The Alphabet House (book)

This was an interesting book to read.  In some parts, it was incredibly slow, while in others, (notably the end) it was a veritable page turner that I couldn't put down.

The premise sounded promising enough for me to pick it up at the library.  In World War II, a pair of British pilots are shot down over Germany and to survive, they steal the identities of two high ranking SS officers being sent to a mental institution deep in Germany.  Once in the institution, they have to maintain their sanity while convincing the nurses and doctors of their insanity.  Oh, and some of the other patients may also be faking insanity, for reasons not yet clear.

Sounds interesting doesn't it? I would add that to the read pile based on the description.  (Which, obviously I did.)

And it did start off interesting.  It was obvious that the author, Jussi Adler-Olsen, had done plenty of research.  In fact, Adler-Olsen (in a note in the beginning of the book) said that his father was psychiatrist who worked in Danish mental hospitals in the 1950's.  So he knows what he's talking about.

The "pilots getting shot down" part was pretty exciting, as was there attempts to evade the German patrols.  Even the first few days in the mental hospital were edge of the seat type stuff as they struggled with their deception.  One quickly realizes that a mental hospital is probably a great place to hide out, because basically anything goes.  For example, only one of the pilots speaks German. That might be a problem in a regular hospital, because his blank, uncomprehending looks when spoken too by the doctors and nurses are exactly what is expected of someone with mental issues. Also, it's easier to explain the lack of physical ailments.

But then you run into the same problems as were covered in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Pretending to be insane is pretty hard work. And that's when it starts getting slow.  The book spends probably a third of the pages inside the heads of the two pilots.  They can't speak and they can hardly move because they don't want to appear to able. So they just lay there. Nothing happens for a long time, but the author wants the reader to experience that time. It picks up a little because one of the pilots starts to suspect that others in the institution are faking as well.  So there's this weird cat and mouse game where the two groups are trying to force the others to do something that will prove to the hospital administrators that they're not insane, but do it in a way that they don't also implicate themselves.

It was at this stage that I was close to putting the book down for good. I could only read a few pages at a time, and then I'd get depressed looking at how many pages I had left.  I'm glad I stuck with it though, because one of the pilots manages to escape. At this point, the book jumps 30 years (I don't remember exactly, but it was something like that) into the future.  This pilot is now a wealthy doctor, but is haunted by the fate of his friend and co-pilot, who he had to leave in the hospital.  A chance encounter with someone sparks a renewed interest and sets off a chain of events that reminded me a lot of the movie Serendipity.

I make that comparison because the author switches points of view to a bunch of the connected characters as their arcs slowly spiral together. As the omniscient reader you see how they all interact, but the characters keep missing slightly missing each other or meeting but not knowing it.  At this stage the plot was moving pretty rapidly and it became something I couldn't put down.  The only problem was that with all the character switching, it kind of became hard to keep track of who was who.

Apparently Adler-Olsen is well known for his "Department Q" series.  Although this book wasn't a part of that group, it was good enough to make me want to see what those books are about. But it wasn't good enough that I'm going to run out tomorrow to find them.

The Barkley Marathons

It's not usual that I see something and doubt whether I could do it.  Now, that doesn't mean that I could actually do it.  But I usually at least think I could.  The Barkely Marathon is not one of those things.  Which of course makes me want to do it.

I'd seen this documentary on Netflix for a while and then someone I work with sent me a link to an article about the Barkley and said she immediately thought of me when she read it. The next day, another coworker stopped me in the hallway and said "Hey, I just watched this thing on Netflix and it totally looked like something you'd do.  Have you heard of the Barkley Marathon?"  It was then that I decided that I needed to watch the thing post haste.  And then a few days after I watched it another coworker stopped me to tell me about this crazy documentary they just watched on Netflix...The Barkley Marathons.

And crazy it is.  O.M.G is it crazy.  In case you haven't heard of it and are wondering, the plural on "Marathon" is not an accident.  This is not a single marathon. It's 5 marathons. In the mountains. Off trails.  And racers have 60 hours to finish.

I thought the movie did a good job of showing the character of the race, the man that puts it on, and the people crazy enough to attempt it.  One of the things that struck me while watching the runners was how absolutely selfish it all was.  Now maybe this was a early attempt at making excuses for never actually doing this race myself, but I couldn't shake the thought.  The guy that won the race the year the documentary was filmed was out there with his wife, mom, and young (toddler age) son. These people that care about about, and whom he likely cares about, were out in the woods for probably more than three days with him.

