The Month That Was - August 2022

The opening of the Dexter Cider Mill is a local indicator that the long slide into Autumn is nigh.  Truth in advertising: I haven't been to the Cider Mill in many years, but I drive by it nearly every day.  People come from far and wide.

I find I don't dread winter as much as I used to.  Perhaps because it is no yard work to worry about.  Or perhaps I've survived so many of them they no longer phase me.  Or perhaps my fears of terrible drives to work are abated by the ability to work from home. In any event Winter is still months away.  I don't know why my mind went there.

Regarding my next book.  The name of it will be The Hawk Sahib.  It is a murder mystery set in Lhasa, Tibet in the 1890s.  How's that for esoteric?  It is on the dark side for me. I like to think there is a bit of Kipling and a bit of Conan Doyle in it.  I do not expect any people outside my personal demographic to have the slightest interest and then only a tiny minority with that demographic.  Such is the benefit of writing without concern for an audience; I can write to suit myself.  More details once I get the damn cover issues sorted out and find some time to actually push it up to Kindle.

[TV] End of Saul

[TV] The Bear

[Good Links, Rant] How to Twitter

[TV] The End of Saul

So good that even though I was left a bit unsatisfied with the final 10 minutes, I still stand in deep appreciation.  More on the ending later.  As I have harped on before, this concludes the short but happy moment in history when television was not just a common culture but a proper art form.  Let me be specific about what is gone.

1. Action emerging from characters.  Now actions emerge from events. If you're lucky the characters will react in accordance with their individual personalities but more often characters react to these events in a way that will allow the writer to trigger the next event, and so barrel on to the conclusion.  I suspect this is symptomatic of some deeper societal ill, perhaps a loss of sense of agency, but I am not qualified to say.  Everything in Saul was the result of specific character traits of the primary characters, going all the way back to Howard's jealousy of Jimmy for their mother's attention and Jimmy's yearning for Howard's approval.  That led Jimmy into a kind of righteous shadiness and Howard to a kind of grandiose mental illness.  Jimmy/Saul and Kim responded to difficulty by embracing the very streak of nihilism that they saw in each other, ultimately leading to their spiral into tragedy.  Even Saul's ultimate capture grew from his hubristic faith in the dark underbelly of the world. True Greek Tragedy in that all the characters were brought down by their own flaws.

2. Action over exposition.  This is more of an implementation detail but, in Saul, motivations could be summed up in a look or a camera angle or the intonation in dialogue.  You trust the audience to understand and build, or interpret, the narrative.  You don't have to do that with other shows these days because the writers will have the characters tell you exactly what to think.

In the absence of those two things, we can safely resurrect the notion of TV as a wasteland: Entertaining at times, but uninspired. It's a product, not a creation.

As far as the ending goes, I just don't think Saul would have given up his sweet deal like that.  Even for Kim.  Even for his brother. Vince Gilligan did the same thing with Breaking Bad. At the end the gray was gone and it was clear who the bad guy was and that justice was done.  

I should be more nuanced.  Both Saul/Jimmy and Walter White eventually faced and acknowledged their own guilt.  In the name of that guilt Walter got himself killed and Jimmy/Saul will spend his life in prison.  This too, a la the Greeks, is a very traditional and even virtuous narrative path. It probably should be admired that Gilligan had the courage to do this in the face of the deep cynicism of the current culture. I still don't think it would have played out like that.  I think, especially in the case of Saul/Jimmy, they would have still attempted to dodge consequences.  Accepting your own guilt and accepting the consequences are two very different things.  My experience is that even the acknowledgement of guilt doesn't stop the fight against the consequences.  Human nature can rationalize just about anything including the magnitude of just desserts.  Perhaps my disappointment with it says more about my personal cynicism than anything else. 

Lastly, Odenkirk deserves every award possible.

So the era that started with The Sopranos, peaked with Deadwood and Mad Men, and ultimately dwindled into the long tail of Better Call Saul is over.  We will not see its like again. But hope springs eternal, perhaps at some point in the future someone will find a way to generate artistic value out of 30 second social media videos. May I live to see it.  In the meantime, thank goodness for streaming.

[TV] The Bear

Now, having written that anti-TV rant, along comes The Bear.  A former star chef at the a world renown fine dining establishment, returns home upon inheriting the Chicago Beef sandwich shop from his brother who committed suicide.  Seems like a basic fish-out-of-water sitcom trope, but it's well handled.  Grief lingers in various ways over the people who were close to his brother, and much resentment comes from the existing blue-collar employees who are very attached to the way things were and resent the snooty fine dining protocols.

