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.