We went and had sliders at a restaurant at River Bottoms. They looked like this:

The thing on the right is not a slider. And the thing at the bottom left is just ranch dressing, but if you want to tell yourself that a bird flew into the restaurant and had a near miss with my dinner, more power to you. Or maybe less since you’ll be self-deceived, although there is a lot of power in self-deceit. Maybe in this case it would be a wash. The tri-tip burger (or filet burger?) was pretty special, although the chicken-ranch burger has nothing of which to be ashamed (other than being somewhat effeminate, not that there’s anything wrong with that).

As part of its branding, River Bottoms has installed the tallest speed bumps in all of Utah County. They also have an indoor surfing pool there. Here I am catching a big, dry wave:

And then this is Terry and Claire enjoying the kind of anonymity that can only be afforded a couple by insufficient-light photography:

And it occurs to me that if not for Facebook, I would have no idea how to spell Claire’s name. I mean, I’d have an idea, just that it would be the wrong idea.

We later went to the grocery store, where I was impressed by this aisle:

I’m not sure why grocery stores in western Pennsylvania *wouldn’t* carry five-gallon paint buckets full of corn meal, I just know that they don’t.

Then on the way down to southern Utah, I stopped at Carl’s Jr. in Fillmore. It was kind of a bad Carl’s, though: not enough barbecue sauce on the Western Cheeseburger, over-toasted bun, and whatever the ranch dressing was that they gave me for my criss-cut fries, it wasn’t Carl’s in-house dressing and, accordingly, sucked. So I’m not showing pictures of that particular Carl’s Jr. as it appears to be of an apostate strain. May its misdeeds soon be repaid in the hellfires of franchise license eradication. Amen.

After coming back from SoUT, met up with Terry again and went shooting in Orem with him and the scouts or deacons. I’m not sure whether they were acting as scouts or deacons that night. No one was wearing a neckerchief, but then no one was passing the sacrament either. Maybe they were just 12-year-olds with handguns.

And then I went golfing with Garry, Beth, and Caitlin.

They are dutiful posers (in the sense that they pose dutifully). I only picked up on one hole. More importantly, Garry found Dunmore chocolate donuts (and brought me one). For them alone it would be worth a trip to Utah (although they require hunting down among the gas stations and grocery stores). Seriously the best donut ever, and I don’t say that lightly. But, no, I didn’t take a picture.

These are also just words.

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This was the “follow up” to With the Old Breed, which is the greatest first-person account of war I’m aware of. It was written by the same guy, Eugene Sledge. Unfortunately, it turns out that 100 pages of musings about sitting around in China after the war isn’t quite as gripping as actual war narrative.

This is going to be a short post.

• They should have taken the last 20 pages of China Marine, when Sledge actually gets to go home, and put it at the end of With the Old Breed.
• And then the rest of it they could have posted on his website or whatever.

The last 20 pages or so were very cool and brought satisfying closure to the overall story that began with With the Old Breed. Just that the China that filled the first 80 pages was pretty bland. A lot of discussion of how it was annoying to still be in some amount of danger even though the war was over as well as talking about food and walking around Beijing.

Endut.

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1. For a book with a theme I identify with (i.e., people being born into lives not of their choosing and then having to deal with it), it seems like I should have liked it a lot better.
2. The main character sucked. I mean, as a person. He made frequent bad decisions against advice he should have listened to, thus leading to detrimental situations for everyone around him — and was shameless (and condescending) in doing so.
3. Which is problematic, because he was, as a result, very unsympathetic and the sparse setting and infrequent event doesn’t give you a lot else to care about.
4. Everyone who comes to know him ends up worse off as a result. I’m not sure what the message there is. People who fight their fates really mess stuff up for everyone else?
5. So many monologues.
6. While it was probably very clever the first time someone submitted a punctuation-free manuscript, McCarthy’s insistence on doing so in everything he writes is just self-indulgent and makes the book harder to read (and is probably just a cynical branding function).
7. It’s also hard to read paragraph after paragraph of dialogue in Spanish. I’m not sure how that was a good idea.
8. The getaway/chase scene at the end was utterly unintelligible and did not seem predicated on any gun found on the mantelpiece in the first chapter.

McCarthy obviously likes main characters who, over the course of a novel, stubbornly insist on not learning anything. At least in No Country the sheriff seemed to undergo some sort of transformation even if the cowboy dude didn’t. In The Road, the father was clearly detrimentally self-focused, but that sure never changed even though there were plenty of opportunities for him to recognize his errors. From a perception of reality standpoint, I think McCarthy has a good point about an individual’s inability to adapt. From an enjoyment of reading standpoint: guh.

