Monthly Archives: November 2002

Good Eats Watch

Posted on by

A couple of years ago, the TV show “Good Eats”
did a Thanksgiving special called “Romancing the Bird”, all about how to
prepare turkey. It was a good show. A week later, “Good Eats” was
“preempted” by a “documentary” about the making of “Romancing the Bird”.
(The “documentary” was in fact just an episode of “Good Eats” in
disguise.) A young filmmaker, Blair McGuffin, and her crew had
supposedly been following Alton Brown and his crew about during the
making of “Romancing the Bird”, but it was after shooting was finished
that the real drama began: it started to snow. Within hours a full inch
of snow had fallen and the city of Atlanta, Georgia was paralyzed. There
was no way for the “Good Eats” crew to disperse to their homes. There
followed a week of isolation, dread, and….lots of turkey leftovers.

It’s one of their best shows, and when they re-ran it this past Wednesday
night we had the opportunity to analyze it a little. The highlight of
the show is when AB’s cooking equipment lady, “W” (think James Bond) is
revealed to be…a cyborg. “C’mon,” says AB. “Nobody living could
possibly talk like that.” Apparently they use W to store all of the data
from their past shows; as AB speaks he’s got her hooked up to a PalmPilot
and a folding PalmPilot keyboard.

Then there’s the “Big Brother” like moment when, late at night,
Blair McGuffin tearfully confesses to the camera how hungry she is
(they’ve been on short rations) and how guilty she feels at lifting the
key to the ‘fridge. About that point the amorous and revolting Cousin
Ray sneaks up behind her and the camera fades out.

Then, finally, there’s the name: “Blair McGuffin”. “Blair”, of course,
from another noted “documentary”, “The Blair Witch Project”. But then
there’s that word “McGuffin”. In film, “McGuffin” is the name for the
device or plot element that drives the logic of the plot. And, in the
context of this episode of “Good Eats”, that’s Blair McGuffin in a
nutshell.

Prince Caspian, by C.S. Lewis

Posted on by

Just the other night, David and I finished reading Prince
Caspian together. It was lovely: Lewis’ prose is a joy to read
aloud, just flowing off of my tongue effortlessly. For comparison,
after even a couple of pages of Redwall I was tired and ready
to stop. Part of the difference is that Redwall is written in
a cinematic style; it’s as though a camera is following the characters
around. Lewis, on the other hand, is an old-fashioned story-teller.
Where it’s appropriate to be terse and just tell us something, he does
so without dramatizing it. But that’s not the whole difference; Lois McMaster
Bujold writes in a cinematic style, and her prose is also lovely
to read aloud. I dunno.

I’d never Prince Caspian aloud before, or so slowly
(one chapter a night), and so I’d never really noticed what an odd
book it is. It’s supposedly about Prince Caspian’s efforts to regain
his throne from his usurping Uncle Miraz with the aid of “Old Narnia”
(the Talking Beasts, dwarves, woodnymphs, and of course Peter, Susan,
Edmund, and Lucy). And yet the central conflict in the book has nothing
to do with Caspian at all. Morally speaking, the book is about Lucy and
her willingness to follow Aslan’s guidance even if it means angering her
siblings, or even leaving them behind. Lewis
devotes the better part of three chapters to it, in what is (after all) a
very short book. And upon reflection, it becomes clear that Caspian’s
victory and the salvation of Narnia are both rooted in Lucy’s courage in
following Aslan in the face of stern opposition. Interesting.

Tanner On Ice, by Lawrence Block

Posted on by

This is a reprise of a character Block created in the 60’s, fast
forwarded into the late 90’s. I haven’t read the rest of the series with
Evan Tanner so perhaps my critique is not valid but I found this whole
book just plain cheesy.

Ok, so maybe that is a little harsh. Evan Tanner is brought back to life
after a Swedish Nationalist splinter group puts him into a cryonic coma
because they want him out of the way and yet, being highly evolved
humans, don’t want to kill him. Yeah, right. After springing from his
hospital bed with no side effects except a tendency to be chilly, he goes
back to his old apartment, which is still there after 25 years, and finds
his name on the doorbell. And the child he had taken in has grown up into
a breathtakingly gorgeous woman who home schooled herself without anyone
noticing and kept his apartment for him. Yeah, right. Then we get to
watch as Tanner “catches” up on the happenings of the last 25 years via
Internet which only takes 6 months because he doesn’t have to sleep. His
sleep center has been destroyed by shrapnel in the Korean war. Yeah,
right. So somehow, he finds himself going to Burma on some lame scheme
for some guy he worked for all those years ago. Now th e book turns from
sci fi to thriller and we get to watch Tanner walk thru Burma with this
bombshell chick he picked up, both of them posing as Buddhist monks and
no one stops them. James Bond, eat your heart out.

