other than that, a solid entry. It's interesting that the only good quality entries in this series since the original trilogy have been one-offs -- this and the very good Rogue One. The constraints of the core narrative seem to destroy any possibility of creative value in the main story.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom -- Overall, is pretty bad. All the infantile tropes are on display: the greedy and violent rich are despoiling the world for their own greedy and violent purposes; Jeff Goldblum lectures like a 14-year-old who thinks he's deep. It is just inane. The action is pretty good, if horrific. But that raises the question, Who is this movie for? For children? They might not notice the dumb storyline, but the scenes of dinosaurs eating people and menacing children in their beds is the kind of thing that would cause kids to demand to sleep with mommy and daddy. For adults? In that case, the plot and dialogue is just insulting. I don't know what to make of this other than to say it's just not a good movie. I think this franchise could be saved, but clearly not by the folks running it now.

Part of me is also ho hum about all this because Marvel has cast such a shadow of this genre that everything else seems like background music by comparison. These old school franchises have no idea how to catch up.

[Travel] Austin, Not So Weird

I spent three nights in Austin. It's not so weird. In fact, it is a quintessential college town writ large. If you have been following my travel posts from the past nearly two decades, you know anytime I get to a college town or hipster enclave (Ithaca, Ashville) I start to draw comparisons to Ann Arbor. Austin, while probably four times the size of Ann Arbor, still has the strong vibe of a college town, being the home of the nearly Michigan-sized University of Texas. Throw in its standing as a tech hub second only to Silicon Valley and you get upper middle class hipster paradise.

If Austin was once weird, it is no longer. Food trucks featuring outlandish combinations of flavors are no longer unusual. Dirty 6th street -- kind of like a slightly less psychotic version of Bourbon Street -- is fun and can be crazy, but it's not weird. Bird scooters? Don't make me laugh.

There is an interesting spot called Graffiti Park which is a series of walls that were set to be demolished for condos, but when people started filling them with graffiti it became an iconic landmark and the condos were forestalled. It is actually a pretty cool thing; some of the artists are quite talented, but nothing is sacred. A beautiful panel can be covered by any idiot with a spray can before it even gets seen, with no recourse except of course to repaint over it I suppose. Impressive that it doesn't descend into scatology and the lurid. There is a lot of cool artwork to see and it changes all the time. It qualifies as moderately weird but the weirdness is mitigated because money is money and the real estate is too valuable not to build on. So they are moving it to the outskirts of the city by the airport where it will be at least partially controlled and dedicated to "legitimate" graffiti artists, sanctioned by the government probably. Ah well. Like I said, the weird is gone and the gentry has a firm grip on everything.

Probably the last truly weird thing in Austin is the bats. The Congress Avenue bridge crosses the Colorado river in the heart of Austin. In 1980, it was rebuilt in such a way that there were crevices lining the underside of the bridge. Turns out, bats love crevices. Were you to walk under the bridge during the day, you would have no idea that above your head were in excess of a million bats. Just before dusk, the top of the bridge is covered with hundreds of humans who have gathered to watch the million or so bats emerge in a swarm from below. They flow out like a billowing cloud of smoke that lasts for many minutes as they stream upriver in search of bugs to eat. Very cool thing to see. Recommended, but be advised, bats smell. Bad.

(Aside: I don't think can I count the number of places I have seen the Colorado River. From as far north as Westwater, UT to Lake Havasu, AZ in the south. It would be an interesting project to retrace all my travels through the West and pick out all the stops I've made along the river.)

All this lack of weird doesn't mean Austin isn't a great place to visit. It is. There are tons of things to do and an incredibly energetic vibe anywhere you go. Even a trip to the capitol building is of interest, which would normally be the least interesting thing in the world.

And then, of course, there is the live music. All up and down 6th street and hundreds of other places. Most folks know of the Moody Theatre where Austin City Limits is held -- there is a statue of Willie Nelson out front -- but it's only one of many storied venues.

Endless options for food and drink and music are the core of Austin's particular brand of cool. Still, it is not without its downsides. It is not green, in the sense of verdant. Oh there are parks and greenways and such, but you will never doubt that you are in a major city in the throes of booming building and development. They joke that the official bird of Austin is the crane (Do I have to explain it?).

The bigger problem is the traffic, as you would expect. There are no major freeways that will get you directly to Austin, at some point in your approach you are going to get dumped off onto four lane roads. At that point you better hope you timed things right or you might as well get comfortable. If there is a Longhorns game you might as well get a room at a motel outside town. Driving in the city itself is not much better and parking is a savage beatdown. If there is any place you want to Uber around, it's Austin. Maybe those Bird Scooters make sense after all.

I can understand why Austin is growing like it is. If I was a young tech exec or a student free riding on the 'rents, it would be at the top of my list. It would be a little too intense for me now, given my age and habits, but I do hope to visit again -- maybe catch the F1 race one year or a good Austin City Limits headliner or just snag some interesting food. The energy is infectious.

[Rant] Dave the Builder

I am decidedly not handy. This is quite clear to me. Oh I can get some basic stuff done -- replace a ceiling fan or light fixture, change the air filters in my car (you'd be surprised how much that saves you), paint a bedroom, etc. -- but if something goes awry all bets are off. You know how you can be following a youtube how-to video which tells you to remove a ramastat with an adjustable whichamacallit, except your whichamacallit doesn't fit and the ramastat is actually a thingamajig? At that point I'm toast. Improvised handiness is beyond me. (This is especially true of bike maintenance, it turns out.) So I was really quite proud of myself for building a catio. That's not a typo -- a catio.

