Jonathan Henderson

2666: A Novel

Posted on April 13, 2010 by jonhen

2666 by Roberto Bolaño (2004) (translated from the spanish by Natasha Wimmer, 2008). 898 pages, Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

The first thing I’ll say is… it took me a very long time to get through this book. Usually I read one or two books a week, depending on the length. A 900 pager like this one, usually a solid week, unless I have a lot of free time, which I never have these days. If it’s a very dense nonfiction or biography work, maybe two weeks. But it took me three months of on-and-off attention to get through 2666.

Normally, if I don’t get into a book, I’ll just put it aside and move on. Even if it’s an author I really enjoy. A good example is Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson. Stephenson is one of my all-time favorite authors. I thought I’d love Quicksilver, an historical novel revolving around the Royal Society of London in Isaac Newton’s time. Especially since it had a structural tie to Cryptonomicon, an excellent earlier work by Stephenson.

Yet… I just couldn’t get into it. I got to about page 500, and I just lost interest. Haven’t picked it up since, and doubt I ever will.

2666 was not like that. I’d read it for a day, put it aside for several weeks, and then get curious again and pick it back up. Slogging through the interminable Part Four, I almost gave up… but the prose was so strong, and I kept getting hints that it would all add up to something… so I kept going.

And now I have finally finished it. Looking back, I realize now that I read the first three parts of the book in about two weeks. Then Part Four took me two and half months. And the final Part Five I read over just the past week.

My main reason for reading 2666 is that it received awards out the ying yang (that’s a technical, literary term, I’m told). It topped the National Book Critics Circle in 2008. Time Magazine gave it Best Book of 2008. It’s been lauded by readers all over the world. And, just to add some icing to the cake, it was the final book by author Roberto Bolaño before his death. He apparently handed over the manuscript to his publisher while he lay dying in the hospital.

According to the introduction, Bolaño had intended the five parts of 2666 to be published as five separate novels, each a year apart. But after his death, his heirs decided to publish all five parts as one massive work, which they believed was more fitting to the manuscript.

So, I bought 2666 and dove in. The first thing I’ll say is that I sure wish there was a Kindle version of this! 900 pages in hardcover is very heavy. Weighs almost four pounds. Not an easy book to read in bed, that’s for sure. Just picking it up, I immediately understood why the author had intended it as five separate books.

Ok, all well and good. But what’s the story about? Well… it’s kind of hard to say. If judged by the amount of words and pages dedicated to plot, then it’s the story of a series of murders in the Mexican border town of Santa Teresa (a thinly-veiled fictional version of Ciudad Juárez, near the Arizona border). Hundreds of young women are brutally raped and murdered there, in a decade-long series of unsolved crimes. Every part of the book briefly touches upon this storyline, and three of the book’s five parts are set almost completely in Santa Teresa.

We follow a local University professor, as he moves in his own world, nearly oblivious to what is going on around him – included the danger than his teenage daughter puts herself in on a nightly basis (Part Two: The Part About Amalfitano). Why does the distracted instructor hang an out-of-print geometry book outside to sway on a clothesline, refusing to take it down for months?

We follow an African-American reporter, send to Santa Teresa to cover a boxing match, as he gets drawn into the circle of that city’s underworld, and to people who may (or may not) share responsibility for many of the murders (Part Three: The Part About Fate).

And, for nearly three hundred pages, we follow the discovery of every single body over nearly ten years. In an episodic, non-narrative form, one after the other, date by date. Some of the victims are identified. Many aren’t. Several people are arrested for some of the murders, including an odd German man who’s a naturalized American citizen – but living in exile in Mexico (Part Four: The Part About The Crimes).

But if judged by what is at the heart of the book, what (at least to me) the real story is, then it’s about a German novelist named Benno von Archimbaldi. In the opening pages, we meet four European academic literary critics, all of whom specialize in studying and critiquing the works of Archimbaldi, and each of them from a different country (Part One: The Part About The Critics).

And in the climatic last section, the book concludes with the life story of Archimbaldi, and we loop around to where we began (Part Five: The Part About Archimbaldi). The story of Archimbaldi and the people who study him is what got me hooked, and what kept me reading through the rest of the book.

It was Part Four that nearly lost me. This is the most difficult part of the book, mainly because there is no plot thread for this entire section. It really is just a narrated crime docket. A body is found, its condition is described, and various connections are followed up. We meet the many different police officers and detectives trying to solve the crimes. We meet many of the criminals. We follow one of the possible murderers into prison, and bear witness to an incredibly brutal torture-murder session as justice is served by prisoners on their own behind bars.

The only thing that kept me going was that I could see the table of contents promised that we’d finally get back to Archimbaldi after this horrific tour of Santa Teresa was over. I wish I could say that at the book’s end, it all ties together – but not really. Yes, it’s not surprising to find out there is a connection between Archimbaldi and the angry young German man who’s the prime suspect in the murders – but I’m going to warn you right now that this is not the kind of book that ties things up.

By the end of the book, you do not know who’s responsible for the murders. You don’t know if the mysterious German man with the connection to Archimbaldi had anything to do with the murders or not. You will not get a conclusion to Archimbaldi’s story. Nor will you ever see or hear from any of the critics again after Part One. Nor will you find out what happens to Fate or Amalfitano or any of the other characters. Part Five loops back to Part One, and I suppose you could just go right back to Part One and keep on reading the book forever if you wanted to. You still won’t get any answers.

As a novel, 2666 is pretty unsatisfying. It’s not a true novel, ignoring most storytelling conventions. Characters weave in and out, speaking and thinking in long, unbroken pseudo-paragraphs that go on for pages and pages. A lead character may stop in to rent a typewriter… and for the next ten pages, we jump into the point of the view of the storeowner, and hear his life story. He never appears again, and has no bearing on any part of the story. And we don’t even get to the end of the scene that brought us there in the first place!

There are a great number of dreams in 2666. Everyone is always waking up and recounting a dream that is vivid and surrealistic… and yet not a single one, to my mind anyway, had anything to do with what was going on either in that character’s life or anyone else’s in the book. Another running theme is insanity – particularly any variety of insanity that involves making some sort of sacrifice for the sake of art.

So. Why read 2666 at all? Because what this book adds up to, when all is said and done, is a testament to the craft of writing. It’s the prose that kept me turning the page. Despite the fact that this book is translated from the author’s original Spanish, the words are beautifully crafted, even (and maybe even especially) when used to describe brutal or violent deaths.

I would not have awarded it such high honors as those listed up at the beginning of this review. To my mind, the novel as an art form and as entertainment has certain expectations, certain loose rules, and 2666 is simply too unstructured and rambling to fit even those loose rules. It’s a collection of hundreds of incredibly well-written scenes, but just putting a bunch of scenes between two covers does not make something a novel. To me, that is the true art and craft of the novel: combining fantastic prose with well-conceived characters who act within a compelling story.

In the end, I can’t overtly recommend 2666. It’s a dense work. I suppose if you really truly enjoyed Ulysses or Gravity’s Rainbow, this will be right up your alley. For me, it was an interesting glimpse into another writer’s mind, and I’m glad I made the trip – even if it was a trip which I have no desire to repeat. Your mileage, however, may vary.

And by the way – I don’t have the slightest idea what the title means.

Posted in Books | Leave a comment

NUMMI Nova

Posted on April 2, 2010 by jonhen

This is a little personal story about the American car industry, as well as a review of a great episode of This American Life . The episode in question is “NUMMI”, episode #403, available for immediately listening or download here. And the car is the Chevrolet Nova. More specifically, my 1986 Chevrolet Nova.

When I moved to Los Angeles from Chicago at the very beginning of 1986, I drove there in my 1982 Pontiac Phoenix. The Phoenix was an awful car. It was one of GM’s notorious X-body cars, the Pontiac version of the Chevrolet Citation. I had bought it used, but with only 4,000 miles on it. And from the day I got it, it was pretty much always getting serviced. The first six weeks I had the car, the transmission fell apart. I mean literally fell apart: They undid the bolts under the transmission, and the whole thing fell out and crumbled on the garage floor.

The alternator had to be replaced twice in the 18 months I owned the car. The radiator once. Brake pads, twice, entire brake assembly, once. For a while, the air conditioner heated up the car and the heater cooled it off.

It did have a nice interior, however. I remember my Dad emphasizing that fact.

In the fall of 1986, after nine months of driving the Phoenix all over Los Angeles, it finally gave up the ghost completely. At a stop light one day in Culver City, the car make a loud sound like that of a giant sighing. The brake pedal suddenly lost all tension and slammed against the floor. And the car began to creep though the intersection, right into oncoming traffic.

15 minutes later, a cop helped me push it off to the side of the road. I took it to the nearest brake shop… driving at 5 miles an hour with the door open, so I could drag my foot to bring the car to a stop. The Meineke guys were all smirking. A quick look at the car, and the service dude told me the entire brake system needed to be replaced. “But man… it’s not worth it. If I were you, I’d ditch this piece of crap”, the service manager told me bluntly.

They did something with tying off a hose or pumping it full of fluid or some such, which they said would last for about a week if I didn’t drive faster than 50 an hour or so. I did it. Even that was $150.

Two days later, driving down La Brea Avenue, the car started to rattle and cough. And then there was a very loud noise, a kind of popping and crashing sound, and a dent appeared on the hood – pushed out from the inside. The Phoenix just stopped, and I coasted it to the side of the road.

And that was it. It has thrown a rod, along with at least one other bad thing that I didn’t bother to deal with. I had the car towed to the dealer. Even the crappy extended warranty I had on the car would not cover a complete engine rebuild – because I’d already used most of my “deductible” on the new transmission.

So I sat down with the nice man at the Chevy dealer – because I still had almost a year of payments left to make on the car – and worked out buying a new car. I was all set to get a new Camaro. Silver. T-Top. Basic 4 cylinder. Mmmm boy. I had the keys in my hand, and then they did the final credit check. And the salesman snatched the keys back out of my hand.