Being out in the woods for three plus days isn't the worst thing in the world you can ask your loved ones to do, but it's not like they were really on a vacation. Every time he completed a loop they hovered around him getting him food, clean clothes, and encouragement.  And people can't use phones, so it's not like he can call and say "Hey honey, I should be back at camp in about 2 hours." It's not like it could be anytime, since he is running 20+ miles in the elements.  Once he heads out you can assume he won't be back for a couple of hours. But it could be 10 hours, or 13, or 9. Personally, I'd hate to assume it was 10, but my loved one comes back in 9 and I'm not there to do the job I'm supposed to do.  And then what about if there's an injury?  Or he quits (as most people do) and comes back after only a few hours.

What I'm saying is it's not like you can say, "I'm going to head back to town for a bit, but I'm sure I'll be here when you need me."  You're there the entire time, sitting on your hands waiting.  And it's one thing if he eventually wins, since then you can at least say that it was worth it.  But most people don't finish.  The stat I heard is something like only 1% of all the people who have ever entered the race have finished.

Then there is everything that goes into this en-devour.  There's the travel to and from the race, which is minor compared to the thousands of hours of training and preparation that go into something like this. And this guy had a toddler son. How much of that boys life did this guy miss because he had to train.  It's not like it's a local 5k and you can knock out a 30 minute run early in the morning.  You're running hours and hours each day.  Sure, the kid can probably go with for some of that, either on a bike or a running stroller.  But I doubt he could go for all of it, every time.

I know that I said in the first paragraph that this is something that I want to do, but I don't think I can ask my family to support me while I do it.  Caveat: At this time.  In a decade or so, my kids will be old enough that I can go for hours-long runs and they can take care of themselves.  Who knows, maybe they'll even be running with me at that point.  Wouldn't that be great?  Sure, my body will be a decade older, but the Barkleys is not a race of speed.  It's a race of endurance.  Mental and physical.  And a lot of times, those come with age.  Or so I've heard.

Max (movie)

I watched this with the kids on our normal pizza and a movie night. It was a while ago and I'm just now getting around to this post about it so I'm not 100% on the details. But I know that the kids really liked it, mostly because it had a cool dog in it.  And even though I probably wasn't the intended audience that the makers had in mind for the movie, I didn't think it was all that bad.  My only problem with it was that I hated the parents.

The mom was okay, but had this "I'm doing the best thing for my kids but is actually only making it worse" kind of thing.  It made her really annoying, but my true anger was saved for the dad.  He was this ex-Marine tough guy but he was just so frustrating. He had his "favorite" son and was not subtle about expressing that.  The only way he could have been less subtle was by literally saying "I like your brother more than you."  And of course, for the sake of the plot, that "favorite" son is not the main character.

Beyond that though, the dad was just a dick. It was kind of implied that he was a racist.  He was also mean. In the sequence that made me me realize I hated him, he almost shoots the dog because...wait. I probably need to give a brief plot summary because that'll be make it easier to explain the scene.

So the "favorite" son follows in his fathers footsteps and joins the Marines.  He is serving as a dog handler in Afghanistan when his unit is attacked and he dies. The dog survives, but is so grief stricken that it that the Marines can't rehabilitate him so they give him to the family. The younger brother, initially portrayed as a slacker (more on that later), resists the responsibility of caring for the dog, but eventually the two help each other and save the day. Also, the older son's best friend (who joined the Marines with him and was in the attack) was actually smuggling guns out of Afghanistan to sell illegally and may have actually been the one that killed the older brother. So the dog doesn't like him.

Anyways, the friend is home on "leave" and gets a job working at the dad's self storage business. The dad asked him what happened to his son, and the friend tells him that the dog freaked out in the firefight, turned on him, and killed him. The dad's like, "sure that makes sense", and he goes home and tries to shoot the dog but is stopped by his other son who now likes the dog.

Let's take a second to think about that. If the dog really did kill his handler, do you think the Marines would just give the dog to the family of the guy the dog just killed? Not only would that be a huge liability for them if the dog attacked someone else, but they wouldn't have spent all the money bringing the dog back from Afghanistan. They would have just killed him there.

Also, if it were all true and this is a killer dog, how could you let your son convince you not to kill it then?  (Well, maybe not then then, but give it back to the Marines or have a vet put it down.) Sure your son likes the dog and he would be totally bummed, but he's 15 years old. He doesn't get to make those decisions, especially when he's not objective about it. Your job as the father is to make those tough decisions. But I bet if the dad had called a family meeting and told them what he knew, instead of just pointing a gun at the dog like a crazy person, then they might have even agreed that he needed to be put down.