My house abuts a huge swath of protected wetlands. This has its pluses and minuses. It affords me privacy and nice view out my back window. I also get an abundance of wildlife. Deer, sometimes in groups of eight or ten, traipse through my backyard (although less so now that I've learned to plant deer-resistant flowers), there is a troupe of wild turkeys that parade about, bunnies abound, squirrels and chipmunks in uncountable numbers, racoons, fox, and even coyotes -- it's like Wild Kingdom back there.

Currently I have a houseguest that is the owner of a siamese cat. Needless to say, the cat likes to go outside. I don't know why. Given the size of my house, she has run of an area that is likely not much smaller than the relative territory of a Bengal tiger. Still, one can't dump the cat out the back door because there is no way a siamese cat that will look a live mouse in the face walk away to get ear scratches would last more than five minutes out in the wilds behind my house.

The best option was to take the cat out on my deck (which is elevated to second story level) but the cat would make a beeline for certain death if not restrained. There was only one solution. I needed to build an enclosure so the cat could be left to wander the deck but not escape.

At this point you are no doubt smirking and saying "What could possibly go wrong?" Well, I'll tell you: Nothing. I bought some lumber and chicken wire, measured everything ten times before I cut. Bought a couple of better quality tools. Thought about everything -- sometimes for days -- before I took action, but I completed the catio. It is ugly, but can easily be disassembled and removed in 15-20 minutes. There are things I would have done differently, but still, I did it without losing any fingers or putting out an eye. To any skilled craftsman, I'm sure it would be a source of comedy. But it works, and I did it myself.

It was a good lesson to (re)learn. Trying something new, without fearing probable failure is always rewarding. If there is one thing I could change about myself it would be to not be so afraid to fail. It would be convenient to blame this on my childhood environment, where any mistakes opened you to shame and derision, but I'm 58 and my window for blaming things on my childhood closed decades ago. I have to keep doing things like this -- to make myself keep doing things like this. It's even more important as I age and get more and more comfortable with those limitations I discussed above. As they ask in Tough Mudder, "When was the last time you did something for the first time?"

For now, I'm just going to keep doing the little projects and maybe next summer, if my houseguest is still here, I'll build a bigger, better catio. Actually, my next goal should be taking on a bike upgrade over the winter without screwing it up so royally I have to call in a professional. When you see me on HGTV, you'll know I've arrived.

But first I have to go make sure my health insurance covers accidental dismemberment.

Sunday, September 09, 2018

The Month That Was - August 2018

I feel a change has manifested, but I can't put my finger on it. The grip of certain activities -- things that provided the motive force for my life -- are weakening in their grip. Writing has become a struggle (although some of that is just the place I am in the process in my current book). Travel doesn't provide the same sense of adventure. Participating in races is getting more and more difficult. I'm even running out of things to say on this site and have given thought to shutting it down, or at least taking a break. After all, I've been at this in one way or a another for nearly 20 years.

I don't know whether tis is temporary or if it is indicative of some sort of sea change. But it goes hand-in-hand with the sense that I am increasingly distanced from the affairs of the world. I hate to navel gaze, but I fear there may be more to come on this topic.

[[Movies] Infinite Blockbuster
[Movies] More Dead, More Pool
[Tech] Tech I Almost Like
[Rant] Anti-Anti-Social

[Movies] Infinite Blockbuster

Very much The Empire Strikes Back. A dark episode, marvelously handled. Nothing goes the Avengers way yet they still fight on, crack wise, and keep hope alive.

One of the biggest movies in history, but it is dependent on you having seen many earlier films to follow the details, not to mention know the characters. I would have thought such a thing could not be done. It shows how deeply ingrained this series already is in our culture.

RDJ/Ironman stands out here. His path and his interactions with the characters he crosses are the best, although the Thor/Starlord meeting is a gem. I don't have to recap what was good because it's the same good stuff you've seen in all the other films, only more so. This movie is unbelievably action dense, and I mean that in the sense that physical action is deeply intertwined with the dramatic action of moving the plot and characters forward. In most films you have action (bang, boom) then pauses to advance the setting (dramatic action) for the next bit of bang-boom action. Separating them opens you to the trap of pointless pyrotechnics or worse, extensive exposition. Not here. I would be willing to bet there are never more than 3 minutes of talk without activity and any explanations are given ether as a single line or in the course of battle.

Was there anything to dislike? Well, Peter Dinklage was poorly used. The Black Panther is still painfully sincere and haughty. I don't think Ruffalo or Johansen were at their best -- their lines didn't seem all that well delivered, and I still struggle with Cumberbatch's American accent. This is niggling.

I have argued before that blockbuster action films are this era's premier creative achievement -- like classic rock in the '60s, or auteur TV in the aughts. In the Blockbuster Action era, Infinity War, and Avengers 4 next year, could be the peak -- like Sgt. Pepper or Sopranos. When it's all over I may spiral into depression. I'm sure what will follow on will be watered down replacement heroes and race and gender stunt casting. With any luck I'll be gone by the time the reboots start.

I'm just delighted these stories from my adolescence have come alive so wonderfully at this point in my life. It's almost like a form of closure.

[Movies] More Dead, More Pool

Deadpool 2 is Infinity War's near-equal, but in a different, more R-rated way. In a Deadpool movie, nothing is respected. Nothing. The 4th wall does not exist. Characters are created, just for the sake of a couple of funny lines or a spot of endearing sympathy, then are given blackley comedic, horrendously violent deaths. There is not a rule that is left unbroken, cultural or cinematic. After the first one I questioned whether they could keep the self-referential, middle-finger gimmickry fresh. They did. If anything, the only parts that fall flat are when they don't just say WTF and instead try to have a human story.

Like I said, they have done the opposite of what makes a great movie and have made a great movie. I can't figure it out, but don't ever change.

