Just Finished Reading Furies of Calderon by Jim Butcher

I'm a bit wary about starting a new fantasy series, especially with George R.R. Martin's series A Song of Ice and Fire...more popularly known as Game of Thrones...delayed so much that the HBO television adaptation finished the entire series before readers could even find out what happened to Jon Snow after his multiple stabbing at the end of the fifth of purportedly seven books.  So I resolved to only read series that have already concluded...Jim Butcher finished his six-volume Codex Alera series, of which Furies of Calderon was the opening novel, in 2009.  And I've just finished reading that opening book...here are my reactions...

Furies of Calderon, like most fantasy series, is heavily derivative, with humanity in a backward technological state while imbued with special magic that empowers them to perform well in what is almost always a state of war.  Here people can "craft" the elemental spirits from wind, water, earth, fire, wood, or metal, carrying with them entities from those elements that impart special powers.  Of the novel's two main characters, Amara...a young woman working for the land of Alera's ruler Gaius Sextus as a messenger/spy...crafts wind and can fly (by the way, many names here sound like they're from the Roman Empire).  And then there is Tavi, a boy living in the outlying Calderon Valley and who suffers the rare and humiliating condition of not being able to craft any elements...but his intelligence, family loyalty and courage more than make up for his lack of magical abilities. The story, into which I will not delve in detail for the sake of any potential readers out there, involves treachery, loyalty, codes of honor, a strongly divided society by class, and much cruelty and savagery.  There is little in it to inspire the reader to daydream about what place they would like to have in such an inhospitable world...and that to me was its main drawback: in Lord of the Rings you could look with fondness at the Shire or Rivendell while Harry Potter's Hogwarts Academy carried with it many attractions. I did like the way Butcher developed his characters, though, and there are some that I would refer to as "wild card", meaning that I never could truly be certain whether they were ultimately the good or bad guys...always a welcome, intriguing addition to an ongoing story...

So now I'm reading the next book in the series, titled Academ's Fury.  So far so good, and I can at least be certain of not having to be left hanging for years while the author (like George R.R. Martin) just sits around on his butt, refusing to write the next installment while I totally forget the series' story line and characters...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #310-301

Here are the next ten songs, in ascending order, on my personal 500 all-time favorite songs list. They range a time span of forty years...unfortunately the latest one come out more than fifteen years ago!  Not that I'm pronouncing judgment against the state of today's popular music, but it just doesn't grab me the way the older stuff did...but I'm sure if I were much younger the songs of today would impact me the same way as the ones I grew up with...

310 REBELLION (LIES)...Arcade Fire
This track is from the Canadian alternative rock band's 2004 debut album Funeral, but I first heard it about six years later when I got around to listening to the entire album.  I became a fan of theirs because of Funeral and the subsequent albums Neon Bible and The Suburbs...but I've generally been disappointed with Arcade Fire's last two LPs.  Still, their best works rank among my favorite songs ever...band leader Win Butler sings with such heart...

309 A CHANGE WOULD DO YOU GOOD...Sheryl Crow
I bought Sheryl Crow's eponymous second album from 1996 largely on the merits of this terrific song with a mesmerizing beat, rhythm guitar and clever lyrics.  It contains one of my all-time favorite lines, a great suggestion for a telephone answering machine: "Hello it's me, I'm not at home.  If you'd like to reach me, leave me alone!".  Crow has a flair for lyrical twists in her songs that at times remind me of Bob Dylan or John Lennon...

308 ABACAB...Genesis
1982 had a lot of good songs...this lengthy track, also the title of its album, turned out to be my Song of the Year back then.  The letters in the title represent the first six musical notes of the song...being a music theory dummy I leave it for you to investigate whether that's so.  Genesis, in my opinion, was terrific from around 1980 through 1984...then their output began to deteriorate.  The trio of Phil Collins on drums and vocals, Mike Rutherford on guitar and Tony Banks on keyboards was a hard combination to beat when they were at their peak...Banks is spectacular on Abacab, especially the long instrumental closing part...

307 YOU BETTER RUN...the Rascals
The Rascals came out with this minor singles hit in 1966 two years before Led Zeppelin exploded onto the musical scene...yet You Better Run, to me, was the proto-hard-rock song, with Jimmy Page-like guitar riffs and soulful singing.  I wondered how Zeppelin's Robert Plant would have sung it had his band decided to cover it, only to just recently discover that he himself had actually done so...back in '66 with another group! The Rascals' songs covered a wide range of musical styles...a few years later Pat Benatar successfully covered this favorite of mine...

306 TWO HEARTS BEAT AS ONE...U2
This is the U2 song that back in 1983 first turned my attention to this Irish rock band...not so much for Bono's wailing singing style but rather for guitarist The Edge's inimitable, trademark rapid-fire playing, which stood out on this brash, passionate song of desperation and faith.  I owe my thanks to MTV for showing the video back then...I never did hear it played on the radio. Two Hearts Beat as One is from their third album, titled War...

305 RUBY TUESDAY...the Rolling Stones
Although Mick Jagger gets a lot of credit for singing this Stones hit from early 1967, it was actually a creative collaboration of the band's talented multi-instrumentalist Brian Jones and Keith Richards, the former largely responsible for the song's melody and the latter composing the lyrics.  Jones played the recorder on it...you know, that flimsy little instrument they gave lessons for in elementary school? Fame and success can provide focus and discipline for some people while destroying others...sadly for Jones he couldn't handle his own "good" fortune...

304 A SUMMER SONG...Chad and Jeremy
On 560 WQAM "Tiger Radio" back in 1964 this song was introduced as being by "Stuart and Clyde"...the surnames of Chad and Jeremy.  I invariably associate this song with sitting outside on my back porch back then as a seven-year old kid, often with my sister Anita.  Sweet memories, old times..songs like this one bring them back although, like A Summer Song, they can be beautiful in their own right...

