I don't know, when your 17 year old says "I don't think Trump is going to be as bad as I thought," what's the right answer? Is it to praise him for a broad-thinking open-mindedness, showing an ability to take in the point of view of those he politically opposes and see them as humans with as much as stake in the survival (if not thriving) of the political, economic and social biome we all find ourselves locked in together?
OR do you remember what it was like to be 17, where your fickleness belies a spongy, uncalcified political skeleton still in the process of forming around a brain awash in a tsunamian influx of testosterone so that your only real peace in life are the raw pleasures of fried red meat and Cinemax After Dark? Where an active intervention of parental guidance can still act with orthopedic force to properly shape, mold and contour into gracile nuance?
OR do you not only acknowledge the big red button in the middle of your own political soul flashing DANGER DANGER MY GOD SO MUCH DANGER, but smash it down over and over again with a reddening, bloodying fist, unleashing the klaxon torrent of warnings, warnings, warnings against the de-crypto-ing of the crypto-fascism coagulating in the mouths and ears of the American politically interested?
The first option is obviously the one with the best long-term prospects, allowing your teenager to develop a sense of political self-reliance as part of the process of the slow severing of the parent-child dependency that started the day he first pinched a Cheerio off a high-chair tray and forced it into his own mouth, without any help or guidance from you.*
The second one is obviously middle road, not entirely dignified but corrective without being dictatorial. Unless your teaching approach involves threats to literally reconfigure your child's head, which I've seen attempted in live action, with varying levels of success.
But see, the last one seems like the worst, but who's to say it's a bad thing for your child to see you stripped of the veil of your parental composure? The reason for keeping it is usually either out of concern for your child (understanding their inherent vulnerability where seeing you unglued would signal to them that they are, immediately and potentially over the long term, suddenly outside a protection you are normally present to offer but have now been rendered incapable or unwilling to provide) or as a part of an elaborate long con where you're desperately trying to keep all your mental and emotional plates spinning on the end of some thin and shaky spindles indeed, just long enough to get them out before they can see this whole "adult" game you've been playing at was as much to fool yourself as it was them. If you're trying to hasten the process of the inversion of roles in your parent child relationship, this is probably the shortest line between those points.
Besides, did you see the press conference? What possible argument is there to not freak out more than just a little bit? The vilification and bullying of the press alone is enough of an unprecedented attack on the institutions that rein in the abuse of power to trigger totally legitimate waves of nausea-laden anxiety. And we haven't even come to the Emoluments Clause yet. Or the salacious to outright intolerable details that flowed freely from that now famous dossier released by BuzzFeed. Go on, let him see you unravel. Throw your beaten self across his (or her, depending on your offspring) shoulders and let them feel obligated to carry you for once. We all know that's where this is going eventually anyway.
---
*This was not a recent development. I didn't want you to worry.
Friday, January 13, 2017
Friday, January 6, 2017
Fat Pants
It is 1 am on Friday, so I guess technically I'm late again, having missed the Thursday regular posting time. However, I haven't gone to bed yet for Thursday, so according to my circadian rhythm timer, I'm still on time. I guess the tiebreaker will be that, being on the west coast of these United States, I'm in the trailing darkness of Pacific Time whereas most of you are closer to dawn than sunrise. And since this blogspace is in no way a democracy, I invoke the primacy of authorship to give full weight to my location and its associated NOW. I hereby declare this entry to be On Time. It's 2017 and we're in Trump America, where we do things by fiat and fit. Time to start getting used to it.
But as it's 1 am on barely-post-Thursday, this will be a very short entry. I would say it's because I'm tired, but I'm on my third consecutive vacation Thursday night (my extended leave-taking started Friday 23 December). The normal bounds of day and night within the borders of sleep have been eroded by entertainments and distractions of various kinds to the point where I'm happy to report that I'm not particularly exhausted while at the same time I'm being slowly squeezed by an encircling python of dread as I consider Sunday night trying to get to sleep in time to arrive at work Monday in any kind of shape that resembles functional. Best thing to do: go ahead an pre-emptively write that Monday off as lost time. Productivity is a relative idea anyway. I have a lot of YouTube channels to catch up on. That's not zero effort. Close, but not zero.
This should be the point where I sum up bits and bobs of what I've been doing/accomplishing over this break, but I will reference you to the paragraph above re: entertainments and distractions. This is the first extended vacation (more than one or two days) I've taken probably since college, back when it was called "summer." And I'm nearly at the point now (in March I think) where "college," meaning every single bit of it, beginning to end, will have been 20 years ago.
To be fair, though, there was that almost 9 year period in the middle where I was staying home every day with my kids. But I can't tell if that means I had 9 years off in a row or zero days off for 9 years. I'm not sure. That whole period is kind of a blur of diapers and tears by now. I don't know quite what to say about it anymore, except the pay was shit. Usually literally.
I still have the normal confines of a long weekend ahead of me before I return to re-face the horrors of everyday work life. Yes, there's a gray cubicle out there, quite literally, with my name on it. It's the kids' weekend with their mom and my lady-companion is out of town on some fairly awful family business, so it's an opportunity for me to be honestly on my own, to center myself, to plant a firm emotional and spiritual base from whence I can then extend myself back into the world with balance, grace and purpose. Mostly this will mean finishing off the ginger-molasses cookies I made for Christmas that nobody ate but are my favorite things, like ever. When I say "firm base" I'm mostly talking about noticeable weight gain. I'll let you know how it goes.
But as it's 1 am on barely-post-Thursday, this will be a very short entry. I would say it's because I'm tired, but I'm on my third consecutive vacation Thursday night (my extended leave-taking started Friday 23 December). The normal bounds of day and night within the borders of sleep have been eroded by entertainments and distractions of various kinds to the point where I'm happy to report that I'm not particularly exhausted while at the same time I'm being slowly squeezed by an encircling python of dread as I consider Sunday night trying to get to sleep in time to arrive at work Monday in any kind of shape that resembles functional. Best thing to do: go ahead an pre-emptively write that Monday off as lost time. Productivity is a relative idea anyway. I have a lot of YouTube channels to catch up on. That's not zero effort. Close, but not zero.
This should be the point where I sum up bits and bobs of what I've been doing/accomplishing over this break, but I will reference you to the paragraph above re: entertainments and distractions. This is the first extended vacation (more than one or two days) I've taken probably since college, back when it was called "summer." And I'm nearly at the point now (in March I think) where "college," meaning every single bit of it, beginning to end, will have been 20 years ago.