The characters are truly well-drawn. Everyone has a dark side and a light side and is fully human.  There is growth and change and acceptance --let's call it character arcs -- over time, but it all occurs within the framework of their imperfections.  Sometimes, just when you have these characters figured out, they surprise you, but they still stay within their own skin.  In fact the whole thing is -- dare I say it? -- character driven.  Think of that: a new TV drama that is character driven and not about crime or crime-adjacent activities.

It falls short in some places.  It attempts to draw a picture of a Chicago that I don't think really exists.  There is an overtone of shady/mafioso style characters (big fat Italian looking guys), even to the point of them claiming the sidewalk in front of the restaurant as their turf.   That is patently nonsense. It ends up being just contrivance for atmosphere. 

But if it fails as a love letter to Chicago, it succeeds as a love letter to the restaurant industry.  Having once been a part of that, I can attest to how well it captures the madness and the rush it can provide and why you would keep your restaurant job despite the lousy pay and all the frustration.

Nicely done.  Lots of holes, lots of contrivance, but terrific character based drama.  Ebon Moss-Bacharach and Jeremy Allen White and fine as the lead "cousins", but Ayo Edebiri as the hyper-ironic, overconfident, post-millennial stood out even more. It's no Better Call Saul, but it might be given a chance to grow.  Nicely done.

[Good Links, Rant] How to Twitter

Don't tweet.  Unless you have something you particularly need to promote -- meaning you are selling something, including yourself -- don't tweet.  No good will come of it.

I have a Twitter account but I don't tweet.  If you ever see a tweet from me, I've probably been hacked.  I do have folks I follow on twitter -- if you dig deep enough, you can get some useful info and some entertainment out of it.  You just have to be very judicious about whom you follow and never read replies.  That last part is very important.  Never think of Twitter as a discussion board.  It is for dissemination not collaboration.  Every once in a while somebody will do an AMA.  But beyond that never engage or expect constructive engagement.

Here are a few accounts I have found that are worth following.

David Burge (@iowahawkblog) / Twitter -- Consistently the most sharp and funny guy on the internet.  Keen comments, old car identification, Iowa football, nostalgia, driving thru  liquor store windows.

CarDealershipGuy (@GuyDealership) / Twitter -- Independent car dealer.  Lots of good insight into the car dealership biz and the auto resale market (Carvana, etc.)

StripMallGuy (@realEstateTrent) / Twitter -- Some flip houses, this guy flips strip malls. Fascinating window into a rarely considered corner of suburban life.

BabelColour (@StuartHumphryes) / Twitter --  Finds old washed out autochromes (early color photographs, early 1900s) and cleans them up in Photoshop -- not colorized, the color is the original.  End result is often photos taken more than a century ago that have the same vitality as something from your iPhone.  It was never so clear that the people of the past were just like us.

Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) / Twitter -- Prolific poster of fascinating science and nature videos.  

Super 70s Sports (@Super70sSports) / Twitter -- Savage nostalgia from the 70s, plus or minus a few years.  Mostly, but not entirely, sports.  Lots of bad language, but that was also true of the 70s.

Three Year Letterman (@3YearLetterman) / Twitter -- I have a twisted appreciation for a good troll and Three Year Letterman is the best, and it's not even close.

Elon Musk (@elonmusk) / Twitter --- I have a twisted appreciation for a good troll…er, OK Elon isn't really a troll, except occasionally.  I like Elon, he doesn't spew corporate jargon or take fashionable poses. He can be snide or sarcastic or sentimental, but he seems genuine with a touch of eccentricity. Basically, he's just like most of us, which is a good quality for the richest man alive to have.

The Month That Was - July 2022

It will not surprise you to know that the book is not ready yet.  The latest snag is with the cover art.  Even though it is only going to be on Kindle it still needs cover art. And all the graphics I like have royalties attached to them.  So the hunt for a royalty free cover continues.  I have high hopes for next month.  On the upside, ideas for a sequel are forming in my brain.

I still have not seen the house I bought in Savannah, but that's another thing I hope to do this month.  More on that purchase adventure below.

Beyond that, it's been a beautiful summer, if a bit warm.  I've been on the bike a lot; enough that I am considering buying a new one since mine is an Amazon-special purchased at least 15 years ago.  Although I am told bikes, like many things, are in short supply.

