I am keeping a new blog for reviews, roleplaying thoughts, and anything that I can sloppily lump under the term “culture.”
It’s here:
Author: Bryant
I’m mildly addicted to Hard Case Crime books. (Parenthetical trivia: Charles Ardai, the editor and founder of Hard Case Crime, is married to Naomi Novik, who writes the Temeraire series. Fantasy Napoleonic dragons vs. noir thrillers. Small world.)
Anyway, mildly addicted. The new books are in the style of the old books, and the old books are a fun read. Slick, completely stuck in the preconceptions and prejudice of their day, but fun. Tough guys slouch around dealing with rotten people in seedy situations, and there’s a bad idea for every gin mill and a gin mill for every chapter. There’s something charming about a milieu in which the world isn’t measured by the time it takes for an email to get to you — I suspect that one of the key dividing lines of modern fiction is the point at which cell phones became so common that you had to assume them. It’s a fundamental change in the difficulty of interactions.
The view of organized crime is a really interesting difference between these books and modern mysteries slash thrillers. Blame the trinity of Puzo, Coppola, and Scorsese, I suppose. All these old books have an organized crime that’s almost completely a corporate matter. The Organization (or Outfit, or Family, but not Mafia) has lawyers. It wears three-piece suits and does business in a fairly chilly, austere kind of a way.
In Point Blank, the money quote goes like this: “Let me tell you something about corporations, Walker. This is a corporation, I’m an officer of a corporation, and we deal in millions, we never see cash. I’ve got about eleven dollars in my pocket.” That’s the size of it. You see hints of Sicilian heritage here and there, but they get shoved into the background a lot. Sometimes you don’t really see organized crime as much as you see a big businessman whose pursuits lead him across the legal limit now and again.
I figure this reflects the corporate mindset of the fifties. It wasn’t till 1969 that Puzo blew it apart with The Godfather, and Coppola and Scorsese nailed the coffin shut, or some such suitably violent metaphor. This is about a ten year lag from the point at which the Mafia as we think of it today first really hit the American consciousness, but that sounds about right for pop culture.
This primary realization, along with a week or two spent swimming in 50s-60s noir, was the clue that unlocked Edge of Midnight for me. You want to pull back a notch and go for that chilly, corporate feel or the world doesn’t quite make sense. At least, not for me.
This leads to my one-shot idea, which is an Edge of Midnight game set in the aftermath of one of those failed jobs you got all the time. I think I’d want to kill off the protagonist, or rather, the person who’d be the protagonist in the book. I could do worse than lift Max Allan Collins’ first Nolan novel, with a dead Nolan; that leaves us with the older guy who plans jobs, his eager but wet behind the ears nephew, his nephew’s friend the driver… I’d have to rework the girlfriend, who is in no way a playable character, but I’ll think of something.
Some geeks build things. A few geeks build things really well. Once upon a time, there was a geek named Tom, an MIT graduate, who worked for Polaroid. He decided he wanted to build a rock and roll band.
So he built Boston, and say what you will, but it’s my opinion that he built the best stadium rock band ever. Boston had the biggest selling debut album and held that record for over ten years, which is not trivial. That doesn’t mean it was great music, but stadium rock isn’t great music. They knew what they were doing.
They: Barry Goudreau, Tom Scholz, and Brad Delp. Cause nah, it wasn’t just Scholz and his magical effects boxes. Goudreau played guitar and wrote songs, and Delp’s voice was pretty much integral to the whole thing. Not that he was a great singer, although he was good, but he had great range and a wonderful harmony and it wouldn’t have been Boston’s soaring overblown overwrought flights of musical excess without him.
All of which is preamble to this: Brad Delp died today, at age 55, in his home in New Hampshire. I am sorely saddened. May he rest in peace.
Pan’s Labyrinth is not so much a children’s movie. It’s about children, but that’s not really the same thing. Easy mistake, since it’s called a fairy tale and that has certain cultural references for us, but think the original Grimm’s stories.
Which were, admittedly, cautionary. I guess you could take your kid to Pan’s Labyrinth as a cautionary measure against him or her becoming a fascist military officer, but there may be better ways to accomplish that.
Really, though, it’s a fairy tale about the Spanish Civil War. Three acts, three tasks, three parallels to those tasks in the adult world. Ofelia and Mercedes begin by capturing keys; the second task is taking a dagger, mirrored by Mercedes’ knife (and her later use of it). And finally, Ofelia’s choice regarding her brother is precisely Captain Vidal’s choice regarding Ofelia’s mother Carmen — what’s a life worth to you?
Or, perhaps, it’s Mercedes’ choice about Vidal. Hard to say. Is Vidal’s search for information about the rebels likewise a parallel to the quest for the key? Are his torture instruments his dagger? You could read it that way, although I think that’s perhaps a bit more multi-layered than del Toro intended. The pivot point of Ofelia’s brother is enough of a nexus for the parallel quests for me.
On the other hand, I’m perfectly content to assume that the fantasy kingdom is Spain without Franco. Only makes sense.