To be fair, though, there was that almost 9 year period in the middle where I was staying home every day with my kids. But I can't tell if that means I had 9 years off in a row or zero days off for 9 years. I'm not sure. That whole period is kind of a blur of diapers and tears by now. I don't know quite what to say about it anymore, except the pay was shit. Usually literally.
I still have the normal confines of a long weekend ahead of me before I return to re-face the horrors of everyday work life. Yes, there's a gray cubicle out there, quite literally, with my name on it. It's the kids' weekend with their mom and my lady-companion is out of town on some fairly awful family business, so it's an opportunity for me to be honestly on my own, to center myself, to plant a firm emotional and spiritual base from whence I can then extend myself back into the world with balance, grace and purpose. Mostly this will mean finishing off the ginger-molasses cookies I made for Christmas that nobody ate but are my favorite things, like ever. When I say "firm base" I'm mostly talking about noticeable weight gain. I'll let you know how it goes.
Saturday, December 31, 2016
I Have Failed This City
If you're a regular reader of this space, you'll probably notice that, for the first time in a very long time, I missed my regular self-imposed deadline for Thursday weekly posting. I pride myself not only on the size, quality and healthful expression contained in my leavings here, but also for my uncompromising regularity. I know that for many of you, I am a beacon in the abject darkness of internet thought, a signpost to guide you through the twisted and ill-maintained byways of modern living, a time machine to hide you from the perils of the moment in the warm, familiar comfort and safety of a communications format that more or less died in 2005.
I take this responsibility very seriously. And I have failed you. For that I am heartily sorry. Seriously, teeth have been gnashed, garments have been rent, hair and eyes have been clawed at. There may have been wailing. It's been a long seven minutes or so since I was in the shower and went "Oh, dang, I think I forgot to do the thing..." Doesn't seem like that big of a deal, but you try rending your garments while you're in the shower. It's a logistical nightmare.
I'd like to tell you I've been in hiding since I realized I was on Donald Trump's list of enemies, but I think he knows better than to publicly mess with a guy with the kind of reach I have. If this week is any indication, if I disappeared, it's possible up to eight people would notice. Imagine the furor. Imagine the outcry. Oh hey that reminds me, WHERE WAS THE FUROR, YOU GUYS?! I could have been dead for you all know and not one of you thought to send a SWAT team to my house. Just because I do this more or less anonymously is no excuse. Luckily I had the private investigator I pay to follow me around to make sure nobody else is ever following me to make sure I was OK. So yeah, I guess you're covered. Also, unrelated: would it kill one of you to stalk me? I mean, it might, because Jerry has a license to carry and standing orders to shoot first, but it's like none of you cares enough to risk it.
I know this is already weird. It's Saturday morning, it's New Year's Eve, what are we even doing? The right/laziest thing to do would be to throw together a year end retrospective of pop culture lists and summaries. But look, we've got about three weeks left of the Obama era and nothing feels quite relevant enough in these sobering (but, if my drinking friends are any indication since the election, not particularly sober) times. Also I'm embarrassed because I've seen like five movies and read I think two and a half books all year. I'm not really in a position to go deep with the superficial stuff.
Also Carrie Fisher died. And then her mom died, like, the next day or some fucked up shit. Right up until then I really wasn't sure about the awful year of celebrity death people my age (largely) were bitching about. I mean, all the pop culture heroes of our parents' generation died too, only there were no social media platforms to wail and lament on as a massive, whiny group. I think my Generation X cohort are generally a funny, cynical group with almost fatal dedication to ironic detachment, but that doesn't mean we can't also disappear up our own asses. We have a tendency to forget that we aren't in fact the first generation that anything has happened to. So as bummed as I've been about seeing Alan Rickman et al. shuffle off, at some point grandpa was sad because he'd read Errol Flynn died* or whatever the fuck. He just didn't have facebook available to commiserate about the loss of "my Robin Hood" or whatever.
Still, though, Carrie Fisher... If you're feeling nostalgic or just want to celebrate her life, don't watch Star Wars, go watch Postcards from the Edge. Or better yet, read it.
But she wasn't the reason I missed posting on Thursday. I'm on vacation. In the past I've been able to post while vacationing, in exotic locales like London and Phoenix. This time I've decided to vacation right here at my house. I'm getting important things done like binge-watching season one of Arrow with my kids and learning to play Civilization VI. These things may not seem important to you, but that's because you have judgment and good taste. I've dedicated this rare two-week break from work specifically to not doing anything of particular importance. Hence missing this last Thursday. Sorry. I'll try to do better in a few days when Thursday, inevitably, happens again.
---
*In a newspaper article, like four days after the fact, tactfully not mentioning the details of his personal life.
I take this responsibility very seriously. And I have failed you. For that I am heartily sorry. Seriously, teeth have been gnashed, garments have been rent, hair and eyes have been clawed at. There may have been wailing. It's been a long seven minutes or so since I was in the shower and went "Oh, dang, I think I forgot to do the thing..." Doesn't seem like that big of a deal, but you try rending your garments while you're in the shower. It's a logistical nightmare.
I'd like to tell you I've been in hiding since I realized I was on Donald Trump's list of enemies, but I think he knows better than to publicly mess with a guy with the kind of reach I have. If this week is any indication, if I disappeared, it's possible up to eight people would notice. Imagine the furor. Imagine the outcry. Oh hey that reminds me, WHERE WAS THE FUROR, YOU GUYS?! I could have been dead for you all know and not one of you thought to send a SWAT team to my house. Just because I do this more or less anonymously is no excuse. Luckily I had the private investigator I pay to follow me around to make sure nobody else is ever following me to make sure I was OK. So yeah, I guess you're covered. Also, unrelated: would it kill one of you to stalk me? I mean, it might, because Jerry has a license to carry and standing orders to shoot first, but it's like none of you cares enough to risk it.
I know this is already weird. It's Saturday morning, it's New Year's Eve, what are we even doing? The right/laziest thing to do would be to throw together a year end retrospective of pop culture lists and summaries. But look, we've got about three weeks left of the Obama era and nothing feels quite relevant enough in these sobering (but, if my drinking friends are any indication since the election, not particularly sober) times. Also I'm embarrassed because I've seen like five movies and read I think two and a half books all year. I'm not really in a position to go deep with the superficial stuff.
