Baxil [bakh-HEEL'], n.

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Below are the 11 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Baxil" journal:

December 14th, 2009
06:27 pm [Link]	BOOK LIST: Dragons in urban fantasy Early in November, kistaro asked: "Looking for a good urban fantasy novel with a dragon as a major (or main, even better) character. Any recommendations?" I was a little thrown to see the paucity of recommendations. A month later -- even fudging on some of the criteria -- the number of "good urban-fantasy novels with dragon characters" is still small. As such, I'm making this post as an attempt to compile a definitive list. ( ... ) Please speak up in comments if there are other items that should be added in! LAST UPDATE: 2009/12/17 Series ( books ) Individual Novels ( more books ) Not-Quites ( even more books, in sub-categories ) Current Location: ~spiral Current Music: Boom Crash Opera, "Too Hot To Think" Tags: books, draconity, requests, reviews (29 comments \| Leave a comment)
August 19th, 2009
04:42 am [Link]	When fiction lies (NOTE: If you were linked directly to this post instead of reading it on my journal or your friends list, it contains many spoilers. Beware.) I have a bad habit, and I'll admit it: I nitpick movies. It comes with being a writer. When you tell stories, you care about stories. When you care about stories, you explore them -- savor them. When someone else comes along with their story, you want to leap into it with both feet. And when someone comes along with a movie with great potential and poor execution, you feel betrayed. The thing is, this feeling is totally independent of the quality of the movie. When I watched Watchmen, I spent 90% of my review ranting about how they removed the source material's moral ambiguities, before adding in almost as an aside that it was great and worth seeing. I've harshed on Star Wars (I still don't think aris_tgd has forgiven me for that one ;-)) and demolished 300, so I get critical on the good and bad alike. If you think this is leading up to something, good call: kadyg and I watched District 9 on Sunday. With an introduction like that, you know I'm going to be critical of it, so the real question is: Was it a good movie? And this is hard for me to say, because it was technically excellent, inventive sci-fi ... but, no, not really. I will admit up front that I am biased about this. I care about stories ... and all of this movie's failings were on the story level. If you want a brainless blockbuster with some generic Hollywood liberal moralizing, you'll love it. And if you don't mind being lied to -- Lied? you might ask. How does a piece of fiction "lie?" Aren't fictional stories lies by definition? ... Okay, so here's the thing. When good fictional stories lie, it's in the service of exposing deeper truths about the sapient condition. They set up what-ifs to provoke thought. They shake us out of comfortable expectations. They help bring us to a new perspective on something we deal with here in life. When bad stories lie, they don't tell the truth. Take a closer look at this sign in the "District 9" movie poster. Take a look at the ominous warning of the slogan. Now, I'm about to give you a spoiler, but it's an important and nonspecific one: That sign occurs nowhere in the movie. This is not a movie about the oppression of humans ... except allegorically, and even there it fails in some important ways. Before you even walk into the theater the movie is not telling you the truth. This is not, if you will pardon the pun, a good sign. There are a few places where the movie gets technological details wrong -- such as when one character eludes authorities for days while carrying an active cell phone -- but these can generally be forgiven as lies in the service of the story. (To their credit, they do lampshade the cell phone bit, by having the authorities trace the one call he does receive.) Unfortunately, the key word is "generally." When the technological glitches spill out into character glitches, the story starts falling apart. Let's dip into the spoilers for an illustrative example: ( Spoiler cut ) The rule of thumb for a fantasy/sci-fi story is that you get one free "what-if" that changes the world -- what if people could turn into dragons? what if the toys on your dresser were real people? what if aliens landed? -- that your audience will accept without explanation, and every other fantastic element you introduce has to be justified in some way. Otherwise, suspension of disbelief becomes difficult. District 9 uses up its allotment of free what-ifs when the alien ship lands in Johannesburg, South Africa to make a racial meta-point; they sorta kinda pretend to justify the aliens living in the slums despite technology far beyond Earth's. But they've lost suspension of disbelief by the time the aliens -- without exception -- play helpless victim to Evil Corporation's bullshit. And speaking of Johannesburg ... by far the worst of the