Whatever the case, I continue to plod forward, still above ground.

[TV] Two from the Wasteland

[Sports] Tour de France 

[House and Home] Homes Sweet Homes

[TV] Two from the Wasteland

With the exception of Better Call Saul, TV remains in a wasteland phase.  To paint with a broad brush, quality drama got replaced by wokeyness, and fantasy, and wokey fantasy.  Wokeyness gets you virtuous accolades but nobody watches -- sorry, but partisan politics is poison to drama and entertainment.  Fantasies are so thoroughly troped-out post-Game of Thrones that they tend towards dreck, see: Wheel of Time.  Wokey fantasies…well, Amazon's woke Lord of the Rings, Rings of Power, is widely being identified as a kind of rock bottom. The response to this commercial disaster appears to be a slide deeper and deeper back into the '70s.  The '70s was characterized by formulaic private-eye/cop/crime-adjacent shows.  The TV world may have stumbled on to this rebirth when Reacher hit it big earlier this year.  Two recent shows fall in that category.

The Old Man -- Trope: An aging special operative is thrust back into the game when events of his past return with a vengeance.  This one starts out with a bang but slows down after a couple of episodes. What it has going for it is an absolute murderer's row of acting talent.  Jeff Bridges, John Lithgow, Amy Brennemen.  Their consummate skill elevates what is really a garden variety action series.  The direction is thoughtful, nothing looks or feels cheap.  The exposition is done skillfully.  I'm on the fence as to whether it's worth watching. If watching Bridges and Lithgow dominate a scene is something you'd like to see, then give it a look.

The Terminal List -- Trope:  Navy seal goes rogue to exact revenge on the people who killed his family. Remember that campy old Swarzenegger film Commando, where bad guys kidnapped Alyssa Milano and Arnold went on a rampage?  Take that film, make it completely serious and grim and gory, stretch it from 2 hours to 8, and you've got a good grip on this one.  This is Chris Pratt's pet project and, while I like Chris Pratt and his work in any number of films, this character is a little one dimensional and dark for an actor who is so well calibrated for comedy.  There is some controversy about this series, as a number of reviewers have deemed the hero to be an immoral vigilante and therefore "right-wing". Pratt's character does horrific things outside the law -- probably not setting a good behavior example. This doesn't phase me because, as I might have mentioned, I grew up in the '70s where all heroes were immoral vigilantes, but I see their point.  The result of this is that critics have largely panned the show, while the audience is eating it up.  And so a Commando-level trope-fest comes to take its place in the culture wars.  I'd skip this one, but if it sounds like something you'd like, you probably will.

In the era of the new wasteland, I can only sigh and suggest you watch Better Call Saul.  Or rewatch Deadwood.  Or The Sopranos.  Or Mad Men.  Or read a book.

[Sports] Tour de France

Once again I find myself the only person in North America who follows the Tour de France.  I can't blame anyone.  The coverage is abysmal.  Half the time the camera feeds are focused away from whatever action is going on.  Not that there is a whole lot of action.  The event in its entirety is 20+ days of folks riding bicycles for 5+ hours a day.  The teams are so good that for the most part once you have the lead, it is extraordinarily difficult for another team to overtake you.  In this case there was one stage where the leader and favorite got overtaken significantly and it was spoken of as historic.

TdF stages are split into three types -- most between 100 and 120 miles.  

• There are mountain stages, which are utterly brutal and feature steep miles-long climbs through the Alps or the Pyrenees.  Mountain stages are when riders often "crack"; that is to say, their bodies effectively give out and all the desire in the world can't keep them in the game.  These stages are the ultimate test of endurance and will often make the difference among the race favorites.

• There are time trial stages, which are exactly what they sound like: riders go off at set intervals and hammer through a shorter than normal course at a pretty much full-on pace the whole way.  In these stages the cyclist is on his own, no team to help, no one to draft off of.  The final day of racing is always a time trial so that effectively the leader is on his own to defend his lead against the last chance efforts of the contenders.

• Thirdly, there are sprint stages. These are generally flat or rolling hills, not mountainous, designed especially for sprint specialists, guys with enormous thighs who can pedal at ridiculous speeds.  These folks are almost never in contention for overall race victories so sprinting is kind of a race within a race. So after riding along for 4+ hours and 100+ miles, these guys put the hammer down for what often amounts to a photo finish.