Also Carrie Fisher died. And then her mom died, like, the next day or some fucked up shit. Right up until then I really wasn't sure about the awful year of celebrity death people my age (largely) were bitching about. I mean, all the pop culture heroes of our parents' generation died too, only there were no social media platforms to wail and lament on as a massive, whiny group. I think my Generation X cohort are generally a funny, cynical group with almost fatal dedication to ironic detachment, but that doesn't mean we can't also disappear up our own asses. We have a tendency to forget that we aren't in fact the first generation that anything has happened to. So as bummed as I've been about seeing Alan Rickman et al. shuffle off, at some point grandpa was sad because he'd read Errol Flynn died* or whatever the fuck. He just didn't have facebook available to commiserate about the loss of "my Robin Hood" or whatever.
Still, though, Carrie Fisher... If you're feeling nostalgic or just want to celebrate her life, don't watch Star Wars, go watch Postcards from the Edge. Or better yet, read it.
But she wasn't the reason I missed posting on Thursday. I'm on vacation. In the past I've been able to post while vacationing, in exotic locales like London and Phoenix. This time I've decided to vacation right here at my house. I'm getting important things done like binge-watching season one of Arrow with my kids and learning to play Civilization VI. These things may not seem important to you, but that's because you have judgment and good taste. I've dedicated this rare two-week break from work specifically to not doing anything of particular importance. Hence missing this last Thursday. Sorry. I'll try to do better in a few days when Thursday, inevitably, happens again.
---
*In a newspaper article, like four days after the fact, tactfully not mentioning the details of his personal life.
Thursday, December 22, 2016
The Fifth Movement
Our first Holiday Season of Trump America is upon us, ladies and gentlemen, and so far it looks about like what we though it would, with people going out of their way to wish their fellow man peace and goodwill and long life back in whatever the fuck country it is they came from before they showed up here to steal our jobs and be murder-rapists. You were always going to have your work cut out for you trying to surprise me with the idea that the full-throated defense of petty, white America wasn't absolutely going to start in a JCPenney. Especially since Montgomery Ward went out of business.
So what do we do while we wait for either the inevitable race war or self-inflicted nuclear annihilation? Well, I'm pretty sure that's why Netflix was invented.
This past week, in a panic to avoid news of any kind, I was suckered in to a deceptive ad campaign to watch the new Netflix series The OA. "It's science-fictiony!" the mostly non sequitur surprise press information suggested. "Plus, here's a picture of a lady strapped to some science equipment with a water tank on her head. You remember something like that from Stranger Things, right? That one that was also on Netflix a few months ago, the one you liked?" And I was all: it's this or read one more fucking thing anywhere ever about Uday and Qusay Trump. I'm in!
Well, let me sum up my thoughts about The OA: it's not good. And I can say that with authority because I knew it sucked by about episode 3 (before that I only strongly suspected) but I still watched the whole thing. I'd like to say it was so I could defend you from it with an informed opinion, but really it's just a result of being an obsessive completist. It's the same impulse that made me read all four of the Heritage of Shannara books and each one of those made me want to reconsider the fascists and their book burning tendencies. Maybe there was some context I was missing?
To be fair: maybe you should watch it. Because some people really love it. Just because those people are wrong doesn't mean you won't be. These things are subjective after all. Sometimes the subject has opinions that are terrible.
What is the show about? It's about a lady who disappears for seven years. When she vanishes she is blind, but when she comes back, she totally is not blind! Mental, right?! Also she jumped off a bridge and talks in weird New Age-y code speak, which is supposed to be upsetting and weird, but I'm from Southern California. Walk through a Whole Foods over on the west side of LA somewhere, tell me if you don't hear most of this dialogue verbatim over the self-serve bin of tapioca flour.
Maybe "not good" was too vague. A more focused, and more pretentiously English, way to put it would be: it's a bit rubbish. These people mean well (starting with co-creator and star Brit Marling), but there is a VERY SERIOUS MESSAGE she/they would like you to take away, even if that means explaining in detail the very important back-story of the main character by narrating every beat of her disappearance (the B plot) by having her sit in an attic and tell it as as story to a bunch of people sitting around. This is ostensibly the A plot. Seriously, they just sit there. For, like, four episodes. And there are only eight total.
Nobody seems to be interested in any of the basics of television writing or storytelling, which would be fine if there felt like there was some kind of experimental deconstruction going on, but I've seen it all and I can tell you: there isn't. You know how shows give episodes internal arcs, resolving mini-stories that build to a crescendo at the end, drawing you into the next arc of the following episode? Nah, none of that. Episodes just kind of... end. Starting the next one is a conscious act of will, requiring not-insignificant consideration.
The ending is supposed to be wild and shocking and jarring, spurring conversation and re-examination of everything you've seen. Actually though, because the basic function of narrative art to suspend disbelief and draw in the reader/viewer/experiencer has been either discarded or forgotten, it ends up being frustrating and annoying, unearned and manipulative. Worse, when it was over, my main question was "yes, but who could actually ever care?"
The press comparisons to Stranger Things were lazy, based on proximity of platform and release date. It was actually closer to Sense8, another show that was a bit rubbish, but KNEW it and LOVED it. The Wachowskis, who created that show, at least had the notional intention to entertain. They also understood the rubbish-ness of their pretentious New Age-y premise and leaned into it, hard, throwing in for good measure some gangster elements, martial arts action and a raid/heist finale that was ludicrous, yes, but more dopey and fun, like a half-grown puppy, than The OA was skittish and terrified, like a feral cat.
And that should be enough criticism to keep you away. Cats are the worst.
Look, maybe it is for you and I don't know what I'm talking about. I like a ton of shit other people hate. I watch Agents of SHIELD every week. I own a Fall Out Boy album. Like what you want.
So what do we do while we wait for either the inevitable race war or self-inflicted nuclear annihilation? Well, I'm pretty sure that's why Netflix was invented.
This past week, in a panic to avoid news of any kind, I was suckered in to a deceptive ad campaign to watch the new Netflix series The OA. "It's science-fictiony!" the mostly non sequitur surprise press information suggested. "Plus, here's a picture of a lady strapped to some science equipment with a water tank on her head. You remember something like that from Stranger Things, right? That one that was also on Netflix a few months ago, the one you liked?" And I was all: it's this or read one more fucking thing anywhere ever about Uday and Qusay Trump. I'm in!