I don’t know that I’ve ever gotten 80-percent through with a book and then just not cared about the last 20%. I’m starting to wonder if McCarthy is overrated.

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Why I Watched: Because Netflix said that users like me rated it 3 1/4 stars. Which is really high for users like me. (I gave it 3.)

Biggest Question: Why is it so hard for lower-budget movies to maintain consistent facial hair length from scene to scene? Just put the trimmer on 6 and use it every morning before shooting. Man.

Second Biggest Question: How can any town in Denmark be *that* remote? The whole country is the size of my fist, ergo people shouldn’t be able to hide anything from anyone there.

If the movie were a restaurant, which restaurant would it be?: A one-off shack in a far away place that you visited once and where you really liked the one thing that you tried there, but they only serve that dish on Wednesdays.

Best Part: The interior sets made Denmark look like East Germany or worse (meaning better).

Worst Part: Really inconsistent morals that took center stage frequently even though they sort of didn’t amount to anything functional. Or maybe I just don’t “get” Denmark.

Bearable or Unbearable: Oddly bearable.

And also: Just because the town bully tries to engage you in a drinking contest, that doesn’t mean you have to go along with it.

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1. Shawshank Redemption – Loved it; in my personal top 10. Speaks to the idea of hope without feeling cloying; the characters deserve the ends they get.
2. The Godfather – I just don’t care about gangsters. That said, it’s a very compelling, interesting movie and I have a hard time arguing with its belovedness.
3. The Godfather II – Ibid.
4. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly – I liked it. It’s not my fourth-favorite movie or anything and the Italian extras trying to play civil war soldiers are, IMHO, unintentionally funny. But I liked it a lot. Eli Wallach ftw.
5. Pulp Fiction – A lot of fun and violence. I should probably watch it again and see if there’s anything more to it than that, but, you know, fun and violence are good either way.
6. Schindler’s List – Overrated, under-interesting. Any PBS or History Channel program on the holocaust is more moving (if perhaps only due to lack of editorial). Little plot, no surprise, and the black-and-white is, I think, just an attempt to make the masses think they’ve watched and comprehended something “arty”. Life Is Beautiful was way better, frex. It had a plot and some emotional resonance.
7. Inception – Haven’t seen.
8. 12 Angry Men – Kind of cool. It’s sort of a small movie, but it’s a good lesson about how a group of people who are foolish in the first place can easily get brow-beaten by Henry Fonda. Wait — that *was* the message, right?
9. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Kind of boring. Not much happened. Didn’t see any reason to care about any of the characters. Now what?
10. The Dark Knight – There was a fantastic 90-minute brainless action movie in here just trying to get out. Alas. [My earlier review.]
11. The Empire Strikes Back – Given its iconic status and that I loved it as an eight-year-old, calling it “still watchable” should probably serve as high praise.
12. Lord of the Rings: Return of the King – Awful on many, many levels. In Peter Jackson’s defense, most of the flaws came from the source material. Why didn’t the eagles come at the *start* of the journey? How come it hadn’t occurred to anyone any earlier that a bunch of ghosts owed Aragorn a favor? Why were the main characters so blasé about everybody in their army dying such that they were making jokes about how many bad guys they’d killed? Who thought it was a good idea to include a scene where a hobbit sings while some dude eats tomatoes with his mouth open? How come Gandalf could only see the future in ways that didn’t matter? Why were there eight different endings, none of which were the right one? Man. As Terry Brown once said, this was the first movie that won Best Picture based on quantity of work rather than quality.
13. Seven Samurai – Haven’t seen.
14. Star Wars (A New Hope) – Wooden characters, stilted dialogue, loved it when I was five years old, but now it’s unwatchable. Yeah, I know, I’m worse than Hitler.
15. Fight Club – Haven’t seen.
16. Goodfellas – Haven’t seen.
17. Casablanca – It’s okay. In 2008 I typed: Some great one-liners, but the plot’s unclear. Is Rick the main character? What’s he trying to achieve? Should I be happy at how it ends? I probably would have liked it better if I hadn’t been told it was the third greatest movie ever. I probably would have.
18. City of God – This is my cousin’s former favorite movie. It was pretty good, although it sort of felt like every movie I’ve seen about violence in poor neighborhoods.
19. Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring – I still kind of like this one. There’s so much potential in here. The scary parts are actually kind of scary. The characters are dynamic. Their actions seem to matter. It’s a beautiful movie on the screen and in 5.1 surround and it’s nice how it doesn’t insult you at every turn.
20. Once Upon a Time in the West – A little long and the music was kind of cheesy, but there are some really beautifully put-together scenes in here (e.g., the opening) and I like it enough to own it.
21. Rear Window – Every Hitchcock movie is sort of the same to me. Fun to watch the first time, not much reason to go back to it.