The whole book is cheesy, lame and just plain silly in parts. I finished
it, though, which says something.

The Hundred Days, by Patrick O’Brian

Posted on by

Being at home sick for a day, I put the Burton bio aside for awhile and
picked up this, the penultimate volume in O’Brian’s long, long saga.
I’ve gotten the impression from little things I’ve seen here and there
that many fans don’t think much of it; and to be fair it never really
seems to catch fire. Plus, O’Brian did some really obnoxious things.
The book begins with a passing mention of the death of Stephen’s wife
Diana; and toward the end another of my favorite continuing characters is
killed with hardly any notice taken–and to no literary end that I can
see.

Apart from that it’s a pleasant enough book; lots of nautical to-ing and
fro-ing about the Mediterranean Sea and a few nice sea battles, with the
escaped Bonaparte floating about Europe and a complicated Islamic plot to
help him back into power. Of course, by the time Aubrey succeeds in
forestalling said plot Wellington has succeeded in defeating Bonaparte at
Waterloo, rendering the whole thing rather moot.

I have some suspicions on where O’Brian might have been going. I say
“might have been”, because I haven’t yet read the final book,
Blue at the Mizzen, and because he had just begun writing a
subsequent book when he died. But in the previous book,
The Yellow Admiral, Stephen meets a lovely woman, a
naturalist in her own right, and the wife of the governor of Sierra
Leone. Though she doesn’t appear in this book she’s mentioned a number
of times; and it’s rather pointedly mentioned that (1) the governor has
just died, and (2) the marriage was not as happy as it appeared to be,
and in fact was never consummated. It begins to look as though O’Brian
was getting Diana out of the way, so as to interest Stephen in somebody
new.

So I’m quite curious to see what happens in Blue at the Mizzen,
a book about which I’ve heard none of the unpleasant little whispers. But
that’s a tale for next month.

The Burglar in the Closet, and The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian, by Lawrence Block

Posted on by

When I was a kid I worried that someday, in the distant future, I
would run out of good books to read. Seriously. Thinking back, that
probably speaks more to my innocence and ignorance than to my taste in
books at the time. But I did and now, many, many, MANY moons later, I
have yet to hit that tragic moment. And I highly doubt that I
will. This has little to do with Lawrence
Block‘s books except that they are a new discovery for me and
whenever I find a new author to read I experience a slight feeling of
relief. I haven’t run out yet.

Anyway, these were my first two Bernie Rhodenbarr mysteries and already I
have figured out Block writes with a formula. Bernie breaks into
someone’s house after some sort of treasure, something goes wrong, like a
murder, and he has to solve the crime himself or get the rap pinned on
him. A formula book is comforting. You can sit back and watch how the
writer varies it without horrid little surprises coming your way. And
Block is funny, an added bonus. The Mondrian book was a little more
developed than the Closet book. Block had developed additional characters
and expanded Bernie’s social life a bit. He has found his sidekick in
Carolyn, the lesbian owner of a dog washing business. And he has
developed Ray Kirschmann, the cop on the take who somehow always ends up
helping Bernie out of the mess he finds himself in.

These are good books. Not great literature and not really even classics
in the mystery genre. Just plain good reads. And there are lots of them
so I don’t have to worry about running out of good books for awhile. Phew.

It’s Amazing What You Can Do With The Right Tools

Posted on by

A couple of
days ago, Jane showed me a list of words that David is supposed to learn
to recognize. And it occurred to me, “Gosh…I could probably make Dave
a flashcard program.” The current release of the Tcl programming language
includes all of the bells and whistles that I needed. So yesterday
morning I sat down, and in a couple of hours I had a simple program that
displays a word in really big type. When Dave presses the “???” button,
a recording of my voice says the word, then spells it letter by letter,
then says it again. When he presses the “Go!” button, another word
appears. When he presses the “Stop!” button, the program ends.

And most of that two hours was spent recording the words and the
individual letters; the programming was simple. There’s a reason I
like Tcl.