The winner of the race will always be someone who climbs well and is good in time trials. Most importantly, he will have the best team surrounding him: teammates who sacrifice themselves to let him draft and lead him back to the front if there is a crash. 

This year's winner was exactly to formula.  He took the lead on a mountain stage when the existing leader -- last year's winner -- cracked.  In subsequent stages when challengers tried to race out ahead of him, his teammates essentially drafted him back up to the front.  It was a textbook victory.

There are a couple of things I really like about the Tour.  One is the sportsmanship.  There are traditions that have no documentation in the rules but are followed none-the-less.  For example, the last day of the race is largely ceremonial.  If you are leading going into the last day, even by just a few seconds, no one will challenge you.  It's sort of an acknowledgement that after 20 days of biking 100 miles a day, you're just glad to have completed the Tour.

Another tradition that is perhaps slightly less often adhered to is to not take advantage of a competitor's, especially the race leader's, mechanical issue or crash.  I've seen this a few times where there will be a crash in the peloton that involves a top contender and everyone just takes it easy until his team brings him a new bike and he's back in the thick of things.  This year the leader actually slowed down to let his prime competitor back up after a crash. (Granted there may have been some strategy to that. The leader only has to keep pace with his competitor, not pass him, and it's easier to keep pace if you can draft off him.)  The idea here is you win the race on biking skill, not because of mechanical failure or accidents.

Such traditions stand in sharp contrast to the behavior in most sports.  They are both archaic and noble.

I think the thing that most attracts me about it is that everything the racers feel on these long rides, I have experienced.  Sure I experience it after one day of riding 30-50 miles, not after three weeks of century-length efforts, but I know the feelings.  In my own small way, I know what it's like to be exhausted and confronted with a steep grade or the relief of sliding into another rider's slipstream or simply going as fast as I can on a flat, smooth road.

I also know how to fast-forward skillfully enough that I can reduce a 5-hour stage replay to about 45 minutes.  Yeah, that too.

[House and Home] Homes Sweet Homes

I mentioned last month that I bought a house in Savannah.  I won't go into the reasoning behind doing this but suffice it to say it was the confluence of personal needs and speculative asset management.  Perhaps the most shocking thing is that I purchased the house sight unseen.  I'll pause while you process the notion of buying a house without seeing.  I will note that people I trust did see it and I had seen other homes in the same neighborhood with the same floor plan.

Buying a house is a remarkably outdated process.  It's even more ludicrous when it collides with the need to do it remotely.  When you buy a house you are handed an inches-thick sheath of documents to sign and initial.  It is, oh, 90% boilerplate so you have to try to be smart about what you pick and choose to read.  If the law firm doing your closing is good, they will provide you with a cheat sheet about one page long that summarizes all the financial details.  That right there tells you that the bulk of what you are doing is busy work left over from decisions designed to keep regulators in their jobs. Presumably these documents are intended to inform you of the details but are so dense and obtuse that you don't read them, you just sign and count on the boiler plate to be irrelevant. Instead of being ignorant, you are ignorant but proclaim you are not.

There are few things that I find more loathsome than regulatory busy work originated by myopic midwits, and that loathing gets worse with each passing year.  Honestly, in my senescence I plan on wearing socks and sandals, hitting up McDonalds for breakfast, and griping about goddam bureaucrats to the other seniors at the nearby tables.

Anyway, the upshot of this is the you end up doing stupid and inconvenient things for no reason. To wit:  since I was doing all this remotely, I was sent pdfs of documents to sign, with the instructions that they would need an actual ink signature; they couldn't accept a digital one.  Then they tell you that you can sign them and scan them and send them back electronically.  Um, that's not actual ink.  And if it's not actual ink, why can't the signature be digital.

Stop and think about how stupid that is.  A thick mass of documents that don't need to be read, need to be signed and initialized in various places by hand, then scanned to send electronically.  I cannot for the life of me see what legal safeguards this provides over a digital signature.  I mean apart from the inconvenience of finding a printer to generate paper docs, signing, then finding a scanner to import the printed docs -- none of which is, or should be, a common activity in 2022 -- I could have signed the damn things with any signature in the world.  Hell I could have signed it Mickey Mouse and no one would have noticed.  At that point they are pixels and nothing more -- they guarantee nothing.  Yet the mindlessness must be adhered to, because it is just the way things are done and no one ever got in trouble for doing things the way things are done. 