“The only thing we have that you can afford”, he said, sneering a little bit (I swear to god I’m not making that up, he honestly did sneer, the side of his lip curled up with actual disdain) “is one of the Novas. The Toyota things.” He waved his arm towards the opposite end of the dealership.

Now, I grew up in a military household. To my father, there were (and still are) only two places that made cars: Detroit and Germany. Although we had a few Volkswagens here and there, every other car we had was a True Blue American Car Made By Real Americans In America. Mostly Chevys, but we had at least one Ford that I know of. So, honestly, I had not even thought of buying a Japanese car. Besides, I was locked into my GMAC loan.

The smarmy Camaro salesman handed me off to a sadder-but-wiser looking older salesman, who gave me an earnest review of the Nova. He explained that it was exactly the same as a Toyota Corolla, but made by GM workers in a plant in California, under Toyota supervision. It was the first joint venture between an American and a Japanese car company, and this was the second year they had been available. He told me what a great deal it was – I was getting a Toyota Corolla, but for less money and made in America!

To be honest, it wasn’t like I had a lot of choice, and it did seem like a decent enough little car. I drove off with one that was just a little above “the base” – a blue, four-door 1986 Chevrolet Nova with cloth seats, automatic transmission, no air conditioning, basic FM radio.

As I drove it home for the first time, it felt good. It was solid. It hugged the road. It accelerated nicely with its tiny 4-cylinder engine, much better than my crappy Phoenix ever had. The brakes worked! And even without A/C, the vent system was powerful and blew air through the car well. I was still pretty miffed about not getting the Camaro, but still, it seemed like a nice enough little car…

Well. I drove that car for the next six years, putting 89,238 miles on it before I finally sold it. It became, to this day, the only car that I ever completely paid off. I continued to drive it for another year, even after it was paid for and the warranty had expired. I drove that car all the way through Baja Mexico, over a thousand miles to Cabo San Lucas, and back. I drove it to San Francisco, Las Vegas, and even through the snow to Mammoth Mountain for skiing. It took me everywhere I wanted to go.

After the first year, I upgraded the stereo to add a cassette player and four speakers. And other than regular service, that was the only money I ever had to spend on that car. It never broke down. Never. Nothing every had to be replaced. Nothing rattled. Nothing broke. The transmission was flawless. The brakes always worked. It never stalled. The interior stayed solid and wear-free for six years. Even the carpets stood up to the test of numerous hikes, ski boots, and I can’t even remember what all else.

I paid, I think, $7,500 for that car brand new. Six years later, in 1992, I sold it for $3,000 cash. One of my friends said I was a fool for selling that car, since it was paid for and ran great. In retrospect, he was right. I moved “up” into a Ford Explorer, which was the first of a series of SUV’s that I bought, until I finally moved back into a small car in 2005 (the Mini Cooper).

I have very found memories of that Nova. And one last little tidbit: Two years after I sold it, I was driving down PCH (Pacific Coast Highway, outside Malibu) behind… a blue Chevy Nova. Frank was in the car seat next to me, and I pointed at the car, telling him I used to have a car “just like that”. And then I noticed… the license plate was my old plate. And my “Northwestern University” sticker was still on the rear window. It was my actual car!

I tried to wave at the driver – I was pretty sure it was the same woman I had sold the car to – but she didn’t see me, and pulled away into traffic. I noticed that the car was still running fine, and it was still clean and dent-free.

The Chevrolet Nova got great reviews while it was made, and even Consumer Reports said it was the most reliable car GM made. I had always assumed that it was just because it was, after all, an exact clone of a Toyota Corolla.

And then, I heard the latest episode of This American Life , hosted by Ira Glass. Although This American Life is a radio (and TV) show on PBS, I listen to it as a downloaded podcast. I listen to the show regularly (great to listen to in the car on the long drive to work), so when I saw the title of this week’s episode – “NUMMI” – I didn’t really care what it meant, since I listen to every episode regardless.

As it turns out, “NUMMI” is, more or less, the story of the Chevrolet Nova. NUMMI stands for New United Motors Manufacturing, Inc. And it was the factory that my Nova was built in.

Over the course of an hour, the show details how the NUMMI plant came to be, going online in late 1984. It describes how the workers traveled over to Japan, for intense training in the concept of car teamwork. It includes frank, honest interviews with auto workers, union members, and GM and Toyota executives.

What is truly amazing – and very, very sad – is that way back in 1985, GM knew exactly how to make high-quality, reliable cars. They were doing it at the NUMMI plant. The union workers put aside their seniority and their perks, and worked side by side with management. They fully embraced the entire concept of “Kaizen” – constant, continuous improvement – in all aspects of the company. At the NUMMI plant, by the end of 1986, they were building the highest quality, most reliable vehicles on the American continent. They were even keeping pace neck-and-neck with their Japanese counterparts.

In the show, as revealed by interview after interview with former line workers, you can hear the pride in the worker’s voices. For the first time, one says, he looked forward to going to work. He swelled with pride when a new Nova came off the line, 100% free of flaws.

Another talked about how he printed up a batch of postcards with his name and address on them, and whenever he saw a new Nova in a parking lot, he’d slide the postcard under the windshield wiper. What did the card say? “I built this car, and I’d love to hear what you think”. For years, he’d get comments back from owners – almost all of them positive.

One worker, who was planning on taking early retirement, stayed for an additional 18 years until he was forced to retire. He said he just liked what he was doing too much to stop. Management became actual members of the team, even working the production line alongside their union counterparts.

So…. why didn’t the rest of GM just do the same thing? Why, rather than extend this technique to the entire company, did they instead wind up filing for bankruptcy in 2008, the largest company in history to do so?

The second half of the show tells us why. More interviews reveal that for the most part, the majority of General Motors did not care at all about… well… actually making cars. They cared about protecting their jobs, their exact way of life, their little fiefdoms. They did not want change. They wanted things to stay exactly the same. None of them believed that GM could ever fall, and they saw no reason to rock the boat.

And so NUMMI remained as the one and only unionized, American operated factory that practiced the same production methods as their Japanese counterparts. After 1988, NUMMI switched over to making the Geo line, and then later to just making Toyotas – Corollas, Tacomas, etc – when GM dropped their small cars in favor of larger trucks and SUVs. It finally closed down in 2008, a victim of the bankruptcy. Joint ventures, even successful ones, can’t survive a complete dismantling of one of the parents.

I’ve always enjoyed This American Life, but this is a particularly stand-out episode. If you have any interest at all in why American car manufacturers fell so far and so (relatively) fast, listen to this episode . It is awesome in its clear, frank attitude about exactly what went wrong. And how, if only more people had been willing to accept a new way of thinking and working, GM might have not only regained their number one position, but could have climbed even further. Instead – well, we all know what happened instead.

At the end of the show, one retired worker comments on how the only thing that really saddened him about the GM bankruptcy was that the NUMMI plant was getting shut down. “I loved that plant”, he says wistfully. “It changed me life. I’m not kidding, it really did. It changed the way I thought about everything, and it gave me pride in what I was doing every single day I went to work”. He didn’t take a vacation day for one of those eighteen years, he reveals.

So when you wonder… how did American end up in such a bad recession? How did we lose our lead in such a short time? How could we, as a country, have fallen so far? Listen to “NUMMI”. In a nutshell, it’s all there.

Chevrolet Novas from the 1980s are still on the road. And they’re still holding together.

And that’s the best testimony I can think of to what could have been.

Posted in Thoughts and Comments | Tagged chevrolet nova, general motors, gm, NUMMI, this american life, toyota coralla | Leave a comment

American Idol 2010: Top Twelve… Eleven… Ten… whatever.

Posted on March 29, 2010 by jonhen

My last few posts have been way too serious. Time for some candy-flavored pop culture treacle!

At its best, American Idol is the pinnacle of that classic American standby, the talent show. Most of us have seen talent shows in some form or another since our first days in school. Remember? Little Cindy and her friends from ballet class, Mitchell with his martial arts, that smelly kid who does the yodeling… Later in high school, we got to see various types of singing divas, the stoners who had their own garage band, and the speech team doing various interpretations of poetry (guilty!).

Those of us whose first televisions were of the black-and-white variety also learned about the quintessential talent show from episodes of I Love Lucy, the Little Rascals shorts, and from the endless times that Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland exclaimed “Let’s put on a show!”. Later, there were various sort-of talent shows, like The Gong Show and Star Search. But those didn’t quite hit the mark… they were too much of a gimmick, and they aired too often.

Then we got American Idol. It’s American! It’s bigger and brasher and louder and far more ostentatious than its British cousin! It’s a talent show for the entire frickin’ country, from ages 16 to 29, whoever can sing the best and win the hearts (and votes) of that fickle bitch, the American Public.

During the first few seasons – despite its high ratings – American Idol was still kind of a low-fi affair. The stage was small, the songs were not exactly the best of the record label’s catalog, and so on. But it was fun and sassy and made your root for your favorites and boo for the ones you wanted to go home.

But then, AmIdol went to HD, the computer graphics got flashier, the stage expanded. The judges (and Fox, the network that airs American Idol) started to think they were the ones we were all tuning in to watch. That got so bad that last season, one of the best contestants in years (Adam Lambert!) had his final number shoved into overtime because the judges just couldn’t stop talking to each other about whatever inane topic they were stuck on that had nothing to do with the show.

The press thus made a Big Deal out of the fact that this year, for its ninth season, one of the original judges was leaving for the first time. Paula won’t be there anymore! I could not have cared less. Yes, I enjoy Simon’s snark as much as the next person, but the other two or three judges could rotate every week for the input they bring. They make no difference at all.

Ellen DeGeneres? Fine, whatever. She’s funny. I like her. However, if I really want to see her, I can catch her on TV five times a week. I don’t watch AmIdol for the judges. Not even Simon, entertaining as he can be. No, I watch it for the contestants. I want to see who’s a surprisingly good singer, and who’s not. Who are the producers pimping this year? Who is the underdog that wows us all and makes it right to the finale?