[Tech] Tech I Almost Like

My car is now fully sorted at over 80k. It's finally living up to the promise of Acura -- steady, strong, reliable. Of course as a 2014 car from a model run that started in 2009, it is also hopelessly outdated. The nav and audio are looking decrepit, connecting my phone is an adventure is pointlessness. I fail to understand why your auto infotainment has to be stuck at the point you bought it. Why cannot this get upgraded like virtually all other electronics? Still, I'd like to get 2 or 3 more years of no car payments out of it.

My new phone (Moto G6) is hanging in there. It is roughly on par with my old phone functionally, though a bit faster and with what seems like nearly double the battery life. Android remains a usability dumpster fire, and until now I have successfully fought off Apple, but...

There is only one thing that would make me buy an Apple device and that is if the price was Free. Well, as a 25th anniversary gift from work, I received an Apple iPad. I am treating it as an experiment. The best outcome is that it replaces my laptop during travel. The worst is that it replaces my ancient Samsung tab which can barely play solitaire without lagging and whos primary use is as an alarm clock and kindle reader. More to come.

I have not cut the cord with cable and I am suspicious of how much it actually would save me. I suspect not much. If I switched to internet service only, the first thing Charter would do is jack up the price of it. Then, let's say there were 5 pay services I wanted to subscribe to at $10-12/month, I would probably not be saving all that much money. Does 5 seem like a lot? Remember virtually every broadcast and cable network is building their own service with a plan to no longer licence stuff to Netflix or Amazon. That's gonna get worse, too. I do wish Charter would come out with something to replace that god awful, 1980s-era cable box. I gotta figure everything it does could fit on a chip now. Of course, at the rate they're losing customers, they have bigger problems. No idea how all this is going to fall out.

In truth, virtually all my tech is need of upgrade. My laptop is multiple years old; the touchpad is balky and the power cord is flaky. My DSLR, a Canon EOS, is hanging in there, but honestly it has never taken the same quality photos as my old Nikon; probably due to a poorer, lens, yes, but I understand Fuji is doing some amazing stuff with their latest line of mirrorless cameras and lenses. Even my beautiful Panasonic 65" plasma -- last of the plasmas -- is long in the tooth and aching to be replaced by an 85" smart 4k OLED. Maybe a wholesale tech-life upgrade is in order. Not this year, though. I can only afford to piss away one small fortune at a time.

[Rant] Anti-Anti-Social

facebook popped up a reminder that I have been with them for eight years. And I was a latecomer I think. Unlike the negativity you read in op-eds, I find it a pretty constructive and convenient way to keep up with friends. I suspect for most people it works exactly that way. I have found that by liking certain pages or joining certain groups, I get a pretty relevant news feed, much more so than any haphazard consumer profiling algorithm (although I know they do that too -- and even those are pretty much on target).

My experience with facebook makes me one of the few people who have a positive view of being profiled by marketers. I get a lot of promotions for races and fitness stuff and travel, because that is my real life social circle. I click on them out of organic interest and that reinforces the behavior. Overall it's much better than the ads for over-40 dating and male enhancement pills that I used to get when all they knew about me was that I was an aging male.

I admit that it's a little freaky when I shop for something on Amazon and, within seconds, ads for similar products appear in facebook. Still I don't see the harm or what everyone is up in arms about. I am quite happy to have retailers battling for my eyeballs. I know there are fears of information about your habits freely floating around, but it's been quite remarkable how quickly the developed world has built in legal and technical safeguards to defend against this. Laws have been written such that any organization that gathers truly personal information would instantly become a criminal enterprise by using beyond it's explicitly intended purpose. The Europeans have GDPR now, and since everything is connected globally, it might as well be in place for the entire world. (That's why you suddenly got all those pop-ups asking you to accept security policies suddenly appear on your favorite sites recently).

Note: It's not the brave new technological world that puts your info at risk. Don't delude yourself that you ever had protection against criminals who wanted your info. It is vastly easier for me to steal your snail mail right out of your box, than to hack your bank's server.

Yes, I have some "friends" who reflexively share inane political memes, but they are easy to ignore and it's a small price. So, unlike most, I'm good with facebook. I especially love the local groups that serve the small community live in. They are peppered with people reporting lost and wandering dogs or farm animals, arguing about local road construction issues, engaging in nostalgia, or expressing joy at the fact that the local high school football team just won their first game in five years. I really think this may end up being facebook's highest purpose.

And that's where I draw the line at social media.
  • I don't understand what Instagram is that facebook isn't, other than photo oriented. I think if I understood it better I might join, but I would need a practical reason, not just for the sake of entertainment.
  • I have a Twitter account, although I have never tweeted. Have you ever seen Twitter. It is a cesspool. You know how a dog will pee on a fire hydrant, then another dog will come and pee on top of it, then another dog pees on top of that. That's Twitter.
  • I never understood Snapchat and I still don't. It strikes me as a platform for people to do lurid things then leave no trace. So, kind of like before there was social media. Hmmm, maybe that's it. Providing idiots the promise of the past world, where not every dumbass thing you did lived forever in some data center. Of course, it's a false promise with respect to Snapchat because people can screenshot anything.
The fears of the horrible effects of social media on the culture are, I think, very overblown. Yes, it is possible to fire up a witch hunt in short order, but it's also much easier to counter it with the truth. Yes, the attention span can shorten, but some of that is efficiency, is it not? If I spend less time on my interests it's not necessarily because I care less, I just get the info I need from glancing at my phone instead of rifling through documents.

Since I use it, it's no surprise that facebook has gained a reputation as a site for old folks. Young'uns like Instagram or Snapchat. (Actually most young people I know primarily use SMS more than social networks for communication which is also encouraging. It's not social it's personal.) But I strongly suspect all of these mediums will converge on a main feature set and become an oligopoly, maybe including WeChat from China. If social forces still keep them in check and we avoid giving the government too much power over them, at some point in the future we will end up with them so deeply interwoven into our culture that it will be hard to remember life without them.