You know, Amazon has announced they are getting into the health care business, to quote: 

“We think health care is high on the list of experiences that need reinvention… Booking an appointment, waiting weeks or even months to be seen, taking time off work, driving to a clinic, finding a parking spot, waiting in the waiting room then the exam room for what is too often a rushed few minutes with a doctor, then making another trip to a pharmacy – we see lots of opportunity to both improve the quality of the experience and give people back valuable time in their days.”

May I suggest Amazon also turn their attention to residential Real Estate?  Many people have legitimate gripes and fears about Amazon, including me on occasion, but one thing they are not is mindless.

*Deep breath*

Another thing that really rustles my jimmies is the home inspection process. Typically when you buy a house you pay for a home inspection service, and they send a supposedly knowledgeable person to the house to find any hidden issues that you might miss in a normal walkthrough.  They should do things like try all the switches and faucets; examine the roof, and the exterior; try all the appliances, the heat, the a/c.  

In my experience this is pure Kabuki.  Both of the houses I've purchased had problems that

would have been revealed had this inspector had actually done the thorough investigation promised. My inclination is that for the next house I purchase (which I hope will be the last) I would skip this.  But buying a house is a fearful thing, and you just can pass on the possibility of someone finding something that's amiss.  I just wish I knew a way to assure myself of finding an inspector that's worth a damn.  

Oh and by the way, the inspector I used misspelled my email address when hand-keying my personal data into his software and could not fathom how to fix it. As a result I had days of delay in communications at critical junctures. He could not figure out that if he just replied to the emails I sent him it would work.  It wouldn't surprise me if there was a regulation about requiring email addresses to be hand-keyed.

In any event I now have two homes, although one is at least theoretically an income generating property.  Somehow I went from planning on selling my current McMansion and quietly retiring to a little beach shack to adding a second McMansion instead.  I can only sigh and hope that just because God laughs at your plans, it doesn't mean he's going to punish you.

The Month That Was - June 2022

I am astounded by how fast the months pass.  That we are now halfway through 2022 boggles the mind.  I continue on my breakneck pace with changes coming fast and furious.  I am now the owner of a second home in Savannah, GA.  A rental and investment property, mostly because my money in the stock market is going nowhere but down and I have a very reliable tenant.  I may write more about this, but not this month. I need to let the experience marinate for a bit. 

My day job continues to be a swirl of madness, but at least it's productive madness, and at the moment a good salary is priceless.  

The good news is my book is complete.  All that's left for me is to arrange cover art, write both short and long descriptions for Amazon, and load it onto Kindle.  Fingers crossed, next month I will tell you about it.

We are experiencing a lovely summer, I've had the windows open and been out on the bike quite a bit.  Alas, the days are already getting shorter. 

[Heath and Fitness, Retirement and Old Age] Retirement and Chemicals and Life

[Movies] Strange Dr. Strange

[Good Links] Link Dump

[Health and Fitness, Retirement and Old Age] Retirement and Chemicals and Life

By the time you read this I will be most of the way to 62 years old, which is the broadly accepted age at which you can retire (not me); that is mostly because it is the age wherein you can start receiving Social Security checks in return for the fortune you have been paying in Social Security taxes throughout your entire working life.  I can't honestly say if I will be getting my money's worth.  I have personally paid a little shy of 200k in SS taxes (not counting what my employers matched) going back to my first legit employment back in 1979.  (That would have been a summer job working in a residence hall at University of Michigan.  Yeesh.)  Depending on when I retire, if I live until 90 -- roughly when both my parents died -- I will get a payout of anywhere between 700k and 1M over the course of my retirement.  Those seem like big numbers, but it actually amounts to anywhere from 25k to 50k per year -- a low income salary at best.  The best return I would get is not retiring until 70, or at least not applying for SS until then. 

From a strict rate-of-return point of view, it would take a good deal of calculation to determine if I would have been better off having that money to invest on my own. It's possible I could have turned that 200k into something more if I could have invested it as a young man with the wisdom of an old man, which I probably couldn't have, at least until 401ks came along.  Of course we all know that it wasn't like the Gummint was saving that money for me.  They were using it to pay the oldsters that came before me, like you kids will be paying mine.    