movie's failings is that, while ostensibly a socially conscious parable about race and racism, it spends the entire film kicking you in the face with White Privilege. The plot is about how awful racism is. The story is about how White Guys are important, and it's the Lesser Race's job to be passively grateful at Whitey's good intentions because after all Whitey knows best. You think I'm exaggerating or being overly sensitive. I wish I was. The examples just drip off the film. But one of the most iconic moments has to have been the pro-alien protests by a group of bleeding-heart liberals at the beginning. The aliens are never actually named as a species (!!!); all the official movie material refers to them canonically as "non-humans." (!) However, the movie's Evil Corporation employees immediately coin them "prawns" due to their vaguely crustacean appearance. "Prawn" is thrown around as an ethnic slur throughout. Guess what the pro-alien protesters have on their signs? This is ... I don't even know how to address that sort of thoughtlessness. Would the movie makers go to a Black History Month rally with a sign reading "We ♥ Coons"? Dear god, no, because that would be offensive beyond the bounds of reason. I'm ashamed that I even had to write that for purposes of the analogy. Yet we're supposed to believe entire crowds of nonhuman sympathizers would make that monumental of a gaffe? Then there's the human main character. Let's just call him "Whitey." The primary theme of the movie is that Whitey is a dick, but that's OK because ... well, you really need to see it to understand why this is such a huge privilege issue. This is going to be long, but I will try to make it entertaining, and I promise I'm building up to a point. ( This section spoils basically the whole movie ) In isolation, Whitey's unbroken streak of stunning assholery could be written off as Hollywood protagonist behavior. But this is not a movie that gives you the luxury of ignoring its context. District 9 made a big point of filming in Johannesburg. They had a huge opening sequence showing the evils of apartheid and the nightmare of mistreatment handed down from the bureaucracy. All of their web promotional material is explicitly about the racial unfairness that nonhumans face. In short, District 9 itself made race an issue. And here you have the main character, a white male human, at every possible turn screwing over his nonhuman ally, even to the point of physical violence, and being unconditionally forgiven for it, with no discussion or apology or even any need for such. Then look at the pattern again, and put it together with the earlier issues brought up in the ECHQ infiltration scene. Not only is Whitey above criticism, he is also the only one who is important. We never see an actual alien operating any of the alien weaponry; that's Whitey's privilege. We never see a plan being executed unless it's one that Whitey OK'd, or one that was done on Whitey's behalf. And Whitey has no obligation to any of the aliens; he is driven largely by his interactions with other (white) humans (the mercenaries and his wife). If this were all deliberate, it would be brilliant: a movie about racial oppression meta-critiquing racial oppression! But it is not; and so it's somewhere in between stupefying and scary. The film explicitly presents itself as a critique of racism. If the film meant to critique the things I am pointing out here, it could have done so. It does not; there is not even an attempt. The main character is never held responsible for his outrageous moral failures, and in fact is held up as praiseworthy for making his Hard Protagonist Moral Choices, and given the standard Hollywood Redemption Ending. District 9 is simply blind to its own faults. And in a movie that puts so much effort into its presentation ... that's extremely hard to forgive. ----------- Letter grade: This is tough. Technical presentation is excellent; story is an utter failure. I'm not sure it's really possible to average those two together and give a meaningful result in the middle. Nevertheless, let's call it C+, and acknowledge that that can vary widely in either direction based on how much the issues in my review troubled you. Edited to add: Several people are saying that based on my review they aren't going to watch the movie. Thank you for reading and giving my opinions weight. I would also urge you to skim through the comments thread, where several others have objected to my characterization of the movie; I've wavered back and forth over whether I was too harsh with it, and some other plausible narratives around the protagonists' actions have been proposed. If you're on the fence, read the whole thing. Edit x2: ... And when you do, start here. In comments is a strong argument that the privilege issue is in fact intentional, and thus that it's a lot smarter movie than I give it credit for. Current Location: ~/brainstorm Current Music: Jim's Big Ego, "Angry White Guy" Tags: films, reviews (69 comments \| Leave a comment)