Monday, August 06, 2018

The Month That Was - July 2018

It was a time of drought and scorched lawns. Biking was big -- I purchased a (used) mountain bike and began riding the trails and gravel roads in addition to my typical road cycling. I am shaky, but improving, on the trails. On the road, no century this year. Looks like the long ride will be 62 miles. Of course, I remain one of the five people in North america who follows the Tour de France every year -- see below.

But generally things are still good. My complaints, such as they are, aren't just First World complaints, they are upper middle class complaints. That's what I am; what sort of complaints were you expecting?

I notice that, not only haven't I been writing, I also haven't been reading. Over a month with no book going-on of any sort. That is worrisome.

Also, I find myself getting dizzy when I stand up. That is more worrisome.

Yes, everything is good.

[Tech] Phone Follies
[Travel] The Mitten Views The Fingers
[Sports] Tour de Familiar

[Tech] Phone Follies

My phone died. This statement ranks along with “I lost my wallet” and “My sump pump failed” for an indicator that you have a painful, and possibly expensive, few days ahead. So yes, just beyond warranty, my Google Fi sourced Nexus 5x failed. Unrecoverable even after chats with Google’s support team. That puts a man to a decision.

First did I want to continue with the Fi service? Answer: Not really. Fi has some good features, namely a low price that doesn’t really make you buy a set amount of data. You pay up front for a GB/month, then you are charged for over but also credited a certain amount if you don’t use it all. It also moves seamlessly from cell to wi-fi even for calls and texts. And, I am told, it has seamless transition across national boundaries so you don't have to worry about buy international minutes or extreme roaming charges.

But, for me, it’s use of either the Sprint or T-Mobile network based on signal strength was a problem. First, it didn't always switch between the two when it should. I bought a little app that could force it to switch and I often found that I would be sitting there with no bars and have to force a switch to the other service to get a signal. Worse, in a problem that is likely specific to me, I seem to spend my time in places with dicey signals on both those services. A road trip to Northern Michigan could leave me signaless for quite some time, interrupting streaming. And it turns out that at the building I work I would often arrive to no signal at all in the morning only to have it back up to four bars by the end of the work day. Not a big deal because I obviously had wifi there, but it was more evidence of flakiness.

The answer was to switch back to Verizon, it is really the only reliable signal in my circle of operation. The cool thing is you can go with their cheap virtual network Total Wireless. Virtuals use the same towers and have the same coverage as their parents so service is identical, unless the network gets overloaded and they need to de-prioritize signals, and you also lose your roaming agreements. That should be fine I reasoned and it looked like I could get 4 gig data pretty close to the price of Fi. That was when the comedy began.

My first plan is to buy an unlocked high-end Samsung Galaxy S -- mostly for the fabulous camera. I find the lowest price at Walmart and proceed to order one online to pick up after work. Once there I go to the pick-up kiosk, but they have no record of my order. I show them the print out -- they call the manager. Manager says sorry can’t find the order, I say fine, just cancel the online order and I’ll buy one from your current stock. “I can’t cancel that. You’ll have to do it on your phone.” “(deadpan) The phone I am trying to buy?” “Oh, then you’ll have to do it on the website.” Not willing to take the risk of getting double-charged for an expensive phone and having to sort that out, I leave phoneless, cancel the order on the website, and vow never to go back to Walmart.

Next day and I have changed my mind: I don’t need a high end phone, like I’m some kind of billionaire. I settle on a Moto G6 which is about a 1/4 of the price of the Samsung, but still miles ahead of my old Nexus 5x in capability. So now at Target, I pick up the phone and a $1 sim card (which even says “Verizon compatible” on it.) I am now ready to migrate my number to the new phone.

Bless Fi in that they make it very easy for anyone to leave them. You click a couple of buttons on a Google website and it passes you the information you need for your new carrier -- the key being an internal account number. That is, unless the carrier is Total Wireless. It turns out that whatever software Total Wireless uses doesn't know about Fi and doesn't recognize Fi account numbers. No amount of cajoling and sending documentation can convince them that the Fi account number was legitimate. They offer to activate the phone but under a new number. Unacceptable. Frustrated and angry I resign myself to signing up for some ridiculously expensive plan from Verizon proper.

This part actually works out well for me. Verizon is running a promotion where you get 6 GB of data for the price of 3. So for under $50/month I sign up for 6GB. That’s about $20 more than I was paying Fi, but in exchange I get a strong signal and I don’t have to worry about streaming or navigation pushing my data to an extra charge.

Feeling better, I work out all the details with the online rep. She lets me know I’ll be getting a sim in a couple of days. Cool, but could I speed up the process by just stopping by my local Verizon store and getting a sim on the way home? “Sure!” she says the way a salesman always says yes.

First I decide to try the Total Wireless sim I had from my previous attempt since it said “Verizon Compatible” on it. Narrator: It was not Verizon Compatible.

Second thing I do is go the Verizon store down the street and see if they’ll give me a sim. They cannot find a record of me despite the print out of the sales receipt I have from the online sale. They conclude that it’s because they are a franchisee or something, not an actual company store. So they give me directions to the nearest company store.

I drive to the company store where I talk to a confused rep who, with effort, understands what I am trying to accomplish but can’t fathom why I wouldn’t want to wait for the sim they sent. But he sells me sim for a $1 anyway, telling me he’s not confident it will work because of “where I am in the process”. At least he’s honest.

And he’s right, it doesn’t work. I have wasted a couple of days and experienced ongoing frustration by trying to do things as quickly as possible. I end up waiting for “the process” to complete.

In the end I got my sim a couple of days later and was able to get the phone set up. Google actually made that pretty easy. All the photos and contacts transferred transparently. It even tried to reinstall my apps, but for some reason it installed the apps that were on my beat up old tablet not my previous phone, so I had a little work to do there.