22. Raiders of the Lost Ark – Some time between 1981 and 2006 this movie became unwatchable for me. Sad.
23. The Matrix – Cool concept. Characters and story were flat, but the concept — the *concept*!
24. Psycho – Haven’t seen.
25. The Usual Suspects – Not bad. I think the twist is unfair, though. There’s no real way to suspect who the bad guy is, which left me feeling like someone had just been yanking my chain the whole time. And it has one of the untalented Baldwin brothers in it, which isn’t a plus.
26. Silence of the Lambs – Haven’t seen.
27. Toy Story 3 – Very funny movie, although I think I liked the first two better.
28. Se7en – Haven’t seen.
29. It’s a Wonderful Life – Haven’t seen.
30. Memento – Kind of a challenge to keep up with, which I liked a lot.
31. Lord of the Rings: Two Towers – Atrociously awful. Three hours of filler, none of which impacted the overall story of the trilogy. No character development and nothing important happened. CGI for its own sake. Rancid.
32. Sunset Blvd. – A role where William Holden’s overacting actually fits the character. Fun and dark and full of implication about what Hollywood in the 1950s was probably like.
33. Forrest Gump – Meh. I liked it a lot the first time through. Upon further review, it seems utterly cynical in its message that, in order to get ahead in life the key thing to do is not try very hard and let things fall into your lap. Forrest should have let Lt. Dan die. OTOH, this is where I first heard the story of Nathaniel Bedford Forrest, which I encountered again in Tennessee last year.
34. The Professional – Haven’t seen.
35. Dr. Strangelove – I think I like this one a lot, although part of me thinks that I only like it because I feel like it’s a movie that I *should* like. ::shrug:: I enjoyed seeing George C. Scott do comedy and there are a number of lines from this movie that stick with me.
36. Apocalypse Now – Also in my personal Top 10. Awesome characters and does a brilliant thing in weaving an actual story into an absurd and wacky setting with so many messed-up characters. I felt like I learned a few things about human nature from this movie (e.g., “F—, man, this is better than Disneyland!”).
37. Citizen Kane – Lovely camera angles. Banal plot, but, you know, *lovely* camera angles.
38. North by Northwest – Seriously, all of Hitchcock’s movies run together. Yeah, I know, Mt. Rushmore and the plane in the corn fields. I liked it the first time I watched it.
39. American Beauty – Haven’t seen.
40. American History X – Didn’t feel like a complete movie to me, but I remember liking a lot about it. Felt like it pulled its punches toward the end maybe.
41. Taxi Driver – Haven’t seen.
42. Terminator 2: Judgment Day – Haven’t seen.
43. Saving Private Ryan – I have mixed emotions about it. I loved it the first time I saw it. The D-Day montage is jaw-dropping, but having since read enough about WWII to know better, seems a little disingenuous (in the sense that no one person would have seen a tenth of the extreme instances shown in these 15 minutes of the film). I also think that the ending is a little contrived and too conventional. A lot of the in-between sticks with me, though. Also importantly: the pinnacle of Vin Diesel’s career. Giovanni Ribisi’s too. Probably Nathan Fillian’s and Ted Danson’s also. Huh.
44. Vertigo – Hitchcock. See above.
45. Amélie – Haven’t seen.
46. Alien – Haven’t seen as such.
47. WALL-E – Liked it, especially the first half-hour. I thought it was amazing how much character, setting, and plot were conveyed during that time of no dialogue. Things got a little silly and slow once they got in the ship, though. IMHO.
48. Spirited Away – Haven’t seen.
49. The Shining – I like Stanley Kubrick and this movie is effective for me. The masks haunt even still.
50. Paths of Glory – Haven’t seen.
51. Lawrence of Arabia – Remember liking it when I watched it, but then again I watched it when I was in high school as part of a class and I may have just been happy to not be having to sit through a lecture. Do high school teachers give “lectures”? Whatever it is they do. At this point I mostly just remember the Turkish guy coughing.
52. Black Swan – Haven’t seen. IMDB users often overrate newer movies.
53. Double Indemnity – Haven’t seen.
54. The Pianist – Haven’t seen.
55. A Clockwork Orange – Really, really effective. I don’t know that I can say I “like” a movie like this, but — yeah. I like how effective it is; another one that haunts and sticks.
56. To Kill a Mockingbird – Saw in ninth grade, I think.
57. The Lives of Others – Liked a lot; kind of surprising it’s rated so highly, it being foreign and all. The ending felt like it was a little drawn out the first time I watched it, but I didn’t feel that way the second time. Tense and captivating.
58. City Lights – Haven’t seen.
59. M – Haven’t seen.
60. The Departed – Poster boy for everything I don’t like about Martin Scorcese. Scorsese. Whatever. Want more on why this movie sucks? Here’s a blog post I wrote in 2007 entitled “The Departed Wasn’t a Very Good Movie“.
61. Aliens – Haven’t seen.
62. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – I liked the concept and it seemed like the movie almost lived up to it (but not quite).
63. Requiem for a Dream – Haven’t seen.
64. Das Boot – This might be the first war movie that I really liked. I still really like it, I think. I imagine the inside of that submarine didn’t smell very good.
65. The Third Man – Haven’t seen.