March 18th, 2009
11:38 pm [Link]	Product recommendation Back in the ancient, crazy days of 2002, I bought a graphics tablet for a very reasonable price. It plugged into those newfangled USB port things, and only one of my computers had a USB card installed, but (even on a Mac) I ran it with almost no trouble. The included software worked well, the drivers caused no issues, the plugins for my graphics programs integrated excellently and took full advantage of the tablet's pressure sensitivity, and the hardware was sturdy. I doubt I used it enough to justify the purchase price, but it was an awesome toy and I'm glad I bought it. Today I dragged the tablet down out of the attic. It has survived two moves and seven years of sloppy handling. It has outlived two computers and seven OS upgrades. I surfed to the manufacturer website, discovered the tablet is still actively supported, downloaded current drivers for OSX, rebooted, and it's performing like it came home from the store yesterday. There's even a handwriting recognition feature that I haven't yet played with. Ironically, my computer is too old to use my 2002 tablet at full efficiency. My only installation issue is that The GIMP for Mac OS X doesn't have pressure sensitivity support, because the underlying X11 environment for OS 10.4.11 won't recognize the device as a tablet (which they fixed in OS 10.5). With a commercial drawing program, I'd be set. So, I would like to wholeheartedly endorse Wacom for their breathtaking awesomeness. This sort of computer peripheral product longevity is unheard of, and if you have any use for a drawing tablet whatsoever, they deserve your business. Current Location: ~/Brainstorm Current Mood: amazed Current Music: Brainpool, "Who's That Man?" Tags: multimedia, reviews, technology (10 comments \| Leave a comment)
March 12th, 2009
04:10 pm [Link]	"Watchmen": A review We walked out of the theater in silence. Half a block later, roaminrob finally asked, "So what did you think?" "Well," I replied, "it certainly preserved the moral ambiguity of the original." Rob slowly nodded. "Have you ever thought about becoming a movie reviewer?" "Huh?" "I mean it. Can you imagine seeing 'moral ambiguity' in a movie review?" What I should have said, but didn't think of until later: "Can you imagine seeing moral ambiguity in a movie?" So, yes, we went and watched the Watchmen over the weekend. Others have already provided in-depth discussion of its editing issues and its differences from the source book. Me? I'm going to tell an anecdote from our theater. There is a scene in the film where the narrator, a costumed vigilante named Rorschach, murders a criminal. ("Murder" is a loaded word, but also technically accurate: a man has surrendered, is chained to a stove making no threats or non-verbal provocations, and Rorschach splits his head open with a knife. See also.) Our Sunday-matinee movie theater was quiet and sparsely populated. However, when Rorschach killed the bad guy in cold blood ... for the first time in the film, someone in the audience applauded. Clearly they were watching a very different movie than we were. The story of Watchmen is, like its main character, a shifting pattern of black and white with no predetermined meaning: a Rorschach test. What you see in it is a reflection of what you carry into the experience. And its value lies in its ability to expose the framework of those external expectations. Later on, this got me to thinking: One of the things that was so fascinating about the original book was that every single one of the heroes is morally culpable, stained with the blood of innocent victims. A point is made of the Comedian's and Rorschach's amoral behavior -- but in the end, they are the only ones who refuse to condone a horrible act of evil in the name of the greater good. (The Comedian is dead by then, but the story makes clear that he disapproved of it; and all of the heroes but Rorschach voluntarily make themselves party to the act.) "Who is worse?" the graphic novel asks, and there's no clear-cut answer. In the movie -- I only realized in hindsight -- that question is sidestepped. The movie does have a "good guy," who is never portrayed as doing anything "wrong." It's Rorschach. And it's only partially the film's fault. When the Comedian tries to rape a teammate, that's Wrong; when the Comedian rejects and then kills a woman who he impregnated, that's Wrong. His dog kicking has been firmly established. Rorschach's moral lapses, however, are all against a different set of targets: criminals. He tortures and murders with a shockingly casual attitude, but the movie builds in justifications the book lacks: The two people he premeditatedly kills are shown on-screen as having also cold-bloodedly murdered others. (The child killer, and the prison boss who cuts off an underling's arms.) In the book, Rorschach also kills a mere rapist for the sole purpose of sending a message to the police about the Keene