That’s why I watch the show. Last year, with Adam Lambert, Kris Allen, and Allison Iraheta, we had some of the best contestants in years. For most of last season, I wish the judges had been limited to 90 seconds total, and just let the contestants perform for the entire rest of the show.

But this season… Oh. My. God. Oh, it is so sad.

It’s March, which means it’s time for another “Top Twelve” (well, Top Ten as I finally finish up this post). This, to me, is when the show gets actually interesting. From now until the season ends in May, we get to see one person a week get sent home by lack of votes. We get to watch various celebrity mentors coach these wannabe stars. We get to watch in shock and awe as the various “theme weeks” attempt to challenge the vocal prowess of these future pop radio champions. And, when we get to the final three weeks, we’ll get to see someone who absolutely deserves to win get voted off in fourth or fifth place instead (Jennifer Hudson, Chris Daughtry, Allison Iraheta…)

As I’ve said before, I cannot stand – and I no longer watch – the audition episodes of Idol. It was funny on the very first season, way back in 2001. It was still a bit funny in the second season, when we had William Hung become a surprise awful star. By Season 3 the joke had worn itself out, and now, in American Idol’s ninth year on the air, it has become tiresome and boring. I no longer watch the show until it gets to Hollywood Week, about the fourth week in. I just cannot stomach watching the parade of awful contestants, with maybe one or two good singers thrown in every hour. And those dreadful behind the scenes “packages” designed to arose either pity or disdain before we’ve even heard a single note.

It’s not just that I don’t care, it’s that I actively despise the whole phony audition shows in their entirety. I mean… why in the world would I watch a talent show to see people who aren’t good enough to make the cut? It is completely pointless. Just show me the ones who are good enough to get on! Contrast this to the far superior summer show So You Think You Can Dance, where the formula is reversed: We see one or two token bad performances, but all the rest are good auditions for people who will actually at least get the judge’s nod for going to the next level. None of that on AmIdol! Instead they waste 15 minutes of our lives on some pathetic sad sack with delusions of grandeur who can’t even sing as well as I can (and believe me, I can’t sing).

But back to now. In the last of the semi-final episodes. American Idol cut its remaining 16 contestants down to 12. And these twelve – six boys, six girls (we can’t say “men and women” considering the ages of some of these kids) – moved on to the Big Stage. Getting into the 12 is a big deal, and it’s only a two contestants away from the Top Ten, who get paid to go on tour during the coming summer.

I had a few favorites. Note I said “had”. So you already know what I think about this year’s top 12. There were three contestants that I thought were entertaining, talented, and worthy of the Idol crown. And two of them – Alex Lambert (no relation to Adam from last season) and Lilly Scott – got the ax. That leaves only Crystal Bowersox as the sole contestants, out of twelve, who are at all interesting.

(By the way, I encourage all of you to go purchase the Alex Lambert version of “Trouble” from the iTunes store, before they inevitably pull it from distribution. It’s an excellent, excellent track, one that highlights why I enjoyed his singing so much – and why I fully expected him to make it to at least the Top Five. Also check out Lilly Scott’s “I Fall to Pieces”, a fun and snappy rendition of the Patsy Cline classic.)

In the two weeks since then, the show has just gotten worse and worse. Yes, Aaron Kelly can carry a tune, and it’s kind of fun seeing that tiny sixteen-year-old kid stand next to the giant football player dude. Then there are bunch of interchangeable female singers whose names and faces I can’t keep straight. They all sound alike, and they all bore me to tears.

I don’t care who wins. I’m not really even watching the show anymore. And that is the first time I’ve ever felt that way, since the show first went on the air in 2001. We’re weeks and weeks away from the end, and the show is about as exciting as watching golf without Tiger Woods. There is not even a fun Bad Contestant, like Sanjaya or Scott Savol. Just a series of cardboard cutouts from Central Casting who can carry a basic tune in a nice, High School Musical / Glee kind of way.

Yes, Crystal is still there, but I don’t hold any hope of her actually winning. Even if she does, watching a two-hour show just to get to hear her sing for 90 seconds is not worth it.

I don’t know what happened to American Idol. Did they get so caught up in the gimmicky parts of the show that they forgot to pick really good singers? Why did they get rid of the Wild Cards (bringing back good contestants who got voted off too early)?

No one is asking my opinion, and no one is going to take it… but American Idol needs a refresh. Badly. We need American Idol: The Next Generation.

The show needs an entirely new panel of judges. Maybe entirely new producers. Keep Ryan Seacrest for continuity, he’s this century’s Dick Clark. Change the way the voting works, so silly tween girls can’t text thousands of times for the guy with the blue eyes and bulging chest muscles who can barely sing. How about one vote per phone number, for example? Or one vote for a contestant, and another against – negative voting. Ditch the massive, tens of thousands of people phony “auditions” and just show the real couple hundred who make it to the judges. How about a rotating panel of judges, like the way So You Think You Can Dance or Top Chef work?

It needs something. It’s sad when a show that can basically run forever – it’s a talent show, for crying out loud! – seems to have run out of steam and become too boring to watch in just nine seasons.

I want to watch American Idol. I love American Idol. But this thing that’s currently on the air that’s calling itself American Idol, Season Nine?

Not so much.

Posted in Audio Visual | Tagged adam lambert, alex lambert, American Idol, lilly scott | Leave a comment

Skeptical Me

Posted on February 11, 2010 by jonhen

I have always considered myself to be a realist, ever since I was old enough to understand the concept. I don’t put much stock in superstition, blind faith, or jumping on the bandwagon. When I first started this blog, before I put up the quote from Erasmus that defines it now, I used to have my personal motto up there instead. Which is, “Question Authority. Embrace Change. Think for Yourself.” One of these days, when I get around to doing a proper site design, I’ll put that back somewhere on the site.

In recent years, a school of political thought has been revived called “Realism “. The political affiliation of Realism – as opposed to, say, Neo-Conservativism or LIberalism or Libertarianism or whatever – is a discipline that teaches that ideologies are basically pointless, and that the only proper study of the world situation is to try to figure out what is actually, really going on. Not what people say they want, or claim they’re trying to do, but focus solely on what people are actually, really doing. Strip all the blinders off as best you can and study the situation at hand, warts and all.

A political Realist, for example, would not have invaded Iraq. Yes, Saddam Hussein was extremely evil. Yes, he killed lots of people. Yes, it was very very sad that he ruled his country with an iron fist. But it would cost too much to oust him, and besides, the “no-fly” policy had kept him pretty well locked tight. He just wasn’t a problem. So who cares? He didn’t affect anything in reality. Realistically, it was not a situation that needed any action.

A Realist would also have questioned all the intelligence reports. Are there any opposing reports? If so, why? Does anyone who is providing intelligence have a particular ax to grind? Have you followed the money to make sure that no one is simply telling you what you want to hear?

A Realist would say, “You want to cut the deficit? Fine by me. So what should we cut from Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and Defense? Because that’s 4/5 of the national budget. Oh, you don’t want anything cut from any of those? And you don’t want to raise any taxes at all? Then we will continue to have a deficit. End of story.”

Needless to say, no true Realist has ever won any kind of political office. The electorate doesn’t want to hear reality, they want to hear boastful promises.

Which leads me, finally, to the title of this post. I am a skeptic. I am skeptical. I need to see the evidence. I need to see the evidence from multiple sources, preferably over a period of time, and I am willing to change my mind based on the evidence assembled in front of me. I’m also a great believer in common sense (in addition to being a fan of Thomas Paine‘s Common Sense, but that’s another story). I believe in Occam’s Razor – the simplest, plainest, most logical solution is usually the right one.

For example, what makes more sense: Extraterrestrial aliens, using unknown faster-than-light technology, traverse hundreds or thousands of light-years to anally probe various farmers? Or: Suggestible people black out and hallucinate, based on commonly shared, pop-culture science fiction references? To me, the hallucination sounds a lot more plausible than the alien visit. Add to that the lack of any physical evidence for alien visitation versus the several hundred years of documentation on people hallucinating. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, in other words.

Recently, I had a very invigorating back-and-forth with a friend of mine on Facebook on the basic topic of “skepticism”. I had made a passing comment about the “bogus Toyota recall”. My friend took issue with that comment, asking me what in the world I thought was bogus about the recall. Another friend chimed in to support me, adding in a critique of the recent H1N1 “Swine Flu” scare. Which led to a series of 19 (!) related, threaded comments over a period of two days.

Here was my position: I don’t believe there’s anything fundamentally wrong with Toyotas. I’ve been hearing “The car just accelerated on me!” excuse since I was a little kid. In every case, it was someone who either got confused between the accelerator and the brake, got their shoe (like a sandal) caught on the accelerator at the same time as they were using the brake, or slammed on the clutch and not the brake. The physical way an accelerator works simply won’t allow it to accelerate on its own… an accelerator is a spring that requires constant pressure to keep it depressed. Sure, accelerators can and do break – but they break by no longer accelerating. Not by accelerating on their own!

The claim for a few Toyotas was that the accelerator “stuck”. A very few. Something on the order of 8 cars total. And even in those cases, the cars did not accelerate on their own – the accelerator just failed to return to its default position as fast as it normally would have. In all cases, the brakes on the cars worked just fine. If the car operator had braked properly, the accidents would not have happened.

I believe I’m being realistic here. A very few cars had sticky accelerators. This stickiness would not cause the car to speed up on its own; all it would do, in the very worst case, was act like cruise control was engaged when it actually wasn’t. The mechanics who have investigated the issue say there’s about a one in 10,000 chance of the problem occurring in any given vehicle.

My point is, that’s no cause for panic. It’s just a minor repair. No big deal. Your car is fine. The next time you take it in for service, ask them to check the accelerator to see if your Toyota is the one in 10,000 that might have a slightly sticky accelerator. End of story.