66. Reservoir Dogs – Haven’t seen.
67. L.A. Confidential – Also probably in my Top 10. Loved it; better than Cats.
68. Chinatown – Felt tired and like something I’d seen a thousand times before. I’ve been told that this is only because Chinatown was the first-ever movie like this. Fine, but now it feels tired and like something I’ve seen a thousand times before. OTOH, includes some stunning footage of the LA River…
69. Modern Times – Tried to watch; failed due to lack of patience. I’m not a film student, no.
70. Treasure of the Sierra Madre – To quote myself: A painful experience. That crazy old guy alone would have been too much to take. Boring dialog and no reason for me to care about the characters.
71. Life Is Beautiful – Fortunately they were sent to the concentration camp because I couldn’t take any more of that self-indulgent Italian guy trying to act “funny”. Once they got to the camp, though, this movie rawked.
72. Back to the Future – I worry that if I watch this movie again I’ll end up hating it just like I now have to hate Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark. Right now my memories of it are still innocent and pleasant.
73. Monte Python and the Holy Grail – There were maybe ten years in my life when I thought Monte Python was funny. Those are in the past now.
74. The Prestige – Haven’t seen.
75. Pan’s Labyrinth – Meh? Spanish girl. Some guy gets his mouth slit open, but he was kind of a jerk, so maybe that was all right. Yeah, meh.
76. Raging Bull – Way better than The Departed. A little over-long maybe, but otherwise compelling.
77. Cinema Paradiso – Haven’t seen.
78. Singin’ in the Rain – Haven’t seen. Probably now too tainted by A Clockwork Orange to watch with an open mind.
79. Some Like It Hot – Haven’t seen.
80. The Bridge on the River Kwai – Top 10 list probably. William Holden is a little hard to stomach, but I love the contrasts between Americans, British, and Japanese. “I thought you were the enemy, sir.” “Well I’m an American if that’s what you mean.” Yeah.
81. Rashomon – Haven’t seen.
82. All About Eve – Haven’t seen.
83. Amadeus – It’s a very 80s movie, but I still probably like it.
84. Once Upon a Time in America – Haven’t seen.
85. The Green Mile – Felt like a movie that was trying to cash in on Shawshank Redemption‘s halo. It was all right I guess.
86. Full Metal Jacket – Two movies in one! I liked the first one a lot better than the second one. The second one just felt like a generic Vietnam War movie. Having a character named “Animal Mother” doesn’t make a movie interesting in itself. IMHO. R. Lee Ermey ftw though.
87. Bicycle Thieves – Haven’t seen.
88. 2001: A Space Odyssey – I mean, yeah. It’s slow and mostly plotless. Interesting-enough vision of the future, but, you know, none of that vision has come true. Maybe HAL still will. I’ll give it some more time. Not my favorite Kubrick movie; I liked Barry Lyndon better, frex.
89. The Great Dictator – Tried to watch recently; failed. Chaplin is just too twee for me. I mean, it’s 2011, of course he is.
90. Inglorious Basterds – Haven’t seen.
91. Braveheart – I really loved this movie back in the day. I think I started liking it somewhat less when I found out that by “freedom” in the end, they meant that the Scots won the war. I liked it better when I used to think that they all died in the end and were in that sense “free”. Regardless, a lot of very nice violence.
92. The Apartment – Haven’t seen.
93. Downfall – I wanted this to be better than it was. I didn’t hate it, just didn’t think it was special. Came across as a little dry maybe. Could be I know too much history to find sufficient novelty in the story or characterizations, but whatever. I mean, it had occurred to me before watching this movie that Hitler was, in fact, also a human.
94. Up – It was okay. A little bit more of a downer than I wanted it to be. Also didn’t really like its message that taking out the garbage every Thursday *is* an adventure. It’s not, I swear.
95. Gran Torino – Haven’t seen. Mean to.
96. Metropolis – Heh. I mean, you know. It’s hard to watch this as a 2011er. You have to watch it with context, which, I dunno, seems a bit much. Frex, you can watch and enjoy Mozart’s Don Giovanni and not have to keep telling yourself that, you know, this is *really novel* for 1787! Metropolis, by contrast, comes across like simplistic, socialist (or fascist?) political scree. There’s little emotion in it and the plot and characters serve only the message. Maybe it was novel for its time, but, again: not a film student, don’t have to care.
97. Gladiator – Loved it when it first came out. Like it less now. I still love, though, the recurring theme of the guy dragging his hand through the wheat, which doesn’t have a lot of meaning early on in the movie, but by the end is very, very powerful. The Danish woman who played, well, the woman, had kind of a crappy accent and wooden delivery. Joaquin Phoenix was fun to watch. Ridley Scott spent a lot of time in his commentary talking about how much money he saved by reusing sets.
98. The Sting – Haven’t seen.
99. Unforgiven – Greatest movie of all time. All the movies Eastwood directs have great scenes in them. This is the one where the scenes all work together. Has some fantastic, memorable lines in it. The scene where they shoot the first cowboy is the most uncomfortable assassination ever. “Take away all he’s got, and all he’s ever gonna have.” It’s an unusual movie that can pay homage while debunking mythology.
100. The Maltese Falcon – No. Just no.