303 TRY A LITTLE KINDNESS...Glen Campbell
The springtime of 1970, when this song was a radio hit, was anything but a "kind" time in my own life, undergoing a very dog-eat-dog, hostile social environment at school in the 8th grade, and I had always thought that this song's lyrics were for others to follow. But in all honesty, although I never picked on other kids I have to realize that I was also short in the compassion department back then...taking an engaged, active interest in others' lives and opinions is in itself a form of kindness, one that would have served me well had I employed it in those difficult times.  Campbell's message reigns universal and timeless...

302 HEY HEY WHAT CAN I DO...Led Zeppelin
Not on any of Led Zeppelin's traditional albums, this B-side song on the Immigrant Song single should have been on their third album...why they passed up on it in favor of some clearly inferior tracks is beyond me.  It's a slow bluesy rant by Robert Plant about his (fictional) wayward love, one of his best performances for the band.  I came to know of Hey Hey What Can I Do after hearing it off their 1990 box set, which was aired on Gainesville's WRUF/Rock 104...

301 CIVIL WAR...Guns n' Roses
Guns n' Roses is far from being my favorite band, but they put it all together on this 1991 piece from their Use Your Illusion II album about the horrors of war and assassination...from back in our own American Civil War on through the Kennedy shooting and Vietnam War and then to the proxy international civil wars instigated and armed by the superpowers.  Yes, there is a lot of food for thought here as well as fantastic guitar playing by Slash.   This band is one that had a lot of talent and promise, but internal squabbling broke them up in the end...too bad, I would have loved to hear more songs from them with the intensity and sophistication of Civil War...

Next week: my all-time favorite songs #300-291...

Will Tom Brady Stay with Patriots or Move On?

After falling to the last-place and rebuilding Miami Dolphins at home for their final 2019 regular season game, eliminating themselves in the process from a first-round bye in the playoffs, the New England Patriots made an early exit from the playoffs yesterday evening as they lost in their fog-shrouded home stadium in the first round 20-13 to Tennessee.  The Titans were led on the field by ex-Dolphins quarterback Ryan Tannehill, who was aided by a fierce running attack headed by Derrick Henry and a solid offensive line...elements that already-legendary Patriots quarterback Tom Brady sorely lacked in his own team this year.  Brady has been known to be willing to forgo the big paycheck he deserves in favor of having those needed players on the field around him to bolster his offense...the Pats let him down this year.  Consequently, with Brady as a free agent now, talk is going around that he will either go to another team to seek a higher level of pay or to one that has that supportive offensive cast of players he demands and needs.  After all, look at Tannehill's lackluster performance in Miami when he didn't have a quality roster around him and how well he took to Tennessee, a franchise that knows how to build a team from the inside out.  I'd like to see Tom Brady go to a team outside the NFL East so I can support him...being a Dolphins fan for better or for worse, I view the Patriots, Bills, and Jets as the "enemy".   Brady is 42 and not likely to be playing for much longer...seeing that he already has nine Super Bowl appearances and six championships to his credit, I'd be surprised if he doesn't either go for a very financially lucrative short-term contract with another team or just remain with New England with assurances of them bringing in higher-caliber teammates.  I strongly doubt that he will announce his retirement after such a dubious ending to his playing career, his last pass being a pick-six interception...

Quote of the Week...from Steven Spielberg

All of us every single year, we're a different person.  I don't think we're the same person all our lives.
                                                     ---Steven Spielberg

Back in the early years of this blog, I once got into an argument with an old buddy from elementary and high school who strongly differed with my comment that I was the same person that I was when I was 2-3 years old.  He also expressed skepticism that I could remember events going back that far in my own life...making me wonder at what age do different people achieve a sense of self-awareness instead of just plodding on ahead in life as programmed, reactive biological machines: apparently for him it came much later in his own childhood...I wonder whether for some people it ever comes.  The point I was trying to make with my friend wasn't that I didn't learn new things and grow physically, emotionally, socially, and spiritually...we all do that to varying degrees as we experience our lives over the years...but that my sense of singular identity, that "I" that sets me apart from everything else in the universe, was the same back in 1958 as it is now.  But I'm afraid he was unable to receive what I was trying to convey, and that's a shame...

Steven Spielberg's above quote is about the change that is continually going on with us as we live out our lives, not that core sense of identity...or at least I hope that's what he was thinking when he made it.  I personally have two competing factions within me: one part wants to settle into established routines, enough to function in the world and even provide a few relatively comfortable challenges and goals, while another part sees life as more of a smorgasbord of potential experiences that require me jumping out of my comfort zone and pursuing more daunting projects and adventures, some of which by their nature pose risks of failure, humiliation...and even danger.  I think there's a time and place for both inclinations...here is where discernment and wisdom come in.  I'm getting to the stage of my work life in which I need to look ahead to what I'll be doing in retirement...one thing I do know is that I do not want to live it overcautiously, fearing new experiences and growth.  Change is a crucial element of life and as long as I am living, change it will be...but through it all I will always be "myself"...

Just Finished Reading The Institute by Stephen King

The Institute is the latest novel written by my favorite author, Stephen King, published just this past September.  It's about the abduction of specially talented children by a ruthless, shady organization...I don't think I'm giving away the story by saying that the "Institute" is a remote facility in which they're housed...or more precisely, imprisoned.  In the meantime, a decorated ex-cop from Tampa is looking to sort out his life and future as he hitchhikes his way to a rural South Carolina town, where he is hired to be the "night-knocker"...a part-time, unarmed employee of the police force whose job entails checking out the town's various businesses and neighborhoods late at night for their security.  How these two separate story threads eventually come together...well, I guess you'll need to read the book for yourself as I want you to get its full impact.  Instead of going further into the plot and characters, I think I'll reiterate something I've discussed on this blog in the past...

I don't subscribe to the notion that some people have paranormal abilities such as telepathy (mind-reading and thought-transfer) or telekinesis (mentally moving objects).  Of course there are people out there who claim to be psychics, often making a bit of money publicly hawking their claims.  But anyone who actually possessed such abilities would be well-advised to keep them private and not allow them to become common knowledge.  Not only would it arouse suspicion and mistrust among the people around them, but a paranormal ability could well attract the attention of the kind of nefarious people that King described in his novel.  There was a similar situation in his excellent 2011 book  11/22/63, in which a time traveler to the past...technically not "gifted" with precognition...nevertheless had to be careful with his knowledge of upcoming events not to allow it to inadvertently slip out to those around him....

