This has the first appearance of the Traveller, a mysterious alien who claims to be a visitor to “[our] reality”. The scene in particular that gets me is when he watches Wesley stumble across a complex scientific problem; our intrepid youth manages to quietly and efficiently solve it despite not knowing how difficult it is simply because he’s curious and hardworking. I often think people let their idea of what a work should be get in the way of what it is, and Wesley is a big expression of that. People dismiss him as a gee-whiz fantasy figure designed to let the writers live out their fantasy of being the cleverest kid onboard the Enterprise, but he’s more interesting than that.
Children invite responsibility in most people. We can feel as if we have to be the Adult around them, punishing them for their misdeeds and using them as receptacles for our hard-earned wisdom because we want to make sure our lives have some positive legacy, no matter how they actually see us. When the Traveller notices Wesley working, you can see him very carefully choosing to do nothing. He doesn’t interfere with the boy, doesn’t tell him what he’s doing is difficult, and gives him no advice or attention even as, it’s implied, he knows exactly what the solution is. To interfere in this case would ruin the most magical of processes: Wesley learning something for himself.
Wesley is a fantasy of being the smartest kid in school, but he’s also an object the adult crew are forced to work with; a responsibility they must treasure and be careful about. This episode is the first time Picard is forced to ask himself: what do you do with a child genius? How do you encourage him? How do you punish him? You may be aware of The Venture Bros, a show about, by, and largely for ex-gifted children who burned out, became bitter, and faded away. How do you make sure Wesley grows into Captain Kirk, not Rusty Venture?
About the writer
Tristan J. Nankervis
Tristan J Nankervis (aka Drunk Napoleon) has been a writer, pop culture critic, dishwasher, standup comedian, waiter, potato cake factory worker, gamer, TV worker, and various other things. You can find him in Hobart, Tasmania.
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"Obi-Wan never told you about your father."
"I love you." / "I know."
"I'm terribly sorry - no no, please don't get up--"
Department of
Conversation
What Did We Watch?
Three Minutes: A Lengthening: Glenn Kurtz discovered old film footage his Polish-American grandfather shot on his “Grand Tour” of Europe—including three-odd minutes in his old hometown of Nasielsk. It’s three minutes of film of an ordinary Jewish neighborhood, captured right when any kind of home movies were so rare that the mere presence of the camera brought people out into the streets in delighted awe. And, of course, it was 1938. The city had 3000 Jewish residents, and in a few years, only about a hundred of them would still be alive. Three Minutes looks thoughtfully and poignantly at how this rare footage serves—and fails—as a memorial and an act of preservation. It explores some of the technical details of the restoration and how challenging it is to pin down certain details; it tracks down the few people in the film it can identify, getting interviews and reading letters. And throughout it all, the footage plays, looped, doubled-back, slowed, etc., emphasizing how much you can dig into it. Excellent command of tone here, even as a lot of the material is obviously very bleak—the sense of care and solemnity is there automatically, and the movie never has to reach for it—and an interesting look at how (some) historians work.
Conclave: I should’ve gotten out to see this in theaters—I read part of the book in a movie theater, years ago, waiting for the previews to start!—but alas, I only caught it when it turned up on Peacock, much to my delight. I doubt I have anything new to add than what people have said already, so I’ll just say that this totally lived up to my high expectations. I loved the book—Harris is great at crafting thrillers from premises no one else would pick—and the movie captures all its strengths. Fantastic performances from everyone involved, strong pacing, lush cinematography. (And costuming—I read some interesting notes on the ways they tweaked the traditional cassocks, etc., to add some more visual richness and personalize every cardinal’s appearance a little, and it’s all fascinating.)
The Eiger Sanction: One-third pulp that relishes its own cheeky weirdness (what if M, but known as Dragon, and also albino, constantly bathed in red light, and having his blood cycled out?) and two-thirds fantastic mountain cinematography and action stunts, with the unfortunate distraction of a sprinkling of bigoted meanness (like a dog named a homophobic slur) and questionable choices (a lengthy discussion of why your Black female lead is named Jemima, very odd reference to rape, etc.). But damn, those mountains and stunts are exhilarating, Clint Eastwood and George Kennedy are both very good, and the emotional arc of the movie takes a turn that I like.
The Princess and the Frog: Plenty has already been written about the awkwardness in how Disney handles its first Black princess and her prince, and there are definitely some decisions here that don’t work. But to concentrate on the positives: I love the hand-drawn animation, the film’s New Orleans is an appealingly and lovingly drawn fantasy-land version of itself, and Keith David is absolutely fantastic as Dr. Facilier—magnetic, charismatic, funny, and unnerving, and all the horror elements his character brings in work very nicely.
If I had to bet, I’d bet on Conclave for Beat Picture at this moment. Actors doing acting, appeal all around, handsomely made, whiff of importance to disguise that it’s a really an enjoyable potboiler – in the absence of a strong front runner, I see this getting a “eh, why not” win ala Spotlight.