As it happened though, the dad is getting ready to shoot the dog that killed his son (the war dog trained to fight by the Marines I remind you) but his son says "no Dad! I love him" (paraphrased), and the dad says "fine, but don't let him in the house."  What?!?!

Anyway, that, plus the racist stuff, plus just generally bad parenting decisions by the dad really took me out of the movie. But that stuff was over the heads of the intended audience as both my boys really liked "the dog movie."

The Ascendent (book)

I'm apparently really good at judging books by their covers because I'm 2/2 on picking up random books at the library and ending up liking them. Or maybe the library only stocks good books?

I also recently learned that this is the first in a planned series, which means more options next time I go to the library. Although technically I don't think series is the right word. From what I understand, it's not a series like Harry Potter, where each book is almost a continuation of the the events from the previous books so that reading book 3 before book 2 doesn't make much sense. I think it's going to be more like a bunch of books about different stuff with the same characters in them. I'm fine either way really.

What I thought was interesting about this particular book was it took the whole "total government surveillance" thing in a new direction. Most of the books that explore that particular theme normal take the approach of a shadowy government organization with access to unlimited information and resources using that access to do bad things and it's up to one man/women/small task force to save America and restore the sanctity of the Constitution.

What the author (Andrew Chapman) did though was show that a shadowy government organization with access to unlimited information and resources could actually be useful, and might actually be vital, to preserving the American way. Without getting into the whole argument of which black or white viewpoint of the issue is "right", I appreciated seeing the other side of the argument.

In the book, the main character is kind of like someone with autism, without all the personality issues that are usually associated with the condition. Basically, he's just really good at seeing patterns. Which makes him a lot of money on the stock market and to the attention of the aforementioned shadowy government organization. This group is looking for someone that can make sense out of all the information now be collecting. And not just surreptitiously collected, but all the tweets, and comments, and stock market fluctuations, and news reports.  Because this shadowy government organization believes that the country is being attacked in a new, unconventional way.  In fact, it's so unconventional, that many in the government don't even think the country is being attacked.  Which puts them at odds with the shadowy government organization.

So the main character has to navigate all this political-type intrigue in addition to overcoming a serious aversion to working for someone/something other than himself.

I guess in a way, it's kind of like propaganda for the millennial generation.  "See, you need us because only we can play computer games and trade stocks and pay attention to the news all at the same time. And doing those things is the way of the future."  Besides that message (which I don't necessarily agree) it was a pretty enjoyable book to read.

Experimenter

I saw this a couple of weeks ago but I'm just now getting around to writing about it. So I guess it's delayed delayed consumption?  Anyway, this was an interesting movie and not all that bad.  The subject matter was interesting (more on that in a moment) but it was also fairly unique in it's style, in that it was more like a play than a movie.

The main character (Dr. Stanley Milgrim, played by Peter Sarsgaard) often steps out of scenes and breaks the fourth wall to act more like a narrator throughout the movie. It was particularly weird at the end when he said something along the lines of "this is the year I died."  Besides that, some of the scenes (especially an early driving scene) that were so obviously shot on a blue screen I assume it was intentially done to make it look like something you would see at a theater.  I couldn't figure out why the movie went with this concept, but it might have just hit me as I wrote that last sentence.  I'll come back to it later. 

Besides Sarsgaard (whou couldn't have more "a's" in his name if he tried), the other main character Winona Ryder, who plays Milgram's wife.  My first thought seeing her was, "what the hell has Winona Ryder been up to?"  She did a pretty good job but I'm not going to use my time here to judge other the specific performances by the actors, unless they were unbelievably good or bad. And Ryder was neither.  At the end of the movie there is a shot of Milgram's real life wife (at least that's what I assumed because it wasn't explicitly stated) which I always appreciate in "based on true events" type movies because otherwise I have to go Google it to see the real stuff. And this wasn't a movie that stuck with me enough to remember to do that later.

Before I go any further, there's one more thing I have to bring up. What the hell was up with Milgram's beard?  

Also showing him breaking the fourth wall.

Was that the style back then?  Or was that just him messing with people. Because I've had a beard for the last few months and there is no way I would want it to look like that. It's like the exact opposite of a mustache. I've heard people say that a goatee is the opposite of a mustache but they're wrong. This is the exact opposite of a mustache.