That was not, of course, the end of the story. Quite the opposite. Instead, this was the lead story on the news for nearly two weeks. Toyota recalled millions of vehicles in response to panicked owners. The Secretary of Transportion told people to stop driving their cars. Three nights in a row, the news featured interviews with a doctor who was absolutely certain something was wrong with his car – even though he had taken it in multiple times, and each time mechanics had assured him his car was fine, it was not one of the ones affected. But the doctor refuses to drive the car, and insisted instead that Toyota refund to him the entire dollar amount of the car, plus “pain and suffering”. By the way, he’s been driving the car for three years without any problems.

Now. Going back to my example about the aliens. What is more likely? That 8 people, maybe maybe possibly with an accelerator that was slightly sticky, panicked and crashed their cars? Possibly, in their panic, confusing brake and accelerator, forgetting to break at all? Or: That Toyota somehow, defying all laws of physics and more than 100 years of collected technological research in how to make cars, somehow designed, built, and sold millions of cars with accelerators that sped up on their own? Occam’s Razor, folks. Which answer makes more sense?

Look at the evidence. Not at emotions. Not panicked parents concerned about their children. Not a doctor who thinks “Lawsuit!”. The evidence. What is the hard core, real world, actual evidence? I watched two weeks of news about this story, and not once – not once! – did I ever hear or read any actual, factual evidence about anything associated with this story. No engineering diagrams. No explanations from a mechanic. No testimony from anyone who investigated any of these crashes. Nothing. Just a lot of emotional weeping and moaning and groaning.

When the Balloon Boy story first broke, I said “Bullshit. Something’s going on there”. When Susan Smith reported her children missing, I said “Bullshit. She knows where they are”. And remember the story about the woman in 2008, who claimed that a crazy black man carved a “B” on her face because she didn’t like Obama (the “B”, by the way, was backwards, the way it would appear in a mirror). Why didn’t any news people call these things for the bullshit that they were on the spot? Where are the skeptics? Where are the people demanding, “Let’s see the evidence before we draw any conclusions”?

I’m making a plea here. Question stuff. When a talking head on the news starts out with “Some people say…” or “It has been reported…” you should immediately be skeptical. When instead of evidence, you hear tearful statements from someone not actually involved, you should be skeptical. When a story is based on “estimates”, you should be skeptical. You should be skeptical by default.

And follow up. Part of why I bitched so much about the H1N1 reporting was that the actual, real, tested deaths did not come anywhere near close to the “estimates” that the news reports were throwing around. At the time, it seemed like the media was drumming up panic to boost ratings. After all, “swine flu” has been around for quite a while. And all influenza viruses mutate and evolve every year. That’s perfectly normal. Look at the total flu statistics, for all varieties combined, year over year. Was this past year of 2009, statistically speaking, very different on average from all other years? No. It was not. (Compare each year from 1997 on up through 2009, looking at totals across the board for all varieties of influenza). So why all the panic?

Some people have mistakenly called me cynical. I am not. I believe in the basic goodness of people, and I believe that most people really do want to do the right thing.

But I am skeptical. And you should be too.

Skeptical Me.

Posted in Politics, Thoughts and Comments | Leave a comment

The Publishing War

Posted on February 9, 2010 by jonhen

Since I wrote my review of the Kindle DX in the previous post, quite a lot has happened in the little world of electronic books and publishing. Namely, one large publisher and one large retailer seem to have lost their collective minds and declared all-out war on each other. And in the process, they are dragging authors and readers down into the mud with them. There is quite a bit of anger on all sides, and so, as a (somewhat) neutral observers of the book world, I thought I’d chime in with my own summary and my own opinion.

Here’s how it went down. On Wednesday, January 27th, Apple announced their long-awaited new tablet computer: the iPad. The iPad is a 10-inch touch based computer, basically an iPod Touch scaled up to giant proportions. Part of the new feature set of this tablet, which should be available for purchase in two or three months from now, is an integrated book reading application and electronic book store, called iBook.

Unlike the Kindle, the nook, the Sony Reader and other true eReaders, the iPad is a standard LED-lit color LCD screen – the same type that your television and computer monitor use. For most of us who rely on an eReader, this technology doesn’t seem very well suited to reading… but we’ll just have to wait and see what the market decides. At $499, the iPad is a wonderful multimedia device – although an awfully expensive book reader.

Prior to announcing the iPad, Apple apparently negotiated some special deals with at least 5 of the “Big Six” publishers. Skipping over the accounting details, to the end user of an iPad, Apple’s deal means that new “hardcover” books will be $14.99 or $12.99 in electronic form from the iBook store. That sounds awfully expensive, considering that actual hardcovers cost just about exactly that same amount right now. And it sounds even more expensive compared to Amazon… which jumps through a lot of hoops, including selling a number of books at a loss, to keep prices at $9.99 per book and below.

A reporter from the Wall Street Journal, Walt Mossberg, asked Apple CEO Steve Jobs afterwards if this was going to be a problem. Jobs said no, because “the prices [for books] would be the same”. Initially, this was taken to mean that Apple would match Amazon’s $9.99 price. Within two days, however, it became clear that Jobs meant nothing of the sort. Instead, he had it on good authority that the publishers would in fact be forcing Amazon to raise their price to match Apple’s.

Let’s move forward to Friday, January 29th. Two days later. On that day (or perhaps the day before) the publisher Macmillan gave an ultimatum to Amazon: They had to immediately accept a new deal, under the exact same terms as their deal with Apple. And a key part of that deal meant that Macmillan, not Amazon, got to set the price of each and every book. You see, Macmillan felt that $9.99 was way too cheap for an electronic edition of a book, and wanted to make certain that Amazon could not sell at that price – not even if Amazon was willing to take a loss on the book. Amazon, being the largest retailer of books on the planet, did not take kindly to being told how to run their business, nor how they should set their prices. Macmillan said it was a “take it or leave it” deal.

So Amazon, as of that evening, pulled all Macmillan books from their web site. Both printed and electronic.

And the Internet went insane.

Authors published by Macmillan immediately put up articles and blog posts raking Amazon over the coals. Two prominent science fiction authors, John Scalzi (whose work I don’t care for) and Charles Stross (whose work I am a big fan of) were particularly vocal, claiming that Amazon is, more or less, pure evil, and certainly stupid. Almost every single author took the publisher’s side in this little war.

Readers, on the other hand, were furious at Macmillan and praised Amazon to the skies. They felt Macmillan was being extremely greedy, trying to force a retailer to bow to their will, and was engaging in a very obvious example of price collusion with their new partner Apple.

Anyone who’s ever read comments on any web site knows how quickly tempers can get out of hand. By Saturday, certain readers were vowing to permanently boycott certain authors. Some authors were vowing to never give Amazon any support ever. Some readers who vowing to never read any book published by Macmillan or any of its imprints. Very little in the way of reasonable arguments could be found in these comments, but you could find quite a lot in the way of four-letter words and over the top anger.

By Sunday, Amazon caved. They released a statement saying, in effect, that they were capitulating to Macmillan, and would have to raise the prices of any Macmillan imprint electronic book to whatever Macmillan wanted them to charge. And slowly, slowly, they began restoring Macmillan books to their online book store.

The war is not over, however, not by a long shot. During the next week, several other publishers immediately jumped and said they, too, wanted Amazon to agree to the same terms. The same terms they’d already agreed to with Apple, that is. The only exception was the largest of them all: Random House. Random House, in fact, stated that they wanted to let Amazon price however they wanted to, and planned to leave things the way they are. Notably, Random House is the one large publisher that did not sign on to supply e-books to the iPad. Also notably… the spokesperson for Random House used to work for Amazon.

As a fan of books, reading, and writing, I’ve read as much as I can stand to on this subject. The truth is… nobody comes out smelling rosy in this situation. Amazon definitely acted like a petulant child by cutting off all sales for Macmillan books; this act didn’t hurt Macmillan corporate a bit, while it hurt its authors and Amazon’s customers a great deal. And Macmillan was acting equally childish: they just got a new deal they liked, so they wanted to force their biggest retailer to accept the same terms.

The Supreme Court recently ruled that corporations have all the same rights in the constitution as actual people do. However, I think Amazon and Macmillan have demonstrated that corporations are, at best, children. And as such, they are not capable of making rational decisions and planning carefully for their future. They consider that sticking their tongues out at each, holding their breath until they turn blue, and taking all their toys and going home are all good business ideas. What a shame.

My personal view on all of this… well. I have always maintained that a purely electronic copy of anything is not worth as much as a physical copy. An album on a CD is worth more than an album downloaded from iTunes. A DVD of a movie is worth more than a copy of a movie purchased online. And a physical book is worth more than an electronic one.

Trying to price an e-book the same as a printed book is pure folly. It will never work, at least not in the long term. My gut tells me that an e-book should be about 25% less than whatever the current printed copy (either hardcover or paperback) price is. If you look on Amazon, most new hardcovers sell for between $15.00 and $12.00. So, frankly, $9.99 for an electronic version sounds exactly right. And, as a reader, that’s definitely my impulse buy limit. Any book that sounds halfway decent, as long as it’s under $10, I’ll probably give it a shot. Over $10? Well… I have to want to read it pretty bad.

I’m not saying I’ll never pay more than $9.99 for an e-book, but I will say that it will be rare. Right now, for instance, there are several books that I’d like to read on my Kindle (such as Kim Stanley Robinson’s new novel Galileo’s Dream), but they’re in Wish List Limbo at the moment, waiting for their price to drop below the $14 or $15 they’re at right now.

