I think I’d like to rip off Larry David’s creative process. I don’t specifically mean making an improvised sitcom, although that might be fun – I mean replicating how he puts so much of his actual life into the show, and so ruthlessly. This was the season that really tipped me over into thinking that, because this is the season where he lets his real-life divorce intrude onto the show and change its situation. I was wondering how it would be played, considering it’s one of the top five most stressful life events a person can go through.
I asked myself, would the tone of the show change? Generally, when this kind of thing comes up in a sitcom, it’s treated with sentimentality and seriousness, especially when it’s drawing on real life events from the creator’s life. In fact, you can generally see this with how silly sitcoms end; generally, characters are given happy endings, even when the character was defined by being annoying or stupid, which I generally put down to the creators thinking “I put so many years of my life into this show and I want to express how much it means to me” (positive example: Jenna’s final song on 30 Rock, which many have noted comes off like actress Jane Krakowski saying goodbye to the show).
With divorce in particular, I feel like a normal guy would have tried to protect his ego, maybe make his wife come off as a harridan or something; I think of the way Lynn Johnston lost her mind after her divorce and how that drove her comic For Better Or For Worse off of a cliff as she screwed over her avatar of her ex-husband. A nicer guy might have used the show as a way to analyse his own faults; a self-deluding one would have used it to create a fantasy of his wife never leaving him.
Larry David is none of those things. Larry David is a guy trying to make people laugh. There is absolutely no difference between how they shoot the scene of Cheryl telling Larry she wants a divorce and the scene of Leon explaining to Larry that he didn’t cum on his blanket; there is no difference to how it factors into the plot; there is nothing special about it at all beyond the difference in situation. In a way, it doesn’t matter what we do – who we are will come out, and who we are is what we want. There’s something artistically freeing about that, and there’s something deeply cool about using yourself in your art no matter how it makes you look.
Related to this is a new angle to Larry’s character that has emerged. In one episode, Larry feels sorry for a chauffeur, and he remarks that he worked as a chauffeur and hated having to wait out for three hours or so with no food or ability to turn on the radio or anything. First of all, it’s very revealing that he apparently has no inner life; not that I actively seek out three hours stuck in my own head, but I could bear it. Hell, I’d probably think ahead of time and bring a book if I really needed to.
More importantly, though, this is Larry’s particular brand of empathy (the character, I mean). He sees people in a situation and automatically asks, what would I do and feel in their situation? He sees a guy sitting in a limo for a few hours and knows he’d be miserable and bitter, and resolves to fix it. It’s a sympathetic expectation, but also tends to make him jump to conclusions; on a fundamental level, Larry is lazy, indulgent, and in possession of a fragile ego, and he automatically assumes everyone else is too. His schemes are either attempts to get away with it or attempts to set it up so other people can get away with it. This is what makes it entertaining to watch.
On this level, too, is the introduction of Leon Black. I was looking forward to this, and he got me right from his first scene. At the risk of repeating things said by our own Captain Nath, Leon automatically lands as someone just as weird about social rules as Larry but with none of his neuroticism – Leon is often completely ready to go for any scheme (loved the episode where he was ready to fight on Larry’s behalf for almost no reason) and won’t ever question his own logic, often carrying it from scene to scene.
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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Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
Beneath The Planet Of The Apes
You know for some reason all the other ones were on Disney+ but this wasn’t until recently? Anyway, this is famously an attempt to kill the franchise in the crib, so I was amused by it doing the most crowdpleasing shit possible right up to that point. The movie is significantly dumber than its predecessor, but it chases its goals tenaciously. It has a very clear goal with very clear, super-evil antagonists and helpful side characters. It even works around the problem of Heston not wanting to come back by front- and backloading him, and replacing him with a cheaper guy who looks kind of a bit like him. It even explains a few mysteries from the first film, like expanding on the nature of the Forbidden Zone – lore being like catnip to certain fans.
So obviously I love that it ends with a gigantic nuclear explosion wiping everyone out. The movie straight up makes that as dark and nihilistic as possible, laying the work paid off in the end of Escape From LA’s far superior riff on the same idea.
I Know What You Did Last Summer
Weak. Strong premise, but there’s not enough ideas driving this thing and the tension is weak. I knew the final twist going in, and I was prepared to be annoyed because I hate when the twist is that some random guy did it, but they actually do work to characterise the killer in the little screentime we get of him.