One reason I think he might have done it to mess with people is because that was kind of his whole shtick. And he was pretty good at it. Before watching the movie I knew that he did the shock experiment, but not much else. Which is interesting because that was a big theme of the movie, that that research had been so impactful that it overshadowed everything else he did. Which sucked because that was one of the first things that he had done. But what I found fascinating was that I was familiar with some of his later experiments, I just didn't know that he had done them.  Like the work he did with the "Six Degrees of Separation" theory.  Although original done by Michael Gurevich (and I'm citing Wikipedia here) in 1961, Milgram's work on the topic got so much publicity that it overshadowed the original work.

Milgram also did work showing how we are influenced by others by having someone stand on a busy street and pretend to stare at something up in the sky. Eventually people stop and start looking too.  This was a phenomenon that I was familiar with, but I had no idea it was associated with Milgram's work.

So, getting back to the movie as a play, I wonder if that was the intention. Some commentary about how we think we're active in our lives, but all we're really doing is living in someone else's play.  I"m not saying that was it for sure, but it seems to fit with Milgram's general feelings and work on the human condition.  I think.

The movie did make me want to learn more about Milgram, or more specifically, about the shock experiments (again with the overshadowing) and luckily my wife had a copy his book on the study, "Obedience to Authority." So look for a post on that soon. (Talk about delayed consumption!  That book was published in the 1974.)

Trouble with the Curve (move)

I confess, I only watched about 30 minutes of this movie before turning it off.  I barely even got to see Justin Timberlake!  I decided not to finish it because my time is valuable to me and I just wasn't interested in spending another hour (or so) with this movie.

My notes from the first half hour are all about how Clint Eastwood is old.  Which I feel like is every recent Clint Eastwood movie. In the first 30 minutes, we learn that Eastwood (or at least Eastwood's character, which I consider to be one and the same):

• doesn't understand computers, even going so far as to use the words "inter-web" (in a non ironic way) when discussing how easy it is to research baseball statistics
• has trouble urinating
• can't back out of his garage without scraping the side of his car
• has to wear glasses to see and is embarrassed by it
• doesn't trust his doctor because "you're always reading about them cutting off the wrong part" even though this doctor has been with him for a while because Eastwood's daughter (or character's daughter) has his phone number.

And remember that's the first 30 minutes.  I turned it off when the daughter, the tough nosed corporate lawyer (played by Amy Adams in what is in hindsight, a terrible job casting. I mean, Adams is clearly the first person I think of when I think "tough nosed" and "corporate") decides to take a vacation so she can go scout some baseball players with her estranged father because he can't see and he'll lose his job if he doesn't deliver.  This despite the fact that she has been promised a partnership in her firm if she wins her current case.  Oh, and did I mention she was estranged from her father and couldn't stand to be around him?

So without looking at a plot summary (promise that I haven't yet) let me tell you how I see this playing out.

Adams meets up with her father who, although initially reluctant, eventually agrees that she can help him. Over the next few days, the reconnect and develop a new found respect for each other. Maybe she even convinces him to give up meat. Or he convinces her (she's a vegetarian) to try a hamburger. Or a hot dog probably, since it's a baseball movie. During the trip, she develops feelings for Timberlake, who I'm assuming is another scout. At the end, she realizes that she's going to give up all the corporate stuff (including the semi-official lawyer boyfriend) and "run away" with Timberlake. 50/50 on Eastwood losing his job at the end, but finding happiness by learning to let go and find something else.  So now, let's see what the wikipedia plot summary has to say....

• Adams "starts to take an active role in [Eastwood's] work to make up for his shortcomings" (the eyesight)
• They reconnect with Timberlake's character, now a scout 
• Timberlake takes an interest in Adams
• A misunderstanding leads to hurt feelings between Timberlake and Eastwood, but Adams finds a new prospect
• The team's ownership realize that Eastwood knows more than the computer "geek", so they fire him and extend Eastwood's contract.
• Eastwood suggest's Adams become an agent for the prospect she found and she gets a partnership offer from the firm
• Timberlake and Adams kiss

So besides the part about trying a hot dog (which still could be in there) and the ambiguity (at least in the wikipedia summary) about whether Adams chooses baseball or law, I think I hit this one out of the park.  Haha, puns.

Zootopia (movie)

I know it's a kid movie, but why don't the animals have butt holes, penises, or vaginas? It may seem like I answered my own question with the first clause there, but there is a section of the movie where the clothed bunny and fox characters go to an animal "nudist" colony. And the innocent country bunny is flustered by all the animals parading around in their "natural state." It's funny on the surface because of the anthropomorphic (no shame if you have to look it up.  I did.) effect. I'm sure I've seen that same exact scene play out in other movies with actual humans. And to the same humorous effect. But where's the butt?