Act -- a scene not reproduced. The book also attributes several other murders to Rorschach that are never described. The scene in the book where Rorschach fires his grappling hook gun into a police officer's chest is reproduced in the film. The consequences, however, are not. In the book, the officer is revealed to still be in critical condition in the hospital days after the attack. The movie never even mentions that the grappling hook caused permanent damage. In the book, Rorschach's standard method of interrogation involves starting out by breaking a finger. If the target doesn't know, he breaks a few more and keeps moving on until he finds one who does. (One such session involves leaving fifteen inhabitants of an underworld-frequented bar with major injuries.) In the movie, this remains the same. Alright, so the movie did show one example of violence it didn't specifically try to justify ... except Jack Bauer has done it for them. In an age where the public has largely shrugged off Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib's abuses, in an age where popular culture has internalized an "ends justify the means" approach to Bad Guys, Rorschach's torture -- which (one hopes) was appropriately scandalous when first published in the late 1980s -- no longer is a marker of clear Moral Wrongdoing.* The end result is a poorer story -- one that doesn't get to grapple with its central ethical question of who the real Good Guys are. Instead of asking a tough question, it promotes a disturbing moral. I guess I should have expected this from Hollywood, and specifically the guy who directed 300, but it's still a disappointment. The good news is that -- this issue aside -- Watchmen is a lush visual spectacle, an impressively faithful translation of the graphic novel, and a film worth watching at least once. Don't take my criticism to mean that I disliked it. A-. -- * Edited to add: Given the Watchmen entry in the "Comic Book" section of TVTropes.org's "Misaimed Fandom" page, apparently this was a problem for the original as well. Current Location: ~spiral Current Mood: thoughtful Current Music: Big & Rich, "Holy Water" Tags: films, reviews (21 comments \| Leave a comment)
April 10th, 2008
12:05 pm [Link]	Product shill Just registered SizzlingKeys to the tune of $7 for a "family pack" (five-computer license). Highly recommended for all Mac OS X users. And virtually all of its functionality is available in the freeware version. SizzlingKeys addressed one of the most painful parts of my transition from Winamp to iTunes: it adds configurable global hotkeys for music control (as well as a few bonus hotkeys for locking or sleeping the system). It's got a clean, simple interface and has been an indispensable sanity saver at work - letting me keep music on and mute/pause it at a touch when calls come in. -- EDITED TO ADD: Since I'm on a buying spree today, fish owners should check out the Screwcumber. (Hey! Get your mind out of the gutter. thwaps your nose with a rolled-up newspaper) Nice solution to the problem of how to sink fresh vegetables to the bottom of the tank. Current Location: ~spiral Current Music: Stiiv, "Naked Time" Tags: pets, reviews, technology (4 comments \| Leave a comment)
August 12th, 2007
01:06 am [Link]	Movie reviews: Go watch Stardust. Among the distractions keeping me away from Livejournal lately (though certainly not the biggest of them) have been a few trips to the local movie theater. Here summarized briefly for your convenience. Stardust The verdict: A+. A solid A+. Not since The Matrix have I been so thrilled with a movie that I want to immediately go and watch it again. The good: Neil Gaiman. Good script based (loosely) on a good book. Hit the right notes with the audience. Captain Shakespeare. And (I do not exaggerate) the BEST MOVIE SWORDFIGHT IN YEARS. Yes, even counting kung fu flicks. The bad: Makes you stop and wonder why "Mirrormask" couldn't be this good. Ratatouille The verdict: B+. Not just for kids and chefs, though the latter will appreciate its kitchen subtleties. The good: Beautifully animated action sequences. One or two golden moments where reality triumphs over movie cliche. The bad: Not stellar, but no specific complaints. The Bourne Ultimatum The verdict: C-. See below. The good: Fast, tense action sequences -- with no soundtrack; hurrah! Why don't more action movies do this? The bad: I'd love to fairly evaluate this movie, but it very literally gave me motion sickness, and I'm not a person who normally has that problem. Oh, gods, the shakycam. I'm renaming this one "The Bourne Witch Project." Current Location: ~/brainstorm Current Mood: excited Current Music: Duran Duran, "Ordinary World" Tags: films, reviews (10 comments \| Leave a comment)
March 18th, 2007