When I was in the first grade, my teacher Mrs. Parsons had the class play a little game.  One student would be picked to stand outside in the hallway while another in the class would be given an object, like a blackboard eraser.  Then the student in the hallway would come back in and, without a word being exchanged, survey the classroom and try to pick out the classmate hiding the object.  It seems I had a special talent for looking over the many faces and picking the right one...repeatedly...to the point where some kids began to grumble that I was somehow cheating.  But I wasn't cheating...or psychic...but rather was simply good at accurately reading faces and body language.  Still, I think the temptation among many of us is to quickly make that giant leap whenever a confounding situation arises and attribute it to the supernatural or paranormal...or with my example, start accusing.  It's as if the correct and intellectually honest response "I don't know why this is so" has become taboo...

I thought The Institute was one of Stephen King's better novels...why not read it and let me know your own reactions...

Weekly Short Stories: 1955 Science Fiction, Part 2

As we usher in the New Year of 2020, today I'll be continuing my look back 65 years at some standout science fiction short stories as they appeared in the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories #17 (1955).  Here are my reactions to the next five as they appear in the book...

GRANDPA by James H. Schmitz
Ecology...the concept of symbiosis in particular...is the theme of this tale set in the future after humanity has settled several different star systems.  The planet here has just recently been staked out, and the indigenous life is peculiar...especially the boat-like creatures that the new settlers use as locomotion on this water-dominated world. Like in a Michael Crichton novel, though, the normality of the pioneers' lives is thrown into a crisis when the fauna around them rise up...an exciting story that predates our environmental movement by several years...

WHO? by Theodore Sturgeon
It is known that long-distance space flights take their toll on the astronauts, especially the protracted periods of isolation from community with others.  The protagonist, telling the story in the first person, is on a test flight to determine his suitability to command a ship. He takes off on his mission, physically separated in the ship's cabin from the single other passenger by a bulkhead...they can talk back and forth but cannot see each other.  This is a psychological story, one of Sturgeon's areas of expertise, that delves into people's motivations, jealousies, and fears.  It has a surprise ending, of course...

THE SHORT ONES by Raymond E. Banks
Within the walls of the Pentagon exists a created society of artificial, protoplasm-based miniature "people".  Its purpose is to test suitable nominees and applicants for important government posts according to their temperament...can they strike an almost impossible-to-attain balance between exerting too much or too little power over others in their line of duty?  It's Ralph Hiller's turn to be tested and he will be the "god" of this miniature society for the next six hours...these very difficult "short ones" will frustrate him but will he be able to make the right decisions?  This story is a clever examination of the role of religion without getting itself hung up on theology...

CAPTIVE MARKET by Philip K. Dick
Back in 2017 I reviewed this story in greater length...here's a link to that article: [link].  It's based on the notion that the future is full of alternative possibilities...the elderly woman here has the ability to discern them around her and decide which one will come true.  Unfortunately, her talent is wasted because of her petty and prejudiced narrowmindedness.  On one hand you have something totally brilliant with so many possible positive implications.  And on the other you have an abject squandering of it all...kind of reminds me of how some people are using the amazing Internet these days to promote their own prejudices and indulge in their own shortcomings...

ALLAMAGOOSA by Eric Frank Russell
In the interstellar space fleet of the future, a captain docked on "shore" leave at Sirius has to contend with an upcoming inspection, including a minute inventory of everything on the ship, carefully listed down to the last issued pair of suspenders.  Only one problem: the inventory list has one item, an "offog", supposedly issued four years earlier but no one on board has a clue as to what it is: the solution? Invent an "offog" and present it for inspection!  This is a funny satire of the entrenched bureaucracy, in which people use it to create a secure buffer around themselves while employing a certain "logic" of reasoning that can drastically stray from reality...

Next week: more about short science fiction from 1955...

My December 2019 Running Report

In December I ran a total of 102 miles, missing training on three days with 9.3 miles being my single longest run.  That run occurred on December 7, the second year in a row I ran the Seasons of Hope 15K along the Hawthorne Trail southeast of Gainesville.  I had reported on this blog a couple of hours after the race that my recovery seemed to be going well...unfortunately, later that evening my body was aching badly and it was painful moving and resting in certain positions.  The next day it cleared up substantially, with the aching completely disappearing the following day.  I'm going to need to reconsider my recovery strategy following a race, rehydrating much more and cutting out the coffee (I drank several cups going into late afternoon that day).  I also wonder whether I pulled something as I was straining at the end of that 15K race...no more straining for me!

I am still considering trying out that Ocala Half-Marathon on January 19...I hadn't run it since 2013.  If I do, though, I will be going at it slow with walking breaks every few minutes.  And there's the Newnan's Lake 15K race at the end of the month as well, something I've grown accustomed to running in recent years.  I'd like to continue with my long weekend training runs as well...I have the courses already mapped out.  And thanks to my wife Melissa, who has become quite a walker, I plan to increase my fitness walking in the months to come...should running become untenable to me as I journey through my senior years, it seems to be the logical next "step" for me...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #320-311

Here are the next ten songs from my list of 500 personal all-time favorites.  It's pretty clear that I tend to associate the songs with my own life memories...I'm sure that with the songs from the list that you recognize, you probably connect them in some fashion with your own personal memories.  It's one of the curious things about popular music through the years, how they serve as memory markers...

320 YOUR WILDEST DREAMS...the Moody Blues
Your Wildest Dreams, from 1986, was one of this durable British rock band's final singles hits although they would record three more albums and successfully tour for decades...last year they were belatedly inducted into the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame.  It's a dreamy, wistful song about a relationship separated by many years and an implied question: "What's going on with you these days?", something that 33 years later with our social media era is generally a lot easier to answer...