Well, let me sum up my thoughts about The OA: it's not good. And I can say that with authority because I knew it sucked by about episode 3 (before that I only strongly suspected) but I still watched the whole thing. I'd like to say it was so I could defend you from it with an informed opinion, but really it's just a result of being an obsessive completist. It's the same impulse that made me read all four of the Heritage of Shannara books and each one of those made me want to reconsider the fascists and their book burning tendencies. Maybe there was some context I was missing?
To be fair: maybe you should watch it. Because some people really love it. Just because those people are wrong doesn't mean you won't be. These things are subjective after all. Sometimes the subject has opinions that are terrible.
What is the show about? It's about a lady who disappears for seven years. When she vanishes she is blind, but when she comes back, she totally is not blind! Mental, right?! Also she jumped off a bridge and talks in weird New Age-y code speak, which is supposed to be upsetting and weird, but I'm from Southern California. Walk through a Whole Foods over on the west side of LA somewhere, tell me if you don't hear most of this dialogue verbatim over the self-serve bin of tapioca flour.
Maybe "not good" was too vague. A more focused, and more pretentiously English, way to put it would be: it's a bit rubbish. These people mean well (starting with co-creator and star Brit Marling), but there is a VERY SERIOUS MESSAGE she/they would like you to take away, even if that means explaining in detail the very important back-story of the main character by narrating every beat of her disappearance (the B plot) by having her sit in an attic and tell it as as story to a bunch of people sitting around. This is ostensibly the A plot. Seriously, they just sit there. For, like, four episodes. And there are only eight total.
Nobody seems to be interested in any of the basics of television writing or storytelling, which would be fine if there felt like there was some kind of experimental deconstruction going on, but I've seen it all and I can tell you: there isn't. You know how shows give episodes internal arcs, resolving mini-stories that build to a crescendo at the end, drawing you into the next arc of the following episode? Nah, none of that. Episodes just kind of... end. Starting the next one is a conscious act of will, requiring not-insignificant consideration.
The ending is supposed to be wild and shocking and jarring, spurring conversation and re-examination of everything you've seen. Actually though, because the basic function of narrative art to suspend disbelief and draw in the reader/viewer/experiencer has been either discarded or forgotten, it ends up being frustrating and annoying, unearned and manipulative. Worse, when it was over, my main question was "yes, but who could actually ever care?"
The press comparisons to Stranger Things were lazy, based on proximity of platform and release date. It was actually closer to Sense8, another show that was a bit rubbish, but KNEW it and LOVED it. The Wachowskis, who created that show, at least had the notional intention to entertain. They also understood the rubbish-ness of their pretentious New Age-y premise and leaned into it, hard, throwing in for good measure some gangster elements, martial arts action and a raid/heist finale that was ludicrous, yes, but more dopey and fun, like a half-grown puppy, than The OA was skittish and terrified, like a feral cat.
And that should be enough criticism to keep you away. Cats are the worst.
Look, maybe it is for you and I don't know what I'm talking about. I like a ton of shit other people hate. I watch Agents of SHIELD every week. I own a Fall Out Boy album. Like what you want.
Thursday, December 15, 2016
Forced
Starting late as I just got back from an opening-night screening of Rogue One, which is also, apparently, a Star Wars story. Maybe you're thinking: hey, doesn't that not come out until Friday? To which I would answer: technically, yes. But as capitalism is wont to do, it's decided that "days" are a vague and poorly understood concept and an underused exploitable resource, as measurements of time go. So Big Movie figured a few years ago they could pack out three or four screenings on Thursday evenings for the event-type films and still count the proceedings against the "weekend" opening box office. So that, plus inflation, plus adding markups for IMAX and 3D, it's apparently justifiable to charge $18.50 for one adult ticket on a weeknight at a suburban AMC screen warehouse and every weekend's a goddamned record-setter.
So yes, I did just blame capitalism for making me take my kids out on a school night in lieu of homework and an adequate amount of sleep. Hey, they weren't complaining. That's always a sign of good parenting, in my experience.
The movie then... well, it conveys a lot of information and plot-type points, many of which may be contained below. BEWARE SHOULD YOU NOT WISH TO IN ADVANCE LEARN OF THESE THINGS, EITHER DELIBERATELY, EXPLICITLY OR BY INFERENCE. CONSIDER THIS SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO CONTINUE READING.
It's a clumsy and wordy warning, but I don't want there to be any misunderstanding. Hey, if you can think of a faster way to say it, I'm all ears.
The movie is about Star Wars stuff, sure. And that part of it was all pretty close to 100% awesome. There was some decidedly unconventional material in it for a Star Wars movie too, especially the great cast, lovely acting and real, immediate stakes. The last part was the most surprising and the biggest break from the established playbook for making one of these things: in Rogue One, the stormtroopers do not always miss. Even when you'd really prefer that they did.
The film ends literally just before the events of the original 1977 Star Wars begins. In the opening of that movie, the stormtroopers break into the Tantive IV (welcome, nerds!) and pretty much wreck shop. Then they go to Tatooine and fuck up some Jawas and blast Luke Skywalker's old-ass aunt and uncle to charcoal. And then... that's it. From the time Luke makes a wincey face over Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru's crispy remnants, something magical happens and all stormtroopers forget how to aim. Maybe it's the force awakening or some shit to protect the protagonists and all the protagonists' sidekicks. Who can say? But in Rogue One, some motherfuckers get capped by the imperial space police.
Felicity Jones and Diego Luna are pretty good as the main leads, although as the main leads they generally have to carry the plot forward, with less time to be quirky and interesting, like Alan Tudyk or Donnie Yen. To be fair, Tudyk cheats by being a CGI motion-captured digital robot puppet. He also cheats by being extra super talented and having played Wash on Firefly. Nobody else had much of a chance to compete with that. And Donnie Yen gets to wreck some fools with a stick. Win.
Darth Vader also shows up AND does more than breathe menacingly at people. But he's not the only nostalgia pill you'll be forced to swallow. There are a couple of embarrassingly shoe-horned in cameos by recognizable figures from other films, a couple of whom are prominently featured and, bizarrely, recreated by a mixture of live-action body work and CGI face-drawing. It's creepy and distracting and HOLY SHIT STOP IT. I get it, Peter Cushing was exceptionally weird looking and hard to recast. But Ewan McGregor don't like nothing like no Alec Guinness and we were all fine with that. And I'd like to note we were fine with JUST THAT about the prequels. Nothing else. I said nothing.