I’m betting on that at the moment too, and I’d be perfectly fine with it. It fits in well in The Reveal’s “middlebrow masterpieces” category, and it’s the kind of thing Hollywood can still do well when it tries. I can futilely hope the critical and popular attention for this one might encourage them to do it more often, because I’d love to see, say, three Conclaves a year.
Agreed, although I am enjoying the monkey’s paw idea of Hollywood releasing three movies a year about trying to select the next pope.
Eiger Sanction never lives up to the cheeky weirdness of the Dragon scenes. I wish it stayed with that weirdness instead of shifting away to something heightened but more real, if I’m remembering correctly. It feels like two different movies. Dragon is played by Thayer David who played multiple weird and strange roles on Dark Shadows.
It does feel like two separate movies. I could have happily watched either one–though I feel like Eastwood’s directorial sensibilities are especially attuned to the more realistic second half, which may be why he moves away from the weirdness–but you’re right, they don’t quite gel.
I hadn’t looked Thayer David up, but that Dark Shadows connection is perfect. Maybe he should have directed the weirder version of this movie.
As I discovered after my own recent watch of this, Eastwood had no interest in the spy stuff. He took the gig just so he could figure out how to film mountain climbing (and also to finish his contract at Universal).
It’s a fair cop to ding Princess and the Frog for claiming diversity and then making its diverse leads amphibians for much of the run time, but to me that just points to possibilities for improvement and it’s more on Disney for not going further in the future than on PF for not going as far at it could at the time. But yeah, David rules, I love the drunk firefly, the alligator is a classic Dopey Disney Animal and the songs are great, “Almost There” in particular.
I was surprised by how many emotions I wound up having about the drunk firefly.
A name like The Eiger Sanction always makes me laugh, something that’s trying to sound cool and meaningful but maybe isn’t. Or perhaps more to the point it makes me think of Mr. Show‘s “Racist in the Year 3000” sketch: “Episode 8: The Argos Checkmate.”
Die Hard – So disappointing. This just shamelessly rips off every action movie that came after it. It takes the cliched “Die hard on a [blank]” pitch and puts it right in the title! How arrogant! Is it a boat, plane, a bus, what? No, it’s just a boring, stationary building. Speaking of TNG. The same concept was used in the episode Starship Mine with Picard trapped alone on the Enterprise with some terrorists posing as a maintenance crew in order to steal dilithium crystals. Obviously, McTiernan is a Star Trek fan. There are just no original ideas anymore.
“Die Hard is a Christmas movie because it’s set at Christmas!”
“Die Hard is an action movie; Christmas isn’t relevant to the plot!”
“Die Hard is a Christmas movie because it’s the story of a man with twelve followers who took on the system and was sentenced to death by an agent of the state.”
“Die Hard is German for ‘The Hard’.”
Imagine this as a galaxy brain meme and it works better. Can we post images here? I haven’t tried to.
I like the idea of Die Hard 2: Die Harder as a Mormon-type follow-up gospel.
Jesus is back…and this time, it’s personal.
A Day in the Country – Renoir short film – billed as unfinished but really it does exactly what Renoir set out to do – is less interested in a complete story than in sensations, images, feelings, vibes. I wanted more of a story since what we have feels incomplete and sketchy, but if you adapt a short story, it might be best to keep it short. But never mind all that. What happened to the kitten?
Doctor Who, “The Greatest Show in the Galaxy” – The Internet tells me this was meant to be fairly harsh satire of the travails the show was facing in its penultimate season, commentary on the pressure to entertain the standard issue middle class family, on lost optimism and on fanboys who love a show they haven’t actually seen. It’s all in there, but honestly, I didn’t see any of it. I just saw a very well done if occasionally muddled four part epic with great performances across the board and a vision of the Seventh Doctor that is at once more than a bumbling clown and very much a charmer.
M*A*S*H, “A Smattering of Intelligence” – Edward Winter’s first official appearance as the CIA’s finest, Col. Flagg, sent to the camp for reasons that never become clear, followed by an officer in G-2 who’s an old friend of Trapper. The plot really makes no sense. Nor does it need to. This is a master class in absurdist comedy at more or less the moment G. Gordon Liddy was becoming the symbol of CIA insanity and incompetence. Lots of great Hawkeye one liners and double takes across the board.
Started to watch the latest installment of Pretty Good, where Jon Bois examines the character James Rebhorn played in Independence Day, a character intentionally created to be always wrong and always unlikeable. Problem is, after 10 minutes of being told this – and I would argue he was not always wrong – I had no desire to hear more of this for a full 45 minutes. Bois’s first foray into anything like film criticism just didn’t do it for me. (Never mind that I can’t really argue that Independence Day needs anyone to spend 45 minutes analyzing any aspect of it.)
Greatest Show is a great serial at this point in the series. I still get chills when the Doctor says, “I fought Gods all through time!” Who knew this Doctor could look so cool, calming walking out of the tent as it explodes behind him, also his reaction to the Tarot card. McCoy was a great throwback to classic Doctors after the more modern Five and Six.