However, certain timely books, like political tell-alls, I can see ponying up $14.99 to read right away. Right now, instead of a higher price, many publishers are delaying the e-book version of these titles by several months, under the assumption that this will force people to run out and buy the hardcover. In fact, I’d like to read The Politician, Andrew Young’s account of John Edwards – but they publisher has delayed the e-book version until April. And that’s not the kind of book I’m willing to pay for a hardcover of. So, looks like I’ll be passing on it. You see? They just lost a sale by delaying the e-book. A sale they would have made if they’d just allowed the book to come out in electronic form, sold to Amazon for whatever they wanted to, and allowed Amazon to sell for whatever they want to.

in the long run, I don’t think this will work. As the years go buy, more and more people will read books in some electronic form versus a hardcopy form. I’ll predict that within 10 years, the split will be 50/50.And as more people read electronically, the price pressure will become even greater to lower the price as compared to the hardcopy version. When that happens, Macmillan and the other publishers who got suckered into Apple’s “agency pricing” model are going to wish they could go back to the old days.

Watch Random House laugh all the way to the bank in a few years.

Posted in Books, Technology | Tagged amazon, apple, ipad, kindle, macmillan | Leave a comment

Kindle DX: 7 Months with the Amazon Giant

Posted on January 25, 2010 by jonhen

Kindle DX Wireless Reading Device. 9.7″ display, global wireless, $489.00.

Ever since I got my Kindle DX back in June 2009, I’ve been meaning to write up a review of it. But I never got around to it – mainly because every time I touch that little slab of glass and plastic, I immediately start reading something. An hour goes by, and I hear a voice nagging at the back of my head… didn’t I pick this thing up for some other reason? But whatever I’m reading is always more entertaining than listening to the voices in my head, so I ignore it and go back to my book.

In and of itself, that’s already a pretty good review, when you think about it.

Two days from now, Apple will be formally announcing their tablet or slate or giant iPod or whatever it’s going to be, and I wanted to be sure that I got my Kindle thoughts down clearly before I am forced to re-think the paradigm based on whatever it is that Apple comes up with. The media has been reporting all over that Apple has been in talks with publishers, and is going to make reading a big part of this new gizmo. These media reports claim, therefore, that this new iPad or iSlate or MacTablet will be a “Kindle killer”, and only a fool would thus buy a machine that “only” functions as an electronic reader.

Now, far be it from me to second guess Apple (says the man who is typing this post on a MacBook Air), but I don’t think so. The MSM (main stream media) doesn’t seem to think that there are “people who read” out there anymore. And while it is quite true that Constant Readers number far less than Movie Watchers or TV Freaks or Gamers, it’s still a large number. Speaking as one of those Constant Readers, a dedicated device for reading – and only for reading – is quite clearly the way to go. It’s entirely possible that I may buy whatever it is that Apple debuts on Wednesday… but I find it very unlikely that I’ll be reading a novel on it.

As I mentioned in my review last year of the Kindle 2, I ordered the Kindle DX the same day it was announced. I love the Kindle 2 (now just called the Kindle, since Amazon has long since stopped selling the old original model). Honestly, except for the screen being too small, I felt the Kindle 2 was just about as perfect a piece of hardware as I’ve ever used. But as I said, with a mere 6″ diagonal screen, I felt that the reading area was just too small. When reading a fast-paced novel, I found myself pressing the “Next Page” button so quickly that I was afraid it might break from such heavy use (it never did). The Kindle DX, marketed as an exact duplicate of the Kindle 2 except for a larger, 9.7″ diagonal screen, sounded like it would be the be-all end-all e-Reader.

I felt so strongly about that, in fact, that I sold my Kindle 2 the same week my Kindle DX arrived.

I wish I hadn’t done that.

Because as it turns out, the Kindle DX is not a sized-up duplicate of the Kindle 2. Amazon made three very obvious changes to the hardware, and I hate all three changes.

First off, and by far the worst… there are no buttons on the left side of the Kindle DX. None at all. On the Kindle, the “Next Page” button is on both the right and the left. The “Previous Page” button is also on the left side of the Kindle. Having the “Next Page” button on both sides means that you can hold the Kindle in either hand, or use either hand to turn the page. This helps to mimic the movement of using an actual printed book very closely. Sadly, and for absolutely no reason that I can see, the Kindle DX jettisons this nearly perfect design (so perfect, in fact, that it was copied almost exactly on the Barnes and Noble nook) and simply has an expanse of blank white plastic on its left side. I cannot fathom why Amazon did this, and I must repeat that this is the single most glaring design fault of the Kindle DX in comparison to its smaller cousin.

Second, the keyboard on the Kindle DX is different from that of the Kindle… again, for absolutely no reason that I can figure out. The Kindle has very nice, functional round keys that mimic a normal QWERTY keyboard. The Kindle DX instead uses rectangular keys that are much harder to use, since each key is wider than it is tall. This makes it almost impossible to “thumb type” on the Kindle DX keyboard, an operation that is quite easy on the Kindle. And still worse – and again for no reason – the top row of number keys is gone. To type a number, you have to hold down “Alt” and then press one of the top rows – ALT+Q for 1, ALT+W for 2, and so on. Maddening. Especially when there is plenty of room for another row of keys, even in the horrible rectangular style.

Third, the Kindle DX adds an accelerometer for “auto rotation” of the screen to landscape mode. For the first month, I hated this feature so much that I almost returned the device. Every time I would lean to one side, the book I was reading would rotate itself in the other direction. This would result in a comedic chase, as I kept trying to rotate the Kindle DX in the opposite direction to compensate. When I called Amazon to complain, the support person pointed out that I could turn off this feature using the “Font Size” key (how obvious!). Unfortunately, every time I turn off the Kindle or when it gets a software update, it resets itself back to “auto rotate”.

Since the Kindle DX came out, Amazon has updated the regular Kindle to include the rotation feature as well. But in the regular Kindle, it’s a maual option that must be selected by the user. It doesn’t try to “automatically” rotate itself based on whatever angle the device itself is at. This is a perfect illustration of a feature that is very handy in a mobile device (the iPhone has an excellent auto rotation feature, for example), but is useless and in fact very annoying when put into a dedicated reading device. Why in the world would I ever want the text I am currently reading to rotate itself in another direction just based on which way I happen to be leaning at the time?

Now, the larger screen? Oh, it’s quite nice. Especially when reading a book with illustrations or technical diagrams (I am re-reading Neil Shubin’s Your Inner Fish currently, and the diagrams are almost as clear as the printed version). I still wish the screen had better contrast – whiter whites, blacker blacks – but eInk displays don’t seem to be able to do that yet. The larger screen means that I can finally have a page in an eBook that has the same amount of text as a printed page.

But as the months have gone by, I’ve become increasingly disappointed in the Kindle DX. Because, as it turns out, the extra-large screen is really its only feature. Gone are the easy buttons from the Kindle. Gone is the nice keyboard. Silly auto-rotation added. And… well… the Kindle DX is heavy. Holding it with one hand gets tiring quickly, and when reading in bed, I always have to prop it on a pillow. (Keep in mind that when I say “heavy”, I mean as compared to the Kindle. The Kindle DX is still much lighter than most hardcover books). The Kindle weighs just a hair over 10 ounces. The Kindle DX weighs 1 pound, 3 ounces. Thus the Kindle DX feels about twice as heavy as the Kindle. A shame.

At $489, the Kindle DX costs almost twice as much as the $259 Kindle. When I originally ordered it, I felt that price was fair because of the much larger screen size. I still feel it’s a fair price – but I did not expect to have so much of what I liked about the Kindle taken away from me at the same time.

And… that nice big screen? Well, after 7 months… I’ve decided that it’s actually too big. I still feel that the Kindle’s 6″ diagonal screen is too small. But the Kindle DX’s 9.7″ screen goes too far in the other direction. Right in the middle, an 8″ diagonal screen, that would be truly perfect. But it seems like the world has settled on the 6″ and 9.7″ / 10″ size as standards, so I’m stuck. Having to choose between them… well… I guess I’d go with the smaller screen.

In summary, I prefer the Kindle to the Kindle DX. I wish I hadn’t sold my Kindle. If I had not, I would have probably returned the Kindle DX before the 30 day return window had expired. So, you may logically ask: Why don’t I sell the Kindle DX and buy a regular Kindle again? Well, see, the Kindle 2 came out almost exactly a year ago. So, I figure, Amazon should be coming out with what would be the “Kindle 3″ sometime this year. I’ll just wait for that.

The Kindle DX was developed by Amazon primarily as a text book reader for college students. For that use, it would probably be great. The heavier weight of the Kindle DX is still pounds and pounds lighter than the lightest college text book I ever had, that’s for sure. And as I said, for books with illustrations, that big honking screen is wonderful.

But for reading books? Stick with the regular Kindle, which really is a bargain at $259. No matter what magic thing Apple comes out with on January 27th, the Kindle is still the best game around for reading books.

Posted in Books, Technology | Leave a comment

The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart

Posted on January 12, 2010 by jonhen

The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart by Jesse Bullington (2009). 464 pages, Orbit Books.

I have the Amazon Daily blog to thank for bringing this book to my attention. A few weeks ago, author Jesse Bullington was the guest-editor for Amazon Daily. In several posts, he talked about how thoroughly he had researched the period of history his novel is set in – even though this is actually a dark fantasy novel, with witches, demons, sirens, hell-spawn children, and manticores. His eloquent series of posts prompted me to add his novel to my Watch List. And then the novel was named on Amazon’s Best Books of 2009: Editors’ Top 10 in Science Fiction & Fantasy. And a bunch of other “Best Of” lists. So, I figured I’d check it out.

I knew I was in for an intriguing read from the first page, with what has to go down as one of the best first paragraphs I’ve ever read:

To claim that the Brothers Grossbart were cruel and selfish brigands is to slander even the nastiest highwayman, and to say they were murderous swine is an insult to even the filthiest boar. They were Grossbarts through and true, and in many lands such a title still carries serious weight. While not as repugnant as their father nor as cunning as his, horrible though both men were, the Brothers proved worse. Blood can go bad in a single generation or it can be distilled down through the ages into something truly wicked, which was the case with those abominable twins, Hegel and Manfried.

That same style and sense of humor carries on throughout the entire novel. For example, when brother Manfried runs into a good-looking cad: “Like most men who are ugly on both sides of their skin, Manfried detested handsome people on general principle.”