Also: this contains the worst cover of “Hey Bulldog” you could possibly do.
Elephant
An experimental film that almost works. I pretty much got the point of the long takes early on – oh yeah, because they’ll be walking around shooting everyone.
I could never got on Elephant’s wavelength. For me the things that are experimental – long meandering takes, untrained actors – make it feel “experimental” rather than enhance the material. And adding the scene in the shower – not something that was part of the real Columbine shooting story – is a weirdly kinda homophobic-looking choice. I felt more often confused than anything.
Out of Sight – This is a well made entertaining move with a great cast. But there is just something about it that doesn’t do it for me. Is it that I never for one second bought that Karen would be dumb enough to get involved with Jack instead of just arresting him? Is it that Jackie Brown is a much better Elmore Leonard movie (with, as was noted here recently, actual adults)? Or is it that I have read way more Westlake/Stark than Leonard and just don’t have any patience with this kind of crime story after years of Dortmunder (funny crime but no sentimentality) and Parker (who probably thinks Jack is a moron for sleeping with the enemy and wonders how you commit robberies without guns). Anyway, at least the chemistry between Clooney and J-Lo is good, but Ving Rhames is the best actor here, followed by Albert Brooks.
Frasier, “The Good Son”/”Space Quest” – After finishing Out of Sight on the flight home. there was only enough time for sitcoms, and it’s probably been a decade since I watched Frasier start to finish. So why not? I don’t think a sitcom has ever sprouted as fully formed from the writers room as this one. Though I also think no one quite released it since the premise was supposed to be more “Frasier and Martin don’t get along” and less “The Brothers Crane.” But you watch the pilot, and it’s instantly clear that Frasier and Niles are going to be the core soon enough. Maybe it’s time to do another rewatch.
Kojak, “The Chinatown Murders,” part 2 – The independent operators, having failed to get a ransom for the first mobster they kidnap, go after the big boss next, and it becomes a race against time by Kojak and friends to find him before things get worse. There is a fascinating scene where Kojak, through a Chinese-speaking detective, begs the grandmother of one of the kidnappers to help, admitting that he knows nothing about her life and her world, and that is “both guilty and ashamed” of that fact. This show is not what would pass for progressive today, but at least there is an admission that the NYPD exist in a pretty closed world despite being in the most diverse of cities. Also, look for the first appearances of blue and white NYPD cars, replacing the blue and green that were the standard. (That green is actually an official color of the cops here, and only recently returned to police cars.)
Live music – We were at a filk convention (filk being, as I have noted before, a form of folk music played by a certain class of sci fi fans and associated nerds). So we heard lots of music. Some of it was pretty good, some was just heartfelt, and all of it was welcome.
Heh, you might prefer the book version of Out Of Sight — Soderbergh and Tarantino each independently came to the very smart conclusion of reversing their source’s ending, so you can imagine how OOS’s novel concludes. I think the Westlake/Stark comparison is revealing, while a lot of Westlakes have romantic connections there is very little romance and as you note sentimentality, it was not a strength of his (while the unromantic Dortmunder/May relationship is still wonderful) and I think Soderbergh is very interested in it as its own thing and as an X factor in this crime story.
I read Out of Sight a long time ago and vaguely remember how it ends. (Would you believe the Wikipedia listing for it is one whole paragraph?)
Westlake does has some degree of romance – one of his posthumously published books is basically a sweet skewed romcom – but I think in general he always saw romance in crime novels as something that had to be off to the side, or just kind of weird (Tiny and JC, Grofield and Mary).
He’s certainly not averse to it, but I think the more he focuses on a relationship the darker it is — The Hook is probably the best example but the marriage in The Ax is not great, and the obsession in Ordo is very melancholy. And then there is Two Much, about as poisonous a romantic farce as you can get. Maybe the two divorces had something to do with that…
I felt similarly about Out of Sight, I put it down to my general inability to get on Soderbergh’s wavelength but I definitely want to give it another shot at some point.
I feel like I should like Soderbergh more given the love for him many have in our corner of the net, but what I have seem marks him as a talented and capable director who is not making movies for me.