319 I'LL HAVE TO SAY I LOVE YOU IN A SONG...Jim Croce
I remember this beautiful love song by Jim Croce being a radio hit a couple of months before I graduated from high school in the spring of 1974...Croce tragically had died the summer before in an airplane crash just as his musical career was taking off.  Later in '74 I bought his "best hits" album titled Photographs and Memories...lots of great tracks on it.  Croce's music was divided between funny, folksy pieces like You Don't Mess Around with Jim and Bad Bad Leroy Brown and the more sensitive songs that I preferred, such as this one.  More from Jim to come down the line on this favorites list...

318 ONLY TIME...Enya
The 9/11 terrorist attack on our country was very traumatic to the national psyche: this calming, sweet song by Enya...at the time a radio hit...presented an alternative reaction to the fear, paranoia and war-chanting going on at that time.  There are two versions: very slow and normal speed, the latter of which was played more on the radio back in '01, although the former has endured as the generally more preferred one (and with me as well).  Only Time was my favorite song of 2001 as I lived through it...

317 BORN ON THE BAYOU...Creedence Clearwater Revival
There are songs that have a relentless, driving nature...this is one of the best examples of one that worked well.  It originally came out in 1969 although it wasn't really for another couple of decades before I heard it one night on classic rock radio and had an epiphany: it's a masterpiece of Southern rock, although CCR was a San Francisco-based band.  It's singer John Fogerty at his Cajun-drawling best: "And I can still hear my old hound dog barkin', chasing down a hoodoo there"...

316 HAVE YOU NEVER BEEN MELLOW...Olivia Newton-John
This singles hit in the spring of 1975 came out at a time when I felt the world around me was pressuring me to be anything but mellow...and my spirit rebelled.  At least Olivia seemed to think that chilling out and taking things at a more relaxed pace was a viable option...this was the first of several songs of hers that I truly liked.  The personal pressure continued, though, for pretty much the whole year and never completely abated...I guess part of it has to do with growing up. This song is one of those timeless treasures...

315 MAILMAN...Soundgarden
In early 1995 an obscure Gainesville AM radio station (on 1390 kHz) was playing complete Doors albums.  I enthusiastically listened, but suddenly they started playing Soundgarden's 1994 Superunknown CD...that's when I first heard this deep track on it.  It's a grindingly slow, angry and menacing piece with the late Chris Cornell delivering one of his more compelling performances.  Soundgarden, in my mind, was Seattle's greatest grunge band and Superunknown is definitely high on my list of all-time favorite albums, not a weak song anywhere.  But I warn you, there's a lot of rage on it: definitely no Enya or Olivia Newton-John here...

314 YOU'RE SO VAIN...Carly Simon
This was a monster hit in December 1972/January 1973...I was crazy about it when it first came out and listened to it so much that I finally got a little tired of hearing it. The line "I had some dreams, they were clouds in my coffee, clouds in my coffee" has universal appeal and stuck with me, back then and through the years.  Mick Jagger provided backup vocals after he happened to drop by the studio during the song's recording.  December '72 was a pretty cool and upbeat time in my life and I was just beginning to take up running as a more distance-oriented sport (I used to just sprint short distances very fast)...I think it drastically improved my disposition and outlook...

313 CRAISE FINTON KIRK ROYAL ACADEMY OF ARTS...the Bee Gees
For brevity's sake I simply call this track from the band's 1967 Bee Gees' 1st album "Craise Finton Kirk". My parents initially loved the Bee Gees at the time, bought this album and played it over and over again.  This was the one song on it neither of them cared for and they couldn't understand why I liked it so much.  Robin Gibb sings it solo with just a piano backing him...beauty in simplicity.  The Bee Gees were so talented...I wished they had steered clear of the disco mess in the late '70s...

312 I CAN'T GET NEXT TO YOU...the Temptations
1969 was a peculiar year with my popular music listening.  I wasn't keeping up with the current radio hits then, and many songs I would later embrace as favorites I disliked at the time.  This one by the Temptations is a good example...I began to better appreciate this talented singing group's backlog of hits a few years later.  There's the real high-pitched guy (Eddie Kendricks) and the real low-pitched guy (Melvin Franklin) ...and then the lead singer (in '69 it was Dennis Edwards) and the rest.  I Can't Get Next to You is short, fast-paced, abrupt, and passionate...

311 MICHELLE...the Beatles
Michelle was one of my family's favorite Beatles songs from 1965...when my dad brought home a rescue cockapoo puppy in February 1966 we had a ready-made name for her: Michelle had a long, happy life with us until her passing in 1981.  This Paul McCartney ode to an English-challenged French girl also served as my personal introduction to the French language: "Michelle ma belle, sont les mots qui vont tres bien ensemble"...

Next week: personal favorite songs #310-301...

Yesterday's College Football Playoff Games, NFL Regular Season Ends Today

I enjoyed watching the college football playoffs yesterday on ESPN, especially that second game between Clemson and Ohio State...I guess it also helped that the two teams I had decided to root for both won.  Still, after LSU had run up an incredible 49-14 halftime lead over Oklahoma in the first game...with Tigers QB Joe Burrow throwing 7 touchdown passes in the process...it wasn't all that much fun getting through that contest's second half. With Clemson vs. Ohio State, it looked as if the Buckeyes were clearly the better team by far early on, but three of their drives stalled out in the Red Zone and they had to kick field goals each time...they could have been ahead by far more than 16-0 before Clemson finally woke up and began their penalty-aided comeback. Not that I'm complaining about the officiating, other than that one blown call when a Clemson receiver clearly fumbled the ball...recovered by Ohio State...that was ultimately deemed an incomplete pass.  The final score was 29-23 in favor of Clemson, so we now have a Tigers-Tigers championship game slated in New Orleans on January 13th next year.  I'm going to pull for Clemson although just going by yesterday's games it looks as if they will have an uphill battle getting past Burrow...