The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart is engrossing, disturbing, grim, humorous, disgusting, and intriguing all at the same time. Set in 1364, little more than a decade after the Black Death, the brothers wander through a very realistically painted medieval Europe. One in which supernatural things occur all the time. They run into knights, monks, yeomen, sea captains, beggars, rich men and poor men. The brothers themselves are terrible people who think they are not only right, but downright sainted as well.

The book begins when the brothers murder a man’s entire family. Wife, babies, small children. In gory descriptive detail. They steal horse and cart, and escape the village. You see, the brothers profession is grave robbing. A profession which has been passed down from father to son. And according to family legend, their grandfather robbed graves in Egypt, amassing a fortune. The brothers decide they’ll travel to “Gyptland” to dig up what their grandfather left behind, which will also serve the additional purpose of getting far away from the village where they’ve just committed mass murder.

That’s all in the first chapter. This ain’t exactly Harry Potter we’re talking about here.

The prose style of this novel is excellent. Bullington manages to weave in a great amount of realistic detail into this very fantastical novel, resulting in a book that really is unlike anything I’ve ever read. Oh, and it’s also funny as hell. In a sick way.

How does he pull this off? I’ll try to describe it. Early in the novel, the brothers encounter a demon that spreads the Plague. The demon is a disgusting creature that reminded me of the alien symbiote in The Hidden (a great little film that far too few people have seen, by the way. ). It grows its body out of the pus nodules extruded from its victims. Then, once the body is dead, it invades a new host by pushing its way down the victim’s throat until it is living inside of it. This is all accompanied by a great deal of blood, guts, torn limbs, decapitations, and descriptions of every horrific form of injury and decay that accompanies them.

Now, if all that wasn’t offensive enough (and I mean that in a good way), throw in loads of bizarre heresy as well. The brothers are followers of the Virgin Mary. But they call her son a “lousy coward”, and have long theological arguments about how they are the only true believers in the world, and everyone else is a heretic. Of course, along their journey they team up with an insane defrocked priest who agrees with all of their theological points, which frequently include murdering anyone who doesn’t agree with them.

And yet… intermixed with all the actual religious turmoil that was going on in the middle ages, it doesn’t seem that ridiculous. Bullington manages to thread the Grossbart’s heresy into King Peter’s invasion of Alexandria, for example, and it fits perfectly.

This is definitely not a book for everyone. There were a couple of places where I actually got sick to my stomach, and had to put the book down for a minute or two to quell my vomit reflex before I resumed reading. I’m not kidding about the extreme level of violence, mayhem, and just sheer, utter, disgusting gore. The Grossbarts are profane, foul creatures who look down on anyone who is not like them. Every supernatural entity they encounter is grossly and unremittingly evil. This is the categorical opposite of the Twilight approach to the supernatural. This is no book for children.

At one point in the book, the brothers kill a shape-shifter in the middle of its change. The bottom half of the corpse is animal, the top half still human. Being hungry, they butcher, cook, and eat the bottom half. But they won’t touch the top half, because that would be cannibalism. So they hack up the top half of the body and throw it away. Then they wonder if maybe they should have waited a few more seconds to kill it – so they could have eaten the whole thing.

Several other reviews I’ve read have called the novel “gritty”. I’m not sure that word applies, although I understand why so many used it. When reading a book in a genre that includes Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Twilight, and the like, how do you fit in the awful Brothers Grossbart?

There’s a sub-genre of literary fiction dubbed “magical realism” (exemplified by one of my personal Top Ten Novels of All Time, One Hundred Years of Solitude). The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart might be called “historical magical realism”.

I also want to give a shout out to whoever was responsible for formatting the Kindle version of this book. This is one of the best e-books I’ve seen. Each chapter is cleanly delineated, even including the illustrated chapter headings and larger fonts at the beginning. The table of contents is full and expertly linked. And the publisher even threw in some extras at the end, including a long interview with author. I can’t help but contrast this admirable layout job to the very poor formatting of Under the Dome, which I reviewed last week.

My only real criticism is that the last five chapters seem a bit rushed. I got the feeling the author was getting tired of writing in so much detail, and just decided to get to the ending already. But this is a minor quibble about an altogether excellent novel.

I guess it says something about my sick personality that I enjoyed this book so much. If, like me, you’ve got a dark sense of humor, a strong stomach, and don’t offend easily, you definitely should read The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart.

Because I can almost guarantee there will never make a movie version of something as depraved as this.

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Under the Dome

Posted on January 1, 2010 by jonhen

Under the Dome by Stephen King (2009).1088 pages, Scribner.

There is no author alive who can write a page-turner like Stephen King. None. I have read almost every single book he has ever written. And the vast majority of them have kept me up late at night – not because I can’t sleep (although, considering his usual subject matter, that is often the case), but because I just cannot stop reading. His books are that involving.

Under the Dome is no exception to this rule. This is another in King’s occasional Massive Book oeuvre; previous occupants include The Stand, IT, and Insomnia. That means the book is over a thousand pages long, has a very large cast of characters, and is going to be a grand take on the basic concept of good vs. evil.

(As an aside, I’d like to point out that if you’re a Constant Reader and you don’t have a Kindle yet, this would be a great opportunity to get one. The hardcover version of this book weights 3.6 pounds. A Kindle weighs 10 ounces. The hardcover version of this book sells on Amazon for $21.00. The Kindle version sells for $9.99. I rest my case. Now back to my review currently in progress…)

Unlike any of King’s previous Massive Books, however, this one has (almost) no actual supernatural elements. Technically, I guess it would be classified as science fiction, although it’s really a dramatic thriller. The science fiction element exist as the MacGuffin that drives the story. The story is basically: What would happen if a small town were completely and totally separated from the rest of the world? If nothing could get in, and nothing could get out?

The story begins on a nice day in mid-October, a few years from now. The town in question is Chester Mills, Maine, population about 2,000. At about 11am one morning, an impenetrable dome suddenly snaps into existence over the entire town, sealing it in. The dome is perfectly transparent. It reaches miles up in the air and miles down into the earth. It precisely follows the borders of the township, so it cannot be natural. Sound and all types of radio waves penetrate the dome easily, so radio and tv work fine. In fact, people can talk on opposite sides of the dome without any trouble. The dome is slightly permeable to air and water, but that’s about it.

When the dome appears, deaths occur immediately. Cars smash into the dome from either side; a small plane collides into the dome in seconds. The first helicopter to investigate crashes into the dome, killing everyone aboard immediately. And, within just a few hours, the dome over Chester Mills is the biggest news story in the world, and the focus of intense military scrutiny as the entire town is cordoned off and surrounded.

But that’s all mostly background. The real story is: What happens to the town inside the dome? Because, as it turns out, Chester Mills is a hotbed of tension. The town is run by the Second Alderman “Big Jim” Rennie, who is as cynical and evil as they come. Big Jim’s son, Junior Rennie, is every bit as mean as his father – and thanks to a very active brain tumor, is a raving psychotic as well.

As the hours and days go by, Big Jim turns from a simple Alderman into an all-out dictator, amassing his own police force within 24 hours of the dome’s existence. Will anyone oppose him? Of course! For starters, there’s former Army Lieutenant Dale Barbara (“Barbie” to his friends) who’s been working as a cook at the local diner. The local newspaper editor, Julia Shumway, has never been a fan of either Big Jim or his creepy son. And the former police chief’s wife isn’t too fond of have her husband’s old job being turned over to a complete retard. Oh, and let’s not forget another common King element, the teenage heros: “Scarecrow” Joe McClatchey and his gang of fellow skateboarding computer geeks.

Big Jim is big physically (there must be a dozen places in the book where the size of his gut and his eating habits are the focus of a scene), and his personality is bigger than life as well. Even though he’s an evangelical Christian, his favorite bible saying seems to be “The Lord helps those which help themselves”. Which, the last time I checked, is not in the bible (I think it originated in one of Ben Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanacs, actually). But that hasn’t stopped Big Jim from running the country’s largest meth lab, under cover of a Christian radio station. As evidenced by Big Jim, I’d have to say that Stephen King is not exactly a fan of evangelical Christians.

As the days progress under the dome, the townspeople take sides: Who’s in favor of the law-and-order regime set up by Big Jim, and who prefers to live free? Add into the mix the military forces amassed outside the dome, doing everything they can to break inside. Because the air is running out, and every time a fire burns or a car runs inside the dome, the oxygen count goes down a little further. Oh, and that giant meth lab isn’t helping the environment either…

Under the Dome, like all good King novels, is a capsule morality play that does it best to make observations on our modern world via an engaging story. Big Jim is obviously supposed to represent the approach to government taken by certain right-wing Christian fundamentalists. The ticking time bomb of life under the dome stands for our current debate over global climate change. And the anguished tensions of the townspeople stand in for our challenges in fighting the “war on terror”.

All of that is well and good, and you either like it or you don’t (I happen to like it, personally). King is well-known for didactic commentary in his fiction; see The Tommyknockers for his takedown on nuclear power, The Stand for his condemnation of government biological weapons, and even Firestarter for his low opinion of the CIA. It works particularly well in this case, since you can read the novel perfectly well without any outside allegory at all if you like. The story holds up perfectly fine on its own.

There’s definitely a Lord of the Flies vibe to the book, so much so that several characters even make explicit reference to that fact. The body count is high and rises quickly; I don’t think I’m spoiling much by warning that only a few of the people you meet in the beginning are still going to be alive at the end. Pretty much everything that could go wrong does go wrong, in other words.

My only real complaints are:

Some of the characters are not as fully realized as I would like, especially for a novel of this length. For example, we know almost nothing about Dale Barbara other than that he used to be in the Army, he served in Iraq, and he’s basically a good guy. King usually gives lots of depth and back story to his heroes, but not in this case.

The villain, Big Jim Rennie, is cartoonishly evil. He literally has not one single redeeming feature. It’s hard to believe that someone this glaringly odious would ever be admired by anyone, much less elected to public office. It’s fun to have a villain to hate, but Big Jim is a bit over the top.