And this is a female elephant, so there should be other parts as well.  To prove my point, I just spent 10 minutes googling elephant vagina, elephant asshole and elephant anus.  And surprisingly, there are very few pictures of elephant parts on the internet.  There are actually more pictures of humans (please please please be veterinarians) with their arms inside elephant butts that there are of elephant butts.

So besides that somewhat unreasonable complaint, I thought the movie was okay. It was funny, with jokes for both the kids and the adults.  It was just to heavy on the social commentary for me. I mean, super obvious social commentary. Yes, I get it Disney.  I agree that racism/discrimination is bad.  But I think there were about a dozen times one of the characters said something along the lines of "Just because I'm a [insert type of animal] doesn't mean I'm [insert trait of that animal]."  The bunny character even said "I'm not just a token bunny."  It just seemed a little forced. But it's a kid's movie, so maybe I'm being to critical.

The best part was shown in one of the trailers and involved the sloths working at the DMV.  Besides the obvious social commentary (and playing into the sloth stereotype of slowness) this part was my favorite part. And judging by the audiences reaction, just about everyone else's too.  I can only imagine the animators painstakingly watching video of people doing stuff (stamping paper, stapling) frame by frame.  Far and away the best 12 seconds of the movie was the sloth's reaction when the fox tells him a joke.  I'll stop right here, because the entire movie is worth it to just see this part.

Equalizer (Movie)

Why is this movie so dark?  Not dark as in psychologically, but like actually dark. It seems like every scene takes place at night or in a room with the lights off.  The big climactic fight at the end takes place at night in a home improvement store with no electricity. For added effect, the climax of the big climactic fight happens as the sprinklers are going off!  Now, part of the issue I had was that I watched this late at night on an iPad and that may have been the reason it seemed especially dark. So after complaining for a paragraph about the lighting, I'll give it a pass.

I thought one of the best lines was when Denzel's character was talking to his coworker about goals and improvement and told him that the goal was "progress, not perfection."  I've adopted this as a personal mantra of sorts, which is the reason I'm not eating a second package of Pop-Tarts right now.  While I liked the quote on a personal basis, I'm not sure if it fits with the movie because Denzel's character is a pretty damn perfect killing machine. And not just killing. To survive the movie he uses surveillance, interrogation, explosives, evasion tactics, and just general survive ability instincts.  I mean, he single handily destroys a Russian crime organization. And I know that "Russian crime organization" is screenwriter shorthand for "really bad guys" but these guys seemed to know what they were doing. They were smart, ruthless, and had tons of money. Good guys or bad, those are usually the people/groups that win. Especially when they're fighting one old (no offense Denzel) guy.

I guess I'm just having trouble figuring out what progress Denzel made. Sure he was leading a lonely, solitary life and now he's using his skills to help the downtrodden. But that was just something he decided to do and then went and did it. He didn't have to struggle and develop and grow. One day he's working in a home improvement store, the next he's killing a bunch (5? 6? I don't know, it was dark.) of Russian mobsters. Oh, and he's still going to work in the home supply store.

This movie was also appealing to me because, as I wrote earlier, the big climactic fight happens in the home improvement store where he works. And while the Russian baddies have guns and knives, Denzel kills them all with items in the store. Why he never picked up one of their guns and knives is beyond me though. Kill a guy with a drill to the back of the neck?  "Sure, I'm cool with that." Pick up his gun after and use it to shoot the guys with guns from a safe distance? "Nah, guns are evil."  (Please note that those are not actually quotes from the movie.) I just had a terrible thought...was this actually a pro-gun movie? Like the message was that well sure guns can kill people, but so can drills and barbed wire and shards of broken mirror. And we can't ban those things, so we shouldn't ban guns. Oh my god I hope that wasn't the message. 

But I can't remember hearing/seeing a reason why Denzel's character didn't use guns. I'm all good if a hero character doesn't want to use guns. But they are a fairly useful way to kill Russian ex-military bad guys who are trying to kill you. And using guns to do try and do that. So if the hero doesn't use guns, there's usually a part where he/she says something like "I promised I would never again use a gun to kill people after I accidentally shot INSERT NAME (usually someone they loved or a clear innocent, like a child)."  So what gives here? Denzel's character is highly trained in the art of killing people with random objects. But that sort of training usually happens after someone is highly trained in the art of killing people with objects specifically designed to fucking kill people.