McCoy is underappreciated, probably because by this point no one was really paying attention. And I can see some little hints that what he did has influenced nuWho actors a bit.
I think what Bois is looking at is a great idea for a broader film, because The Guy Who Exists To Be Wrong fascinates me (Henry Czerny in Mission Impossible — yes! Poor David Denman, perhaps the patron saint of this particular Guy, in Big Fish — no!). But while I love Rebhorn in general, one role is probably not enough to hang a doc on, even a shorter one.
“and Barnes, what the hell is that noise?”
“Uh, fire alarm, sir.”
“…Do we have to evacuate?”
House (Hausu) – This was a wild time. A fever dream of a horror movie meets a weirdo’s impression of a teen romp with absolutely no pause given for propriety. Like that terribly strange kid at school whose honest commitment to his outlandish hat transcend mockery. Maybe bizarre for the sake of bizarre but the movie will have you believe this is the best and only way to live. An inspiring reminder that there really are no rules in cinema, go nuts.
I love House. (I’d like to steal hbomberguy’s admiring commentary on Deus Ex: Invisible War for this: “Is it good? I don’t know. But it’s certainly the most!”) The sheer exuberance is great, and I love the fact that it’s relevant to the plot that a guy gets his ass stuck in a bucket.
I think Scott Tobias called the theme song the aural equivalent of shag carpet and it is that, but a shag carpet that grows on you. So catchy!
Live music — shoegaze is generally a high floor/low ceiling genre for me (loud guitars yay, no structure/riffs/hooks nay) and the first act I caught midway through a shoegaze fest slotted right in. Not bad but get some damn riffs and beats! But I was there to catch Vivid Bloom after seeing them earlier in the year and digging their sound and I can confirm they have the damn juice, some postpunk guitar hooks and solid songwriting and most importantly a rhythm section with meat on its bones. They’re quite good on record but heavier live, they’re on the “always catch if possible” list now.
Home Alone — Family movie night! This unsurprisingly still plays extremely well with eight-year-olds, who are now obsessed with booby traps and “pranks,” uh oh. And if the sadism of said pranks is weird Pesci and Stern sell it wonderfully, Culkin’s schtick is less welcome but I’m mostly blaming Hughes for that. But the real auteur remains screenwriter Chris Columbus, he wrote Culkin’s snotty teen-ish crap and the torture of the Wet Bandits but also the pretty sick burns (“I wouldn’t let you sleep in my room if you were growing on my ass”) and the wonderfully violent Angels With Filthy Souls and best of all, John Candy’s incredible monologue about leaving his kid in a funeral home, this is so clearly from the same mind that came up with Phoebe Cates’ Christmas story in Gremlins.
City Of Industry — 90s crime in LA, Stephen Dorff double-crosses Harvey Keitel and spoiler alert does not live to tell the tale. This has some pretty loud echoes with Richard Stark’s The Sour Lemon Score and that ultimately does it no favors (and there is weird pre-Payback stuff here too, everyone loved a Chinese gang in the late 90s), Keitel is a fine vengeful badass but the movie largely plods. Real dopey voiceover at the end too.
A Prayer For The Dying — a man turns his back on crime but finds it is not that easy to leave, I am of course referring to director Mike Hodges here telling the story of Mikey Rourke’s regretful IRA assassin, hiding out in London after a botched attack and drawn into a local mobster’s schemes. Hodges made Get Carter and Croupier and I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead, he had a great feel for crime as unglamorous but compelling and here he’s telling a tale of redemption via Bob Hoskins’ priest and his horrible dumbass maudlin blind niece* trying to turn Rourke around, it does not fly. What does fly is Hoskins losing his temper and reverting to pre-priest mode and beating the shit out of dudes with a garbage can lid, total fucking ownage, and Rourke disposing of a body in a crematorium and casually flicking the ashes of his cigarette in there with it. This is Hodges’ wheelhouse. He apparently was sincerely trying to tell this story and surely did better than what exists after the producers took the movie away from him and re-cut it and added Bill Conti’s supremely dogshit score (Hodges tried to take his name off because of the score and he was right to do so) but Rourke is sleepwalking in a different mode than Clive Owen in Sleep and I don’t know how successful this would have been in any case. If nothing else an interesting RETVRN flick of 80s Oirish middlebrow but I had higher hopes.
*absolutely hilarious how Unleashed would basically jack this dynamic 20 years later and be better in every way
I’m the same on shoegaze, it’s always worth checking out but I’m not sure I’ve ever been blown away by a shoegaze show or album. Although the shows don’t seem to crop up here as much as post-punk which has been close to inescapable the last few years, so maybe I’d appreciate it more just out of a sense of variety.
*whispers* this is generally my take on My Bloody Valentine too! So gauzy. They were one of those bands I’d heard about before I heard them and the listen was a letdown — this is what everyone’s so excited about? When I heard Th’ Faith Healers some years later it was like a light went on, THIS is what I had been expecting! RIFFS MOTHERFUCKERS
Lush is the superior shoegaze, and the fact that I discovered them as a result of playing Rock Band on my Wii changes this opinion not one whit.