Lots of fighting occurs and days get saved, more or less, just with a lot of death for a Star Wars movie. This one doesn't just dick around with Lucas' weird hand-stump fetish and maim everyone. They get completely dead. Some at the hands of a raging Darth Vader, for the first time ever in the suit getting his full Sith on. That part was pretty great.
If I have to criticize anything about the film, it was that it introduced almost as many plot holes as it attempted to fill. And more damning, we got there plenty early and stood in line for an hour before anyone told us it was the wrong line and our showing had already seated. I mean, AMC had one sign at the head of the line for ALL the showings, including 7:00 and 10:00. We got there at like 5:15 and the line had already transitioned to the 10:00 showing line, but nobody said or made any indication. So we stood outside in a SoCal winter deluge* for like an hour and, once we got inside, the theater was practically full, so the four of us couldn't even all sit together. As a result, I was really mad during all the trailers and decided they were all stupid. Fuck you, Dunkirk. You made me root for the Nazis for two and a half minutes.
SEVEN STARS OUT OF FIVE.
---
*I was touched by exactly 11 raindrops. I counted.
So yes, I did just blame capitalism for making me take my kids out on a school night in lieu of homework and an adequate amount of sleep. Hey, they weren't complaining. That's always a sign of good parenting, in my experience.
The movie then... well, it conveys a lot of information and plot-type points, many of which may be contained below. BEWARE SHOULD YOU NOT WISH TO IN ADVANCE LEARN OF THESE THINGS, EITHER DELIBERATELY, EXPLICITLY OR BY INFERENCE. CONSIDER THIS SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO CONTINUE READING.
It's a clumsy and wordy warning, but I don't want there to be any misunderstanding. Hey, if you can think of a faster way to say it, I'm all ears.
The movie is about Star Wars stuff, sure. And that part of it was all pretty close to 100% awesome. There was some decidedly unconventional material in it for a Star Wars movie too, especially the great cast, lovely acting and real, immediate stakes. The last part was the most surprising and the biggest break from the established playbook for making one of these things: in Rogue One, the stormtroopers do not always miss. Even when you'd really prefer that they did.
The film ends literally just before the events of the original 1977 Star Wars begins. In the opening of that movie, the stormtroopers break into the Tantive IV (welcome, nerds!) and pretty much wreck shop. Then they go to Tatooine and fuck up some Jawas and blast Luke Skywalker's old-ass aunt and uncle to charcoal. And then... that's it. From the time Luke makes a wincey face over Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru's crispy remnants, something magical happens and all stormtroopers forget how to aim. Maybe it's the force awakening or some shit to protect the protagonists and all the protagonists' sidekicks. Who can say? But in Rogue One, some motherfuckers get capped by the imperial space police.
Felicity Jones and Diego Luna are pretty good as the main leads, although as the main leads they generally have to carry the plot forward, with less time to be quirky and interesting, like Alan Tudyk or Donnie Yen. To be fair, Tudyk cheats by being a CGI motion-captured digital robot puppet. He also cheats by being extra super talented and having played Wash on Firefly. Nobody else had much of a chance to compete with that. And Donnie Yen gets to wreck some fools with a stick. Win.
Darth Vader also shows up AND does more than breathe menacingly at people. But he's not the only nostalgia pill you'll be forced to swallow. There are a couple of embarrassingly shoe-horned in cameos by recognizable figures from other films, a couple of whom are prominently featured and, bizarrely, recreated by a mixture of live-action body work and CGI face-drawing. It's creepy and distracting and HOLY SHIT STOP IT. I get it, Peter Cushing was exceptionally weird looking and hard to recast. But Ewan McGregor don't like nothing like no Alec Guinness and we were all fine with that. And I'd like to note we were fine with JUST THAT about the prequels. Nothing else. I said nothing.
Lots of fighting occurs and days get saved, more or less, just with a lot of death for a Star Wars movie. This one doesn't just dick around with Lucas' weird hand-stump fetish and maim everyone. They get completely dead. Some at the hands of a raging Darth Vader, for the first time ever in the suit getting his full Sith on. That part was pretty great.
If I have to criticize anything about the film, it was that it introduced almost as many plot holes as it attempted to fill. And more damning, we got there plenty early and stood in line for an hour before anyone told us it was the wrong line and our showing had already seated. I mean, AMC had one sign at the head of the line for ALL the showings, including 7:00 and 10:00. We got there at like 5:15 and the line had already transitioned to the 10:00 showing line, but nobody said or made any indication. So we stood outside in a SoCal winter deluge* for like an hour and, once we got inside, the theater was practically full, so the four of us couldn't even all sit together. As a result, I was really mad during all the trailers and decided they were all stupid. Fuck you, Dunkirk. You made me root for the Nazis for two and a half minutes.
SEVEN STARS OUT OF FIVE.
---
*I was touched by exactly 11 raindrops. I counted.
Thursday, December 8, 2016
You Better Listen to the Voice of Reason
I think we can all agree that one of the most important bedrock truths of human existence is that, in almost every case, 24 episodes of television in one season is too many episodes.
There are lots of things that the British have done incorrectly. They drive on the incorrect side of the road, they mix up the name of their money with a unit of weight measurement, they think competitive rowing is visually and athletically compelling, they use too many letters out of sheer bloody-mindedness, that whole taxation without representation kerfuffle and they keep getting in over their heads by pissing off the Germans at semi-regular intervals. The wisest course of action, of course, is to always ignore their example; the best advice, I always say, is wait to see what the British do and then do the opposite. Like remember in the 1980s when we didn't invade the Falkland Islands? That went way better for us than it did for them, mate. Rabid crowds have never spontaneously formed to kill any American TV presenters down there, for starters.
What the British have gotten violently, stunningly correct, however, is the very short television season. Being British of course they have to incorrectly and confusingly refer to a season as a "series" just to be contrarian fuss-buckets. It's similar to the way they insist on misusing "public school." They know better. They know we know they know better. This would be their way of giving us the finger, but we already know they do that wrong on purpose as well.
Taking all that into consideration, for us to adopt something that they do, it must have been done so right that the pull was irresistible, undeniable, like the crashing wave of history. Similar to the one that washed away their once global empire.