Anyways, back to the home improvement store thing. I loved this because a few weeks ago at work we spent the week talking about what we would do if we were dropped into Home Depot with random strangers and told, Hunger Games style, that only one of us would be allowed to leave alive. And then here it is in a movie! I got so many ideas from this movie that I definitely think my chances of surviving such an event have improved. 

A Walk Among the Tombstones (Movie)

Another Liam Neeson shoot 'em up action film ala Taken, Taken 2, and Taken 3?  Not really. Although he is in it, it's more of a slow thriller.  Although it's about kidnapping, so I guess technically it's Taken 4.  (BTW, is it still kidnapping if the napper takes adults?  The word has such evil connotations but the "napping" seems like such a prim and proper word. Like saying something is the bees knees.  Which is another phrase that makes absolutely zero sense.  And besides the parent of two young children, I actually look forward to kid naps.)

Anyway, this isn't a high octane explosions and gunshots type thriller.  It's actually very dark and moody.  No shit right?  I mean, look at the the title of the movie. That's a dark title.

Overall, I thought it was pretty good.  Some parts did seem a little forced though.  I didn't really get why the kid was needed.  Now don't get me wrong. I thought the kid (whose name, according to IMDB is "Astro."  Although it also says he was born as Brian Bradley.  Which also seems like a fake name.) was awesome.  He did a great job acting.  I just don't know why he was in the movie.

Is he going to live with the white, alcoholic ex-cop now working as an unlicensed Private Investigator now? Liam Nesson is a super hero in his eyes?  Why was this kid in the movie?  For redemption you say?  Well I say bollocks.  (Which is something I never say but it seemed like it would be funny after the whole "kidnapping" thing.)

Nesson's character needs redemption because he accidentally shot and killed a little girl while drunkenly pursuing and shooting at some robbers (one of whom was presumably a killer) around NYC one morning a few years back.  This leads him to quit the police force and get into the lucrative unlicensed PI racket.

But during his investigation of some kidnapping being done by some seriously creepy guys, Neeson rescues a young girl from the pair. She even looked to be roughly the same age as the girl he killed all those years ago.  Shouldn't that be the source of his redemption?  Or would that be too obvious?

The kid's main purpose, besides showing the Neeson's character cared about the little guy, was that he hid in the kidnappers van and helped figure out where they lived. Could the writers not figure out another way to have that happen?  Or maybe they could have just ended it in the graveyard, since that was the title of the movie after all.

Also, why did the drug dealer have to die? Was that some sort of "crime doesn't pay" message? It was completely pointless. The one drug dealer got to get his daughter back, while the one that actually helped find the kidnappers had his wife and brother killed by the kidnappers, and then they killed him as well.  Put that way, it almost seems unfair.

I have way more questions now, after writing this, then I did when I finished the movie.

My favorite part of the movie was the juxtaposition (if i'm review movies, I'm obligated to use that term at least once per review) of the 12 AA steps with the actions/activities at the end of the movie. Maybe it was a little obvious perhaps, but sometimes there isn't anything wrong with obvious. And I'm not familiar with the 12 steps, so it's not like I knew what was going to happen next because the 7th step in AA is "Humbly ask Him to remove our shortcomings."

Above (book)

I recently started making an effort to read more to counteract the amount of media I consume passively.  At the library, I decided to try and pick a book from each shelf in an effort to expand the types of books I'm reading.  So I'm literally judging books by their covers.  Granted, I then read the blurb before making my final choice, but still...

Anyways, this is one that I choose in such a manner.  And Oh My God am I glad I did.  This book just blew me away.  I wish I had more friends so I could tell them to read it.  I do plan on buying a copy for my mother-in-law for her birthday, but that's not really the same thing.

The basic plot is that a 17 year old girl is kidnapped by the school librarian, who happens to be a crazy religious survivalist.  (Did I need to specify he was crazy?  Or did religious survivalist paint that picture well enough?  Or was it school librarian?)   After kidnapping her he locks her away in an abandoned missile silo that he has stocked to survive the impending apocalypse.

At this point I feel a little torn. I know that I said that I would not shy away from writing about things with twists, and this is a book with a lot of twists.  But I also appreciate that a plot twist in a novel is a little different than a plot twist in a movie.  Or is it?  I don't know.  So as much as I promised myself I wouldn't do it, I'm going to stop and issue a SPOILER ALERT.  If you haven't read the book yet, promise that you'll stop reading, go get it, read it, and then come back.  Done?  Alight.  I can proceed with a clear conscious.