The National Football League regular season ends today...I'm writing this before the afternoon and evening games.  The Miami Dolphins, even though their management all-but declared 2019 to be a "tanking" season, have amassed a 4-11 record through the efforts of the players under first-year head coach Brian Flores, who clearly understands the importance of establishing discipline and a culture of winning.  I know with that record this may sound strange on the surface, but I think a lot of people were expecting the Dolphins to go winless this year...hats off to them for confounding the critics!  As for the other teams I'm following, Seattle plays San Francisco to determine who wins the NFC West division and who enters the playoff as a wild card team.  Philadelphia wins the NFC East if they can get past the erratic New York Giants, else Dallas still has a shot to win it against Washington.  Minnesota, New Orleans, and Green Bay are already in the NFC playoffs...the exact seedings will be determined today.  In the American Conference Baltimore has the number one seed throughout the conference playoffs and New England...if they get past Miami in their game today or Kansas City loses...will be seeded number two, with first round byes.  Since the Dolphins won't be in the playoff picture this year I like the Chiefs...and if not them, the Ravens.  Houston and Buffalo are already in the playoffs with the last wild card slot going either to Pittsburgh or Tennessee, depending on how today's games go.  The way things stack up right now with teams currently still in the running, my ideal Super Bowl for this season would pit Seattle against Kansas City, with Philadelphia and Baltimore representing the secondary teams I'm rooting for...and then Green Bay and Pittsburgh.  The "worst" Super Bowl scenario for me?  New Orleans vs. New England, definitely an unwanted possibility...

Enjoying New Disney Plus Service on TV, Especially Winnie the Pooh

Having just received a Christmas gift of Disney Plus, I can now reference many movies and television series on Roku that had been unavailable to me.  I'm especially a big fan of the cartoon Winnie the Pooh series and associated movies.  I'm now going through the New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh episode by episode, in the original chronological order from 1988 to 1991...and once again enjoy the distinctive personalities of the different characters: phlegmatic, honey-loving and absent-minded Winnie, melancholy and wise Eeyore, fun-loving and gregarious Tigger, timid and empathetic Piglet, hard-working and choleric Rabbit...along with Kanga, Roo, Gopher, and Owl...are the main citizens of the Hundred Acre Woods and the product of little boy Christopher Robin's vivid imagination with his stuffed animal toys.  Of course, it's all based on the original books written by A. A. Milne in the 1920s.  The movies are available as well, Pooh's Grand Adventure: the Search for Christopher Robin being my favorite of the lot.  So now when the vast wasteland of the current state of affairs on television inevitably rears its ugly head to me late at night (sorry for the mixed metaphors), I now have something else to resort to besides old reruns of The Prisoner and Mr. Bean...

Quote of the Week...from Neil Gaiman

I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.  Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world.  You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're doing something.                                        ---Neil Gaiman

I've read and enjoyed most of English writer Neil Gaiman's novels...they're usually a combination of fantasy and horror, often with some good old satire thrown in.  Gaiman started out writing comic books and graphic novels...I'm glad this gifted writer decided to try his hand at the more conventional novel format.  The above quote of his tells me that Gaiman himself realized that if you're ever going to grow or get anything substantial or meaningful accomplished in your life, then you have to plunge into what you're doing with the foresight that you will screw up bigtime on a lot of things and that it's important to learn from those failures as you experience them in order to achieve excellence.  Many years ago I took a Russian language class in which the professor told the class that they could say anything in Russian to him they liked...but they had to say it correctly.  I instantly thought that was a lot of BS, and I noticed the following year while around some Vietnamese refugees I worked with that the ones who threw off their pride and uninhibitedly spoke English knowing that much of what they said would be incorrect...even laughable...were the ones who achieved fluency the fastest.  So I say the New Year's always a cool time to consider new ventures...but just remember that if you're a novice at something it's important to be humble around others and eager to learn from your mistakes.  As a matter of fact, unless you're taking up something like sky or cave diving that you'd better get perfect from the start (or else), you should expect those shortfalls in your early efforts, else you're not really trying hard enough...

Weekly Short Stories: 1955 Science Fiction, Part 1

In opening this review of the stories appearing in the retrospective anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 17 (1955), only three tales appear below...that's because the middle one is actually a novella and pretty long for inclusion in such a book.  Each story has its own particular message to impart and in its own way eerily predicts things that have come true over the years. Here are my reactions to them...

THE TUNNEL UNDER THE WORLD...Frederick Pohl
Every morning Gary Burckhardt wakes up is June 15th and he is coming out of a nightmare of a terrible explosion.  Shaking off his unsettling dream, he sets about his morning business and goes to work at the chemical plant.  But Gary is starting to suspect something amiss with his life and circumstances...on the surface everything's the same but not exactly...and he can't escape that deja vu feeling.  Finally another man, also suspicious, approaches him and the search is on to discover what the heck is actually going on.  Pohl delivered a story here about how little control we really have over our own lives and privacy...oddly prescient so many years before the Internet and its intrusion into our own personal information and preferences...

THE DARFSTELLER...Walter M. Miller, Jr.
At some time in the near future (from 1955's perspective), professional stage acting has been completely supplanted by sophisticated robot actors who almost exactly resemble former real stage stars...who had sold the rights to use their names and copy their images.  Ryan Thornier was one of the former acting stars but refused to sell out to make way for the robots...he's now a janitor at one of the roboticized theaters, and his boss wants to take away even this job and replace it with an automated service.  In an upcoming play, the star male robot...who was to play a role that Thornier knew by heart...is malfunctioning.  And the disgruntled actor decides to take matters into his own hands and deliver his final performance.  On one level this 64-year old story resonates with the trend of replacing the work force with technology...even in acting, look at how computers have augmented the stars of film (Lord of the Rings, Polar Express, Star Wars).  It was, in my opinion, what was said at the end of the story that endeared it to many...but you have to read the story first...

THE CAVE OF NIGHT...James E. Gunn
Written six years before the first human...the USSR's Yuri Gagarin...was launched into space and orbited Earth...The Cave of Night already anticipated the apathy and skepticism that would come to typify much of public and political opinion about the space program.  Remember, just a few months after the first manned landing on the moon, TV networks stopped evening live coverage of the Apollo 13 mission...that is, until a mission-and-life-threatening crisis happened on the ship.  And then it was all headline news with the world standing united with the three astronauts, who were potentially stranded in space.  What does this have to do with this story?  Just read it and dig that ending...

Next week: more from 1955 in the genre of short science fiction...