Still, the whole fiasco was instructive. It is very easy to see how Amazon is crushing retailers, even those as big as Walmart. The only reason to go brick-and-mortar is because you need a human to make an allowance for what you want. You need an exception that requires special judgement or knowledge. If you are content to follow a process, the human just becomes a button pusher and Amazon’s robots can push buttons a lot better and faster. Literally everyone I encountered in retails stores during this comedy couldn’t step outside the process. Walmart couldn’t cancel and order they lost and found themselves out of my phone purchase. Total Wireless reps had no ability to handle a new situation that their system didn’t support. Verizon can’t fathom that someone might want to stop at one of the multiple Verizon stores they pass on the way home to pick up a sim (and save them the shipping), rather than wait a couple of days for snail mail. If all your brick-and-mortar investment produces is a pack of button pushers, Amazon’s robots will destroy you. They are going to continue to eat your lunch, wear your clothes, and steal your girlfriend.

Naturally, a week later, during Prime Day, the next model up Moto phone was on sale for what I paid for mine. Amazon giveth and Amazon taketh away.

[Travel] The Mitten Views the Fingers

I kept referring to the Finger Lakes region as Upstate until I was told it was absolutely not Upstate. To me anything west of the Hudson was Upstate, but I gather Upstate proper is toward the Adirondacks, or at least something north from Albany. The Finger Lakes is the Finger Lakes.

My impression of the Finger Lakes region of New York is that it is very similar to what we in Michigan call Up North. It's as green as green can be. Two lane roads wind among the lakes taking you from small town to small town. Most recreation involves lake activities of some sort, if even just a picnic in a lakeside park. Roadside stands and farmers markets offer local edibles. Deer scurry about, giving drivers heart attacks. There are festivals every weekend for any excuse you can find. Bicyclists troll the highways and trails. Village cafes and antique shops are humming. Brewery and winery (and increasingly, distillery) tours are overbooked. It's all just a way to value our beautiful summers which always seem so fleeting. I guess you'd call it Lake Culture.

New York is, however, a good deal more hilly. Using Ithaca as a base of operations, this becomes clear. Wandering Ithaca will build up your quads. Many sidewalk stretches are a steep as a mountain trail out west.

Ithaca is a college town, so as a veteran of Ann Arbor life it was very familiar to me. Surrounding the university -- or universities in this case: Cornell and Ithaca College -- there is the standard region of run down houses that have been converted into multi-unit rentals. Step further out and you get the upper middle class housing of the admins and professors and such. If you're at the real high-end you are on a lake or a river. More than one resident said the typical story is that someone comes to Cornell for school and just stays in town -- I know that story well.

Another thing Ithaca and Ann Arbor have in common is parks and general greenery. I think folks from standard big city suburbs would be surprised at how thickly treed and lushly verdant these places are. And then there is the predominance of parks -- city park, county parks, state parks -- usually situated around rivers of lakes. Maybe Park Culture would be a better euphemism.

But whereas Ann Arbor's geography provides nothing more than rolling hills, Ithaca is borderline mountainous with lovely deep gorges for scenery -- hence their tagline: Ithaca is Gorges. The result is that you get all the recreational capabilities of my home base, but also waterfalls. Ithaca Falls, right in town, is postcard perfect. The lakes are peppered with state parks, several of them have waterfalls (overview), a couple of them even swimmable -- not the falls themselves but the pools at the bottom. The main swimmable one is at Robert Treman State Park. On a hot Saturday it is as crowded as any public beach, but a good deal more scenic. The water is cold but refreshing. Congrats to the NY State Park system for rolling with the desire to swim, rather than ban any activity in the service of preserving nature. They even have a diving board set up. This is actually a big plus over my home, which I don't really have a counter for.

Although most of the falls are situated in close proximity to parking, there are also hikes you can take through the parks -- mostly short, a mile or so, but very steep and usually offering good views. The paths are paved or at least hard packed -- I was able to do them in sandals.

There are also wineries nearby. Dozens of them. This is a big grape growing region and wine tours are the order of the day. Again comparing: we have a number of wineries in Michigan, mostly Up North, but I don't think they quite have the reputation of the NYS wines. (Michigan is stronger in breweries.) Michigan wineries occasionally have B&Bs attached to them so you can actually stay at the winery, whereas I saw no such thing in NY. The wineries range from quite lovely with great views to a dark room with plastic tables. If you are so inclined I highly recommend doing this as part of packaged tour rather than trolling them on your own. You'll get better service and more swag, but more importantly, you won't have to drive. Honestly, after tastings at three wineries and you're a DUI waiting to happen. And a sloshed tour group can be good entertainment in itself.

Ithaca and Watkins Glen are the key towns in the area, situated at the bottom tip of lakes Cayuga and Seneca, respectively. Ithaca is a little more cosmopolitan because of the universities -- more dining options and so forth -- Watkins Glen a little more homey. Another, smaller town that has gained a bit of notoriety is Skaneateles -- which in the tongue of the locals comes out sounding like "Skinny-Atlas." It is situated at the top end of Lake Skaneateles and is famous because that is where the Clintons settled when Hillary decided she was going to make New York her home state for her senate run.

It's not surprising. Skaneateles is the Kennebunkport or Martha's Vineyard of New York. Unmistakably wealthy, yet conspicuously understated and self-consciously folksy. The short main street is loaded with homespun boutiques and antique shops. There are a couple of nice restaurants where you no doubt can get a carefully prepared entree (possibly deconstructed comfort food, or something with avocado) and a glass of wine from a fashionable winery. Then there is a Doug's Fish Fry which serves as the stylishly kitsch, street-food eatery that "everybody goes to."