~ Fin ~

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Edgar’s Double, 1995

That’s not just 50 seconds of baseball radio announcing, that’s vindication for everyone who lived in the Northwest from 1977 to 1994 and followed the local baseball team despite its historic ineptitude. Dave Niehaus was the man who made people think that following a bunch of deservedly unknown guys play through summer after summer of terrible baseball was, in fact, a good idea. The promised land was always just around the corner.

It might still be, but we’re down a guy who could say so and make you believe it.

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PS, I guess it’s probably a good thing if some guy you don’t know dies of a heart attack at age 75 and it’s the worst news you’ve had in a long time. But still.

1. Writing the last great World War 2 novel.
2. Writing the first great asteroid mining novel.

I needed some vernacular to move ahead with #2, and I found this book (The Making of a Hardrock Miner by Stephen Voynick) on Amazon. It’s very good. It’s a first-person account of a guy who started working in western US mines in order to fund his living the life of a seasonally-employed other-seasonally man of leisure. It’s a very outsiderish perspective on mining. The guy works short stints at mines in Colorado, Arizona, and Wyoming. The outsiderness affords him insights that probably wouldn’t have been clear to someone on the inside; it also makes it easier for someone with no clue about mining to relate to the narrative.

I think there are two different kinds of first-person non-fiction accounts:

1. Those written for money.
2. Those written to expose truth.

I think an easy contrast between the two in World War II terms is anything by Robert Leckey was the first and Eugene Sledge’s book was the second. Most are probably the first kind. This book’s the second.

If you’re reading something written for money, it should make you skeptical of the content. The goal is to make money. People like excitement and controversy. People buy what they like. Ergo, books written for money are going to be more exciting and controversial than the actual experiences and events they describe. The Voynick book includes event. It’s unadorned and lays stuff out there for the reader to romanticize it, learn from it, or whatever.

Its central theme is also similar to one of the themes from my would-be mining novel: that certain people need risk and transience in their lives and, without it, feel insecure and ungrounded. Maybe I also identify with that sentiment. I’m probably never going to be a hardrock miner though.

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Coming in from the east (or south), the recommended parking is all downtown. Works out pretty well — $5 parking and a 10-15 minute walk, depending on what garage you ended up in. The walk is also cool as the closer you get to the park, the more fans you’re walking with and then crossing the (pedestrian-only on gameday) Roberto Clemente Bridge makes for a pretty dramatic final leg of the journey.

The views from the park side of the Allegheny River are also pretty good.

Otherwise:

• They really play up the pirate theme on the big screen; it’s kind of cool.
• They have this big animation sequence before every game wherein a Pirates-themed galleon is taking on a galleon flying the colors of the day’s opponent. You’d think that should be no contest — pirates should be better seamen than, for instance, Franciscan friars — but it’s still pretty satisfying when the statue of Roberto Clemente hits a flaming cannonball out of the park and drops it right on the bad guys’ deck, sending them and their crew to the bottom of the Allegheny.
• It’s as nice a ballpark as I’ve been to. Destroys the Big A and Dodgers easily, more interesting than Petco or Camden Yards, probably on par with Safeco.
• Most of the fans there seem to think that “Willie Stargell” is the answer to every Pirates trivia question.
• As losing teams go, the Pirates are easy to pull for — they’re bad because management is cheap, not because it’s incompetent.
• And it’s fun watching some of their young guys just starting to get established (Alvarez, Walker, Tabata), not to mention guys who weren’t going to get a chance elsewhere seizing the opportunity (Jones). If they sign Cliff Lee in the off-season, they could win as many as 70 games next year!
• It’s surprising how many fans the Pirates have given that they’ve been “re-building” since 1992. They probably deserve better.