Ya-hoo! We got ourselves a good old fashioned Sodergergh Feud! [fires wildly into the air]
Murder on the Orient Express, 70s version — knew the twist going in but not the resolution, which strikes me as a bit odd, but it helps to have the great Richard Widmark as your victim if you’re going to pull that off. The mystery itself is also a bit weird, there is a frame-up of a sort and also a bunch of red herrings and the latter seem very unnecessary because the former is perfectly fine. But as an excuse for fun mystery stuff (Martin Balsam thinking whoever Poirot just talked to is guilty is a hoot) and boss train action this is a good time.
Barquero — scrolled through Tubi for a bit and it coughed up a 1970 western where Lee Van Cleef goes up against Warren Oates, yes fucking please. Oates’ gang slaughters and robs an entire town and is escaping to Mexico, but Van Cleef runs the barge/ferry across the river and he takes it to the other side (with the townspeople he is not a fan of) before the gang gets there, a standoff ensues — this is a great setup and feels very Elmore Leonard, unfortunately the back half of the movie is non-Leonardian in action, there is a lot of dicking around and dumb decisions with Oates in particular getting stupider by the minute, this reminded me of Richard Lynch in Invasion USA. And while Oates owns in the early massacre the violence itself is pretty tame for a post-Wild Bunch flick, but I’m not dinging the 63-year-old Gordon Douglas, who got his start directing Our Gang movies, too hard for that. Ripe for a remake/reworking but still a good watch, Oates and Van Cleef are their own roadmap to muscly mustachioed machismo.
Le Deuxième Souffle, aka Second Wind — on the other hand, once again I am questioning why I bother watching stuff that is not Jean-Pierre Melville movies. Lino Ventura busts out of prison and needs to flee the country, he gets drawn into a dangerous heist — that is carried off without a hitch! I think Melville makes a subtle joke with how even an unexpected event is perfectly handled — but then the troubles really start. There is a very small moment as the heist gets underway as the gang drives their car to a small garage and gets the car they’re going to heist with, the cars are not parked side by side but in a V, because that is the best way to pull in and out of the door (and naturally their second car was backed in for easy egress) and for some reason this image of space used in a not-traditional but unostentatious and in retrospect expertly managed way feels like a synecdoche for how Melville shoots his movies, he’s not exacting in the Kubrick vein and he has no real “One Perfect Shots” here but the pictures and their moving within the frame and from scene to scene are completely captivating. They show a physical world that gives space and contrast to the metaphysics of fate and honor the characters are also living, Ventura’s being is based in not narking and something happens to fuck with that* and it’s far worse than death for him.
More dark humor — the movie opens with a title card saying what is depicted in this movie is not an endorsement, but explicitly referring to the police methods used, not the cool crimes. Police torture here is shot with an eye toward its sadism, but Ventura is not an innocent by any means and he shoots some cops in cold blood for the heist (and other people involved in the heist are not shot, it’s a ruthless pragmatism) and Melville doesn’t pretend that isn’t also a choice. Ventura is the absolute man here, I am on record as thinking Le Samouraii is sort of mid and while Deleon’s handsome icy hitman is still dancing to someone else’s tune Ventura’s pudgy stonefaced bulk is independent to the end and so much harder. Anyway, Heat takes a lot from this (the theft is of precious metal, even!) so if you like Heat and cool and just the best fucking crime shit in existence, you know what to do.
I managed (somehow) so go into Orient Express unspoiled when I saw it a few years ago and the ending really knocked me out. Found it strange that Ingrid Bergman won an Oscar for it though, she’s the only person in the cast who doesn’t seem to be having a good time.
*wikipedias* whaaaat? Yeah, Bergman is pretty dull, it’s fine for the character but Bacall is much more interesting.
It’s odd, I’d assume it was a lifetime achievement kinda thing or trying to make up for a previous bad decision but Bergman already had a couple of Oscars so it wouldn’t make much sense in this case.
Wow, I didn’t know that. Maybe the Academy was blown away by her playing frumpy and dissipated given the verve, strength, and ebullience which characterized her prior roles.
Better than any other explanation I can think of!
The Hateful 13 On The Orient Express. I wonder if QT took anything from this snowbound murder mystery.
Orient Express orients its hate toward one person, and ultimately everyone gets on board the hate train. Hateful 8 spreads the hate around, it certainly is not the more rewatchable movie but it’s the deeper one. And I think outside of a few interestingly cramped hallway scenes Lumet doesn’t really do a lot spacially with the setting here.