Of course they still do it kind of weird, where they have an irregular number of episodes (sometimes 3, sometimes 6, sometimes who the fuck even knows?) that come out at irregularly spaced intervals, whenever the creative team can bother to get to it, sometimes across decades. I mean, look at this one blandly charming show that played nine "series" (eyeroll eyeroll eyeroll) across 12 years, with differing numbers of episodes ranging from 6 to 12 and starting in differing months one can only assume were drawn from a super pretentious bespoke top-hat.
It took the death of the three-network paradigm, which despite the existence of basic cable since the 1970s, didn't really come apart until (I would argue) Mad Men and Breaking Bad came out on AMC. Sure, HBO had original series, but HBO has always been it's own weird-ass thing. It had Dream On as far back as 1990, but there are no humans alive who don't realize that that was less of a television show and more HBO reserving a spot for half an hour per week to show tits just because they could. As much as HBO original programming and storytelling has matured, it's a bug in the core of their DNA that persists.
What do we get for fewer episodes? Higher production values and tighter stories. Turns out both budgets and creative energies go farther when they don't have to be spread as thin. Also? You can snatch bigger names from pop culture in general if they don't have commit to potentially 10 years of 10 month schedules. Hey, who do we want to play the dickish exposition machine for our mostly-OK remake of Westworld? Well, Anthony Hopkins would be ideal, but I don't know if we could.... BOOM, Hannibal Lecter parachutes in for a couple of weeks, holds together your (mostly boring) narrative and jetpacks right the fuck back out again.
The result is also less commitment from the viewer. In one of my post-divorce relationships, we decided we'd watch Battlestar Galactica because we'd heard such good things about the reboot series. But hoo boy, that was way back when 20 episode seasons had to still be a thing, so pretty soon it became homework. And the "slow" episodes you plod through when they're new, week to week, are absolute roadblocks to human happiness if you're binge watching. I mean, it was a good show, but by the end, you're just like "OK, Starbuck is an angel I guess? Fine, fine. Just keep going..."
Now, though, a long season is 13 episodes, like the Marvel Netflix shows. Even traditional network shows have switched over to a model where they split their seasons into halves. They now have a thing called a "midseason finale" (many just this past week) so we don't have to remember the arbitrary place the story got cut off in the long desert of programming that used to exist between November and February sweeps periods.
It's also easier on those of us who have completionist disorders. I've never started a book I didn't finish for reasons beyond my control, even if I hated it.* And that's why I'm very selective about starting a new show because I know I'll have to watch all of it. One time I accidentally caught a rerun of House in syndication. Two years later I'd seen all 177 episodes, including the live airing of the finale, and that's one of the most rote, rigidly structured things in the history of written things. Hugh Laurie's American accent was pretty compelling though.
That's also how/why I ended up watching the last episode of season one of Westworld this past weekend. Because I liked it? Nope. Because I'd started it. Hell, I wasn't even really interested in it, but Game of Thrones was over and I just wanted to look forward to HBO Sunday night for a little longer. It's not like Westworld is awful. The production value is stunning, the cast is both stellar and sublime and the premise is not completely devoid of potential, it's just that... of the 10 episodes, if you distilled out the info dumps of pure expositional speechifying, you'd have 6.5 episodes at best. Did it have some deep ideas? Sure. But it laid them all out in the pilot episode and developed them not at all through the rest of the show. Maybe it's a metacommentary about "loops" that the android amusement park workers are forced to relive and relive that we ended up at the same place we started, but man... well, let's just say it's possible to finish where you started less because you've completed a circuit and more because you never bothered to leave in the first place.
And somehow? Still bummed out we have to wait so long until season two. I accept the consequences of my willing emotional conditioning.
---
*Please see last week's references to Gravity's Rainbow.
There are lots of things that the British have done incorrectly. They drive on the incorrect side of the road, they mix up the name of their money with a unit of weight measurement, they think competitive rowing is visually and athletically compelling, they use too many letters out of sheer bloody-mindedness, that whole taxation without representation kerfuffle and they keep getting in over their heads by pissing off the Germans at semi-regular intervals. The wisest course of action, of course, is to always ignore their example; the best advice, I always say, is wait to see what the British do and then do the opposite. Like remember in the 1980s when we didn't invade the Falkland Islands? That went way better for us than it did for them, mate. Rabid crowds have never spontaneously formed to kill any American TV presenters down there, for starters.
What the British have gotten violently, stunningly correct, however, is the very short television season. Being British of course they have to incorrectly and confusingly refer to a season as a "series" just to be contrarian fuss-buckets. It's similar to the way they insist on misusing "public school." They know better. They know we know they know better. This would be their way of giving us the finger, but we already know they do that wrong on purpose as well.
Taking all that into consideration, for us to adopt something that they do, it must have been done so right that the pull was irresistible, undeniable, like the crashing wave of history. Similar to the one that washed away their once global empire.
Of course they still do it kind of weird, where they have an irregular number of episodes (sometimes 3, sometimes 6, sometimes who the fuck even knows?) that come out at irregularly spaced intervals, whenever the creative team can bother to get to it, sometimes across decades. I mean, look at this one blandly charming show that played nine "series" (eyeroll eyeroll eyeroll) across 12 years, with differing numbers of episodes ranging from 6 to 12 and starting in differing months one can only assume were drawn from a super pretentious bespoke top-hat.
It took the death of the three-network paradigm, which despite the existence of basic cable since the 1970s, didn't really come apart until (I would argue) Mad Men and Breaking Bad came out on AMC. Sure, HBO had original series, but HBO has always been it's own weird-ass thing. It had Dream On as far back as 1990, but there are no humans alive who don't realize that that was less of a television show and more HBO reserving a spot for half an hour per week to show tits just because they could. As much as HBO original programming and storytelling has matured, it's a bug in the core of their DNA that persists.
What do we get for fewer episodes? Higher production values and tighter stories. Turns out both budgets and creative energies go farther when they don't have to be spread as thin. Also? You can snatch bigger names from pop culture in general if they don't have commit to potentially 10 years of 10 month schedules. Hey, who do we want to play the dickish exposition machine for our mostly-OK remake of Westworld? Well, Anthony Hopkins would be ideal, but I don't know if we could.... BOOM, Hannibal Lecter parachutes in for a couple of weeks, holds together your (mostly boring) narrative and jetpacks right the fuck back out again.
The result is also less commitment from the viewer. In one of my post-divorce relationships, we decided we'd watch Battlestar Galactica because we'd heard such good things about the reboot series. But hoo boy, that was way back when 20 episode seasons had to still be a thing, so pretty soon it became homework. And the "slow" episodes you plod through when they're new, week to week, are absolute roadblocks to human happiness if you're binge watching. I mean, it was a good show, but by the end, you're just like "OK, Starbuck is an angel I guess? Fine, fine. Just keep going..."