04:18 pm [Link]	In which I disagree with previous LJ reviewers kadyg and I saw the movie "300" today, after seeing several people raving about its awesomeness on our friends lists. Can't speak for Kady, but I sat through the movie and ... meh. It did nothing for me. And after a little more reflection, I simply can't recommend it to anyone. I saw Sin City and liked it, so it's not just a Frank Miller thing -- it was this movie specifically. (Granted, there are legitimate reasons to dislike the Frank Miller style; I'm just not going to cover them here.) Three main factors, in order of increasing importance, made 300 a more painful experience than I'd have liked: ( 1 - a cinematic nitpick; 2 - yay stereotypes ) 3. Painfully Republican. 300 is not a subtle movie. The very first thing Kady and I agreed on as we left the theater was that it was painfully heavy-handed. And the lessons it tries to draw are at once simplistic, convenient, and very dangerous. Leonidas' 300 -- and more broadly, his city-state of Sparta -- are repeatedly shown as the sole beacon of freedom, justice, and the Greek way in a world of invading Persian faggots (see #2) and their liberal Athenian surrender-monkey allies. The Persians are an existential threat to all of Greece, but weak-willed politicians and a decadent populace are too blind to see it (especially after being infiltrated by a fifth column of false prophets and bought-and-sold governmental traitors). The Greek politicians initially united against Xerxes (remember the reference to those boy-loving Athenians telling him to sod off?) but have now sold out and would rather throw meaningless festivals and be bribed by bad guys than defend the homeland. Any of this sound familiar? It should. It really should. This movie is the argument, in a nutshell, that Bush loyalists have been jumping up and down and screaming at the top of their lungs since 9/11, and are still sticking to in the face of the Iraq war's disintegration. It's Ann Coulter and Michael Savage's shrill denunciations of all liberals as traitors and fifth columnists. It's right-wing blogs' insistence that Islamic terrorism is a threat to the very foundations of civilization and neocons are the only ones with enough clarity to do what must be done. It's culture warriors' denunciations of Teh Gay (see #2) and promotion of an idealized hypermasculinity and strict warrior culture. Like those blowhards, the movie also suffers from a promotion of rhetoric over reality. On numerous occasions, Leonidas and/or other Sparta mouthpieces repeatedly promote how they stand for freedom, etc. However, look at what the movie (and the history) shows and it's a different story. Sparta is (correctly) shown as a harsh, totalitarian culture, where insufficiently strong children were killed and military strength was emphasized. And contrary to the movie's mythologizing about freedom, ancient Sparta was actually a slave society (those who weren't descended from Spartan blood were called "helots" and were officially serfs belonging to the state).* In the movie, the only actual instance of Sparta defending freedom of any sort was their stand against the invading Persians. And even there, in reality, the Spartans were hardly alone -- they were certainly the heroes of Thermopylae, but not as the clear-eyed sole defenders of liberty the movie (and graphic novel) paints. The entire scene with the stupid council ignoring the Persian threat was, shall we say, entirely made up. So the movie got progressively more painful every time the rhetoric blasted in. Look, I'm not the sort of guy who injects politics or ivory-tower lit-crit into everything. (For instance, I'm on record as saying that reading racism into Tolkien is absurd.) But "300" is such a huge, blunt talking-points instrument that it's in a category of its own. This movie was a barrage of violence between ultramanly good-guy soldiers and demonized Middle Easterners intermixed with heavy-handed right-wing talking points. I've gotten enough of that from the news in the last several years. No, thank you -- won't be seeing this one again. -- * To Sparta's credit, they had attitudes toward women that were incredibly enlightened for the time. Wikipedia's notes on Spartan women and adultery are an interesting counterpoint to the movie's treatment of the queen. Current Location: ~calorg Current Mood: cynical Current Music: Yngwie Malmsteen, "How Many Miles to Babylon" Tags: films, politics, reviews (9 comments \| Leave a comment)
February 19th, 2007