A Real Pain – second cinema trip of the year, let’s go! Didn’t really plan to see this but bumped into a friend and they suggested it so why not. It’s an enjoyable, low-key comedy drama in the well-trodden lane of “what if two people had different personalities? but spent time together!?!?” and it does a good job finding funny and poignant notes as Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin bounce off each other in Poland while exploring their heritage. One weird note from me is that this borrows its ending from another “two different people!” indie drama from a director that Eisenberg has worked with, so I can’t imagine it’s a coincidence. It took me out of the moment a little.
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On – have been meaning to get to this for a while, since I like odd animation and Jenny Slate. Really enjoyed it, the “small people in big house” thing always makes for some fun gags and the more melancholy stuff in the plot works surprisingly well. Very strong voice acting, Slate is great and getting Isabella Rossellini for the main non-human supporting role feels like a bit of a coup, such a good voice!
Serenity (the Firefly one) — A while back I rewatched Firefly in the background while making dinner/folding laundry/etc., so I figured I finish it up with this (which I have seen two or three times previous, including in the theater). I was sort of expecting it to be a genial reunion, even remembering the big reveal to start the third act. But I was unprepared by how compelling this was this time around both in terms of story and the visceral hold of your attention in the action scenes, which were not only a great spectacle but more thematically intense than I remembered. I had gotten the DVD from the library and it was sitting around for a few weeks while I waited to get around to it, and if I knew how much I was going to enjoy this rewatch I would have put it on as soon as I got home that day.
The movie where Joss Whedon updated his conceit from “what if the Confederacy was good” to “The Union is poisoning you with fluoridation.” I am being sarcastic, I haven’t seen this in a while but recall it being pretty good, but also not entirely sarcastic? The Operative is interesting but otherwise this stacks the deck pretty hard in favor of our heroes, which is understandable given this is a movie instead of the five seasons of TV it was intended to be, but still.
Lithium, not fluoride!
I’m pretty sure he just inherited the lost cause stuff from all the lost cause stuff in the westerns he’s riffing on, but neo-confederate maga joss whedon is funny idea.
“and he’s standing right behind me isn’t he.”
[turns around to see barack obama who just heard you talking about his birth certificate].
the evil of tranquility idea also pops in Angel season 4 and the joe kelly deadpool run. It’s like a little mini trend in nerd media. I think it’s an end of history phenomenon as they work out what the new unipolar world means before 9/11 and the invasion of iraq.
CFP Semifinal, Texas vs. Ohio State
Ohio State was the better team, but don’t be fooled by the final score: Texas was absolutely in it until Steve Sarkisian made one of the worst play calls I’ve ever seen on 2nd-and-goal from the 1.
NFL Wild Card Weekend
Well, some of it. It’s not like I missed a lot of competitive games or anything. I was here for all of Commanders-Buccaneers, and that was the most competitive one. Also the good guys won. With some luck. After making a similar mistake to Sarkisian at the goal line and nearly having that cost them, until it didn’t. Also, wow, Jayden Daniels is really good. I’m particularly impressed with him as a runner; he seems to have a gift for avoiding direct contact and spinning and squirming his way for a few extra yards every time.
The Importance of Being Earnest (2002)
The Mrs. picked this out for a lazy Sunday (and something that was a tight 90, because I wanted it done before the competitive football game came on). I’d read this ages ago– probably around the time this version was produced, actually– but never seen it performed before. There’s a strong cast here, with Colin Firth as Jack and Rupert Everett as Algy; I was less familiar with Frances O’Connor as Gwendolen or Anna Massey as Miss Prism, but we also get Tom Wilkinson as Dr. Chasuble, Dame Judi Dench as Lady Bracknell, and Reese Witherspoon as Cecily.
Anyway, what new is there to say? This is a great and funny play; Wilde’s dry wit and one-liners still hold up today (although I suspect some of them were cut from this production), and the entire goofy, silly farce about society and keeping up appearances is still a lot of fun. I’m not familiar with any other productions to compare this to, unfortunately.
Animal Control, “Rattlers and Gators”
Lucy Punch’s Naomi is back, and Emily really wants to impress her (and get her to sponsor a new department initiative), which means presenting the department at their very best… which means sending Frank away for the day. Frank is too clever not to figure it out, though, and comes in anyway to insinuate himself into the situation, which takes some odd and unexpected turns.