The solution used by the heroes at the end of the book could have been used at anytime after the middle of the novel, by any one of a number of characters. The fact that they don’t think of it until the very last moment rings false; without giving away an important detail, I’ll just say that the minute a certain mysterious object is discovered, I thought of the solution that is ultimately used. Why did it take the characters in the book so long to think of it?

The Kindle version (which is the one I read) doesn’t have a table of contents, which makes it difficult to move back and forth between chapters and the map and character list at the front. Very annoying. In fact, I’d suggest printing out the town map from Amazon’s web site and keeping it beside you if you read the e-Book version, since there is no way to navigate back and forth to the map at the beginning of the book. I haven’t seen a major e-Book with such an obvious formatting flaw in a long time, and it’s especially unforgivable seeing as how the electronic version was delayed by almost two months.

But those are quibbles. This really is some good Stephen King here. Personally, I’d say this is his best novel since he changed publishers to Scribners (beginning with Bag of Bones back in 1998). If you liked The Stand or IT, you’ll like this one. This is King in full-on Save the World mode, and it’s a blast.

Like I said at the beginning, this is a real page-turner. So be prepared to put aside some long nights if you crack open Under the Dome. It’ll grab ahold of you tightly and won’t let go until the end.

Posted in Books | 1 Comment

Alligators in the Wild

Posted on December 29, 2009 by jonhen

Everglades National Park – Shark Valley. U.S. 41 (Tamiami Trail) 25 miles west of the Florida Turnpike from exit 25 (S.W. 8th St.). Phone: 305-221-877. Hours: 8:30am – 5:00pm, 365 days a year.

I’ve lived in South Florida for over five years now. You would think that I’d be pretty familiar with all the appropriate sites and scenes in the area after all that time. Every month, however, I realize I’ve only just scratched the surface. With a slew of relatives in town this past holiday weekend, and tired of repeating the same rounds of standard tourist areas, I found another great place to go: Shark Valley.

We live, literally, right on the edge of the Everglades. Our home is Weston, Florida, which abuts Everglades National Park. And our housing development is the last one before the Everglades begin. When we exit our development (Isles of Weston, if you’re curious), you can only make a left or right turn. A right turn takes you to Manitee Bay Elementary, and later to Weston proper. A left turn takes you to Highway 27, which runs all along the Everglades. When I walk my dog, I can walk out of our gate, cross the street, and I’m standing in Everglades National Park.

Living as close as we do, we’re pretty familiar with the various fauna. We’ve had most of the large birds visit our swimming pool and back yard many times: Great Blue Herons (Ardea herodias), Green Herons (Butorides virescens), Kingfishers (Ceryle alcyon), Cormorants (Phalacrocorax auritus), White Ibis (Eudocimus albus), and the ever-present Great Egret (Ardea alba). (Side note: I have a T-shirt that says “Egrets? I’ve had a few.”). Two iguanas have taken up permanent residence amidst our hedges, various snakes make occasional appearances, and raccoons frequently wash their food in our pool. We’ve had to fish a snapping turtle out of the pool once as well (it was not happy).

We’ve never had an alligator actually in our back yard, but there have been a few in the pond / lake / canal behind our house. And we’ve seen them on occasion swimming in the canals, or just off the road as we drive on Highway 27 or across Alligator Alley on our way to Naples.

Usually, when friends or family visit us and want to see gators, we take them either to Billie Swamp Safari (long drive, but worth it – it’s a very nice, well-run place on the Seminole Indian reservation) or to Everglades Holiday Park (only 5 minutes from our house, but it’s a nasty, dirty, tourist trap and all the animals look a bit ill). The decision as to which one we go to usually depends on the robustness of the visitor in question, and the age of the children accompanying us.

For this Christmas vacation, however, we had Frank’s nephew (my nephew-in-law) Don Norton (the famous Flight 1549 passenger who has appeared on many, many talk shows and is one of the contributors to the new book Brace for Impact: Miracle on the Hudson Survivors Share Their Stories of Near Death and Hope for New Life), his wife Elizabeth, and their 3-year-old son Ethan. We also had Frank’s sister (my sister-in-law) Darlene Baron and her fiancé Russ Kuspinsky. All five of our visitors had already been to both of the above-mentioned alligator locations, and we’d also already taken them to all of the standard visitor places in greater Fort Lauderdale on previous visits as well.

We were initially planning to head down to the Keys, maybe Key Largo or Marathon, but Ethan, although a well-behaved and mobile 3-year-old boy, is still, nevertheless, a 3-year-old boy, and we decided that 3 hours in the car for all seven of us might be a bit much.

Frank did some research, and found Shark Valley. Shark Valley is a part of Everglades National Park that has a 15-mile-long paved trail that winds a long loop through the Shark River Valley, in the prime southern part of the Everglades. It also includes several shorter connecting trails, and there’s an observation tower at the far end of the loop that lets you look out over the Everglades for miles in all directions. Best of all, however, the park has allowed a concession company to run a tram tour along the entire trail. So, we figured, we could drive out there, buy ourselves a bunch of tram tickets, and tour the entire park Lion Country Safari style, with Ethan safely sitting on our laps.

One hour later, as we tried to park at the Shark Valley Visitor Center, we discovered a little problem in our plan. It was the 26th of December, the day after Christmas. And apparently every other family in South Florida had the same idea. The parking lot was full, cars were parked along the highway for at least a mile in either direction, and the tram tours were sold out for the entire day.

But we’d come all this way, and I was not going to just turn around. Besides, we all had to pee.

So, I dropped off everyone else (including Ethan’s stroller) at the park entrance, and then drove a mile down the highway to find a place to park. By the time I trudged back to the entrance, everyone else was already inside gawking. Frank had cleverly purchased a $10 “one car” admittance to the park, convincing the rangers that just because we weren’t actually in the car at the moment, we were nevertheless “one car load”.

Since the tram tours were sold out, we decided to walk just the first mile or so of the trail and see what we could see. And I immediately discovered the first wonder of the Shark Valley paved trail: it is bicycle friendly. Very bike friendly. So friendly they rent bikes by the hour right at the park entrance. And they encourage everyone to bring their bikes.

That was why all the cars were parked so far up and down the highway. It turns out that Shark Valley is an incredibly popular weekend spot for all bike trail lovers in South Florida. They even sell year-long passes to the park for people who come almost every weekend to bike the trails.

Bikes meandered by us in both directions, pausing and stopping often to view the wildlife. The wildlife! Because that turned out to be the huge surprise of Shark Valley. Every single animal that lives in the Everglades seems to converge on Shark Valley, and they’re completely blasé about people being around them.

Alligators were all over the trail. Resting in the sun just off the trails. Crawling across the trail to plop into the water than ran on either side (the paved trail is basically just a limestone dyke rising up out of the surrounding Everglades). Swimming in the water. Baby alligator sunning themselves on little stone outcroppings of the trail, ready to race off if you got closer than 3 feet to them.

(My entire Flickr gallery, including pictures of all of us with various animals, is here)

And the birds! Every kind of Everglades bird strutted around, not afraid to hunt and eat right in front of you. We saw all 3 types of herons swimming under water, catching fish. I videotaped a Great Blue Heron as it snagged a baby turtle, crunching the shell this way and that until it was mangled enough for it to swallow whole.

We walked about a mile down the main trail, and Russ and I walked one of the small offshoot trails to view the limestone caves that otters live in (alas, we saw no otters). As we left the otter trail to re-enter the main paved trail, there was an extremely large (about 10 feet long) alligator sunning itself right on the trail.

Russ looked up and down. There was no one else visible on the park trail. “You see any rangers?” he asked me. “Get your video camera going”. “What are you going to do”, I asked, camera up and ready. “I just wanna see what its tail feels like”, he said. “He looks pretty asleep to me”.

Slowly Russ leaned down and touched the gator’s tail. Almost immediately, the big reptile’s head jerked up, its eyes opened, and its jaws parted ever so slightly. “Whoa!”, we both said at the same time. “That was really stupid, Russ”, I added. The gator hissed a loud and very clear warning. We backed off several dozen feet. It glared at us for a second, then slowly closed its eyes and resumed its sunning.

As we walked back to rejoin the rest of our group, we passed a sign we had seen earlier: “Warning Wild Alligators Do Not Feed or Molest“. I guess Russ has a different understanding of the word “molest” than I do. But at least I got his idiocy on camera, and neither man nor beast was hurt. Nevertheless: Do not try this.

We rejoined the rest of our group. Just about 100 yards away from the end of the trail, and within site of the visitor’s center, a Blue Heron walked out of the water right in front of us. Its feathers were dripping – and it had a small, wiggling bass fish speared on its beak.

We all squatted down to watch. The bird shook the fish off its beak, and then stabbed at it repeatedly. Every time the fish wiggled a little, the heron would grab it and toss it up into the air, letting it fall back onto the ground. Finally the fish stopped wriggling (“I think you can stop, bird. It’s dead!” Don said to it) and it picked it up carefully.

We wondered how the bird was going to eat the fish. We assumed it would rip it apart. We hadn’t noticed, but a park ranger had joined our little huddle as the bird played with the fish. She began to narrate what was going on for our benefit.

“Now she has to position it at just the right angle so she can swallow it”, the ranger said. “She knows it has to be just so, or else the scales on the fish will catch against her throat and she’ll have to cough it back up. And she wants to eat it pretty quick before one of the other park residents sees the fresh meat and maybe decides to take it away from her”.

Elizabeth was annoyed at that. “That’s not fair! The bird did all the work of catching the fish!” The ranger said not to worry, the herons very rarely gave up their food. Right on cue, the heron got the fish at just the right angle. From a mere four feet away, I videotaped as the large bird expanded its throat, and, in a series of gulps, swallowed the fish whole. And then took a few dainty sips of water to wash it down.

We all clapped. It had been a wonderful end to a wonderful day. Russ pronounced our visit to Shark Valley the best day of the entire vacation, and that was including the 10-day cruise they had all just been on.