The crazy librarian religious survivalist (yeah, that's a little redundant) ends up keeping her locked up in the silo for 17 years or so.  Although he refrains from having sexual contact with her for a number of years (that's the religious part) he ultimately ends up raping her (that's the crazy part).  He feels guilty though (religious) so he "marries" her in a ceremony that he performs himself (crazy).  Now that they're married, it's okay in his mind to keep raping her, ultimately leading to her getting pregnant and giving birth.  I'd like to point out again that she has been confined to an abandoned missile silo this entire time and has only interacted with her kidnapper the entire time.

When the boy is around 15, she ends up killing her kidnapper and the two escape.  (By the way, she names the boy "Adam", so again with the religion.)  But when they finally get to the surface, she discovers that the world did in fact end (massive nuclear meltdown) and she and her son are one of the few survivors.  And since her son has been underground the entire time, his genes haven't been effected by the radiation so he is very valuable to a government desperately trying to get people to have "normal" babies.  So there's that.

What made the book so powerful to me was that the author did an amazing job with the psychology of the whole experience.  Now, I'd like to clarify that I've never been kidnapped and impregnated by a crazy religious survivalist librarian who kept me and my child in an old missile silo for almost 20 years while the world ended.  But while reading this book I was not so sure.

In the beginning when she is first kidnapped, the girl behaves exactly like you would expect. She fights back, she tries to get away. But not totally, because she fully expects that rescue will come any day. She expects her parents or friends to say "you know what, that school librarian did seem a little crazier." And then go to the cops who will dig through old property records and discover that he owned an abandoned missile silo.

But that never happens.

So as time goes by, my hope for her rescue faded right along with hers.  And then you're left with this kind of acceptance of your fate.  Okay, she lives in a missile silo now.  Let's see her make the most of it.  Except being cut off from most human contact, not to mention the stress of the situation, she starts to become an unreliable narrator.  Her memories blend with her imagination and the past blends with the present. This section of the novel almost had a stream of consciousness quality to it.

And then at some point in the ordeal, the guy moves permanently to the silo. The girl doesn't make a huge deal out of it, but your first thought was that he started smelling (metaphorically) a little too crazy for people so he decided to retreat to his bunker.  And he's obviously crazy, so when he a group of people are poking around the silo (he has surveillance cameras) and he freaks out and starts talking about raiding parties and cannibals, she writes him off as now full blown crazy.

But after a few more events like that (he has to trade to get medicine, food is scarce) you start to wonder.  Could the world really have ended?  And then as the final desperate escape attempt is starting to unfold, you kind of almost shout at her to not go out there. Stay in the bunker where it's safe!

Then once outside, the weirdness of the landscape and environment slowly becomes apparent.  Why haven't the roads been taken care of?  Why are there now swamps in Kansas?  Why are all these cars just parked in the middle of the highway with a majority of their parts missing?  That's when you realize, probably a little before her because you're not actually living it, that the world really did end. And then the psychological hay maker.  Was getting kidnapped and locked in a missile silo for 17 years the best thing that could have happened to you?  You had ample food and water, and didn't have to worry about radiation.  You were safe.  It's a tough blow.

After that there's some end of the world type politics with the breeding programs and all that.  Doesn't carry the same weight as the previous parts, but does get into some of the psychology of parenting. Like although her son is 15, he's never experienced the world, so he's more like a toddler. And he's finally experiencing the world and she's torn between wanting to throw him back in the silo to protect him and wanting him to have a different fate than she had.

That whole part is probably deeper than I'm giving credit for here, but honestly I was so worn out and drained from the rest that I was in a daze towards the end.  My real life wife even commented how my mood was noticeably different as I read the book.

I'm definitely going to read more by the author.  Oh, I should probably mention that the author's name was Isla Morley.  Although you have the name of the book and Google.  Also, if you're still reading this than you've already read the book.  Because you promised to.
  

San Andreas (movie)

I watched this movie in the morning while the family was still sleeping.  Technically, I watched almost the whole movie as I had about 10 minutes left when everyone else in the house started stirring.  (I finished later in the day.)

Overall, I was pretty impressed. Although I had heard decent things about it (and it can't be terrible if Dwayne Johnson is in it) it was still a big budget disaster type movie. And I think that those can be hit or miss.  But it turned out to be pretty decent.

I had one quibble early on though.  When the first meet Paul Giamatti's character (he's a seismologist) he is giving a lecture about earthquakes to students at CalTech. I couldn't help but notice that behind him on the chalkboard is a seriously complex looking math equation (s?).  The type of equation where there are weird symbols that make it look like some weird alien language.