Meanwhile, Patel has been offered to throw out the first pitch for the local minor-league team, as “Officer Thumbs” still has some viral popularity around town. This gets to his head pretty quickly (very funny background gag where Grace gets stuck in a car wash chasing an animal while Patel is on the phone acting like a diva), and he has to find a way to make that up to Grace.
Funny episode all around with some unexpected surprises. Pretty good stuff.
Going Dutch, “Tanks for Nothing”
A little more of the show’s potential comes through this episode. The General (Joe Morton) returns to the base to inform Col. Quinn that he’ll need their help in an upcoming NATO exercise… running traffic. The Colonel decides to steal a tank to prove he’s still in his prime (“…very late prime”). He comes up with a complicated plan but sidelines Captain Quinn for most of it, and she’s also intent on proving she is more than capable of running an operation. And at the same time, the Colonel (maybe I should call the Quinns “Patrick” and “Maggie”) finds himself increasingly smitten with Catherine Tate’s Katja.
Anyway, nothing is as fun as a good heist with a cunning plan and crazy caper, and on that level the episode delivered and was quite a bit of fun. I got some good laughs, it was fun to see the caper pulled off, and, hey, it seems like there may be more depth here than I was first aware. We’ll continue to see where this show goes.
Rewatches:
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, “The Gang Wrestles for the Troops,” “Old Lady House: A Situation Comedy,” “The ANTI-Social Network,” “The Gang Goes on Family Fight,” “Charlie Work”
Frank saluting to Ben while “Kiss From a Rose” plays is one of my favorite images of the series, just the pure absurdity.
The “Birds of War” song is so very Gang. One of my favorite traits about them and whatever they’re doing is that they spend far more time self-mythologizing than actually doing it. Of course they would prepare for a wrestling match by coming up with ornate costumes and a theme song with an elaborate backstory, and not, you know, learning any wrestling moves whatsoever.
“Old Lady House” is just super strong on the fundamentals.
I had to watch “The ANTI-Social Network” to see Billings himself, David Marciano, as the detective Charlie and Dennis report the story of the shusher to.
I just wanted to see all the silly shit in “Family Fight.” And the Mrs. picked out “Charlie Work,” which is a great episode as well.
A.P. Bio, “Wednesday Morning, 8 AM,” “Toledo’s Top 100,” “Sweet Low Road,” “Tiny Problems”, “Gary Meets Dave” “The Pistachio” “Aces Wild” “Katie Holmes Day” “Tornado!”
My wife wanted to kick off her vacation by hanging out all Friday night and watching A.P. Bio, and who am I to say no? I’m not gonna write up all these episodes, though. “Gary Meets Dave” is a great experiment outside the typical sitcom format, and “Katie Holmes Day” is the kind of silly fake sitcom holiday (ref. “Leap Day”) that makes for a lot of fun.
Tacoma FD, “I’m Eddie Penisi… Sr.,” “Ike and Mike,” “Hell Week,” “How I Met Your Mother”
I guess it was breezy sitcom weekend over here. The show still holds up pretty well.
American Dad!, “News Glance with Genevieve Vavance”
“Beer Water: It won’t give you diarrhea.”
The Shield, “Blood and Water”
That moment of Mara standing up to Vic is one of those things that plays so much differently on rewatch than it does the first time.
The Kids in the Hall, season 2 episodes
I guess I decided to spend my late Saturday night in a Kids vibe. There are too many favorite sketches here both recurring (the Geralds, Buddy Cole) and one-offs (Bruce’s “America” monologue, “Dead Fish,” Scott’s “Show Within a Show”) to recap them all.
I watched The Instigators. Matt Damon and Casey Affleck team up again, twelve years after they wowed audiences with Gerry. But this time, instead of wandering through the desert and dying, they play two criminals who participate in a scheme to rob the mayor of Boston on his re-election night. The situation gets more complicated and the pair have to go on the run. I was pleasantly surprised that this was an action comedy, instead of a gritty urban drama. There are quips, stunts, high speed chases and explosions. It looks like they filmed on location in Boston, which must have been difficult to coordinate once the pair steal a fire truck. It’s (surprisingly) not on Tubi. It’s on Apple TV.
See, this screams Tubi in conceit, although it should also be made in 1986 and star Gregory Hines and Billy Crystal for the full effect.
What did we read?