Merry Christmas, Everyone

On this Christmas Eve, 2019, I'd like to wish all of you a merry Christmas and a happy holiday season.  Although I could do without the frantic shopping atmosphere and traffic during the week preceding this important holiday and get a little overloaded on the sweets and Christmas music, I also see it as a time when goodwill and community are promoted as Christ's birth is celebrated...the shopping rush will end soon but let's see if we can't extend some of that goodwill beyond the holiday season. I'm taking tomorrow off from this blog but plan to resume Thursday with my weekly feature on short stories I've read...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #330-321

There's a couple of songs on this week's entry of my 500 all-time favorite songs you may never have heard of, a few you have...and maybe some you just might have forgotten.  I got a big kick out of hearing all of them again during the past week...they're all winners to me...

330 PITTSFIELD...Sufjan Stevens
This song is from Sufjan Stevens' 2006 album The Avalanche, which was basically an "extras" LP of songs he had recorded while making his acclaimed Illinois album the previous year.  Yet the songs on it are pretty extraordinary in their own right...I'd even say it's the best album of "rejects" ever made.  Pittsfield is a bittersweet reflection of the singer's rough childhood in this Illinois (not Massachusetts) town, an open letter to possibly his own mother as he and his sister struggle to make it through their daily lives.  Very touching, and a very emotional final crescendo...

329 SOUL MAKOSSA...Manu Dibango
Manu Dibango is a Cameroun musical artist...now 86...whose main claim to fame, at least in America, is his 1973 song Soul Makossa, the music written by him and recorded and originally released the previous year.  It is a standout piece, with its funky beat and sharp saxophone (played by Dibango).  As for the song's lyrics, other than the word "soul", they are all in Cameroun's Duala language...reportedly composed by one of that west-central African nation's poets: "makossa" means "dance", which is self-evident if you've ever heard it.  Of course, at the time in 1973 I knew none of this and just thought it was all extremely cool...here is finally a song that I might actually dig performing on karaoke...it's happy and very intense...

328 NO QUARTER...Led Zeppelin
Definitely not a karaoke piece, this soulful exploration into melancholy is the kind of song that I would reach out to in times when my mood would plummet downward...so it's a cathartic, misery-loves-company kind of listening experience.  No Quarter is from the band's 1972 Houses of the Holy album, unusual to me in that I thoroughly liked every single track on it: one of my all-time favorite albums, to be sure.  But it took a while for me to get there...it wasn't until Led Zeppelin's box set was released in 1990 and my local rock radio station played it that I realized all that I had been missing with this great band over the years...

327 BIG TIME...Peter Gabriel
Big Time is one of two songs on today's "list of ten" that I took an initial aversion toward because I so disliked the accompanying video...once I shed it and simply listened to the music I realized what a funny, funky piece of brilliant satire this was.  One of my favorite lines: "The place where I come from is a small town...they think so small they use small words.  But not me, I'm smarter than that, I've worked it out, I've been stretching my mouth to let those big words come right out."...

326 PARANOID ANDROID...Radiohead
I've always been impressed by singers who can hold a single note and strongly belt it out for a protracted time...Radiohead's Thom Yorke gave such a demonstration with this track from their 1997 O.K. Computer album.  I'm not sure exactly what the lyrics are meant to convey, but Yorke's cynical style and the band's tremendous instrumentation made this one of my favorites years later when I first heard it and enjoyed listening to it on my extended training runs in 2010...

325 THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD...the Beatles
When this song was released as a single in the late spring of 1970, it was called the "final Beatles song", for Paul McCartney has just announced his departure from the band.  Like Paul...who later complained about it in his lawsuit against the other three Beatles...I was initially taken aback at co-producer Phil Spector's lush orchestration and female chorus. Later, though, I came to like it and the song became more of a philosophical piece about the different long and winding roads we find ourselves journeying down at various stages of life...

324 THINK I'M IN LOVE...Beck
The Information...from 2006...may well be my favorite Beck album, and Think I'm In Love is one of my favorite tracks from it.  It's a sweet, simple love song with a catchy beat and crisp, sharply delineated instrumental roles.  I could see the Beatles in their heyday dreaming up a pop tune like this, with Paul on lead vocals and George and John harmonizing in the background.  My favorite line: "Probably lay my head on a wooden floor, tell her I was tired from working the store, counting all the cash from an old shoe box, saving up to buy her something she wants"...

323 TIME AFTER TIME...Cyndi Lauper
This is the other song that I first became acquainted with (and disliked) by watching its video...a really forgettable, maudlin viewing experience.  Not that 1984's  Time After Time on its own doesn't prey on the emotions as well...it's just that there's such a thing as overkill and the song works very well without any "help".  Just listening to it amplified the beautiful arrangement, including that background ticking that made this more serious follow-up single to Lauper's Girls Just Want to Have Fun so appropriate.  As it was, Time After Time turned out to be one of my favorite songs of 1984 as I lived through that year...

322 LAYLA...Derek and the Dominos
I'm not referring here to Eric Clapton's later jazzed-up acoustic Layla that only encompassed the vocal first half of this classic he recorded while fronting Derek and the Dominoes...it's the instrumental last half of the earlier version, recorded in 1970 and complete with piano and virtuoso rock guitar, that endeared me to it so much during the summer of 1972 (a very good time in my life) and sold me on it as my favorite song of that year.  Legendary guitarist Duane Allman, who died in 1971 in a motorcycle accident, provided much of the guitar "beauty" for this enchanting work...

321 I WALK THE LINE...Johnny Cash
What can I say about the Man in Black except that whenever I'm dressed in black I invariably think about the late Johnny Cash...what a great, class act!  I remember he once had his own TV variety show in the 1970s...one of the features was "Ride This Train" where he would musically treat an important time in America's popular history...I Walk the Line to many was Cash's first and biggest hit.  I love the way he would change the pitch of his voice with each succeeding stanza...reminds me of the old "limbo" line: how low can you go?

Next week: songs #320-321...