I first discovered Lush on the radio in the 90s when “500” (“Shake Baby Shake”) was getting airplay. It’s pretty poppy and hooky, so I didn’t really think of it as shoegaze at all.
They moved heavily into britpop later, which I like ok, but their early material is classic shoegaze.
I’m with Nath, they’re very poppy and hooky — not exactly my deal but I like them fine enough and there’s more to them than the typical shoe wash. Cupcakes instead of cotton candy.
Hahaha yeah this is kinda how I feel. I don’t listen to guitar music to zone out!
I think Loveless is good but not something I really revisit, and I also kinda feel like George Bush in “Two Bad Neighbors”: “And having listened to ‘Only Shallow,’ the best shoegaze song, there was no need to listen to a second.”
*aggravated Kevin Shields* Bar! My pedal board’s gone loco!
“The boy shredded my guitar! And not in the good way!”
I considered renting City Of Industry so many times at the store. That and The Last Castle were the two movies I most considered but never rented.
Unfortunately, A Prayer For The Dying was unable to use Seal’s “Prayer For The Dying” on its soundtrack because it came out 7 years before the song. Missed opportunity!
City Of Industry was on TUBI and that is its rightful home, I would not suggest paying money for it.
EDIT: and speaking of missed opportunities from the future, Prayer is kicked off by Rourke’s IRA pipe bomb exploding not on a British convoy but a bus full of Irish children from the Catholic girl’s school — he blows up the Derry Girls!
I love that song. Probably one of my more controversial music takes is that “Kiss From a Rose” is neither the best Seal song nor the best song on the Batman Forever soundtrack.
Wooooo live shoegaze!!
Raiders of the Lost Ark – my current gaming has obviously made me want to rewatch these movies, Letterboxd says I last saw this one in 2014 and while I’ve seen it quite a few times, it’s not quite as burned into my memory as childhood-favourite Temple of Doom, so it was great fun jumping back into it last night and marvelling even more about how much the game has nailed the vibe (not least because the intro / tutorial level recreates the opening sequence of this movie). Had I noticed that the guy who steals the idol at the start was Alfred Molina before this viewing? I’m not sure. Anyway this is wonderful and probably my #1 Spielberg.
Live Music – my tiny local DIY venue had their Christmas Party gig on Friday night, headliners were a band called Objections that were at the fun end of post-punk with the additional gimmick of the guitarist using a signal generator / oscilloscope thing to add wobbly theremin-style synth elements. Really good fun. Varied supporting lineup, I wasn’t massively into the doomy post-rock band but the kinda Sonic Youth-y alt-rock band and the vocal-loop-based dream-pop opener were really good. On Sunday I dropped into another tiny venue after finishing my Christmas shopping and saw three local acts, my friend’s band that I ended up seeing TEN times in 2024 and a couple of folk-punk solo acts who were pretty decent.
Woooo live music! And cheers to the band dropping doomy post-rock on a Christmas gig. Tidings of DISCOMFORT and GLOOM!
I’m not averse to a little festive counter-programming and I love a bit of post-rock but they didn’t really grab me. Although I do have a decades-old grudge against the guitarist so that might have played into things.
Wooo personal grudges!
Wooo live Christmas music!!
With a long weekend in New Orleans, there wasn’t a lot of opportunity to watch stuff, but there were a few things worth noting.
TV
There wasn’t much TV-watching except a couple of brief times back in my hotel room after everyone was ready to pack it in. We caught a Seinfeld marathon on TV Land just in time to see George calling Marisa Tomei after Susan died, then launching into season 8. All the George stuff with the Susan Ross Foundation is great, but we also see already the show going broader post-Larry David, with Kramer taking karate against a bunch of children.
Also managed to catch both Bravo playing It’s a Wonderful Life and ESPN showing the 30 For 30 on the New York Sack Exchange, which was fascinating and got pretty raw and real. And had at least one big revelation from Mark Gastineau that I was definitely not expecting. After it ended I decided to stick around for the rest of It’s a Wonderful Life, which I hadn’t seen in nearly 25 years. Maybe I’ll give it a full go this Christmas season. Christ, I hope Clarence’s dedication is right, because I got nothing else going for me.
Live music
Well, we were in New Orleans, which meant pretty much everywhere we went, we got live music both indoors and outdoors. A few live acts on the street; a few more in the bars we went to. They’re all local so I don’t know any of their names. But how many cities can you walk out of a bar where a band is playing, drink in hand, and walk down the street to see a brass band playing on the corner?
NFL Football: Washington Commanders at New Orleans Saints (live and in person)
That’s right, we went to the game and had killer seats. After a first half that really went nowhere for the Saints, it looked like we might be in a position to leave early, but then the Saints made a QB change for the second half and furiously rallied back to bring the game down to one last play. That was awesome to watch, and even though they lost, it was hard to be upset with how competitive they played (and the fact that they’re not really in the playoff chase anymore means losing just helps draft position).