The best way to maximize total payout is to live a long time. But a long life is only good if you can keep the quality high.  That is the great equalizer.  I can feel good about my financial situation, but if I have a stroke or dementia takes over, that really won't matter much.  On my Mother's side I have good health.  She lived to 90 and while she was not really capable of an active life after 80 or so, my hope is that that was the result of not living a particularly active life -- at least not physically, she was very active socially and stayed employed well into her 70s.  My Father's health profile is not so encouraging.  He was having heart attacks in his early fifties.  I suspect he was clinically depressed, although he was never diagnosed, in a way that manifested in hostility and anxiety.  In old age he suffered Transient Ischemic Attacks which led to vascular dementia. His final decade of life was hellish.

I have chosen to believe that with the proper behaviors I can avoid the worst of my parents' fate.  (I phrased that sentence very carefully.)  I believe my near 30 year dedication to physical fitness will pay off in me being able to engage actively with the world for as long as I live.  I believe it has, and will continue to, help me dodge the harmful afflictions of my parents. Obviously there is no preventative, but I am confident it shifts the probabilities in my favor.  It is a true blessing that I enjoy it also, I don't think of it as only a duty or necessity.

Add into that some truly miraculous chemicals, like statins and HGH, and I could be in the game for a long long time.  I will not hesitate to avail myself of any new wonder drugs or technology that will keep my quality of life high.  I keep hearing about athletes going to Germany for special injury recovery treatments.  Sign me up.  I've participated in two AstraZeneca clinical trials and would happily guinea-pig for any new chemicals, especially those that work against cancer or dementia, not that I have either -- yet.

All of the above is just me giving myself encouragement. If that is not the case, if I suffer debilitation, where does that leave me?  What if my quality of life is not great.  What if I have a stroke and need caretaking?  Or what if I have a mishap and end up with limited mobility?  Then what?  My desire for a high quality life is not to say anything short of that is not worth living.  Plenty of people live what I would describe as reduced quality of life, but find them meaningful and rewarding.  I know more than one person who has lived a fulfilling life from a wheelchair.  Would I be able to find the strength or serenity to adapt? Back to the topic of my father, by the end he was completely detached from reality, yet I don't think he was unhappy.  He had no idea he had completely lost his mind.  

So as l look ahead, I am optimistic for a healthy, robust old age and hopeful that if that is not my fate, I can still find meaning. And if I live to 100, I can take comfort  in the knowledge that I am soaking the Millenials and GenZ for a small fortune.

[Movies] Strange Dr. Strange

Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness is not very good.  The main problem is the script which is just a litany of set pieces and action sequences without a clear purpose.  In good script writing something happens because something else happened because something else happened.  In bad script writing something happens and then something else happens and then something else happens. DSMOM is bad script writing.  

The second problem is that what little valid causality there is comes from exposition.  At the moments when the writers realized they needed some explanation for what they wanted to do next, they just gave a character a speech. Exposition kills.

The third problem is that the dialogue is flat and dull and all attempts at humorous interjections fail.  It's hard to say why this is.  Cumberbatch, McAdams, Wong, etc. all are capable of delivering a comic line.  It could be that these moments were poorly timed in the darker tone of the film.  It could be that they just picked bad takes during editing.  Whatever the case it didn't work.

The fourth problem is that it is heavily, heavily contrived. Eg.

• The MacGuffin in this case is a teenager who can traverse the multiverse.  How and why she can do this, we don't know.  She's not given much of a personality.  The only personailty she is given is identitarian -- she is Hispanic, with lesbian parents -- so it seems she is only served up as a diversity symbol.    

• There are cameos that are huge for Marvel fanbois -- Patrick Stewart, John Krasinski, etc. playing iconic characters -- cute, but purely a gimmick from what I can tell. 

• The characters' powers are both enormous and vague, which allows them to do anything that the script requires whether it is coherent or not.  I cannot emphasize enough how much this undermines any superhero movie. It's also lazy. This has become a huge problem at Marvel. (I could write an entire post on this one.)

• The final battle is an ode to Evil Dead (thanks to director Sam Raimi, I suppose),  with combatants throwing musical notes at each other and zombie joint snapping and so forth.  It is absurd to the point of cynicism.

In the end, you're left with nothing but a sense of pointlessness.  No harm will come to you from watching it but set your expectations properly.  It is a timepassing curiosity at best, unlikely to be rewatched.  Don't pay money for it beyond any streaming fees you're already paying.

The final post-credit scene is Bruce Campbell crying in relief "It's over!"  It makes me wonder if the film's creators knew it wasn't very good.