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The Road, then:

• I liked the book a lot better. I don’t think the movie did anything wrong per se, but it didn’t really do anything right, either. Just came off as dim and lifeless.
• Liked when Viggo Mortensen lost control of his accent, especially on the word “food”, where he sounded like an owl. Hi-larious. To me.
• The movie plays like a revue of post-apocalyptic fiction cliches — cannibalism, scrounging for ammo, pushing grocery carts, bloody-thirsty gangs, people kept in pens for food, etc.
• You’d think that a kid who was born at the onset of the apocalypse would be used to it by the time he was 11 (or whatever). This kid was freaked out by everything. Defied credibility.
• Plus his dad babied him too much.
• And there was no credible sense in which the kid’s degree of worrying about everything was equal to his dad’s.
• Why can’t a movie show characters eating without showing them eating with their mouths open?
• If it’s after the apocalypse and roving gangs driving around in trucks are a major threat, wouldn’t you probably STAY OFF THE ROAD?
• It doesn’t seem like ammo should be harder to find than food.
• And what kind of apocalypse is it where humans survive but cockroaches don’t?
• And given that there’s still plenty of water on the planet, how is it that nothing can grow?
• Also liked seeing Guy Pearce dressed up like Eddie Vedder at the end.

Etc. A lot of those problems derive from the source material — but they’re a lot easier to ignore in book-form in that the book doesn’t really call that much attention to them. When they’re shown in moving pictures, though, it’s hard to not notice.

I like post-apocalyptic and bleak in itself isn’t a turnoff, but yeah: no.

Final score: 5/10.

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It also struck me as probably a really bad way to begin the NYC adventure — by longing for the wild, open spaces of the west.

There’s a lot that’s different this time around, though, in particular:

1. Pittsburgh is not New York City. You can drive in Pittsburgh. There are grocery stores with parking lots. Stuff is CHEAP. I’m going to be living in a house with a yard and a garage. I’ll be working with a group of people and I’ve already met some that are cool while at the same time not manic-depressive.
2. Pittsburgh is sort-of the West. Definitely through the Angle of Repose lens Pittsburgh would have been considered more like the wilderness that it would have been like the civilization of New York. And it’s sort of a frontier town anyway. Once you get out of downtown and Oakland, Pittsburgh starts looking and feeling like the capital of Appalachia, more like a part of West Virginia than part of the same state that includes Philadelphia.
3. The west isn’t The West. Maybe there are parts of Montana and Nevada that shouldn’t be painted with this gloss, but the modern-day west has nothing to do with the frontiers and taming-the-wilderness values and lifestyle of Angle of Repose. That’s one of the things the road trip taught me — the romantic West is pretty dead. In fact, it seemed more controlled and less “rugged individualist” than a lot of other parts of the country. Wyoming had the most offensive, threatening road signs in the country (e.g., “if you don’t wear your seatbelt, we’ll find you and it will cost you”-type messages) and most of the west was similar. Granted, I tend to perceive the world almost exclusively through a windshield, which might not always be an accurate reflection of reality, but still — driving in Michigan, for example, felt considerably more free. And after you’ve been on the trail to Half Dome for an hour and a half, you realize that the freedom and solitude and therefore to a large extent the bigness of the western wilderness is likewise little more than a matter of legend.

So basically, I think Pittsburgh will be much better than New York. And I don’t think it fits my ideal place to live, but after that road trip, I don’t know that a close approximation of my ideal exists anyway. Oh well.

And I still think that the book ends too quickly and/or that the author should have spent a little more time on the framing story to better justify its existence. And it’s still one of my top five books of all time.

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(A photo to keep the front page concept from breaking:

)

Bright yellow is Carl's, the lighter one is Hardee's.

If you’re not aware, Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s are owned by the same company. As such, you don’t find both restaurants in the same market. It’s hard to say how they’ve determined who gets what market in some cases. Obviously there’s historical precedent (Carl’s originated in California and had mostly just California stores until some time in the 90′s, frex), but in the areas where neither chain had much of a presence… yeah, it’s like they just drew a line.