Also, the Saints sacked Jayden Daniels eight times. Pretty difficult to do for a running QB! Apparently when Dennis Allen was fired the team made a change at defensive line coach as well, and the d-line is performing far better under the new guy. Christ, I can’t believe Mickey Loomis wasted three years on that loser of a head coach.
Woooooo live drunk music! Also, extremely amusing to contrast It’s A Wonderful Life with George essentially taking the other path via Susan’s exit.
Babylon 5, Season One, Episode Eleven, “Believers”
Ownage. This is a brutal story that’s fun to watch if you’re into watching idealists navigate impossible situations; it’s a canny choice of a moral quandary when Dr Franklin has to choose between performing a simple operation and the parent’s beliefs that to do so would violate his spirit. I really like that Franklin’s first instinct is to try and compromise with the parents, because it’s always great when a story builds up from reasonable actions to extreme measures.
Much like M*A*S*H, this is a story about the System – how you use it and how it gets in your way. Both the parents and Franklin scramble for any bureaucratic ruling they can to get the outcome they want; I particularly like the parents turning to each of the main four ambassadors and getting turned down for four very different (yet ultimately identical) reasons, as well as Franklin attempting to get Sinclair to essentially allow the order.
(I particularly like G’kar asking them what exactly they expected him to say)
All of them essentially won’t help anyone because all of them have a bigger picture to deal with. Sinclair angrily tells Franklin that to ignore the rules now for this one kid will make Earth look self-serving, as well as allowing future citizens to use it as justification for more morally dubious actions. People are messy and driven by personal logic; systems are predictable, or try to be.
The Lord Of The Rings (and I mean all three Theatrical movies in order)
Actually amazing. This works entirely because each and every moment prioritises The Story, and in fact it’s incredible for taking all the details from the book and weaving them together into one coherent story. In fact, this is the best argument for franchise filmmaking because you can see how everyone in the cast and crew – from Peter Jackson at the top to the cinematographer, set designers, costumers, editors, etc are all experts on Tolkien, filling the screen with their expertise because they all have a deep understanding of story they’re telling and are, realistically, acting in service to Tolkien.
On a basic level, the melodrama hits hard, and I love how casual and effortless the filmmaking is and how that contributes to this feeling; it put into perspective how mannered most films and shows influenced by this trilogy are, because there were almost a Shieldian amount of closeups here. The movies confidently throw whatever move they need to – a zoom in, a cut, narration, a cutaway – to convey the emotion they need to; I was particularly impressed by a cut from Gandalf realising something to Saruman explaining it as if to Gandalf himself, shots that would have required an insane amount of work just for a simple move.
The story becomes much more about a civilisation working together; the restructuring particularly helps here, where we don’t have time to get bored with following one group for too long (though it does nothing to save the tedium of Merry and Pippin wandering around with the fucking trees) and we do get the pleasure of seeing more strongly how events across the continent affect one another. It really means something seeing Aragorn say “For Frodo,” and charge into battle having just cut from Frodo collapsing in Mordor.
What Are We Reading?
Making my way through France on Trial, all about the trial of Marshal Petain that was, to a large degree, France holding a mirror to itself in the immediate aftermath of the war and the surrender to the Nazis. No one is really sure they even want to have a trial, and no one is sure how much Petain deserves all the blame even though everyone seems to be sure he is guilty. The book is very detailed, so a slow read, but it still makes for a interesting addition to my knowledge of that period.
Stumbled in These Names Make Clues, a mystery novel by ECR Lorac, a British writer of some fame in the 30s whose works had more or less vanished till recent years. (The foreword to the book claims that not a single copy of the book at hand was available anywhere online.) It is fascinating how there are authors who were, if not hugely beloved, well known in their day and just fade away till someone decides it’s a good idea to reprint their works. (I wonder if anyone is going to push for a revival of the works of John Gardener, who was a best selling author in the 90s and now barely exists.)
The Best Short Stories 2022: The O. Henry Prize Winners – Halfway through the collection. This is going down well – we’re still making a steep climb out of pandemic brains in this year so the stories are all nice and short – but I dunno, the modern “literary” short story so often feels like a treat with the cellophane still on. There’s a couple about parenting in the pandemic, including one with frets about compromising on “screen time,” that should be pure nightmare fuel, but peter out even before hitting its scant ten pages. There’s a couple stand-outs, “The Old Man of Kusumpur” which is a good fable-style short translated from Bengali, some interesting tension spread out across a few others, but mostly I’m having trouble remembering details when I look back over the titles.
