Four Years Old!

A happy fourth birthday to Mandu the tux and Chingu the cream-and-gray, the two kitties who make my life a whole lot better than it should be.  They were adopted all the way across the county when I was working at an animal shelter and taking care of my dad in Bellingham, Washington.  Here we are in Frederick, Maryland, and soon we'll be in Sunset Beach, North Carolina.  Technically Mandu is a few days older than Chingu, but that's about all we know for precise dates.

They are my buddies and they shed way too much.

Primetime: Wut I Thunk

The first half plays it safe and straight -- what was it like behind the scenes of To Catch A Predator over 20 years ago?  And there's entertainment (and cringe, and penises) enough there for a decent film.  The second half is something else though, and it requires a bit of buy-in from the audience: What if TCAP was actually a symbol for everything that's gone wrong with America since 9/11?  What if it was simply a mirror to our own neuroses and pathologies as individuals and America as a whole?  Me, I loved it.  I can see how others might not.  In either event, Robert Pattinson is, as always, wholly captivating.

Four flip-phones out of five!

Hearts and Minds

Iranian anti-Trump art is really pretty good.

Hope: Wut I Thunk

Take your pick -- boring and formulaic, or a genre-busting swing for the fences?  With the South Korean film Hope, you're getting the latter kiddo!  And the results are pretty disappointing.  What starts out promisingly as a sort of small town cop meets a village-eating alien is pretty good, with some excellent practical effects and camera work.  But the second act really starts to stretch things out, to the point where we've got a dozen different characters doing their own thing and it's simply too hard to keep track of all of them.  Then there's the final act, which goes in a direction that simply doesn't pay off anything set up earlier in the film.  Individual performances are fine, and there are some funny moments amidst the ultra-violence, but this is a swing and a resounding miss.  Also, way too long.

Two amazing leather cop jackets out of five!

To Stay Or Not To Stay, That Is The Question

My local movie theater now lets you know if your movie has mid- or end-credits.

Like everything Marvel, it's way overdone but I do appreciate the info.

Where Ya Been, James?

Mandu and Chingu both turn four in October.

I'll keep it short -- I put an offer on a house down in North Carolina last month.  Inspection turned up some major issues, including the roof and drainage / standing water.  North Carolina gets a lot of rain, not to mention wind and even hurricanes, so I walked.

I drove down again last weekend and now have another offer out.  It's a nicer house in a nicer neighborhood, and now I'm waiting for another inspection.  If it gets a relatively clean bill of health (roof was supposedly redone in 2019) I'm going to buy it and ideally getting out of Maryland by the end of 2026.

I'm ready to live near, not on, the beach and start a new adventure with these two non-rent-payers above.

Adulting, man.

"that old fear, and that old pain"

"'Lord,' I said. 'Lewis, you're out of sight.'

'Who knows,' he said. 'But I believe in survival. All kinds. Every time I come up here, I believe in it more. You know, with all the so-called modern conveniences, a man can still fall down. His leg will break, like Shad Mackey's. He can lie there in the woods with night coming on, knowing he's got two cars in the garage, one of them an XKE, a wife and three children watching 'Star Trek' as he lies trying to get his breath under a bush. The old human body is the same as it always was. It still feels that old fear, and that old pain. The last time I was near here...'"

-- James Dickey, Deliverance

Mushroom Trail

Seen on a recent walk around my neighborhood.  I can only guess I'm being lured into a cooking pot.  It's been a surprisingly wet summer here in Frederick -- last two summers I swear everything turned brown by the end of July and stopped growing.

Tony: Wut I Thunk

Director Matt Johnson makes some great choices here: three months (a summer) in the life on Anthony Bourdain based loosely on Kitchen Confidential.  Not Bourdain the TV star, the celebrity, the very tragic death by suicide, but just a skinny rich kid who needs to grow up.  This selectiveness is crucial to making the story universal -- because growing up is hard, and learning to love yourself is not always an easy path.  Cue falling for, and chasing, a girl to Provincetown for a summer on the shore and you've got a movie that works best by being a bit incomplete, a bit unfinished, a bit (ahem) under-baked -- always showing more than telling.  Antonio Banderas shines as Tony's reluctant, nearly Puritan mentor who oversees a kitchen pirate crew of burnouts and sex and drug addicts (1975, people).  If not an actual feel-good film, it's certainly feel-decent enough about how downright embarrassing it can be to be young and in love and aspiring to something greater in a world of dirty dishes and crappy customers who wouldn't know a true Lobster Thermidor if it landed on their head.

Five bumps of dodgy cocaine out of five!

Beach Life

Sunset Beach, North Carolina.

I spent the weekend in North Carolina looking at houses.  I found one I like.  If all goes well, I'll be living down here by the end of the year.

I Love You Too

Dolly Parton, dead at 80.

AIDS activist.  Vaccine activist.  Child literacy activist.  Pretty good singer too.