Now, though, a long season is 13 episodes, like the Marvel Netflix shows. Even traditional network shows have switched over to a model where they split their seasons into halves. They now have a thing called a "midseason finale" (many just this past week) so we don't have to remember the arbitrary place the story got cut off in the long desert of programming that used to exist between November and February sweeps periods.
It's also easier on those of us who have completionist disorders. I've never started a book I didn't finish for reasons beyond my control, even if I hated it.* And that's why I'm very selective about starting a new show because I know I'll have to watch all of it. One time I accidentally caught a rerun of House in syndication. Two years later I'd seen all 177 episodes, including the live airing of the finale, and that's one of the most rote, rigidly structured things in the history of written things. Hugh Laurie's American accent was pretty compelling though.
That's also how/why I ended up watching the last episode of season one of Westworld this past weekend. Because I liked it? Nope. Because I'd started it. Hell, I wasn't even really interested in it, but Game of Thrones was over and I just wanted to look forward to HBO Sunday night for a little longer. It's not like Westworld is awful. The production value is stunning, the cast is both stellar and sublime and the premise is not completely devoid of potential, it's just that... of the 10 episodes, if you distilled out the info dumps of pure expositional speechifying, you'd have 6.5 episodes at best. Did it have some deep ideas? Sure. But it laid them all out in the pilot episode and developed them not at all through the rest of the show. Maybe it's a metacommentary about "loops" that the android amusement park workers are forced to relive and relive that we ended up at the same place we started, but man... well, let's just say it's possible to finish where you started less because you've completed a circuit and more because you never bothered to leave in the first place.
And somehow? Still bummed out we have to wait so long until season two. I accept the consequences of my willing emotional conditioning.
---
*Please see last week's references to Gravity's Rainbow.
Thursday, December 1, 2016
Ónen i-Estel Edain, ú-chebin estel anim
I'm 42 years old and when asked, I still tell people my favorite book is The Lord of the Rings.
You're probably thinking:
1) Aren't you embarrassed? You're an adult, for fuck's sake. That's got things unironically called "hobbits" in it and ZERO SEX. It's clearly for children. It's fine if you like that I guess, or at least liked at as a child when you read it, but ranking it at the top of your list doesn't do anything to clue the person asking the question in to what level of cultural sophistication you're operating at. And what is the question "what is your favorite book?" between adults meant to do but begin a status contest wherein one wins when the other one has to pretend to have heard of the painfully obscure post-war Czechoslovakian existentialist proletarian folk-poetry the other one casually drops. The only acceptable counter is something in Quechua or immediate, humiliating surrender.
To which I reply: look, I spent a lot of time when I was a stay-at-home parent on a program of self-improvement through literature, alternating classics from the Western Canon with German philosophy and/or (to save my brain from cracking) Terry Pratchett Discworld novels. By the time I got to Gravity's Rainbow,* I realized the only actual outcome of such a narrowly defined course of action was going to be a defensive middle-class snobbishness, where I hold my arsenal of conquered tomes in reserve, to be released in violent flurries at the types of dinner parties or post-work semi-professional social gatherings where I already hate everyone there.
2) That can't be your favorite book when it's three books, not one. Well, the joke's on you Mr. I-Had-Sex-In-High-School, because every nerd knows it's actually SIX books collected in three volumes. Plus appendices! Does that information make it fit the criteria for "favorite book" better or worse? Arguably the latter, but until they invent two-way real-time blog-response voice technology, I can't hear any of your arguablies, so I'm just going to pretend there are no objections and move on.
I'm not just a fantasy nerd, I'm also a sports nerd, which brings me to the terrible cliche: to be the champ, you have to beat the champ. I've read a lot of books between the summer of sixth grade (when I read Lord of the Rings) and now, and I just haven't come across anything I liked more. Now, it's likely cheating as LotR got me at a time when the only real competition it had for my reading attention were X-Men comics and the Encyclopedia Brown mysteries. Getting through something that dense (I mean physically), with its arch English-ness and archaic English, both supported by a bedrock of utterly alien Scandinavian literary and folk storytelling tradition, brought with it a sense of accomplishment I haven't been able to match since, especially since I actually enjoyed it. Maybe that is, again, more cheating as the gap between the books targeted at people my age at the time and LotR was always going to be wider than any other readerly achievement I'd arrive at just by dint of the stupefying totality of my naivete, but that's not LotR's fault.
I told a lie before, though: I'm not a fantasy nerd. Not really. I've read some, sure, but all modern fantasy flows from the source of Tolkien, all fading echoes of one shouted voice. My adoration for Terry Pratchett isn't a secret, but that's more straight satire than fantasy, though I'm sure the late Sir Terry would object. All I know is what I found in Discworld when I went looking. Mostly puns. But good ones.
The fact that LotR holds up when fantasy holds no particular sway on me I think says something. Probably that I was right before to suspect my own snobbishness.
The best thing about it is that the more I consider it, the more I like it. Plenty of things I read when I was younger fade in my estimation as I discover things I simply enjoy more or other things that put that first thing into a context that no longer seems as flattering. If you can get past the names (of people and places) and the preciousness of the language (both English and invented) and the Manichean absolutes of the characters,** overall, it's a very Catholic story about hope. The "good" characters are able to recognize and (most importantly) hold onto it. Only Sauron is actually evil. Every other character either soldiers on despite the odds and the evidence before his/her eyes or succumbs to despair and becomes a servant of actual evil. Unlike the movies, Saruman sees no way to resist and so turns to the tools of the enemy to meet darkness with darkness. Denethor goes mad because he has a seeing stone that robs him of his hope, driving him to suicide. As a fosterling among the Elves of Rivendell, Aragon is literally called Hope. The Nazguls' superpower is to drive those nearby to thoughts of despair, free of warmth and hope. Even Frodo ultimately fails because, right at the end, before they walk into the mountain, he tells Sam he's lost the ability to hope. And then he decides, logically, that he's going to become a hobbit dark lord, only to have his plans dashed by a greedy junkie frog-weasel who gave up on that bullshit like a thousand years ago.