I'm being snide towards the hipster elite vibe of Skaneateles, but I would live there. It's lovely, and well taken care of. There are lake activities, including little cruise boats that run tours. I bet the infrastructure is second to none. Like I said, it's essentially a high-end New England preppy town transplanted to mid-NY, which is a very nice thing. It's crowded, though. On the weekends everyone in the area comes into town to stroll and shop. Who can blame them?

Lastly, I have to offer a strong recommendation for Inn on Columbia in Ithaca. A non-traditional B&B, there are a couple of separate residences filled with interesting design and decor. The owners collect old cars and motorcycles which are sprinkled about the property. But the real plus is breakfast. Everything fresh made. Some of the best egg dishes I have ever had. It is in (hilly) walking distance to everything of interest in Ithaca. Couple all that with the most genial hosts imaginable and it's a real winner.

Needless to say I like the Finger Lakes region. It is best done with a car and a skeleton plan for exploration, then let the chips fall. It is supports a lifestyle familiar to me, but with enough variation to make it interesting. If it was half of the nine hour drive to get there I'd probably spend a lot of time in the Finger Lakes. As it stands for me, Up North is closer and the lakes are Greater. If you aren't from a similar area, it's a good place to experience Lake Culture or Park Culture or a place where summers are a gift that doesn't last. You may become a regular.

[Sports] Tour de Familiar

Poor Chris Froome. Nobody likes him. A four time champ and the chief guy on the strongest team, he was the overdog to begin with. He was brushed by scandal, and I do mean brushed. He tested high for an asthma medication which he has been prescribed (he does have asthma), so it's not like he was mainlining EPO. But still, in an age when riders target the TdF by skipping the major races earlier in the season so as not to wear themselves out, with his eligibility uncertain he took on the big early-season race, the Giro d'Italia (the Italian tour), and won it, wearing himself out in the process. Only then he was cleared of the charges and lined up with his team for the TdF, amidst the sancitmonious boos of the crowd. His fatigue showed. Although he was in the hunt most of the way, and finished third, a couple of deadly mountain stages made it clear he was not where he needed to be. Much speculation was that he was mentally exhausted from his fight against the ban, but in reality it was more likely physical. I have once in my life ridden 100 miles at half the pace these guys do, and it took me a few days to recover. These guys do it at twice my pace day after day. Granted they are about half my weight and less than half my age but, with all due respect to ultra-marathoners, channel swimmers, ironman triathletes, and such, the 21-days-with-only-two-rest-days aspect of this race makes these guys the most amazing endurance athletes on the planet.

Of course, in what is a clear commentary on one of the problems with the Tour, with Froome not able to win, his team, Team Sky, simply trotted out the next guy in line and won handily with him instead -- that would be Geraint Thomas. Team Sky has all the money. Their stable of riders is so deep that -- in one of the worst cases of bad timing -- last year's second banana Mikel Landa left rather than be second banana again so Team Sky just went to the next guy in line and never lost a step leaving Landa and his new team in the dust. In fact, the Team Sky's second banana from two years ago, Richie Porte, also left to be a first banana on a new team and was a favorite until he crashed out.

Predictability in sports is a problem. If you can predict the outcome with high probability it lessens the fan experience and discourages viewing. Sponsors don't like that. It's unclear how to resolve this problem other than to hope one year, one of these second bananas that strikes out on his own, comes through.

Another thing is the PED scandals still loom large over this sport. Froome got booed despite being cleared. Then, there is the highest of the high profile culprits, Lance Armstrong, still floating around the periphery. He's now doing a podcast where he often discusses cycling. He is working really had to rehabilitate his persona. To his credit, he doesn't dodge blame anymore. He seems to have accepted his guilt and that it will follow him forever. I don't know if it's good or bad that he's still around the sport, whether he is helping put the scandals in context or he is just reminding everyone of sad situation. I do know that watching Geraint Thomas win handily, with enough juice at the end to handily crush any challenge from other riders, the first thought that went through my head was, "Are there Vegas odds on him getting busted for EPO?"

The TV coverage needs a lot of work. The announcers are OK -- a couple of them get confused about things or say silly stuff, but they have enough personality to keep things lively. But you often get haphazard camera work, since it's all done from vehicles trying to maneuver through the crowd of cyclists without interfering with the race. An enlightened coverage package would plant forward and rear facing cameras on all the bikes with live streaming -- this is not remotely beyond the technical expertise of a production crew. If they were really smart, they'd have drone coverage too.

Still, the Tour is beautiful. The French countryside is amazing. And even if the big prize is foreordained, there are the other competitions, the sprints, the mountains, the stage victories, to keep things interesting. Also, for me, the attraction is that I can relate to everything that happens. I can see who making what choice as to heavy or light gear. I know how much easier it is to draft. I know what it's like to climb past the point of pain. And I know what it's like to crack. In my own small way, of course. I suppose that's part of the attraction for me -- I can go out and do a 40 mile ride on a Saturday, them catch up with the prime time replay in the evening, feeling a distant kinship.

A distant kinship to a 23-year-old, 135-lb Belgian in spandex. Very distant.

Monday, July 09, 2018

The Month That Was - June 2018

Stupid. I do stupid thoughtless things all the time but this month was wall-to-wall screw ups. Honestly, from simple things like forgetting appointments and meetings, to screwing up bike maintenance through thoughtlessness, to buying things I already have, I really feel like I took a big step toward senescence. I guess we'll see whether it's an anomalous stretch of time or the the new normal.

And, as is often the case, I don't know where the month went or how I what I did during it. But that's a pretty typical state of affairs for me.

[TV] Toob Notes
[Travel] Galveston, Oh Galveston
[Rant] Not a Good Fit

[TV] Toob Notes

Luke Cage, the second season of the bulletproof brutha from Marvel's TVs universe dropped as a full season on Netflix. Like everyone else who watched it, I thought it was half-again too long and full of too much talky exposition. (It would seem like both problems have the same solution.) Dramatically it lacked cohesiveness and the tone was haphazard. Early on it was all about hostile, destructive, and greedy people pursuing power and justifying their actions by referencing past grievances or difficult childhoods or both. And racism. Yawn. Worse, the action sequences were sporadic and weren't particularly well done. So why don't I think Luke Cage sucks?