09:53 pm [Link]	When work gives you lemonade, make performance art Trouble ticket #10316 from the voice-mail queue: Friends, I believe we have just become witness to "1:24" -- the premiere performance of the long-lost second sequel to John Cage's "4:33." And I must admit, it is a masterful performance. (mp3 file, 366kb) In the first movement, the conductor gives continuous emphasis to the winds of transmission (provided in a guest appearance by the AT&T orchestra). Subtle volume modulation resolves to a slight crescendo, sweeping the section to an urgent, unsettled conclusion that can't fail to reward the hyperattentive listener. The second movement builds dramatic tension via the sustained/restrained attack of the brass section, while introducing percussion in a far-off, ghostly vibrato that evokes the processor-intensive Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence -- proving the composer has indeed kept up with the changing times. But it is in the third movement, at approximately 1:13, that the true daring of this piece is revealed. For in this piece the composer has finally introduced the most brilliant innovation of American artistry -- lyrics. In a lush, occult soprano, the leading diva (provided in a guest appearance by one of our customers) advances the daring, edgy refrain transcribed below: "no, nothing in there maybe I have to have the telephone hung up for that to work" Then the piece explodes into a frenzied climax, finishing with the click of a phone disconnection - a poignant reminder of all music's transitory nature and a philosophical meditation on the greater purpose of life. I hope we get no repeat performances - it would be a shame to hog this brilliant piece all to ourselves. Current Mood: amused Current Music: Tech Support - 1'24" Tags: multimedia, reviews, tech support horror stories, work (2 comments \| Leave a comment)
June 16th, 2006
06:49 pm [Link]	My near-term schedule As described in my previous post, I've had a little incident that's going to force me to twiddle my thumbs until Monday. So. In case anyone cares about my schedule for the next few days, here it is: Friday - Currently in Tehachapi, because holy SHIT is the Cameron Road exit of Highway 58 a wasteland. I tried hitching a ride for over an hour and a grand total of six cars passed by. Two of which arrived separately and drove up to each other in what looked from across the overpass like some sort of drug deal; and two of which arrived 20 minutes later, headed the other direction, and did the same thing. So I jumped at the very first ride that was offered. Screw the fact it was headed in the wrong direction. At least this way I'm in a town. It'll be easier and safer to get to Mojave from here than to have toughed it out in the middle of nowhere. I might try getting a ride to Mojave tonight, or might stay at a hotel here in Tehachapi tonight. Probably depends on whether I can hook up a roomshare with any other hikers -- there's a few others in town, according to thru-hikers Baird and Phillip, who I met here at the Internet cafe. Also, I watched a movie while waiting for the Internet cafe to open. "Nacho Libre," which apparently debuted today. Verdict: (out of 4 stars); a quasi-comedy about a friar at a Mexican orphanage who secretly turns to the wrestling circuit to fulfill a lifelong ambition. Forgettable. However, I appreciated that they shot an awful lot of the movie in Spanish and never used subtitles or expository dialogue -- it's a refreshing change of pace (especially since I still understand enough basic Spanish to catch some of the subtle cues). Jack Black's singing was great. There was one particularly memorable song line from when Nacho goes out to the wilderness: "I ate some bugs, I ate some grass. I used my hand, to wipe my lips." And it was a nice touch that ( spoiler ). As an aside, the flick (as with most) fails the Mo Movie Measure. Saturday - Head into Mojave if I spend the night tonight in Tehachapi; otherwise sit around Mojave all day. Twiddle my thumbs a lot. Spend time wondering if anyone in the area wants to take a day trip and come out for a friendly chat. My cell phone number is in this post if anyone wants to coordinate a visit, and for once, I'll actually leave it on. Sunday - Yay! kadyg drives down south! We spend time together! Monday - kadyg still here with me. The two of us might drive up to Kennedy Meadows to make the big thru-hiker party/No Way Ray memorial service scheduled for the 19th. Then, sometime that day, my pack frame should arrive in Mojave, and I can have kadyg drive me out to pick it up and then drop me off at the trailhead so I can get down to hiking again. Projected arrival date in Kennedy Meadows (where the desert finally ends in earnest, and the High Sierra starts) would then be approx. June 25. Only about 10 days after (in an average year) the big wave of hikers leaves. "Kennedy Meadows day" is one of our big landmarks, and it's frustrating to be that far behind already, but at least the trip is still in salvageable shape. Assuming no further delays. :P ... I hope I'm not going to have too much trouble finding a hiking partner to go through the high Sierra with, because that's one stretch that I'm absolutely not going to tackle without being part of a larger group. Current Location: Tehachapi, Calif. Current Mood: brooding Current Music: Still at the Internet cafe Tags:** baxwalk pct, films, reviews (12 comments \| Leave a comment)
April 20th, 2006
