Stratovania

Happy Memorial Day, everybody! Wait, is Memorial Day supposed to be happy? Probably not. I will say that postal holidays are annoying when you're expecting something in the mail. I mean, it probably wouldn't have come today anyway, but if there's no mail then there isn't even the CHANCE that it would. At least I got one of the things I ordered (Dennis Anfuso's The Winged Monkeys of Oz) on Saturday.

They recently opened a miniature golf course at the nearby Nifty Fifty's, so bethje and I went there last night to try it out. We hadn't played miniature golf in a long time, and it was pretty fun. There weren't any windmills, pink elephants, or clowns on the course. They did, however, have some fake mountains to climb, and one green was inside a cave (Beth said it reminded her of Skull Mountain at Great Adventure). One thing that kind of bothered me is that the holes all had flags in them, which we had to take out before playing them. I know that's how it works at a regular golf course, but there you probably don't have to pull them out yourselves. Some of the flags had already come off their poles, which is probably a good indication that making the public take them in and out themselves isn't such a good idea.

Also last night, we watched the Lemony Snicket movie, which neither of us had seen before. While I didn't think it was particularly good, I have to say that, with a few significant exceptions, I couldn't think of any ways in which it could have been better. Some books just don't translate that well to film. Combining three books into one movie meant they sped through a lot, and underscored how formulaic the first few books in the series are. I don't think they could have stretched just the first book into a feature film, though. Some of the sets were good, and I did like the bizarre cars that Mr. Poe and Count Olaf drove. There were also some new jokes that I found to be in the spirit of the books, like the "Littlest Elf" fake beginning and the narrator's suggestion to exit the theater, living room, or airplane in which you were watching the movie. On the negative side, however, there were so many things that they got wrong for no apparent reason. Klaus only wore glasses in one scene, Mr. Poe didn't cough, and the powder-faced women didn't have powdery faces. Also, wasn't Captain Sham's cap supposed to have been specifically placed to cover Olaf's unibrow? I'm not totally sure on that last one, as it was a long time ago that I read the book. In addition, I felt that there were too many instances in which they replaced the problem-solving segments of the books with new ones that weren't as interesting. I guess the train scene was basically in keeping with the general style of the books. The magnifying glass bit, on the other hand, not only came across as a bit over-the-top even for A Series of Unfortunate Events, but also contradicted the first book's much more clever explanation as to why Olaf and Violet's marriage wasn't legal. So, overall, not too great, but I have to admit that I was expecting worse.

1. Maybe this is crazy on my part, but I don't really like following other people's cars, or other people following mine. The few times I've had to do that, it's worked out all right. Still, I'm always afraid that I'll lose them at a traffic light, or someone else will get in between us, or something like that.

2. I picked up The Tragic Treasury at a music store today. I've also read the first few chapters of The End. So far, no answers to any of the Big Mysteries in Lemony Snicket's series have been forthcoming.

3. Another thing I've been reading recently is Slate's Blogging the Bible series, in which a Jewish editor attempts to read the Bible all the way through, and comments on it as he goes. So far, he's gotten up through Judges. It's pretty interesting, and his take is neither overly snarky (like, say, the Skeptics' Annotated Bible, which I also enjoy) nor totally apologetic. He mentions both the good and the bad. I still hope to read the entire Bible someday myself, but I've only managed to get up through 1 Samuel so far.

4. You know what argument I'm tired of seeing? No, not "allowing gay marriage will also mean people will marry their pets" or "if you do [X], the terrorists win," although those are also pretty high up there. I'm talking about "if you don't believe in God, you're not accountable to anyone." Um, what about being accountable to society, and to your own conscience? It could also be argued that doing the right thing simply because you're concerned about how someone else will react to it is a mentality that we're supposed to grow out of, but that would be getting into some complicated issues of behavioral psychology and where morality comes from in the first place. Suffice it to say that people tend to share a lot of the same basic morals and ethics, regardless of their religion or lack thereof.

I finished reading Lemony Snicket's most recent book, The Penultimate Peril, this evening. The books have been getting progressively longer as the series goes on, but they're still pretty quick reads. This one brings back a lot of characters from earlier books, which is a nice touch. I also like the idea of a hotel arranged by the Dewey Decimal System (maybe sometime I should look in the books I use for cataloging, and see how appropriate the numbers are), and the running joke about Count Olaf being a bad speller. Not surprisingly, there are mentions of Beatrice and the sugar bowl, but no more information as to why they're important. There's also somewhat of an additional mystery involving Olaf's and the Baudelaires' parents.

I have to wonder how much of the mystery aspect to the series was planned from the beginning, and how much was just made up as the author went along. Certainly, The Unauthorized Autobiography of Lemony Snicket introduces a lot of information that would come into play in later books, and adds an element of mystery to seemingly inoccuous events from earlier volumes. But I get the impression that these earlier events weren't originally intended to have hidden meanings. I think The Austere Academy was the first book in the series that gave the impression that there was something going on beyond a villain's outlandish plots to steal a fortune from three orphans. It included the first mention of V.F.D., and I think the first reference that connected the story of Lemony and Beatrice to that of the Baudelaires, as well. Maybe I should take a look back through some of those earlier books, especially The Unauthorized Autobiography, to see whether there are any clues or connections that I missed the first time through.

Hmm, this year saw the release of the next-to-last volumes in both the Harry Potter and Lemony Snicket series. I suppose it's an auspicious year for such things.