Hardy Boys Crime Plot Updates: In The Serpent’s Tooth mystery, an investigative reporter and rogue zookeeper steal poisonous snakes to sell their venom on the black market. Honestly not that bad a scheme! In Dungeon of Doom, a nerd teams up with a pair of hoods to steal merch from the department store the nerd works at and store it in an abandoned cave, but the nerd’s friends (and reluctant Hardys) start looking at the cave for a “Wizards and Warriors” LARP. So of course the nerd creates a D&D escape room with various traps and tricks and “plays” along with the others until capturing everyone and sending them to their watery deaths, all to further the original “let’s steal microwaves” plan. The plot may have been lost somewhere along the way. Although for the shippers around, Joe gets into a rivalry with a fellow teen who kicks his ass at sword-fighting but this turns into respect grudging and maybe something more, the fellow teen invites Joe to a basketball game by saying he was going to bring his girlfriend but would rather bring Joe instead. The mysteries of the human heart may be uncovered in a future installment.
122 Hours Of Fear: A Zine About The Show Going Experience — had some time to kill in the library and stumbled across their rather large zine section, this one jumped out at me immediately. Put together in the wake of the pandemic, writers/musicians/artists talk about going to shows and the broader atmosphere around them, the promise and hope and failures. Some amazing anecdotes and incredible writing, personal and insightful and profound. Lots of female/queer/trans voices here too, essential stuff. Some faves include a bad Daddy Yankee show redeemed by a DJ in the parking lot and accompanying musings on reggaeton, growing up punk in Florida and maybe imagining shows, a Slovenian gig that apparently got cut from The King In Yellow and this one about getting old and still going out, what’s changed and what has not:
https://substack.com/home/post/p-87040608?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Chronicles Of The Crusades by Joinville and Villehardouin – Two very different accounts with Villehardouin’s telling of the Fourth Crusade being more fact based and detached but still nuts in its story of side quests, a missing prince, intrigue among the shifting alliances, and climaxing with the burning of Constantinople. If Villehardouin is the jaded war correspondent, then Joinville is the guy on a lark writing a travelog about his adventures. For a medieval writer his account is colorful and pops off the page with personal anecdotes – “First we went here. Then over to this one place where the Tartars were most unpleasant. Then I met Rashid al-Din Sinan aka The Old Man Of The Mountain, who was absolutely adorbs. Then I got captured by Saracens! It was craaaaazy!” He writes about his relationship with King Louis. Joinville thought Louis was mad at him for disagreeing with the King at a meeting. He was standing near a window and thought the King was going to push him out of it. But Louis just wanted to thank Joinville for his honesty. Though he was annoyed at Joinville for asking for to much stuff to take on his trip East.
Top Blokes: The Larrikin Myth, Class and Power, Lech Blaine
This was part of a pile of books Caspar sent me in the mail! As the title says, this is an exploration of the ‘Aussie larrikin’ myth and the way it’s been used in politics, both by politicians and by voters. The basic idea of the myth is a young anti-authoritarian male who commits crimes simply to piss off cops, refuses to be told what to do, works in unskilled labour, is extremely suspicious of intellectuals, is deeply loyal to his family and friends (to the point of self-sacrifice), and loves rugby league as opposed to rugby union.
Blaine was writing under the shadow of then-current Prime Minister Scott Morrison, a man who cynically created an entire larrikin persona in order to court voters and win the election, and he opens with Morrison’s hypocritical campaign before jumping back – first to the creation of the ‘larrikin’ persona in Australia’s colonial days (with a labour strike leading to the creation of one of the two major Australian parties), then through the late 20th Century and the rise and gradual co-option of it in Australian politics, showing how you could eventually have Morrison make the term totally meaningless.
Part of Blaine’s mission here is to expose that the ‘larrikin’ myth was always a bit of a lie and always serving particularly white, particularly male, particularly straight agendas, and so its hijacking by rich motherfuckers was always inevitable; there’s one almost sad part where the richest piece of shit in Australia has the idea posthumously applied to him in all defiance of the fact that he was an authoritarian terror.
Blaine frequently tosses in personal stories – being in a great position where he knows both ‘real’ ‘battlers’ and people who broke through to become successes, usually through sport – and observes a few people who are driven by insecurity, both economic and spiritual (there’s one dizzying line explaining a lot: “Just because you’re factually correct doesn’t mean I have to agree with you.”). One of the most convincing arguments he makes is that the rise of Donald Trump had its foreshadowing in miniature across Australian small towns decades before.
(In some ways, this essay was a bleak, bleak demonstration of how poorly I fit into this country’s culture on a fundamental level, right down to me being actually anti-authoritarian)
The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe, CS Lewis
I liked the ideas behind this more than the execution. Like, I’m honestly not trying to shit on these classic fantasy books or take them in bad faith, it’s just happening. I always loved editorialising narrators, but Lewis’s voice is so grating on me; I worked out that it was because it perfectly captures how powerless and stupid being a kid made me feel at the time. I had an enormous laugh when I realised how similar Lewis’s voice and Ron Howard on Arrested Development are in principle – explaining the character’s motivations and contextualising things they didn’t know – with the difference being that AD’s characters have history and worldviews more complicated than “likes Turkish Delight”.