11:51 pm [Link]	Book review: "A Walk In The Woods" I ran across Bill Bryson's "A Walk In The Woods" in much the same way Bryson ran across the Appalachian Trail. "Not long after I moved with my family to a small town in New Hampshire I happened upon a path that vanished into a wood on the edge of town," his book starts. From there, he gets the whimsical idea to hike the whole trail -- which, at over 2,100 miles, is the eastern equivalent of the west coast's PCT. I hadn't thought of reading the book prior to my own hike, although many people had recommended it. What did get me to run down to the library and pick it up was reading kadyg's bedside copy of Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything," an overview book on our current scientific knowledge, which I devoured in a day or two before realizing "Hey, this is that guy who also penned that AT book. He's a good writer." How did his trip go? Well, worried about bears and other trail dangers, he convinces the "gloriously out of shape" Stephen Katz to travel with him. They reach the trailhead in below-freezing weather and Katz throws out half his gear in a fit of rage in the first seven miles. This is just the beginning of a comedy of errors and reality checks that follows Bryson up the trail and leads to them bailing out of the trip in northern Virginia. From there, Bryson tours some of the trail's highlights by car -- and the book turns into a different sort of travelogue, with a solid sprinkling of natural history and trail history. The pair gets back together for one final hike through Maine's Hundred Mile Wilderness ... and through it all, in half a year of effort and sweat and discomfort, Bryson walks for 890 miles, or only about 40 percent of the trail's length. Needless to say, this book was not a thru-hiker morale boost. What it was: Entertaining, funny, and highly memorable. Not just funny -- consistently hilarious. The book is the chronicle of an often disastrous trip, but he laughs at it along with us, turning the hike into the mother of all "This one time at band camp" stories (minus the band). Their hiking companions and other human encounters are colorful beyond all reckoning -- he introduces their first hiking companion with the declaration "I have long known that it is part of God's plan for me to spend a little time with each of the most stupid people on Earth, and Mary Ellen was proof that even in the Appalachian woods I would not be spared." Meanwhile, Bryson and Katz bicker and banter, share fear and worry, struggle and savor small triumphs, and in the process illuminate the grind of distance hiking ... as well as its simple and unexpected joys. Bryson is in top form when describing the magnitude of his accomplishment (even though he didn't finish a thru-hike, he still walked several hundred miles, which is not to be taken lightly) and the ways that the thru-hiking world is different from the one we live in. You can't deny his turns of phrase: "When, after ages and ages, you finally reach the telltale world of truly high ground, where the chilled air smells of pine sap and the vegetation is gnarled and tough and wind bent, and push through to the mountain's open pinnacle, you are, alas, beyond caring. You sprawl face down on a sloping pavement of gneiss, pressed to the rock by the weight of your pack, and lie there for some minutes, reflecting in a distant, out-of-body way that you have never before looked this closely at lichen." I found myself nodding in recognition at many of his trail trials; for those of you who haven't ever attempted anything similar, this gets across a good deal of the flavor of the routine I'm setting myself up for. On the other hand, the book loses momentum as Bryson does. Part 2's more traditional travelogue, after he and Katz abandon the trail and Bryson travels around the East Coast by car trying to get a flavor for the rest of the AT, struggles with a shift in tone and the loss of the high adventure of the hike. There's a great deal more of natural history (much of which, incidentally, is repeated almost word for word in A Short History of Nearly Everything). The book is also scattered throughout with environmental wake-up calls -- which are appropriate and necessary, considering the changing face of the wilderness, but sometimes come off as strident. The book picks back up again near the end, with some northeastern hiking and an appropriately climactic final trip. On the whole, it's worth reading. You'll learn plenty (the average American only walks 1.4 miles per week) and you'll be entertained. Four stars out of five (mostly because Part 2 drags so much; the first half is stellar). I hope I make it farther than Bryson did. But failing that, I hope I can write about my trip with as much awe and wit as he did. Speaking of things to read ... tomorrow's Friday. It's been two weeks since my snow-camping clinic. In order to offer some taste of my own adventures, I'll post my trip journal from that experience over the next four days, in "real time" (with a 14-day delay in case the FCC makes me bleep anything), one entry per day. You'll learn about my new trail name, hopefully see some pictures, and vicariously experience the joy of taking a crap outside in a snowstorm. Current Location: T-minus seven days Current Mood: tired Current Music: "Eclipse," Pink Floyd Tags: baxwalk pct, books, reviews (5 comments \| Leave a comment)