Well, as with the first season, the soundtrack is exceptional. There were many points where I wanted to hit the web and search for artists. Second, it was somewhat redeemed by the acting. The inane and irrational dialogue was often redeemed by a good reading (the late Reg Cathey in particular). Third, although the action was too rare and too lame, some of the cinematography and set design in the quieter moments was fascinating. Lastly, and most interestingly, the final episode setup a situation where a real, complicated, and philosophical theme could be explored. When the criminal boss of Harlem was eliminated things didn't get better, in the vacuum they got worse and more violent. Cage is now set up as the guy who, operating outside the law, will keep the peace -- the benevolent dictator. He's convinced he can handle his new power without becoming falling into corruption himself. This is stuff of potentially Greek-level human tragedy. The Godfather theme is intentional and unmistakable. Will the writers nail it the third season? Will they shirk the histrionic melodrama and crank out a story for the ages? I have seen no evidence they are up to the task, but I hope so.

Brockmire, also has axes to grind, but his are more personal. The comedic moments are ace as functional alcoholic Brockmire self-destructs over and over again in assorted absurd ways. Hank Azaria is wonderful and his devotion to Brockmire as his pride and joy shines through. This season, his sidekick Charles (Tyrel WIlliams) shines especially bright. But the sparkle of the first season is gone. Brockmire's professional prospects are whipsawed back and forth as way to send him into a spiral. His connections with others are used as props to emphasize his dysfunction rather than as fully realized relationships. It feels more manufactured.

Still, there are plenty of guffaws to see it through. And in the final episode they have taken a huge chance of getting Brockmire clean and sober. Not sure how it affects their prospects going forward, but I suppose we'll find out.

[Travel] Galveston, Oh Galveston

From what I gather, at the tail end of the 19th century Galveston was primed to become one of the great beachside communities in the country, filled with straw hat resorts and high-end real estate. It has a nice broad beach and all the sun you could ask for. There were some high sand dunes but at no small expense they managed to remove them for even easier beach access. It was, after all, one of the wealthiest places in the nation, so why not. Of course, this backfired when the hurricane arrived in 1900.

The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 was the greatest natural disaster in American history. The storm surge submerged the entire island under 6 feet of water. Wikipedia:
The dead bodies were so numerous that burying all of them was impossible. The dead were initially weighted down on barges and dumped at sea, but when the gulf currents washed many of the bodies back onto the beach, a new solution was needed. Funeral pyres were set up on the beaches, or wherever dead bodies were found, and burned day and night for several weeks after the storm.
Galveston never really recovered. Development in the area shifted inland to a little town called Houston. In fact, by the 1920s a channel was dredged thirty miles inland for ocean going ships to bypass Galveston and dock right outside Houston. That was that for Galveston as a big time economic center.

Over the last century Galveston has clawed its way back to viability. They built a big old seawall that offers them some protection against all but the worst hurricanes. Unfortunately, Harvey in 2017 was just that -- one of the worst. Once again Galveston was pretty much submerged, but this time, less than a year later, everything is pretty much back to normal. Hurricanes loom large in the Galvestonian culture. You see "high water marks" on many of the buildings and most new houses are built on stilts.

Galveston today is effectively the Jersey Shore for all of the explosively growing Houston/Austin corridor. It is bigger than a beach town, but not really a full-on coastal city in that its only real industry is visitors. It is an intriguing mix of hipster resorts, prole-ish amusements, history, and to some extent, natural beauty.

There is a main tourist area which harbors all the hotels, everything from high-end resorts to dive motels. I can recommend the Hotel Galvez -- it has likely the only place on the island that approaches fine dining, including an astonishing Sunday brunch, and it has a lovely salt water pool. Most of the properties in this area are across the street, or within a block, from the seawall. On the other side of the seawall is, of course, the beach. The seawall walk is active, lots of pedestrians and cyclists. The beach itself is very broad and the sand, while not the powder fine variety you get across the gulf, is decent. The water is swimmable, but quite brown; it is after all effectively the runoff from the Mississippi river before the Gulf Stream have a chance to filter it.

The centerpiece of the Seawall is Pleasure Pier -- an amusement park full of rides, that sits on a pier well out over the water. It's a striking, Coney Island-ish image, especially when lit up at night. There are of course restaurants and bars peppered all along the way, mostly the sort where certain types of people go to power drink and behave obnoxiously well into the night.

Inland, there are also some points of interest. Moody Gardens is park of sorts with an aquarium, botanical gardens, Imax, and a sort of extreme playground with zip lines and rope courses. There is a major waterpark nearby. In the older section of town there are historic houses you can tour. And then there is a downtown area called The Strand, which is a Key West-like wander-and-drink destination.

All things considered, Galveston should probably have a more prominent reputation than it does. I suspect what's holding it back is a lack of popular mythology -- say, a prominence in film or literature. It's also kind of trying to be everything to everybody, from a genteel resort and spa destination, to a family friendly fun spot, to a redneck Asbury Park.

More surprising to me is the slow pace of development. There seems to be an enormous amount of space just waiting for vacation homes or retail centers to be built. And the existing buildings all seem...vintage 1962. In contrast I think of the Outer Banks of North Carolina, where there seems to be nary a square foot without a recently-built, multi-bedroom vacation rental.

I'd like to spend more time in Galveston and get to know it better (I only had a short weekend). That said, for me the flight to Houston and the flight to Florida are roughly equivalent and, other things equal, I'll take the Florida Gulf every time. Still, if the opportunity presents itself, I'd look forward to another visit. Galveston brings a solid beach town game.