Be Not Afraid Of Love: Lessons In Fear, Intimacy, and Connection Mimi Zhu
In reading (amongst other things) philosophy, I thought I’d challenge myself and read a book that I had preconceptions about in order to try and empathise with someone difficult for me. Zhu is a Chinese-Australian queer writer/artist, and this partially a memoir of their experiences with intimate partner violence and mainly an exploration of how to heal after abuse. My preconception is that it would be shallow, somewhat patronising, and mostly repeating things a lot of people say in queer, feminist, left-wing spaces.
And I was correct! It’s not that I think Zhu is wrong about their conclusions, I just think their take on almost everything is rather shallow; in fact, I got kind of aggravated that they kept expressing irritation at binaries and things being reduced to good and bad only to then dismiss capitalism and Western civilisation as the cause of all the bad things in the world with absolutely no nuance or explanation. Their ultimate conclusion – and I’m not oversimplifying here – is that capitalism is bad because it makes people tired. Like I said, not wrong, just not helpful.
Further, much of the book is really a collation of quotes from other writers. In Zhu’s defence, this really is an admirably wide range of sources, but it feels like at least half the book is other people’s writing. The second-most compelling part of the book is Zhu’s description of the abuse and the abuser (who, charmingly, Zhu refers to as X because they wish to claim no ownership over ‘my ex’), and the most compelling part is when they actually draw connections between their newfound principles and their experiences, like how they broke away from X.
But I didn’t just read this to be told things I believe to be correct. This was an exercise in empathy, and there were two parts of this. The first is that everything that annoyed me about Zhu’s writing is stuff that I’m insecure about in my own. Zhu’s instincts strike me as very much like mine; an addiction to principles and abstractions, sensitivity to how one comes off, heavily reliant on old sources, and a sense that the author is trying to work out their thoughts in real time.
Of course, I also avoid doing it how Zhu does it; I take other people’s principles and run away with them, I like to think my writing is easy to read without totally losing any individuality, I try to make my thoughts cohere even when I’m uncertain (or at least accept lack of coherence), and I try to root my abstractions in concrete data (even the relative concrete shared reality of a work of fiction we’re all familiar with).
And secondly, I respect that Zhu seems to be happy. Of all my own writing, Zhu’s book reminded me most of my diary entries – extremely personal writing where I’m trying to beat the shit out of a thought until I understand it as opposed to something to be shared for public consumption. Aside from getting where Zhu is coming from and being able to relate their work to others – if nothing else, Zhu is the perfect articulation of their generation of queer leftists – I can see the value of sharing their inner life.
The Silver Chair, CS Lewis
One thing that fascinates me about CS Lewis is that he as an author is completely devoid of all the positive qualities he attributes to Aslan. I actually quite like Aslan as a character because he’s bluntly straightforward, completely nonjudgemental, and quietly effective; meanwhile, Lewis is an arrogant judgemental childish prick.
I’ll be very interested to get to The Last Battle because I’m told by fans that it’s Lewis descending completely into propaganda, when that seems to me to be his basic mode of operation (I practically threw the book across the room when he casually revealed ‘by the way, that liberal progressive school? It’s run by a WOMAN, of course!’). I notice this has the exact same arc as the previous books, and indeed is riffing on Edmund’s arc in The Lion, The Witch, etc – ‘a nasty little brat learns to be a good child’; it’s a fascinating parallel to his friend Tolkien in that he also doesn’t have much of an understanding of story structure – this is, again, mostly a series of incidents – but he compensates for it by telling the same story repeatedly.
But I must admit that he does have a gift for imagery. Puddleglum is an awesome character – he slides into the same role as Reepicheep and Tumnus and the dwarf guy from Voyage, but his rigid dedication to a personality at odds with his actions is delightful, and I’m always a sucker for frog people. The eponymous chair is a cool idea with the characters forced to make a faith-based decision, which is inherently boss.
My Left Foot, Christy Brown
The inner life of a disabled man. I found things to relate to here; Brown was a normal guy mentally who was physically strange, and I’m the other way around, and his life story is largely one of adapting to his particular quirks. He’s also served largely by people around him, both professionally and personally; his mother in particular is an extraordinary person who demonstrates a purity of will. I’m struck by one story of her building Brown a house in her backyard in the face of total opposition by attempting to do it herself and cheerfully passing it over to her bricklayer husband and sons when they can’t stand it not being done well.
Much of Brown’s journey is an attempt to find meaning even when he’s not able to share in the same reality as everyone else. He wants to feel useful, he wants to feel like he adds something to the world, and that’s harder when you’re disabled.
