Mickey 17 -- What I Thunk

Hey, it shares a major plot point with Keanu Reeves' and China Mieville's The Book of Elsewhere!  What if you could live forever?  Scratch that, what if you could die forever, as in over and over and over again?

The first half of Bong Joon-Ho's film is pretty great.  When the titular Mickey finally meets a copy of himself, things fall apart.

Robert Pattinson is good but never does seem to get his working class American accent consistent.  New characters show up out of the blue.  Mark Ruffalo as the villainous president is actually not that great.  I'm willing to be a nickel that Bong told him to "do his best Trump," and it's not a very good Trump.  The animal rights stuff isn't unwelcome, but not really integrated the way it should be either.

The ending does manage to tie the important stuff together in spite of the sloppy second half.  I liked it.  I could have waited to watch on DVD too, nothing lost.

The Book of Elsewhere by China Mieville and Keanu Reeves (Minor Spoilers)

 

I was honestly a bit trepidatious going into this one.  Mieville is one of my favorite science fiction writers, scratch that, favorite writers.  Keanu is -- one of my favorite people, not necessarily one of my favorite actors?

And right off the bat I was looking to figure out which passages where written by which dude.  There are a lot of interesting, if not great, moments, and the use of certain high-falutin' language makes me think they are Mieville's, but who knows.  A collaborative project can bring things out of you you never expected, so maybe I should give Reeves more credit.

But at the end of the day, we have a pretty good, not great, "chosen one" story (which screams Reeves) met with some philosophical ruminations as to the implications (spoiler!) of immortality, or rather quite cleverly, "infinite mortalities."

If you're really desperate to read something new by Mieville, you could do worse.  But it's never going to rank among his best work -- Perdido Street Station, The City and the City, Embassytown.  The overall focus just isn't there.

Still, I liked it just fine.  Thank you, Ted.

"The ghosts of everything"

"'What I have found,' he said, 'is that most journeys take you back to where you left from.  But not all.  A very long time ago I learned that at the end of some journeys, you start again somewhere new.  They don't happen very often.  Such journeys as those.  So when they do it's worth taking note.'  He gestured at the book.  'In any case recalling has never been a difficulty.  But there are ways of seeing.  See too many and it's overwhelming.  If you're looking for patterns, there is a line between too little information and too much.  So this is data.'

'And this,' I said, holding it up, 'is enough?  The perfect amount of information?'

'No,' he said.  'Not nearly enough.  It might be enough in a long time.  And when I write in it, as when anyone writes in any book, what I record is accompanied by the infinite ghosts of that which is not recorded.'

'The ghosts of everything,' I said."

-- China Mieville and Keanu Reeves, The Book of Elsewhere

Sad Sad News

It looks like Gene Hackman spent a week wandering around his house after his wife died.  Then he also died.

Me and my sister know all too much about this dementia stuff.  If you have an elderly relative, please check in daily!

Downtown Frederick, Not Quite Spring

 

Frederick, Maryland.

Only You

 

Gambrill State Park, west of Frederick, Maryland.  Lots of nice hiking trails yet to be discovered.

"It's a big black sky over my town"

 

Robyn and David Byrne, "Dancing On My Own"

A musical bright spot in an otherwise dismal 2025. 

"I wanna ride on the Ferris wheel"

Kim Deal, "Disobedience"

I'm really enjoying the new Kim Deal solo album.  More Breeders than Pixies, with some nice curveballs thrown in (Latin horns, anyone?)

Now it's Kelly's turn?

Feel The Spirit

 

Browsed at the always amazing Wonderbooks in Frederick, Maryland.

Blue Apple

Frederick, Maryland.

Job Stuff

I started a new job last week and it's going really well.  After 12 years teaching ESL in South Korea, and various other things along the way (substituting, tutoring, composition teaching in graduate school) I think part of me will always think of myself as a teacher, or an ex-teacher.

I'm also certain that thousands of years ago, sitting around the in-cave fire, the cave-people elders were complaining about the young folks.  But something really does seem to have changed -- so much unnecessary drama, the occasional death threat from a second grader, the addiction to cell phones -- in terms of what a teacher's job is supposed to be now.

I'll say more soon but it's nice to go into work and not have to hear any screaming, or any n- or f-bombs.