Three areas of non-clarity: one in SW Montana/SE Idaho/NW Wyoming (which chain does Jackson get?!), one in Western Kansas/Nebraska (which chain does, um, you know, that big city in western Nebraska get?!), and one in Southeast Texas (Houston).

Also if you’re not aware, Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s do not have similar menus (aside from both serving hamburgers). They *do*, however, have identical marketing and branding materials — they run the same TV commercials for both, only they have a photo of a different hamburger at the end. Their websites are almost identical (again with the burger photo swapped out). Same star at both locations, same “Six-Dollar” nomenclature (attached to different burgers), etc.

It’s kind of irritating. Here’s the crux of it: why should it never be possible for someone living east of The Line to order a Western Bacon Cheeseburger? Seriously. Just put it on Hardee’s's menu, it’ll be all right.

It’s also kind of weird to overlay this map with Jack-in-the-Box locations. If you look at the Hardee’s menu, it bears a striking resemblance to Jack-in-the-Box. And with a few exceptions, Jack-in-the-Box’s map almost perfectly overlays Carl’s Jr. and makes very few incursions across the line into Hardee’s territory.

Anyway. I’m going to miss the Western Bacon Cheeseburger. Here’s hoping Carl Karcher Enterprises comes to its senses.

bkd

Biggest Question: Did the dude really think that he’d just fly up to the alien’s ship, get his hand fixed, then fly back home where everything would just be back to normal?

Too Long By: 30 minutes. The last 30 to be more precise. So conventional and disappointing after the killer set-up.

Haiku Synopsis:

Alien slum raid

Helps man learn that aliens

Love their children too.

Critique of the Haiku

The haiku kind of ignores the couple thousand sentient beings that died.

Final Score

6.5/10 — At least it had that first hour.

Also

There will probably be a sequel and it will be *awful*.

Picture So the Homepage Works Out

Biggest Question: Which laws of nature actually applied to this movie? (It was hard to think any of the main characters were ever going to be in jeopardy when it was revealed two-thirds of the way through the movie that dogs could fly planes. Also sort of cheapened all the emotional parts — I mean, Karl was certainly not operating in the *real* world, so how valid was anything he experienced?)

Too Long By: 15 minutes (the movie needed to get out of town and into the Amazon sooner).

Haiku Synopsis:

A widowed old man

Gets over losing his wife

By doing nothing.

Grade: 6/10. I mean, the moral is that doing nothing productive *is* adventurous, so go ahead and enjoy sitting on the curb for the rest of your life. Ugh. I blame organized Buddhism.

(Just so the homepage has an image to pull:)

]]> http://www.bkdunn.com/blog/2010/01/movie-review-up/feed/ 0 http://www.bkdunn.com/blog/2009/07/the-grapes-of-wrath-book-report/ http://www.bkdunn.com/blog/2009/07/the-grapes-of-wrath-book-report/#comments Thu, 02 Jul 2009 03:20:48 +0000 bkdunn http://www.bkdunn.com/blog/?p=451 The *truly* impressive thing is that I finished it.

Good:

• Steinbeck writes very cleanly.
• Probably a useful depiction of a slice of life during the Great Depression (although… well, see below).
• Makes me glad I wasn’t a destitute farmer in (fictionalized) California during the 30s.

Bad:

• I swear there were blocking problems everywhere in this book. Was never sure who was in the scene or where in the scene they were — and this often mattered.
• Probably about twice as long as it should have been.
• It lacks event — essentially, this is a 400-page vignette. Very little in the way of plot or tension.
• There are certainly character arcs (Ma has the strongest, Casy obviously, Tom sure, Al sort of, Pa sort of, John should have but didn’t), but they’re just arcs. There are no epiphanies. Ma probably transcended herself, but she wasn’t the focus of the novel for the most part. No one else seemed inclined toward overcoming anything. And Ma’s development felt pretty arbitrary.
• While it might be a useful depiction of real life during the Depression, Steinbeck hammers his themes home with such ferocity that I’m inclined to worry that what was depicted may have been skewed to fit his needs.
• Man, but the PoV wandered. Wonder if that woman who taught that extension class at UCI knows about this…
• The interstitial chapters, the ones that talked in generalities but then didn’t, felt cloying, like they were trying too hard to be something.
• The climax was teased hard and obviously from Page One on, but no part of it started resolving until 80% of the way through. And then it was very, very sudden.

Meh. I liked Of Mice and Men a lot better. For one thing, it was the right length.