Stay Classy, Frederick

I mean, I don't disagree.  Honey too though.

Five Years

Chingu seems to really like diet soda.

This is as good a time as any to recap the last five years of my life, no?

In 2021 I returned to America from my job teaching English in South Korea.  I moved in with my Dad in Bellingham, Washington.  He was 88 at the time and dealing with, well, age, as well as a very bad romantic relationship that had just ended.  Basically, he needed full-time care, and he couldn't drive any more, and he lived in the middle of the woods.  Neither of us were thrilled by all of this, but it was necessary short of putting him in a home.

I worked a weekend / part-time job with the Whatcom County Humane Society which changed my life, in no small part because I adopted the tuxedo terror (pictured above) and his sister -- Chingu and Mandu (Korean names for "friend" and "dumpling.")

In 2022 my Dad was finally diagnosed with vascular dementia.  It was a secret to nobody, especially his doctor, who seemed strangely reluctant to actually give him the test that would allow for the dementia diagnosis.  These were, understandably, very difficult times for everyone.  I cried when the doctor asked my Dad some simple questions -- Date? Location? Where are you, basically.  It wasn't just that he was "wrong" in his answers, but that he couldn't fathom the concepts of test, date, location, and, well, reality.

My Only Sunshine

This is the Tuscorora Crepe Myrtle blooming in front of my house.  I'll miss it!

"a loaded gun to an infant"

"'Let him speak,' Finn said dispassionately.

'We... I and others, I mean ... instituted an explosive increase of knowledge in the physical sciences, smothered or subverted all the social and spiritual sciences. We cranked your technology to a fever pitch of frenzied production, led you to build yourselves a suicidal ethic and culture, gave you toys like the atom bomb and lysergic acid to play with: we gave a loaded gun to an infant.  We manipulated elections and revolutions, staged assassinations, encouraged government to calcify the ability of its people to endure, touched off riots, provided you with news media that would carry the news of growing cancer among you, and did all we could to bring into the minds of men a frustration and a terror that would lead inevitably to chaos. You, the steers, are nearly ready to butcher yourselves for our tables.'"

-- Spider Robinson, "Unnatural Causes"

Spiderman -- Brand New Day: Wut I Thunk

I'm a grown-ass man and I still get just a little bit excited for these damn Marvel movies (sorry, D.C.).  And guess what -- this is definitely one of the better ones.  The script really nails down the problems of being a teenage superhero constantly having to choose between a normal life with friends and a heroic one of kicking villainy in the ass.  It helps that the film doesn't offer easy answers, or even a clean conclusion to the Zendaya love interest.  It really helps that Jon Bernthal as a convincing and surprisingly warm-hearted Punisher is willing to step in and let Peter Parker know that he's got to grow up, at some point, like the rest of us do.  At two and a half hours, it's too long.  But the obvious launch of not just a new character, but a new supergroup, is shoe-horned in as delicately as possible.  And a long overdue Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon style climactic fight is more than welcome.  Enter the Spider, indeed.

Four weird girlfriend Zendayas out of five!

The Odyssey: Wut I Thunk

I think Professor Emily Wilson is essentially correct: Nolan's film takes the archetype of the crafty man of "twists and turns" and turns him into a generic Joe Action-Man.  But I guess I'm also more forgiving in other respects.  The performances are great (Leguizamo has to be an early favorite for supporting actor).  The set-pieces mostly work (Circe's Island being the best).  And sure, we could all be a lot nicer to one another.  But I'm going to stretch a bit and suggest there's another, larger message to the film: people in power and "leadership," one of the most powerful and meaningless words of our age, are toxic, corrosive forces that will lead you down a path where you might succeed, but the entirely expendable people under you will all die horribly.  That strikes me as about as zeity-geisty-2026-y as you can get.

Four underused Zendayas out of five!

Orioles Magic

My sister and her family took me to a ball game for my 52nd birthday.  Orioles won with a walk-off single in the ninth, which was great.

That's right, I'm 52!

The Wisdom of Crowds

Noticed a lot of these guys around my neighborhood recently.  They're crape myrtles, and the red color is really striking.

I went to Reddit to find out more.  Half the comments swore they were a horrible invasive species for Maryland.  The other half said they were a reliable, low-maintenance tree that gets planted all over the place.  They definitely weren't growing wild.

Take your pick!

"without a word without a breath"

All

All the beautiful women in my life

were called Sadie or Sadist I forget

the color of that flower also its name

now that you ask

where I have been these past few months

between the solstice and the total eclipse

of all that we once had known

or thought mistakenly to know.

Perhaps the snow blinded us

or we gazed too long at the startled sun

forgetting our strict instructions

like so many others

who had assembled there for the event

that came and went

without a word without a breath

while the dancers so young filled the streets

and the fields with a sort of silent song

thinking they could go on and on.

-- Michael Palmer, Little Elegies for Sister Satan