April 17th, 2006
03:07 pm [Link]	Meanwhile, in a galaxy far, far away T-minus ten days. It feels like the last month has absolutely sped by; I can't believe how little I've been perched in front of a computer. All this gear buying and trip taking and trying to adjust to the fact that in a little over a week I won't see home for several months. But not all of the time has been spent in obsessing over the upcoming trip. If nothing else, kadyg and I took some time off of planning and preparation last night to watch -- finally, for my first time -- the original Star Wars. (She may have been prodded by waywind's recent viewing.) It was ... kind of disappointing. I guess a certain part of this is that, after having not seen it for 29 years, and after having had it beat into my head through endless cultural reference, it had an impossibly high bar to leap. I mean, it's a movie that singlehandedly altered human entertainment expectation; spawned a universe and a dedicated fandom over the course of my whole lifetime; built the George Lucas empire; and created a generation of "Who would win in a fight - Han Solo or Captain Kirk?" arguments. On top of that, all of the most memorable lines are the ones that have been drummed into my head for decades, to the point where I was reciting lines like "Mos Eisley spaceport ... you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy" and "These aren't the droids you're looking for" along with the on-screen characters. They kind of lose their impact that way, although a certain "Oh, that's where they come from" cultural fascination remains. It probably didn't help that I was watching the new remastered edition. Unfortunately, it was rather obvious which scenes were new and which were original. (Hey, look! Pretty CGI! Hey, look! 1970s Tron-line computer displays!) It kept jarring me out of my film absorption. Compounding this was the absolutely wretched, vile, hard-to-overstate-in-its-badness sound editing -- most of the movie, we had to crank the volume up to 11 to make out the dialogue or music, but new scenes would cut in ear-piercingly loud and clear. There may have been some necessary continuity fixes in the new edition, I guess, but beyond that, I can unambiguously say that everyone involved in the remastering should have been fired. As in, out of a cannon, and not toward a safety net. As a story, the film held together pretty well -- by George Lucas standards, anyway. In the entire Star Wars series, he seems to have a bad case of Storyteller's Voice -- jumping between the parts of the narrative he finds interesting without so much as a "meanwhile." (Am I the only person who is a little annoyed by the "Hey, we're skipping over three movies' worth of material, here's the backstory we didn't care about" nature of the opening credit rolls?) It's not as jarring in the original as it is in the newer ones, but you can still see the signs of the sloppy narrative shorthand that stands out to me as one of the series' trademarks. Speaking as a first-time viewer in 2006, Star Wars' visuals were just ... dated. I regret that my instinct is to harsh on it, because in a few ways it's aged well, and because it really was one of the defining films that made science fiction cool. They did remarkably well for their time -- which makes it painful that the three prequels were made so recently, because the difference in eye candy was like night and day. After having seen the full glory of badass Yoda saber-fu, the 1970s light saber scenes made me wince; and I found myself shifting uncomfortably in my seat during the final, climactic Death Star battle as they kept cutting back and forth between the same three sequence shots. And the planet-sized explosions? Ick. The final scenes made me nostalgic for the old, vintage Star Wars arcade game, which strike me as a greater technical achievement (though admittedly through the soft haze of memory). And speaking of dated ... "Greedo" the money-grubbing bounty hunter? "Porkins" the overweight rebel fighter pilot? twitch I guess it's good to know that as Lucas aged, at least his ham-handed stereotypes gained a little bit of weight in the deniability department. (... Er, or something.) And so I find myself in the odd position of having finished Episode 4, looking forward to the last two with the same sort of odd trepidation I imagine many longtime fans felt after seeing Episode 1 and being slapped in the face with a wet Jar-Jar. Most fans swear by the original trilogy over the new trilogy ... I don't think I can agree at this point, although I'll reserve judgment until I can watch the other two movies. Current Mood: kinda disappointed Current Music: Asia, "Wildest Dreams" Tags: films, reviews (17 comments \| Leave a comment)

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