Diamond Dust, by Peter Lovesey

Posted on by

I am not going to say much about the plot of this book. First, it’s still
in hardback and unless you want to spring for the $23 it’s priced at, any
plot description is going to be a spoiler.

Second, and this is the main reason, I have my knickers in a knot about
what Lovesey did in this book. I will say it is the end of the Peter
Diamond series. And if it is funny in any way, I totally missed the
humor. You kind of grow to expect certain things from a series and when
the author throws the right hook he did in this one, it’s a little
disconcerting. Don’t get me wrong. The writing is great. The murder
investigation is interesting and has some twists you can’t see ahead of
time. I am just a little ticked at Lovesey for doing what he did to Peter
Diamond. I kept waiting for it to be an elaborate charade similar to what
he has done in previous novels. It isn’t. Rats.

Bloodhounds, by Peter Lovesey

Posted on by

This book explores the locked room mystery plot. A murder victim is found
in a room locked from the inside with no discernible way that the
murderer could have gotten in or out. But Lovesey is not only writing a
book with the plot. The opening chapter of this book reads like a Who’s
Who in crime fiction. A young woman joins a meeting of Bloodhounds, a
bookclub dedicated to crime fiction that meets weekly in the crypt of the
Abbey. Her fellow club members are all eccentric, opinionated critics
with their own favorite authors in the genre, which they discuss in
painful detail. When someone sends a riddle to the local radio station
predicting a crime, the group decides to work solve the mystery,
thankfully.

Lovesey is writing his normal humorous murder mystery with all the twists
and dodges that he has put in the other books of the series. Peter
Diamond is his normal grumpy self. The end is unpredictable at the
beginning unless you are paying very, very close attention. However, it’s
not the best in the series. I found it a bit repetitive, though still
totally enjoyable.

GAUNTLET: Dark Legacy

Posted on by

Here it is the 14th of November, and I
haven’t finished reading even one book. Part of the problem is the
Burton biography; I’m trying to finish it before going on to anything
else, and while Burton’s life was the stuff of adventure, the bio is
nothing like a novel. I sometimes wonder why I bother reading
biographies; I don’t care for tragedy, and most bios end only with the
death of the principal.

But it wouldn’t be fair to blame the whole thing on poor old Richard
Burton. A lot of blame has to be put squarely on our Nintendo GameCube.
I bought it six months or so ago; I thought the kids would enjoy it, and
I’d get to play it, too. The way it actually worked out is that I play
it and the kids watch.

“GAUNTLET: Dark Legacy” is one of the games I’ve been working my way
through. It’s surprisingly fun considering that the graphics are a
couple of generations behind the GameCube’s best output, and the user
interface is a disaster. As you go along you collect power-ups of
various kinds, and after nearly completing the game I still have no idea
how to figure out reliably what power-ups I have with me at any given
time.

It’s your basic “dungeon crawl”. You’re playing a mean, nasty, violent,
hair-trigger, suspicious sort of person, which is a good thing because
the world is full of nasty monsters trying to kill you. I find this sort
of thing relaxing. It lets my back brain freewheel on whatever problems
it’s working on, while my conscious brain works off stress. Sometimes in
the evening I’ll tell Jane, “Jane, I’m going to go upstairs and kill
things.” She says, “Have fun, dear.”

I’ve doubtless now lost the respect of many of my long-time readers by
making this admission; ah, well. If I get to feeling anxious about it, I
know the cure.

The Bohemian Murders, by Dianne Day

Posted on by

I realized after about 2 paragraphs that this book is part of a series
that needs to be read in order. It takes place in Carmel, California in
1907. Fremont Jones, the heroine, has moved to Carmel after the San
Francisco earthquake to take a temporary job of lighthouse keeper. On
watch one day she spots a dead woman floating in the sea, unknown by
anyone around and unclaimed by family.

Fremont Jones reminded me a little of Amelia Peabody or Mary Russell. She
is the “independent woman heroine,” refusing to give into accepted norms
for women’s behavior and lifestyle for the period. If you accept the
conceit and ignore the unlikelihood of such a heroine, the novel works
fairly well. This book didn’t have the slapstick humor of Peters
mysteries but I enjoyed it nevertheless. She includes a love interest
named Michael who is some sort of spy–I think that came out in previous
novels. My only gripe with the book is that for all the detecting going
on, Fremont doesn’t really figure out much of anything. And I wish I knew
more about Michael and what he is doing sneaking around in the background
of the plot. I have to read the earlier books in the series.