But the lecture he's giving is basically "earthquakes cause damage."  He's showing the students footage from some of history's biggest earthquakes. One of the students asks him if something "that intense" could happen here and he tells her about the San Andreas fault.

Now I get it that the average movie watcher is not a seismologist.  I get that most people probably don't have any knowledge about some large historical earthquakes.  (I'm one of them.)  As I'm not originally from the west coast, I can also understand that there are plenty of Americans who don't know about the San Andreas fault.  (Not to mention the fact that movies are made for world-wide audiences now, and I doubt they teach much about American geology (? geography?) in international schools.

But this character was giving a lecture to college students in LA.  I GUARANTEE that they know a large earthquake could happen in Southern California.  And these are not just any college students. They're in a fucking earthquake class!  How did this student get into CalTech and not know that a large earthquake could happen in Southern California?  I mean, even if it's the first day of class.  And it seems unlikely that it's the first day of class because of that math on the board.  They don't leave that up all summer. Although, if Giammatti's character had written it, he'd be covered in chalk dust so maybe he didn't write it up there now.

I know exactly what the purpose of the scene was.  I know that they had to show us that historically, what they are about to show us is not totally unrealistic.  But why didn't they have him speak to a bunch of donors or something? In the movie Giamatti is working on a way to predict earthquakes. Have him give this speech at a luncheon for politicians. (Although I would hope that So Cal politicians would also know about the San Andreas.)

Anyways, this occurs fairly early in the movie so I was all set for a hokey disaster movie.  But I was mistaken.  The action is intense.  So much so that at one point, I caught myself thinking "I should call my friends back in California to make sure they're okay."  (Hey, it was early in the morning.)

It was also interesting to see the movie turn a disaster movie trope on it's head and have the "damsel in distress" actually be the guy.  The main heroine of the movie is a female who, after initially being saved by a cute guy (and his little brother) leads the trio through a destroyed San Francisco.  At the end, Johnson's character thanks the brothers for being there for his daughter. The brother says "You're welcome.  But it was more like she was there for us."  That was a little obvious for me, but a nice touch to point it out to viewers who had maybe missed. it.

Overall, a pretty good movie. Nothing that's going on my list of greatest movies, and I probably won't flag it as a re-watchable movie, but it kept me entertained for almost two hours.  And that's all I ask really.

And away we go!

The purpose of this blog is to write about the movies and TV I watch, books I read, and possibly the music I listen to.  In other words, the media I consume. I decided to title the blog "Delayed Consumption" because I have a wife, two kids, three dogs, and a job with a 30 minute commute. So I'm not really on the cutting edge when it comes to the latest offerings from Hollywood.  I don't see most movies until they drop on HBO, Netflix, or Amazon Prime. Most of the time I'm a season behind for TV shows (with a few exceptions) for the same reason.  And even if a TV show is produced by a streamer, I don't have the time to binge watch anything.

Added to that is the fact that I'm not going to be running to my computer every time I finish something so I can immediately blog about it.  So for the most part, there will be no spoilers here. If you're of the same mind as me that after a certain point it's not the writer's job to warn readers about plot points in shows that is. Although there's no consensus, with the current saturation of information, I think a week or two is about the limit. Past that time, it's not my job to start a post with a huge spoiler warning.  For the record:

• Vader is Luke's father!
• Verbal is Keyser!
• Ned dies, Rob dies, everyone dies!
• Except John.  He's resurrected to marry his cousin Danerys!
• Narrator and Tyler are the same person!
• It was Earth all along!

(BTW, this list isn't a reflection of my favorite shows or movies. It's just a list of famous twists.)

After all that though, if I do happen to be posting something about a movie/show/book that came out less than two days ago, I will make sure to add a spoiler tag. But really, if I can go a year without knowing how Breaking Bad ends, then your world isn't going to end if I spill the beans about a big plot twist.

Anyway, I'll try to post somewhat regularly but I have no idea at this point what format these posts will take.  I'm not a critic though, so I'm not going to be talking technical stuff as a matter of course. (If it's particularly noteworthy I may mention it though.)  I may give it a rating though, but it's not going to be stars, or tomatoes or anything. It'll probably be just a statement about whether I liked it or not.

Lastly, I'm not going to write about everything that's produced.  I'm just going to write about what I see or read. Remember, this is not about you, the reader. This is totally for me, the writer.  So enjoy!