“I actually quite like Aslan as a character because he’s bluntly straightforward, completely nonjudgemental, and quietly effective; meanwhile, Lewis is an arrogant judgemental childish prick.”
Heh, this is why I prefer Lewis to Aslan — Aslan is always right and thus boring, Lewis is a prick and therefore entertaining. That shit with the progressive school is hilariously mean-spirited, I love it. But we can agree on Puddleglum, probably the best character Lewis ever came up with — “his rigid dedication to a personality at odds with his actions is delightful” is a great description of why he rules. I also like this one a lot for its hidden Narnia vibe, the first two books cover similar territory (literally) and Dawn Treader is exploratory in nature, this one monkeys around in areas that feel more off-limits, the giant lands and underground, and Lewis gets weirder with it. And the Witch here is number two but she tries harder, dammit.
Heh, this is why I prefer Lewis to Aslan — Aslan is always right and thus boring, Lewis is a prick and therefore entertaining.
You know, I could see that, and I think it gets at what I find so aggravating about Lewis – however much he glorifies Aslan, he clearly can’t help but be Eustace, and I find the clashing of those two impulses irritating rather than charming.
It’s definitely an acquired taste. Lewis at his worst is when he is in glorifying mode without the cover of Marsh-wiggles and progressive-bashing, then he’s just sanctimonious, O.E.D. Flanders. Even Aslan gets to fuck people up now and again.
The Maltese Falcon – About halfway through. The elements of the classic movie are here, but Huston left a fair deal out, such as a lot more involving Iva Archer and a lot more flirting with Effie. The streamlining is not a bad thing for a movie, but that doesn’t mean the more crowded plot is bad. Also, Sam Spade is clearly described in the first paragraph as “a blond satan,” and yet obviously I am picturing Bogey. A solid book, but it is not a great detective novel in terms of actual detection. Someone over the weekend commented that he didn’t like a series of urban fantasy detective novels because “the hero gets beat up, stumbles on a clue, and gets beat up,” but that is exactly what is happening here. I am a Hammett fan for sure, but sometimes I wonder how Sam ever got anywhere in this line of work.
That sort of detection by wandering around and getting beat up is very much how all the Marlowes work.
I think it’s fair to say that just as Chandler did not hide his contempt for the cozy mystery, fans of those mysteries in turn find the seeming mindlessness of Spade and Marlowe to be the opposite of what a mystery should be. (And of course, in real life it’s the cops who do the beating up while no one actually solves mysteries and private eyes only do insurance work, but who wants to hear that?)
Haha, this is reminding me of John Swartzwelder describing his private-eye-novel hero, Frank Burly:
The Divers Game, by Jesse Ball.
Again, like The Repeating Room, this works based on the strength of sparse yet evocative prose. The harshness is unmitigated by any sentimentality or even by much action. This lets Ball get away with what would otherwise be an overly cliche left-liberal parable. It’s the prose that makes this good at the cost of Ball getting to go on msnbc or get a $100M YA blockbuster.
The story is told in four vignettes, only one of which gets a definite conclusion. The vignettes all take place in a future setting. Society is rigorously stratified and at the bottom you have a group of un-people called the quads. The quads (so named after the quadrants in which they live) have no rights and can be killed at will. They have quadrants where they still have no rights but any citizen that enters also won’t be protected by the cops, so the quads have a degree of safety there. On paper this sounds like a lazy allegory about stratification of society based on race, immigration, class, etc. But there’s no sentimentality. There’s no audience surrogate to be angry for us; there’s no uprising; no vicarious victory. The quads do not demonstrate unexpected moral superiority or solidarity. There’s no good samaritan. One character does have a moral awakening, but it comes to
nothing. Instead of vicarious victory you get to enjoy vicarious defeat. I recommend it.
What did we play?
Ratchet & Clank 3: Up Your Arsenal
This is a strong contender for my favourite game in the series. It has the exact same basis as the previous games, though with a cleaned up control system, but it layers in so many minigames that I have never gotten sick of – my favourite is the gladiator combat, but there’s also a mining/exploration minigame I always loved to bits, and a Secret Agent Qwark sidescroller that would be an entire game just two generations previous. The main criticism these games received was for being ‘more of the same’, but I always found that a) wrong because they kept putting more shit in and b) absurd anyway. Variations on fundamentally good gameplay are, you know, a positive. Ain’t broke, don’t fix and all that.