As we left the park, I talked to a group of rangers. Park rangers are just about the friendliest people on Earth, and man do they know their stuff. I asked why the park was named “Shark Valley”, and got a long description of the Shark River, its mouth 35 miles further south, and the long wide valley carved by the river all the way up into the Everglades. “Obviously, in the end, it’s just a name”, the ranger finished. “There are no sharks here. Just alligators, crocodiles, pumas, and bobcats. And sometimes bears”.

All the way home we talked about Shark Valley. Don was amazed at how close the animals were. “I never in a million years thought you could walk right up to an alligator”, he said. “Yeah, well Russ actually did, ” I said. I passed the video camera around the car, and everyone kept re-watching Russ’ gator encounter until the battery died. “Now I know for sure I’m living with an idiot”, Darlene said.

We arrived home a bit footsore, slightly sunburned, and very happy. There is nothing like a hike out in nature to bring out the best in everyone. No matter what kind of mood you may start out in, you’ll be smiling at the end. How can you not?

I kept the ticket we’d bought, which was good for 10 days after purchase. I plan on returning to Shark Valley with my bike in the hatchback, and I’m going to bike the entire 15 mile trail. I promise not to molest any wildlife, to bring plenty of liquids, a lunch, and both a video and a still camera.

The alligators are waiting, and apparently they are very patient.

Posted in Thoughts and Comments | Tagged biking, everglades, hiking, national park, shark valley, trails | Leave a comment

Avatar

Posted on December 21, 2009 by jonhen

Avatar (2009). 162 minutes, Twentieth Century Fox. Written and Directed by James Cameron.

When I first went to college in 1980, I started out in Tech. I was going to major in Computer Science. But after a year learning hard-core assembly language programming, building functioning computer processor gates, and studying electrical engineering technique, I realized that what I really wanted to do was direct.

I wanted to direct movies, that is. And so at the beginning of my sophomore year, I switched to the School of Speech, and switched my major to Radio-TV-Film. I did this because although I am fascinated by computers and technology, I was fascinated because of the creative possibilities – not by the computer science in and of itself. And I wanted to learn the creative side a lot more than I wanted to learn the technology side. Luckily for me, that combination of skills sets turned out to be very savvy in the long run.

I switched to being a Film major because of one, overarching reason: I. Love. Movies.

And when I say “movies”, I mean “Hollywood narrative storytelling kind of movies”. I grew to appreciate and even seek out all kinds of film as my education expanded my viewpoint, but I never have lost my undying love for a pure, unabashed good ‘ol rip-roaring, entertaining Movie.

I like a good story with fleshed-out characters, in a film that is well-acted and has great visuals. And lately, that’s been getting harder and harder to find, especially if you also like science fiction / fantasy type films. It seems that every film in that genre (with a few notable exceptions like District 9) are just video games or toy advertisements rendered for the big screen.

Thank god for James Cameron.

Yesterday morning, I sat in a nearly-sold-out theater wearing a pair of surprisingly comfortable 3D glasses, and was transported away into another world. I got a feeling of rising joy as the story unfolded. It wasn’t a very original story, but it was told very well. And everything on screen was beautiful. And the acting was excellent.

For two hours and forty minutes, I wasn’t on Earth at all. I was gripping my armrests, muttering under my breath for the good guys to win, the bad guys to fail, and drinking it all in. I’m pretty sure I had a smile on my face the entire time, a smile of wonderment and pleasure.

I love a good movie. And Avatar is a very, very good movie.

I’m not going to say much about the way the movie was made, or how long it took, or how much it supposedly cost, or any of that stuff. If you’re interested, there are a bazillion articles about that aspect of the movie all over the net, including a ton of “making of” videos already out there. I’m just going to talk about the movie itself and the experience of watching it.

Avatar is the first real 3D movie I’ve seen in a theater (well, I saw the Michael Jackson Captain Eo short film at Disneyland several times, but I did say “first real 3D movie”). So right away, the experience of putting on the 3D glasses was different. And the film began, a point of view shot of flying over a canopy of trees…

It’s the year 2154. Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is an ex-marine, now a paraplegic confined to a wheelchair due to injuries suffered while in the service. As he explains in a voiceover while he’s being awakened from a 6-year cryogenic sleep aboard a spaceship, broken spines can certainly be repaired – but it’s very expensive, and his VA benefits don’t cover that level of treatment.

So Jake took advantage of a very unique opportunity. See, Jake has – or had – an identical twin brother. And his twin brother was a scientist, working on a project concerning the planet Pandora. Pandora is a planet full of life, but unfortunately the atmosphere is poisonous to humans. So the scientists came up with the concept of “avatars” – hybrid human/alien bodies that humans link into and control.

Each of these avatar bodies is a unique DNA construct, and has to be custom-grown for each individual whose brain the body will be linked to. Jake’s brother was one of those individuals – until he died in an accident. So Jake is recruited to take his brother’s place, seeing as how they already have an avatar that matches his DNA, all ready to go.

Linking into the avatar allows Jake to inhabit a fully functioning body again. A body that is, in fact, stronger and tougher than his pre-injury body ever was. A body that looks exactly like one of the intelligent inhabitants of Pandora, the Na’Vi.

The scene where Jake first links up with his avatar is wonderful. Jake crawls into a coffin-like contraption, glowing optical fibers light up, and in the next second he wakes up in his new body. He’s 10 feet tall, blue, with feline eyes and ears that swivel around like a cat’s. He’s told to take it easy, but Jake can’t wait, and runs outside in his new body, just to enjoy the feeling of standing, running, rubbing his toes into the dirt.

The movie proper really begins at this point. Jake’s assignment, since he has no scientific training, is to act as an armed bodyguard for scientists (who are all also in avatar form) working on the planet. They all work for some company – a company who is trying to get the natives to move away from their current home – which, inconveniently for the company sits right on top of a huge deposit of a very rare mineral that the company wants to mine at almost any cost.

The scientists haven’t been having much diplomatic success, however. The Na’Vi immediately recognize the avatars as being “meat puppets”, or “dreamwalkers”. They are not fooled, and for the most part shun the avatars as being poor duplicates of “real people”. So, the company has paid a huge sum to host a entire Marine brigade, whose job it will be to forceably remove the Na’Vi.

His first day on the job, Jake is separated from the rest (in a fantastic sequenece involving some very nasty alien predatory animals), and has to spend the night out in the forest. During the night, he’s just about to meet his end at the hands of a large pack of dog-like creatures, when his life is saved by Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), one of the natives.

To Neytiri, Jake is a baby, a moron who doesn’t even know how to live in the jungle. Nevertheless, she agrees to help him learn the ways of life here in the Pandoran jungle, and introduces him to her village, including her mother Moat (CCH Pounder) and father Eytukan (Wes Studi). As soon as he falls asleep that evening, he wakes back up in his real body. His teammates, especially Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) and Norm Spellman (Joel David Moore) are thrilled to see him safe and sound.

Later that day, the scarred and very-obviously-evil Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang, chewing the scenery for all it’s worth) makes a special deal with Jake: Gain the trust of the Na’Vi, and then get them to move. He’s got three months. If he fails to get them to move, then the Marines will swoop in and destroy their home out from under them. In return, the Colonel says, he’ll make sure that the company immediately pays to have Jake’s broken spine repaired. Not surprisingly, Jake agrees.

And so every day, he spends most of his time in the avatar body. Then a few mournful hours back in his own broken body, keeping a sad video log. But, as the months go by, Jakes feels less and less like a human, and more and more like a Na’Vi…

And that’s where I’ll stop the recap. I will say that if you’ve seen Dances with Wolves, you know a lot of the rest of the story already. Of course Jake falls in love with Neytiri, and of course he switches his allegiance completely to the Na’Vi. But, so do a number of the scientists… and that makes the company and the military very, very unhappy.

Avatar is two hours and forty minutes long, and I didn’t notice the time. I never even looked at my watch. My eyes stayed glued on screen the entire time. Not since Jurassic Park have I felt so convinced by what is, after all, a very large special effect.

Pandora and the Na’Vi are, simply put, breathtaking. The actors playing the parts inhabit their alien “avatars” completely, using a performance capture technique that is light-years better than anything I’ve ever seen before. The planet itself glows with life. Everything fits together perfectly.

The storyline helps quite a bit. To be sure, it’s not the most unique storyline, and it is very much lifted from other movies you’ve seen before. Paradoxically, however, this is part of what makes the film work so well. The environment of Pandora is so unique, so vibrant, so… wonderfully alien, that having a familiar and easy-to-grasp love story at its heart ties it all together.

The middle section of the film, where JakeSully (all one word, as the Na’Vi call him) learns about how to live on Pandora, tames a flying reptile as his steed, and falls in love with Neytiri, is astonishing. This section of the movie lasts almost an hour, but it never, ever drags.

The 3D works very well. For the first five or ten minutes, I “noticed” it. And then it just faded away into the experience. My eyes didn’t hurt, I didn’t get any kind of a headache, I just fell into Pandora and into the story that James Cameron was telling.

Avatar is, simply put, a great experience. This is Filmmaking at its finest. This is why I love the medium. This is the kind of movie that everyone involved in film dreams of making, and loves watching. This is one of those quintessential movies that is going to define things for a long time to come.

Titanic was a good film (yeah, I still feel that way, so sue me), but Avatar is a great film. If it’s playing in 3D anywhere near where you are, go see it. You will not be bored, and you will not regret seeing it. I am planning on seeing it again later this week myself.

And when you come out of the theater at the end, I bet you will never say the phrase “I see you” in the same way again.

Posted in Audio Visual | 1 Comment

2666: A Novel

NUMMI Nova

American Idol 2010: Top Twelve… Eleven… Ten… whatever.

Skeptical Me

The Publishing War

Kindle DX: 7 Months with the Amazon Giant

The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart

Under the Dome

Alligators in the Wild

Avatar

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