[Rant] Not a Good Fit

I am a contrary SOB. Not impolitiely so, but I instinctively adopt, or at least consider, a contrary position in most situations.  I do not know whether this is learned or innate behavior, but it is strong in me.  Few things are more gratifying to me than pulling against the crowd only to be found later to be correct.  I am reminded of Bill James, the founder of baseball sabermetrics.  When his statistical based theories finally went mainstream after decades of ridicule, he said (paraphrasing), "It's a great feeling being proven right when everyone said you were wrong.  I hope to have that feeling again someday."

Although being right when the world is wrong is a great pleasure, there is a lesser but very real sense of gratification in being an outsider in and of itself.  But, as addressed in this insgihtful essay by Steve Lagerfeld, there are more shades of gray here. He observes that outgroups from MAGAs to Resisters, from Deniers to Greens, from Deadheads to Goths, all cherish there countercultural status.  I would add that even the most dominant cultural force of our era, progressivism (small p), still positions itself as an outside force struggling against some mainstream strawman.  Yet:
There is not much that is truly contrarian in any of this. Real contrarians don't run in crowds....A contrarian is by definition someone with a singular idea who stands against the crowd. He or she takes a risk....For the most part in the West today, their risk is social: They risk the disapproval of the crowd-of their friends, family, colleagues, community, and society. They might simply face unspoken disapproval, or they might be shunned and ostracized or burned at the stake of Twitter. Some face criticism and censure or social or professional excommunication. They risk their status and prestige. Some risk losing their jobs.
Risk is the metric by which contrarians are measured. The greater the risk, the more contrarian they are. Another way of saying this is that it takes courage to be a contrarian. They are a rare but widely dispersed breed. There are intellectual contrarians, such as Christopher Hitchens and Camille Paglia, as well as artistic, scientific, and political ones. Entrepreneurs, from Elon Musk to the most obscure startup boss, are contrarians because they pursue singular ideas, as are some investors, although the risks they face are less social than financial. Whistleblowers are contrarians, as are countless unknown others who fight against the odds in bureaucracies and other settings.
I find this interesting both intellectually and personally. 

I have written before about coalitional instinct -- the urge to form groups for power and protection. This is a primal drive in humans and we get a nice hit of dopamine when we join, form, or even just show support for our coalitions.  One of the best ways to demonstrate support for your coalition is to show allegiance even when there is a cost.  Costly support is a strong signal of loyalty so the dopamine flows.  For a group that is positioned as outside or in opposition to the mainstream there is the risk of social sanction against its members thus a high cost of showing support.  This explains why almost every group with an agenda positions itself as outsiders fighting the mainstream, it makes for more powerful shows of loyalty and more cleanly differentiates those who can be trusted from those who are less committed. There is no such thing as a non-conformist coalition. 

But what of the true contrarians?  This passage could come directly from my biography:
The contrarian's great temptation is moral vanity, and what a sweet one it is. I am contrarian by birth and temperament and not a joiner.... For some of us, there is nothing like the joy of being a pariah. There is no better place to be than on the wrong side, scorned, hated, and despised by people about whom you have exactly the same feelings. I'm right and they're wrong. Their scorn is an intoxicating indicator of my own rightness and moral superiority. The sensation is physical, like what I imagine people get from extreme sports. But it's a pleasure I strive mightily to deny myself. Over the years, I've learned that its costs are high, and that I'm not as smart as I think I am. Even when I'm right, my impulses can lead to bad things. I've gone from thinking of my instinctive desire to be a minority of one as a distinguishing trait to thinking of it as something more like Asperger's syndrome-a disability that can in rare circumstances be an advantage.
This could pretty much describe my personal development over the past 20 years.  What is mechanism that creates this urge in me?  Absent coalitional instinct, what is evolutionary source of my own Dopamine hit for being a true contrarian?  I'm sure it exists.  It is probably tied in with introversion in some respect.  I just don't have an idea of what it is.  Or is it a disability as he suggests; a negative trait that is only survivable thanks to the tolerance of civilization. Is it one of those traits that has a value to the species, provided it surfaces only in a small minority?

When we celebrate rebels we are not really celebrating rebels.  We are celebrating groups that we admire and positioning them as rebels to make our celebrations more valuable.  We rarely celebrate real contrarians, nor should we.  If we did we would rob them of their contrarianism.  True contrarianism is not something to aspire to.  I can verify that even if you are not in the public eye and you can hide your instincts well enough (I'm really good at it), it is not worth it unless you have an honest compulsion towards pariah-hood.  You will end up missing out on some very key experiences of humanity if you can't keep your contrary instincts in check.

Tuesday, June 05, 2018

The Month That Was - May 2018

It requires a small army of people to keep up the maintenance on my house, and my yard in particular. Lawn mowing, lawn spraying, tree spraying, gardening, bug spraying; all are needed constantly. Driveway recoating and septic pumping are needed every few years. Then there are the one-time items -- house painting, window replacements, well replacement. Ugh. Home ownership has been quite an adventure. A friend of mine once told me that owning a home is when you first start thinking of expenses in terms of thousands. At least. A fair amount of home drama this month; my adventure in mowing is described below.

Regular readers know I take every opportunity I can to run races on Mackinac Island. They used to have three every year up there, but they just added a fourth so naturally I travelled up there for the inaugural running. Also, below.

I had a minor breakthrough in writing, well, not writing so much as outlining, but I did get core plot finally sorted out on my current project. That is to say, I know where I want to go and how to get there. Now it's just work. Maybe I'll actually finish this before I'm dead.

[Books, Rant] Tom Wolfe, RIP
[Books] Tigers, Burning Bright
[Dexter, House and Home] Home Sweet Home
[Travel, Health and Fitness] Running the Island