Meanwhile, I actually enjoy this as a Jesus metaphor, and it may possibly be the only good one. It helps that, according to Lewis, Aslan isn’t a metaphor but is Narnia’s actual Jesus. The actual emotional arc is the same, it’s just vivid and stranger, and it gives the story grounding. The downside is that Lewis seems to treat the emotional arc as almost perfunctory; Edmund’s Recognition and transformation happen offscreen, as does the death of the White Queen.
“No one was making fun of Aslan, I can’t emphasize that enough.”
Lewis definitely has a patronizing-at-times voice, what works is how it is at heart more respectful toward children than it is toward adults. The Silver Chair is extremely funny in this regard, Lewis is not a fan of WOKE EDUCATORS. His certainty is best channeled as awe, can shade interestingly into knowing wryness but also have a tinge of contempt. I don’t think the books exist without it, though. I actually came to this one late in my bouncing around the series and I don’t think it’s as good as others (The Silver Chair, Dawn Treader, to name two) but the “Narnia’s actual Jesus” angle gives it a lot of power, and winds up making Narnians on the level of Springfieldians in terms of goldfish-like mob memory over the course of the series.
Spoken like a man who has never tasted Turkish delight.
I still like the Narnia books a lot, but I agree with you about the Aslan as Jesus passages — the section where he plays with Susan and Lucy the night before his execution is the closest I’ve ever come to understanding what believers find valuable in their faith.
Still periodically working through my friend’s football book with the title we all got a good laugh at.
I also started making myself get back into The Mental Game of Poker, which I’d kind of forgotten I dropped off months ago. I haven’t played much lately, but I was planning to do some more over Christmas vacation when I finally had the time to. I just got to the chapter on fear, which seems to speak to a lot of the current mental weaknesses in my game. (Nothing about Mose Schrute yet so far.)
What Did We Play?
We were this close to playing Strahd when one player lost her power. And by the time her power came back, another player lost internet. It’s the Curse of the Curse of Strahd!!
Game Day! Mysterium where we are all murder-investigating psychics attempt to solve a crime based on visions given to us by a ghost (gamemaster). The ghost tries to point us to solutions using illustrated cards and hoping we see the same correlation between them and the correct path. We were failures at this, in the end, and some grotesque cartoonish murderer got away with it, despite the fact that my wife makes for a very talkative ghost in the face of the rules. Acquire, where I had some bad luck and trouble keeping track of the various investments since all the hotels were on the board together for a long stretch. Made for a more interesting game, if not one beneficial to my particular way of playing.
Finished with a couple Secret Whatever-type games, which are not my favorite milieu, but they do involve everyone in a slightly larger group. The first was Secret Hitler, which actually turned out to be a pretty tense affair with the good guys pulling it out at the last minute, followed by one of the Werewolf games, which was mostly confusion over the roles followed by a little bit of gameplay.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle – this is just wonderful. I’ve seen reviews calling it the best Indiana Jones adventure in decades and – with the disclaimer that I haven’t actually bothered checking out Dial of Destiny – I have to agree. It’s so much fun, immersive adventuring with good puzzles, solid combat, great writing and characters. The guy voicing Indy has nailed the assignment. I wish I was playing it right now.
The Secret of Monkey Island – I’ve been dipping into the remastered version of this occasionally and this week I got to the end. I assumed I’d at least mostly, if not completely finished this at some point in the past but I didn’t remember much at all beyond a certain point so I guess not – I certainly spent more time with the first sequel. Anyway, it’s charming and the remaster is done well, finding an updated style of art that complements the original rather than just going for something slick and slightly generic.
Tetris – Nintendo Entertainment System on Nintendo Switch Online
Tetris DX – Game Boy on Nintendo Switch Online
Played a few rounds of both when they dropped on NSO. They’re good, solid Tetris, no more is needed. The Game Boy Color title swaps the traditional Game Boy music from some interesting, more entertaining tracks but otherwise seems largely the same great game. And the NES game is the same too, except it uses part of its extra screen space to display how many pieces of each type have already been in play. It’s not really something I pay attention to when playing but I wonder if it can be gamed in some way.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge on Nintendo Switch
Finally maxed out the new DLC characters in all modes. I’m going to let it rest for a while, except for the possibility of some local co-op with family over the holidays. Plus, I’m overdue for some Streets of Rage 4 when it comes to beat ’em ups.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown
Picked up my playthrough over the weekend and this came just keeps going and going. There’s a very impressive wealth of places to go, upgrades to acquire if you want and things to do. Nominally, the thing to do is to find two extra powers I need to be able to break a magical door of light, plus I’ve already found several places where I will definitely need a double jump that I don’t currently have. In actuality, the design is such that I can explore anywhere and dig for secrets and sidequests off the main path and I was having a blast. Highlights this week include trying (and so far failing) to get a pirate captain his bird back, a beautiful poisoned forest with giant trees and giant enemy pigs, a battle with two dopplegangers at once and a giant wave in an ocean in a storm that got stuck in time so you can walk on the water and pieces of wreckage. Alas, I need the double jump to go through it so I’ll double back and keep looking for it next week.