[Good Links] Link Dump

 

• The best films of 2022 so far | Movies | The Guardian - To me this looks more like a list of all the movies of 2022.
• Marc Andreessen on Learning to Love the Humanities - An interesting interview with the venture capitalist and founder of Netscape.  Most important to me, he feels the way I do about the Deadwood.  It's a timeless and unprecedented work of art.
• School attacks in China - evidently the U.S. is not the only place where school attacks occur.  In China they are done with sharp objects and are kept quiet. 
• G_S_Bhogal - Concepts you should know -- Title says it all.  A pretty good list on Twitter.
• 14 Warning Signs That You Are Living in a Society Without a Counterculture - Ted Gioia explains further why this is such a bland timeline.
• Michigan Couple Says Town Seized Their Building and Offered To Return It if They Bought Two Cars for Police - This is infuriating.

The Month That Was - May 2022

Endless activity -- most of which is out of bounds for this blog.  I will say the day job has gotten quite crazy.  It is really bizarre to be at this late stage in my career and suddenly to be working madly like I was 25 again.  I've had more upheaval in my day job in the last few months than in the entire previous 28 years.  So far it is working in favor of my career so I am kind of trying to roll with it.  

Coupled with further upheaval in my personal relationships (not bad, just more demanding of my time), my writing has suffered.  I am about two thirds done with the final review of my next novel prior to it hitting Kindle and I literally can't find the appropriate time to finish.  At least I am close enough to know it's the last review.  I have changed nothing during an in depth reading of the first 60-70%.

Meanwhile Spring proceeds -- the bikes are tuned-up and ready to ride, the garden beds have been mulched, and short sleeves are all I need. 

[Travel] Back to the Island

[Movies] No Way Home

[TV] Better Call Saul

[Travel] Back to the Island

I can't remember the first time I visited Mackinac Island.  Likely shortly before the turn of the century.   It is utterly timeless.  Oh, a restaurant or two has been replaced.  We went from three ferry lines to two.  They upgraded the pool at the Grand Hotel.  The biggest change I can think of in the last 20 years has been the addition of one new hotel.  And yet, though I have traipsed all over the island I often stumble on things I have not encountered before: a trail on the bluff, a hidden view of the lake, a new microbrew.

I often visit the island for a race and this trip was no exception.  The Fort2Fort Five Mile Run is run in early-mid May, before Memorial Day, and before the island gets crazy busy, which it will be from Memorial Day through Labor Day, and only slightly less busy through Halloween.  This early in the season, some of the businesses are just starting to open and finding their way, but the workers who will be worn and jaded by the end of season are fresh and bright.

I do recommend the race if you are a runner.  Of the four races held each year on the island, this is the shortest.  It passes quite a few of the key landmarks on the interior of the island and is walker friendly so if you want to just use it as an excuse for a walking tour you can. It's net uphill for the first 3.5 miles to the highest point on the island, then a sweet downhill to the finish.  It's also the newest race having been inaugurated in 2019 (I think).  I believe I have done every one of them.

The place I used to go all the time was Las Vegas.  I visited at least once a year for probably 15 years.  I knew what to do and where to go and it made for some great vacations. Personal circumstances and the pandemic have conspired to keep me from Vegas for nearly 5 years. I fear I may be a bit of a stranger when I do get back.  It seems Mackinac Island has stepped up in its place.  I know the island very well.  I know what to do and where to go. Perhaps it makes sense for a man of my years to downshift from Vegas glitz to the Mackinac pastoral vibe.  Or I could be making a lot more of this than I should.

I do think Mackinac Island is worth visiting for just about everyone.  For those of us in the Midwest, it's a great road trip.  For others I would recommend it as a two or three night segment of a larger Great Lakes vacation.  The areas surrounding the northern parts of Lake Huron and Lake Michigan are about as perfect a place for a summer getaway as you can imagine.  I guess you could call it Summertime Lake Culture.  I know when I finally move down south, I will turn backflips to spend time back in Michigan when the mercury rises.

But, Mackinac Island is truly timeless.  The famous Grand Hotel may have added a water park, but you still have to be in coat-and-tie for dinner.  Brewpubs may have replaced homestyle cooking, but folks still gather and socialize in the bars.  E-bikes are (controversially) banned and the dominant sound is still the clip-clop of horses. The waterfront streets are ever more crowded, but the interior trails are quiet and calm.  Cruise ships visit more often, but they still fire off the fort cannon and play taps at sunset. Tulips and Lilacs still bloom in the spring.