And only two characters who give in to despair are redeemed: Theoden (restored by Gandalf, not from being literally possessed like he was in the movie, but corrupted to paralysis being convinced of his own impotence) and Eowyn (who isn't cowed by the Lord of the Nazgul-actually laughs at him-because he doesn't realize she's already way ahead of him on her suicidal death-wish mission, again unlike the movie). The only thing those two ever achieve is to totally save the day.
It's a Catholic idea that despair is a mortal sin. When they say it, I think they mean despairing of God's love and acceptance*** or even of His existence at all. Despair is the handmaiden of Wallowing, which is all unrecoverable spilt action. There's plenty of awful worse than my (or your, probably) awful and plenty of those people are out there still doing shit. Some people find this inspiring, but the right response is probably embarrassment. And if that isn't a motivation to fix something, the only things left south of that are either cash payments or rehab.
This is not a Donald Trump post. I did it! Well, right until this last line...
---
*Which I actually finished. Less a sign of intellectual prowess or discipline and more just proof of the depth of my own masochistic self-loathing.
**These are things people site as stumbling blocks to enjoying Tolkien. I went on to study medieval and early modern British history. I did OK with those parts of it.
***Hard to do as these are pretend things.
You're probably thinking:
1) Aren't you embarrassed? You're an adult, for fuck's sake. That's got things unironically called "hobbits" in it and ZERO SEX. It's clearly for children. It's fine if you like that I guess, or at least liked at as a child when you read it, but ranking it at the top of your list doesn't do anything to clue the person asking the question in to what level of cultural sophistication you're operating at. And what is the question "what is your favorite book?" between adults meant to do but begin a status contest wherein one wins when the other one has to pretend to have heard of the painfully obscure post-war Czechoslovakian existentialist proletarian folk-poetry the other one casually drops. The only acceptable counter is something in Quechua or immediate, humiliating surrender.
To which I reply: look, I spent a lot of time when I was a stay-at-home parent on a program of self-improvement through literature, alternating classics from the Western Canon with German philosophy and/or (to save my brain from cracking) Terry Pratchett Discworld novels. By the time I got to Gravity's Rainbow,* I realized the only actual outcome of such a narrowly defined course of action was going to be a defensive middle-class snobbishness, where I hold my arsenal of conquered tomes in reserve, to be released in violent flurries at the types of dinner parties or post-work semi-professional social gatherings where I already hate everyone there.
2) That can't be your favorite book when it's three books, not one. Well, the joke's on you Mr. I-Had-Sex-In-High-School, because every nerd knows it's actually SIX books collected in three volumes. Plus appendices! Does that information make it fit the criteria for "favorite book" better or worse? Arguably the latter, but until they invent two-way real-time blog-response voice technology, I can't hear any of your arguablies, so I'm just going to pretend there are no objections and move on.
I'm not just a fantasy nerd, I'm also a sports nerd, which brings me to the terrible cliche: to be the champ, you have to beat the champ. I've read a lot of books between the summer of sixth grade (when I read Lord of the Rings) and now, and I just haven't come across anything I liked more. Now, it's likely cheating as LotR got me at a time when the only real competition it had for my reading attention were X-Men comics and the Encyclopedia Brown mysteries. Getting through something that dense (I mean physically), with its arch English-ness and archaic English, both supported by a bedrock of utterly alien Scandinavian literary and folk storytelling tradition, brought with it a sense of accomplishment I haven't been able to match since, especially since I actually enjoyed it. Maybe that is, again, more cheating as the gap between the books targeted at people my age at the time and LotR was always going to be wider than any other readerly achievement I'd arrive at just by dint of the stupefying totality of my naivete, but that's not LotR's fault.
I told a lie before, though: I'm not a fantasy nerd. Not really. I've read some, sure, but all modern fantasy flows from the source of Tolkien, all fading echoes of one shouted voice. My adoration for Terry Pratchett isn't a secret, but that's more straight satire than fantasy, though I'm sure the late Sir Terry would object. All I know is what I found in Discworld when I went looking. Mostly puns. But good ones.
The fact that LotR holds up when fantasy holds no particular sway on me I think says something. Probably that I was right before to suspect my own snobbishness.
The best thing about it is that the more I consider it, the more I like it. Plenty of things I read when I was younger fade in my estimation as I discover things I simply enjoy more or other things that put that first thing into a context that no longer seems as flattering. If you can get past the names (of people and places) and the preciousness of the language (both English and invented) and the Manichean absolutes of the characters,** overall, it's a very Catholic story about hope. The "good" characters are able to recognize and (most importantly) hold onto it. Only Sauron is actually evil. Every other character either soldiers on despite the odds and the evidence before his/her eyes or succumbs to despair and becomes a servant of actual evil. Unlike the movies, Saruman sees no way to resist and so turns to the tools of the enemy to meet darkness with darkness. Denethor goes mad because he has a seeing stone that robs him of his hope, driving him to suicide. As a fosterling among the Elves of Rivendell, Aragon is literally called Hope. The Nazguls' superpower is to drive those nearby to thoughts of despair, free of warmth and hope. Even Frodo ultimately fails because, right at the end, before they walk into the mountain, he tells Sam he's lost the ability to hope. And then he decides, logically, that he's going to become a hobbit dark lord, only to have his plans dashed by a greedy junkie frog-weasel who gave up on that bullshit like a thousand years ago.
And only two characters who give in to despair are redeemed: Theoden (restored by Gandalf, not from being literally possessed like he was in the movie, but corrupted to paralysis being convinced of his own impotence) and Eowyn (who isn't cowed by the Lord of the Nazgul-actually laughs at him-because he doesn't realize she's already way ahead of him on her suicidal death-wish mission, again unlike the movie). The only thing those two ever achieve is to totally save the day.
It's a Catholic idea that despair is a mortal sin. When they say it, I think they mean despairing of God's love and acceptance*** or even of His existence at all. Despair is the handmaiden of Wallowing, which is all unrecoverable spilt action. There's plenty of awful worse than my (or your, probably) awful and plenty of those people are out there still doing shit. Some people find this inspiring, but the right response is probably embarrassment. And if that isn't a motivation to fix something, the only things left south of that are either cash payments or rehab.
This is not a Donald Trump post. I did it! Well, right until this last line...
*Which I actually finished. Less a sign of intellectual prowess or discipline and more just proof of the depth of my own masochistic self-loathing.
**These are things people site as stumbling blocks to enjoying Tolkien. I went on to study medieval and early modern British history. I did OK with those parts of it.
***Hard to do as these are pretend things.
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