Attended Last Night's Christmas Jubilee Jam at the Thomas Center

Yesterday evening, at the historic Thomas Center about six blocks north of downtown Gainesville, Melissa and I went to the annual Christmas Jubilee Jam, which is one of the concerts the group Gospel Meets Jazz conducts there every two months for various charities.  This event's proceeds went to fund aid for homeless students attending Alachua County's schools...a worthy cause and one befitting the Christmas season.  Lanard Perry leads this project and plays trumpet for the group onstage...I don't know the names of the jazz pianist, drummer, or guitarist, but that pianist rocks!  The two-hour show featured guest singers who, along with the band, performed various Christmas and gospel songs...mostly to a jazz format that totally worked.  They also had a barbershop quartet that sang acapella several old Yuletide hits...it all was very entertaining and I was impressed with both the musicianship of everyone involved and the sweet spirit and good tidings they shared with the enthusiastic audience...

As I shared before, Gospel Meets Jazz holds its concerts every two months at the Thomas Center on 302 NE 6th Avenue.  The music is faith-based and uplifting...and exciting! I'm thinking about going to another or more of their shows next year...their dates: Feb 21, Apr 24, June 19, Aug 14, Oct 16...and then on to the next Christmas Jubilee Jam in December, 2020.  You probably want to purchase tickets in advance...the show we just went to had sold out.  Here's their website link: [gospelmeetsjazz]...

Maybe Joe Biden Doesn't Need to Be So Lucid

Joe Biden is starting to sound more lucid...I'm not sure that's a good thing as he clearly answered a question during Wednesday night's Democratic presidential candidate debate on CNN that yes, he would be willing to sacrifice blue collar jobs in his fight against climate change if elected.  Maybe if he had been a little more confused and incoherent as in earlier debates his answer might have escaped the attention of those many former Obama voters who switched parties and voted for Trump in 2016 in states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania (and by this electing him president)...I doubt that our former vice-president is even remotely aware that through his comments he's driving them all back into the arms of the Orange Man in 2020.  But the CNN talking heads after the debate thought that ol' Joe had performed really well...of course, none of them are blue collar workers, are they? I'm not against Biden being against global warming and having us as a nation being better stewards of our resources, but you don't just flat come out and say you're bad news for working people and then expect their votes, sheesh.  As for President Trump, it saddens me that he has thrown his lot in with climate change deniers as I thought he could have pushed for a more equitable Paris Accord agreement that actually put some pressure on China to be responsible about its carbon emissions...under the current pact they can keep building coal burning plants and increasingly spew carbon dioxide in the atmosphere until 2030 when they're supposedly going to then "cap it": that is completely unreasonable, in my opinion, especially when other signatory nations had much more stringent standards to uphold.  But unlike with trade Trump doesn't want to negotiate anything about climate change since he thinks it's just another hoax.  I am equally at odds with Democrats who think that by punishing our own economy regarding the use of our energy resources we'll somehow be setting some kind of shining example for the rest of the world to follow: tell that to China and give our own workers a break, please...

Quote of the Week...from Frank Zappa

The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced.     ---Frank Zappa

I've seen comic Bill Maher get on his HBO show and often joke about how much he likes to smoke pot (years before eight of our states legalized casual use) and has had guests on the air who seemed to be stoned...and then I look at the statistic of over 600,000 people arrested for simple marijuana possession last year. Not that I'm a fan of marijuana: I've never used it and never will...and am skeptical of those who practically idolize the weed. Still, I have to disagree with the substance of late avant-garde rock musician Frank Zappa's above quote although I agree with its spirit: our laws are not randomly enforced...if they were, things would be fairer.  For Kamala Harris, current U.S. senator from California and that state's former prosecutor, to kid around about having smoked pot after she prosecuted others for the same offense isn't random enforcement, either: it's elitism, saying that some people in society are to be judged by different standards under the law than others.  And when you see this circus of result-oriented Federal and Supreme Court judge nominations that has been going on during different administrations during the last couple of decades at least (from both political parties), it becomes apparent that "justice" and the "law" are now being interpreted in a very political and ideological way that diminishes fairness and elevates agendas...

I don't think that police treat the upper class in our society like those in low-income areas...that's not random enforcement in the strict meaning of the word "random".  And in the courts the rich can afford better attorneys...along with private investigators...than the poor, who often must resort to whatever pro bono legal assistance the court provides them...that's not random justice.  The randomness in law enforcement is real, though, when laws are on the books that are violated so much by people at large that the police cannot possibly catch everyone and must then take violators in a more randomized fashion...traffic speed traps are a good example of this strategy.  But, of course, if profiling is going on in the mind of the stationed law enforcement officer, even that isn't truly random, either...

As for the first part of Zappa's quote stating that laws are badly written, just keep in mind that when a politician is elected to a legislature, be it local, state, or national in scope, he or she will naturally feel the pressure to "do" something...and that means becoming an active part of lawmaking.  Like the Geico commercial, it's "what you do" when you're a politician.  So a legislative body will brag about all the bills they submitted or passed and politicians will run for reelection touting their list of accomplishments.  And sometimes they'll pass laws just to say they passed them...after all, one of the most common election-season rallying points is that the other party is a bunch of  "do-nothings".  So as a result we often end up saddled with some pretty crappy laws as our elected officials struggle to justify themselves to the next round of voters...

Just Finished Reading Two If By Sea by Jacquelyn Mitchard

Two If By Sea is a 2016 novel by American writer Jacquelyn Mitchard...it's my first book of hers I've read.  The protagonist is Frank Mercy, a retired cop whose parents and grandparents raised and trained horses back in Wisconsin.  Frank has been residing for some time in the Brisbane area of Queensland, Australia, and has married Natalie from one of the families he has befriended there.  But on Christmas Eve, a tsunami sweeps the coastline and kills his wife, along with much of her family.  Deep in grief, Frank finds himself rescuing from the raging waters a young boy who he soon discovers has a special gift and that some nefarious, ruthless characters are pursuing him for that ability.  Frank takes him back to Wisconsin where he begins to train horses himself...read the rest of the book yourself to find out what I deliberately left out (a lot of stuff), not wanting to spoil the story...