One of these days I shall rent a house on the lisand for a full month. I'll get one with plenty of bedrooms.  Then all my friends can come and visit.  One day.

[Movies] No Way Home

Bluntly put, Marvel has been putting out crap since Endgame -- clearly Infinity War was a high water mark.  They've managed to retire, or in some cases degrade, the characters we loved. They've neutered the Hulk, turned Loki into a tool, and turned Hawkeye into a retiree. They've produced new characters that have zero resonance. I mean, who the hell is Ms. Marvel?  Who are The Eternals?  Where are The Fantastic Four, The Silver Surfer -- the household names?  The scripts are dreary and lame and filled with exposition. The casting pales in comparison to the brilliant use of RDJ, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Holland, Scarlet Johannson.  I used to joke about how bad DC was in comparison to Marvel, but none of the Marvel series could hold a candle to Peacemaker.

Then along comes No Way Home and it's really good.  Through some unusual circumstances I actually saw this twice in a movie theater.  At least once there was a great deal of cheering and demonstrative behavior.  If you've ever seen YouTubes of theaters during scenes from the big battle in Endgame, where everyone is cheering and shouting -- it was like that.  In fact, see it here.  I won't recap it as I'm sure you have heard about the gist of the plot, but I'll note that the cinematic dark arts of Pacing and Tone rang true throughout.  If you get those right you're more than 60% of the way to a great film.  If you nail the casting, you begin to push 90% and, of course, when you have nothing but established characters and the iconic actors that made them famous, greatness becomes a lock.  

So yeah, go see it and enjoy it.  You can think of it as a throwback to when Marvel was hitting non-stop home runs instead of grounding out to second every time.

Now I will extend my rant.  Feel free to move on.

One of the most gratifying scenes in No Way Home was the now famous Matt Murdoch scene with Charlie Cox.  The acknowledgment of the Netflix Daredevil series from 5 years past raised hope for a restart of that character.  In fact, Disney+ even created a special class of "adult" content so they could stream it without offending their child-oriented demographic. I'm a fan of that DD series and a few years ago I would have loved to see what Marvel could have done with it.  Now that they seem to have confirmed their intention to do just that, my prior is that they will screw it up somehow.  The Netflix show, despite its flaws, was vastly superior to any TV series Marvel has put out.

And I've heard little good about the latest Dr. Strange.

I know it's silly for a grown-ass man to go on about this but as I have stated before, I do have a deep nostalgic affinity for Marvel from my tween years of buying comics off the spinning rack for 15¢. And perhaps I should temper my negativity a bit because the new Thor trailer looks pretty cool.  That's Taika Waititi at it again.  

Ah well.  As a grown-ass man I know nothing good lasts forever.  Like the heroic age of pantheon TV before it, the heroic age of action movie craftsmanship appears to be coming to an end.  I guess we'll see what's next.  I hope it's not the heroic age of TikTok.

[TV] Better Call Saul

Speaking of the heroic age of television, its last gasp is happening now with Better Call Saul. It's just stunning to watch this.  I am going to get hopelessly superior-minded about this, so stand back.

From a dramatic standpoint, it puts everything else on TV to shame.  The bulk of the world won't see the quality and depth.  Just like most people saw Mad Men as a soap opera with a nostalgia gimmick, people will see this as just another crime drama with an ambulance chaser gimmick, but the character studies going on here are miles deeper than anything anyone else is doing now.  The absence of exposition alone blows my mind.

The series as a whole can almost be split into two segments.  In the first half we got Jimmy (Saul) and his brother battling in a way the only family can battle -- decades of baggage and resentments driving their actions to an ultimate tragedy.  The second half we get Jimmy and Kim battling their inner instincts.  Jimmy claims his actions are out of an injustice done to his brother, Kim feels her actions are a response to the injustice of the system.  Or are they both making excuses to yield to their sociopathology?  Or are they just playing games for their own entertainment?  Whatever the source, events are driven to harrowing extremes by their characters.  Greek tragedies indeed.

We are now in a brief pause before the last six episodes air.  In Breaking Bad, showrunner Vince Gilligan used the last few episodes to settle the moral questions of the series.  I thought it was a bad decision that dinged what was otherwise a masterpiece.  I hope he ends Saul leaving the moral uncertainty in place.

In any event, this probably marks the end of quality TV in my lifetime.  I'm glad I can restream it as needed.