F-Zero 99
A few more races, with one in particular being an amazing run in the sandstorm stage, where I had first place withing sight in the final stretch only to barely survive a crash and getting to the finish light with no energy through the devious last esses. I made 5th but it felt like a win; in fact, it felt better than some actual wins I’ve had.
I guess the only game I played this weekend was “random signature drink at a New Orleans bar that I have no idea what’s actually in it roulette.”
Pokemon Silver/Gold/Crystal
This is the most popular of all the Pokemon games and the one people tend to have the most nostalgia for, and for good reason. I think the thing that made most people fall in love with it was that defeating the Pokemon League and seeing the end credits is only half the game – the majority of it takes place in the region of Johto, but once you defeat the Pokemon League and see the ‘end credits’, you can then travel to the Kanto region from the first generation and earn all the badges from there.
The first discovery of this is so shocking and so delightful that I think it colours the whole experience in people’s minds. It’s a moment that makes the game feel absolutely huge compared to others, like they managed to cram a whole second game in there. Gen II is set about three years after Gen I, so you have the basic delight of seeing the consequences of the first game play out (a major part is finding the remnants of Team Rocket, disbanded after the leader got owned twice by a ten year old), as well as the melancholy of seeing Cinnabar Island taken out by a volcano eruption.
This isn’t just one flash moment though; this is on top of basic but massive quality of life improvements. The game is significantly better structured and less buggy than the previous, and there are so many little things done to speed up the process of play; my favourite is being able to see how much experience a Pokemon has til it levels up via a little bar under the health as opposed to having to go into a menu.
(Though I’m also a fan of how they clean up the Caterpie/Metapod/Butterfree and Weedle/Kakuna/Beedrill evolution lines. The basic conceit is that Caterpie and Weedle are like caterpillars evolving into butterflies or moths, with their middle stage being akin to cocoons. Caught in the wild, Metapod and Kakuna only know Harden, which toughens their defences, but for some reason they don’t learn it when you level the Pokemon up. This is fixed for this Gen.)
This game also introduces a bunch of cool new elements; I’m a big fan of the Day/Night cycles, in which night falls in real time and you see different Pokemon depending on the time. This also brings in seeds you can plant to grow fruits and apricorns, which can be used to make custom Pokeballs, and it’s enormous fun planting seeds, watering them, and coming back later. There’s also the introduction of Pokemon having sexes and breeding new Pokemon.
(I’m significantly less a fan of the phone it introduces; the one positive is that you can rebattle older trainers, but otherwise it’s just a nuisance.)
And the fundamental appeal of exploring a science-fictional area with a joyful vibe and gladiator combat remains.
Great look at this particular moment and how it fits in with TNG’s developing ethos: I feel like Trek shows often have a buried or not-so-buried question of How Should We Live?, and while a lot of the social commentary comes from how they tackle that question on alien planets, a lot of the core appeal comes from how they tackle it within the ensemble. And Wesley’s presence on the ship sets that up in a very intriguing way.
It’s strange to me learning about the vitriol aimed at Wesley Crusher by Trek fans in the 90s, one of the benefits of the pre-Internet world was blissful ignorance of these things. Had the Internet existed, I suppose I would have seen Wesley as an annoyance (I can see where they’re coming from now, but like all things Next Gen it got better).
Yeah, I was thinking about this too. I guess it’s odd to write for a site where we all share our pop culture opinions and say that sometimes I wish I wasn’t so aware of other people’s pop culture opinions, but the internet has a way of shaping things into vitriolic, uncharitable consensus. And it’s often nice to not have that in your head.
I feel like The Phantom Menace was ground zero for this kind of thing. I’m not saying the movie was all that good, but I don’t remember hearing strong opinions about it until people started getting access to broadband a few months later. And poor Ahmed Best got the brunt of that newfound power.
One of the pleasures of going to iconic shows long after consensus has been reached on them is being able to see how the narrative around them has been flattened into something easier, simpler, and often more flattering to ‘the general public’. The obvious one is this show’s optimism, which is far more nuanced than its generally given credit for; the weight of responsibility of Wesley is another.
I had a vague notion people made fun of him because he was turning into a bit of Deus Ex Machina – the new version of the Mad Magazine Trivial Pursuit card: “In what episode of Trek did Scotty’s engineering save the day?” “All of them!” So I wasn’t entirely surprised what I found on the Internet.
My terrible TNG secret is that when watching, I didn’t notice Wesley being annoying (beyond Wheaton being a limited actor) and I didn’t notice Worf apparently getting his ass kicked all the time. I notice the recurring morality of a show, but never these ‘drinking game’ kind of patterns for some reason.
I didn’t notice either, and I think it’s a lot of cherry-picking in both cases (like saddling Shatner with the hammy acting designation, as though he played every scene like it was his conversation with Kahn). The most annoying Wesley stuff is pretty much confined to the first handful of episodes.
I notice people can definitely get the first few instances of a character’s appearance in their head and suddenly that defines the whole show.