There are questions...based on the nature of Ian, the boy that Frank "adopts" as his own son...about Frank's many decisions throughout the story that the author could have addressed but didn't: I think that was a missed opportunity to make the story's message stronger.  Plus, it just seemed to me as if Mitchard had some story themes she wanted to throw into a story: Australia, tsumani, family tragedy, strangely gifted little kid, horse training and the equestrian sport, even an English country estate...and decided to stick them all in there and try to make the pieces fit together, which in my opinion they didn't.  I also felt that Frank's behavior toward the obvious, established threat that the bad guys posed toward himself and his loved ones was strangely cavalier as he was continually leaving others unguarded and vulnerable.  Don't get me wrong: as stories go I liked it and the characters were decent...but looking back, it seemed kind of sloppy and the author tried to put too many disjointed elements into it along with curiously-behaving characters.  I'm just guessing, but Jacquelyn Mitchard's many previous works were probably better...

Weekly Short Stories: 1954 Science Fiction, Part 4

I conclude my look back at the year 1954 in short science fiction with discussions of the final five entries in the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 16 (1954). I like this series in large part because the two editors, Martin H. Greenberg and Isaac Asimov, contribute brief introductions to each of the stories, often referencing other works of the author in question.  Each book also gives a synapsis of that year in history...not only the headlines news but also what was happening in entertainment and the arts, including of course science fiction literature...

THE FATHER-THING by Philip K. Dick
In what on the surface seems to be a typical suburban American family setting, the mom tells her son to call his dad in to dinner...but the boy, having just seen two identical "dads" in the garage, doesn't want to go.  What eventually happens in this horror-turned-science fiction story reminded me a famous 1956 sci-fi movie and made me wonder whether they derived their movie idea from this Philip K. Dick tale.  Upon further investigation I discovered that the movie was derived...but from a story earlier than Dick's...so maybe it was Dick who picked up on someone else's idea.  Regardless, this is a pretty scary story...

THE DEEP RANGE by Arthur C. Clarke
Clarke, who lived for many years in Ceylon/Sri Lanka, was an accomplished skin diver with a great love for the sea and its life.  This optimistic story is set in a future time when the ocean depths are the source of farming and ranching that easily feed the world's population, forever putting an end to famine.  But within one of the herds of whales, it seems a predator has slipped through the barrier and the protagonist, along with his two dolphin colleagues, go down to investigate...

BALAAM by Anthony Boucher
I'm really not a fan of overtly religious analogies and speculation within the science fiction genre...the ending to the Matrix series left me a bit cold.  Boucher has already gone down this road with his The Quest for St. Aquin and once again I'm being subjected to yawn-inspiring theological arguments in sci-fi disguise.  Balaam seeks to recreate the parameters of that Old Testament story as a Jewish rabbi on Mars is ordered by his military commander to curse that planet's alien invaders...

MAN OF PARTS by H. L. Gold
In an interstellar war of the distant future, a spaceship pilot who had just bombed a crucial site of the enemy's crashes on a nearby world populated by rock-and-metal-based intelligent creatures completely unaware of the conflict going on in the stars above them.  One of their surgeons rescues most of the pilot's brain and his two arms by putting them into the largely metallic body of a miner, a completely different, non-humanoid life-form.  The resuscitated pilot finds himself in a deep conflict trying to reconcile his original human nature with his new life and its parameters...along with his new society's values, priorities, and assumptions.  Very interesting, and I found the ending to be funny in a kind of macabre way...

ANSWER by Fredric Brown
Brown was famous for writing extremely short stories with knockout endings...here's another one, less than a full page in length.  In the future, all the computers spanning the cosmos have been connected and now humanity can use them to solve what heretofore had been considered to be unsolvable problems.  Upon closing the switch that establishes the connection uniting the computing systems of 96 billion planets, Dwar Reyn poses the first (and possibly final) question...now get ready for the punchline...

Next week I'll start reviewing selected science fiction short stories from the year 1955...

Upcoming Militarization of Space Will Finally Make It Interesting

I was standing outside the other evening looking at the clear sky, full of the bright wintertime stars and recognizing old celestial friends from my childhood...they never seem to change.  But the vastness of space, the great distances between stars and even the planets in our solar system, and the lengthy span of time it times to travel in anywhere in space...combined with that seldom (or very slowly) changing nighttime celestial theater...all contribute, sad to say, to a general apathy toward astronomy and space exploration on the part of the general public.  Instead, people would rather go watch the latest Star Wars movie, where the fictional characters can cross vast regions of space in the blink of an eye and...well, since there's always a war going on, then that's exciting, right?  And so with what seems to be an incremental militarization of space and our president's call for a "space force" to counter actions by Russia and China we may be finally...and dismally...finding a way of looking at astronomy and the space program as something more interesting...and deadly.  But let's face it: every crucial development in human transportation, from riding horses and other animals through steam locomotion, trains, ships, motorized vehicles, dirigibles, planes, and submarines, has always been quickly applied to war-making and gaining an advantage over the adversary...sooner or later we should have known that space would be the next military frontier.  As a matter of fact, shooting rockets into space was a direct outgrowth of the Nazi Germans' V-2 rocket program whereby scientists and engineers like Wernher Von Braun developed a new type of locomotion for war use...after World War II he and others were picked up by the U.S. and the Soviets to work on their own Cold War projects.  And being able to project missiles accurately over very long distances directly led to the race to the moon between the two sides in the 1960s...

Well, the people have spoken and they think space warfare is interesting and maybe a nonmilitarized space future with comprehensive international cooperation and goodwill would be just too boring to attract their attention and enthusiasm.  And since...at least here in America...public opinion counts for a lot in what our elected politicians decide to spend money on, I'm afraid that folks are in danger of getting in "real" life what they happily spend their money to achieve in "reel" life.  Now I'm not criticizing the president's 2018 plan for a space force...it may indeed be necessary and I'm not in a position to go over all the classified information about what other countries are doing up there...but maybe it's not going as planned as the current spending deal just negotiated between the politically-divided Congress and the White House cut a whopping $32 million in appropriations for it from the $72 million the administration asked for...