Disappointed,

bkd

• AirwaySim — It’s an airline simulator. I have two airlines going. Just recently, SwampAir became the airline transporting the most passengers through its home base of Orlando and now has a daily nonstop to Manchester, UK. Dog Food Airlines, on the other hand, transports half of all traffic going in and out of Cincinnati/CVG and recently made its first acquisition of an aircraft (everything previous was leased). I have dreamed of this game since I was six. The only thing that would make it better would be if it came with one of those departure boards like they have in all the European airports, the ones that make the clattering noise as the board updates by flipping through all the letters of the alphabet for each space in the city name column. But otherwise, a dream come true.
• BATracer — It’s a car racing simulator. I haven’t dreamed of it since I was six, but so far it’s kind of fun, especially as it coincides with my recent interest in auto racing. I have a couple of cars running: a BMW-Sauber in a 2009 Formula One recreation and a Force Warthog Peugeot in a British Touring Car Championship series. I qualified last in the first F1 race and 13th of 16 in the BTCC. Nowhere to go but up.

Toward a more-simulated future,

bkd

Biggest Question: When the pink minotaur was holding up the portcullis, how come no one bothered to help him lift it up so that the other half of the woodland army could escape the castle without getting killed?

Too Long By: 55 minutes.

Haiku Synopsis:

Brave little Brit kids

Love animals more than men,

So slaughter legions.

And Another Thing: There were a lot of people who died from chest bruises. And one day there’s going to be a fantasy world army that thinks to bring enough giant eagles to actually win the fight.

Grade: 5/10.

And thus ends this spate of movie reviews. Hopefully.

bkd

Best Part: The first 45 minutes. Some pleasant, well-orchestrated tension and violence.

Biggest Question: How did anyone accomplish any of the things they did? Why were all the key moments in the movie hidden in the scene breaks? What, actually, was the main conflict? (Admittedly, yes, that’s three questions.)

Too Long By: 75 minutes. If it had ended at the 1:20 mark, I probably would’ve liked it. No such luck.

Additional Gripe: There were no rules in this movie-world, which means that anything could happen — and when anything can happen, nothing matters.

Haiku Synopsis:

Joker’s a winner

 Over and over again:

Moral quandaries ho!

Final Score: 4/10, including a full point docked for making me sit through Heath Ledger licking his lips for at least 60 minutes of the run-time — between that, the Batman-voice, and the non-stop soliloquies, I got no-joke nauseous.

Biggest Question: I found the characters’ plot-creating decision-making process questionable:

• Hurry, we have to get out of here before they catch us!
• Okay, but I still have some leaflets in the suitcase.
• Oh — in that case, we should distribute them before leaving.
• Good idea!

Too Long By: 10 min. — the leaflet distribution scene was a little long (you know they’re going to get caught) and the scene with the dude from Salzburg (Innsbrück?) getting questioned at trial seemed gratuitous.

Haiku Synopsis (in German to avoid spoiling the ending!):

Mädchen und Bruder

Als Verräter verhaftet,

Danach enthauptet.

Additional Complaint Before Stating That I Liked It: Sophie’s character is too perfect, which makes her seem less human, which makes it seem like she isn’t sacrificing so much when she gets, uh, enthauptet.

Final Score: 7/10.

Hadn’t seen the movie version of Deliverance before reading the book, so didn’t know to expect things like “squeal like a pig” (it’s been a few months, but I don’t think that’s quite in the book like that — I mean, the scene happens, just that it’s not quite as iconic as it is in the movie). And I liked the way the book conveyed the characters better than the movie version, with the main character learning to take up the cause of his buddy and grab “real life” by the horns. Kind of a Bildungsroman for a middle-aged man learning to be alive. Also was enamored of the way the book dissipated rather than resolving. Made it feel less contrived and, I think, the openness and ambiguity at the end shined an interesting light on the book’s theme.

On the Road, though, is just so self-satisfied. I’m guessing the whole beat thing is by its nature self-satisfied. And the character of Dean Moriarty is so dull to me, yet the book requires the reader to idolize him. Didn’t work. He’s too cool to be believable and I guess I was brought up to dislike self-important jackasses. Blame my parents, I guess.

I think I also liked Deliverance better from the standpoint that it’s about having experiences for the sake of personal growth. I don’t think the beat generation was really into actual personal growth — I think that’s more about clapping with one hand. Yeah, well, I don’t care for Buddhism much either.

Iconoclastically,

bkd

Biggest Question: Was the source material as facile as this?

Most Horrifying Truth: There were a lot of similarities between Captain Queeg and several people I’ve seen try to navigate leadership situations.

Too Long By: 90 minutes — or else too short by six hours.

Haiku Synopsis:

Through a mutiny

A young ensign learns to love:

Beautiful girlfriend!

Grade: 3/10.