Pan’s Labyrinth fits in with Labyrinth (sans sentimentality), Heavenly Creatures (sans insanity), and The Great Yokai War (sans Miike). Awesome movie.
So as was fairly noticeable, we had a hard drive crash here at Innocence Central a couple of weeks ago. Recovery is in progress, nothing was lost, etc. So not very traumatic. On the other hand, it did get me thinking about what I wanted to do with my blog, my LiveJournal, and so forth.
After a bunch of said thinking, I decided to shut down this blog. It’s been around for five years or so, which is probably about enough time. Somewhere back there I got distracted from writing about culture and into politics, which was fun for a few years, but yeah. I’ve lost my zest for that.
For the time being, personal stuff will wind up on my LiveJournal. Chances are very good there’ll be a new blog at a later date, which will feed into my LJ. My LJ will, under the current plan, wind up having posts that the blog doesn’t have. I could draw a Venn diagram but it’s not that hard.
So, good night, Popone! Comments are closed; the archives will stick around for the foreseeable future.
This isn’t a real post; this is a way to spread what paltry Googlejuice I have.
Hey! Cameron Rogers!
Getting Things Done. Anyone tried it? Does it work for you? Tips and/or tricks? Do I have to drink the koolaid?
(Regardless of the answers to these questions, my next PC will use GTD as an organizing scheme. Possibly this promise excludes Jess’s Exalted game, but I’m not sure.)
So I wander into my break room at work today and I see this:
“Golden French Toast.”
On one of those little cups you stick in the coffee machine and it makes coffee. We have a bunch of various types. This is new to me. I figured it was a joke.
“The comforting flavors of warm, buttered French Toast with a touch of cinnamon, drizzled with sweet maple syrup.”
Wow, nicely forged label!
Sadly, on closer inspection, it wasn’t a forgery. This is what flavored coffees lead to. Cats and dogs, living together. Bah humbug.
Disney’s still really in fine form. Not perfect, but in fine form.
You get these wistful references to the glory days, which are kind what happens when people don’t recognize that their enjoyment of Carousel of Progress is due to nostalgia rather than due to any quality of the ride experience. It’s pretty bogus. The best work ever done at Walt Disney World was during the late 80s and 90s, when Disney-MGM and Animal Kingdom opened. The worst park, from a sheer quality perspective, is Epcot. On the other hand, it’s the worst park at WDW, which means I enjoy the heck out of it every time.
New stuff this trip!
Raglan Road is a new restaurant which looked cheesy in potential but wow, does it work out well. The food’s really good; traditional Irish cooking with spiffed up presentation and a lot of care taken with ingredients and such. I had this pork loin stuffed with sausage, plus mashed potatoes, and it was just so well done. Perfect harmony of tastes, mild but rich at the same time — loved it.
I did a lot more of Animal Kingdom than usual. The new Everest coaster is superb; not a high end coaster like Universal has across town, but the use of reverse is really good. I liked it a lot. I also saw a lot more of the theming in the Asia section of the park, and it’s an immaculate vista. I’ve read that the team responsible made a field trip to Nepal and the Himalayas, and it’s very easy to believe that.
I also hit Africa, although I skipped the rides. Again, great theming. It’s odd to see pretty depressing areas converted to shiny tourist places, mind you, but I appreciate it as an illusion of relocation to a nonexistent world, if that makes sense.
Disney-MGM is the same way; the theming is very dense, with a lot of detail. I compare this to Epcot, which has minimal theming in the Future World section and very… bursty theming in the World pavilions, I guess. The individual pavilions are buildings in the country’s styles, but for the most part, they don’t present an environment. They’re pavilions, not areas.
Speaking of Epcot, I did the American Adventure show for the first time. Eh. I don’t expect I’ll redo it; it’s cheesy and overwrought.
I continue to wish Disney would figure out Future World. There’s a rumor that Siemens will be sponsoring more of it, which might help, but man. It’s too spread out, and there’s too little to do — the original concept of sub-areas sponsored and invigorated by various companies has been too hard to maintain with shifting sponsorships.
Oh — Soarin’ is nice. Not great, but nice. It needs a narrative track, although the raw images of California are pretty awesome.
I spent a bus ride chatting with an older couple who’d just done a Disney Vacation Club open house. Nice people, but the interesting thing was that they said their guide claimed a new park (“fifth gate,” in Disney fanatic parlance) was on the way. They said he said he couldn’t say anything about it, but that it was gonna be under construction soon.
This seems unlikely — I can’t find a thing about it on the rumor sites — but hey, you never know. If there is a new park opening up in WDW, my bet is that it’ll be a thrill ride park similar to Universal’s Islands of Adventure; it’s the only thing in Orlando that you can’t find replicated inside WDW property.
Good trip. Can’t wait till next time, as usual.
So here’s what I’d like, please: I’d like an recording of Sondheim’s Assassins as sung by a quality a cappella group. See if we can’t make this happen, okay? Thanks.