Really, this series manages to make you feel like a cartoon space-farin’ gunslinger and a work-a-day schlub doin’ the dirty work for money. My dirty secret is that I haven’t actually been replaying any of these older games I’ve been talking about for a few months, just writing about them, and I specifically remember this game had a joke where they actually get charged money for the next plot point by a computer, to Ratchet’s rage and exasperation.
But what is What Did We Play without what we did play? You sit on a throne of lies! Though really I’m just jealous of your memory.
Strahd finally started up again. The endless party got weirder. Who writes this stuff?
Animal Well – saw the credits roll on this a while ago but this is a classic “the game really gets started AFTER you hit the ‘ending'” game and I’m having a lot of fun digging up secrets, even if some of them are REALLY obtuse. I’m allowing myself an occasional search for hints, which I feel justified in because one of the responses was “ah, you need a bunch of other players to team up to solve that one, it took a concerted internet effort to figure it out” and I don’t think I need to go THAT deep. Think I’ve collected all of the various tools now and I need nine more eggs to reach what I assume will give another ending, at that point I’m probably done.
Amnesia: The Bunker – I think I actually found a survival horror that I enjoy more than my wife. I like it’s fairly straightforward objectives and map with the challenge being to search those areas for what you need without getting caught by the creature (we turned off the giant hissing rats that gnaw you to death if you’re dripping even the smallest amount of blood). Not reinventing the wheel, but doing away with some of the extraneous stuff and literally circling what you’re doing on a map in your home base. Not going to match the original in the series with its variety and forward-momentum structure, but a solid entry for the hide-and-seek genre.
Stray – This is our second Annapurna (missed opportunity to not style itself Annapurrrrrna in the opening) and it’s a more straightforward game than What Remains of Edith Finch but retains its fondness for environment and flexible controls. Best component is the fluid cat movement, best animal-based controlled animation since Untitled Goose Game.
I picked up Stray a while ago when it was on sale, think it’ll be my next game after I’m done squeezing the last bits of enjoyment out of Animal Well.
I was thinking it seemed very much like vomas: The Game.
I had to read that opening line twice to make sure you weren’t saying you like your wife less than you do Amnesia.
Hahaha, that can be read two ways. Sorry honey, I’ve met somebody who will reward me for forty different Steam achievements.
F-Zero 99 on Nintendo Switch
A few more rounds, includine one first place finish on Classic. I’m on a roll lately.
Golden Axe – Sega Genesis Classics on Nintendo Switch
I don’t usually play games when I’m hearing a podcast about them, but I did for this one. A bit clunky but I still want to finish it, since I like the setting a lot want to see a couple of the enemies and levels for myself. Might switch character to the dwarf though.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown on Nintendo Switch
Went back against the big snake boss, Azhdaha after a few days and beat her. It wasn’t as tough as I thought she’d be, even though I didn’t figure out how to evade a couple of her attacks. What’s funny is that after I beat her she didn’t die. Instead, she belittled me and gave me some mysterious hints and a special bow to shoot constellations with. And the double jump, finally. She also gave me some markers for said constellations, revealing how large the world map actually is. I swear I laughed in shock for a solid minute.
Metroid 5: Metroid Dread on Nintendo Switch
Visited my sister and her husband on the weekend, and since he made it to the final boss some months ago but couldn’t beat him, I offerred to help. I didn’t think I could pull it off since it’s been too long since I’d played the game, but after a few tries the muscle memory and patterns came back to me and I got him. Was surprised by how relatively easy it came back, and I’m glad they could finally see the ending.
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on Nintendo Switch
After the previous game, we played a couple of cups. The in-law won both, and I struggled to find my bearings when playing on a projector instead of a screen, but I did better than my sister, and that’s what matters the most.
Played a little more Fallen Leaf over the weekend, continues to be pretty fun, if not something that’s got its hooks in me as strong as, say, Animal Well or any of my other recent favorite platformer or Metroidvania games. (It’s more platformer and less Metroidvania; maybe that’s why.)
Thursday night when we had dinner with our friends we also played a game of Ticket to Ride. I won, mostly due to some good luck– I had already completed a New York to Los Angeles route and one point late drew more destination tickets in hopes of pulling that one specifically… and I did. Those 21 points were more than the margin of victory.