Stratovania

I haven't written a post here in a while, and I'm not sure many people even remember that LiveJournal still exists, but I thought I might do a life update of sorts. For one thing, I received the pictures I commissioned from Becca, who's really cool and has been having a difficult time of things recently. She drew a picture of Beth with Wally (who's actually sitting on me right now, but I don't know how long he'll stay), and one of Glinda and Ozma.


Yesterday, I went with Beth and Tavie to the Guggenheim Museum, where today is the last day you can get a free year-long membership with a New York City ID from 2015. They're currently renovating a lot of it, so there were quite a few closed spaces, and you couldn't go all the way down the spiral. I'm sure that, as a kid, I would have just wanted to run down that without more than a cursory glance at the exhibits. My parents won't let me forget about the time we went to Ausable Chasm and I ran through as much of it as possible, heedless of the fact that this was really dangerous. I did get some pictures of people working on exhibits down on the bottom floor.

I have to wonder what the purpose of the decapitated panda is. They had a Kandinsky exhibit that I quite liked; I'm not always that big on abstract art, but his paintings are just so colorful and active.

I also thought that this water fountain looked like something from a fairy tale castle.

Yeah, I know the fountain wasn't on display, but I tend to notice side details like that. It's like how, when I'd go to theme parks as a kid, I was fascinated by how minor aspects were made to fit the theme of a particular area, and somewhat bothered when they didn't fit. I remember reading that one reason Walt Disney insisted on the underground passages at Walt Disney World was that it took people out of the fantasy when costumed employees had to walk through the wrong part of the park, like an astronaut in Frontierland. Honestly, though, that probably would have just amused me, like when people wear Starfleet uniforms to the Renaissance Faire and pretend they've gone back in time.

After the museum, we met Stephanie at a Greek restaurant and had dinner there. I had seafood and pasta with tomato sauce, which kind of seems more Italian than Greek, but they are pretty close to each other. There are a lot of similarities between food from different Mediterranean nations. My taste in food is mostly pretty mundane. I like pizza, pasta, shrimp, and hot dogs. I'm not as big on burgers as my wife is, but I still enjoy them, especially when I can get them with a cheese other than American. I can usually find something I like at just about any restaurant, though. My main issues are that I won't eat anything too spicy, I don't much care for onions and peppers, and potatoes and rice aren't that agreeable to me unless they have enough other flavors mixed in (which means I'll generally eat them fried, because pretty much all fried food tastes about the same). I realize I'm a really picky eater, but I think I'm getting better. I gave Beth part of the salad that came with my meal (hers didn't come with one), but I actually thought it was pretty good for a salad. Pretty much everything came with feta cheese, which has a good flavor to it.

I just recently learned that there's an Oz Convention in Philadelphia this year, so it would be kind of silly if I didn't go to it. I'm seriously considering going to the one in Oregon as well; the rates actually went up today, but not by that much. A bigger concern is whether I should take Beth, who's not into Oz stuff, but I do like sharing my interests with her. I go to the Monster-Mania Convention with her, and have learned to appreciate the horror genre, but those conventions are a lot cheaper. On the other hand, you don't get meals there. The last time I went to one of the Oz Club's conventions was in 2000, and I enjoyed them a lot back then. That's not to say there weren't slow parts, but usually I could find something to read or otherwise check out during those. There are so many stories I started reading at conventions that I wish I could find again.

While I read all of Mari Ness's Oz reviews and am currently keeping up with her write-ups on Disney animated films and their source material, I wasn't aware until this week that she reviewed the Chronicles of Narnia five years ago. Reading her thoughts and the comments made me want to write some more about Narnia, but looking back through my previous posts on the series, I've already covered just about everything I can think of. It happens to me every so often that I think I have a good idea for a post, then I find I've already written it. The Narnia series is one I grew up enjoying and still do, but I've also found quite a bit about it objectionable or just plain sloppy. It was pointed out a few times in Mari's posts and the comments on them how small Narnia is, both in terms of land area and how long it lasted. While not explicitly stated in the books, C.S. Lewis' timeline indicated that the entire world lasted a mere 2555 years from creation to destruction. I noted in my brief review of The Last Battle when I re-read it ten years ago that the Narnian apocalypse came across as fairly small-time and unnecessary. The ape and his donkey partner in a lion skin were not at all threatening, but apparently Aslan thought their playing a trick was enough to wipe out the whole place. But then, attempts to end a popular series are rarely very convincing to the fans. Just ask L. Frank Baum or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (you know, if they were still alive and able to be asked anything).

I had an interview on Thursday for a temporary assignment, and while I don't want to go into too much detail on a public post, it sounded promising. Most of the snow in the area has been cleaned up by now, but the intersections always seem to be particularly bad. There was even a New York Times article about it. Oh, and I guess this Thursday is when I'll see Jenny Lewis, so that's something to look forward to.

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This is kind of an old question at this point, but I figure it would be appropriate for me to answer it. Like some other people who answered this, my first favorites were the Winnie-the-Pooh books. I'm told I could first read at the age of three, and while I can't personally remember this, I guess it's true. And yes, the first stories I read were Pooh stories. I also wrote some of my own, although I don't think I fully grasped the style. One story that I came up with before the age of five (I think I drew the pictures, but one of my parents wrote in the words that I dictated) involves Pooh driving to the North Pole in a Volkswagen Rabbit to go grocery shopping. I had somewhat of an obsession with the Rabbit at that point, not because I ever rode in one (I didn't), but I think I just liked that there was a car with the name of one of the Pooh characters, not to mention the rabbit on the back of the car. I think Volkswagen actually stopped making Rabbits for most of my life, although I believe they're around again now. Hey, since it's a German car, how come it's not called a "Hase"?

Later, I really got into the Alice books, and read them many times. My grandmother owned The Annotated Alice, and that was a help not only at making me a fan of annotated books in general, but because it explained a lot of the Victorian English terms that I initially didn't understand. I still enjoyed the book even before knowing them, though, so take that, L. Ron Hubbard!

I think I got into the Chronicles of Narnia when I was about nine, on a suggestion from my great-aunt. It was also around that time that I started reading The Hobbit, although it was a few years before I'd finish it. Same way with Lord of the Rings, actually. I enjoyed them, but as much as I liked Tolkien's universe, the style wasn't much of a page-turner for me. And I think it was due to a combination of The Annotated Alice and a book on holidays that I knew there were multiple Oz books. I was eleven when I read The Wizard of Oz, and not only did I finish it quickly, but I really got into the series over the next few years.

I still read a fair number of books that are classified as Children's or Young Adult, and not just Harry Potter. A lot of the time, I think the recommended age level is a marketing decision, and not always based on the actual contents or writing style, so why not? It is a little confusing in bookstores, though, because I'll end up looking for the same thing in several different sections. How am I supposed to know whether Borders considers Diana Wynne Jones to be Children's, Young Adult, or just plain Fantasy? Actually, I went there last week, and they had one of the Chrestomanci books in Fantasy and another in Young Adult. Oh, you bookstores and your arbitrary shelving! It reminds me of how the music store near my college dorm put Moxy Früvous' You Will Go to the Moon in Alternative, but their Bargainville in Pop. I guess it's kind of silly to even shop at physical book and music stores anymore, since just about everything is cheaper online, but there's something about the physical stores that I find more enjoyable.

bethje and I finally got around to watching last Sunday's Simpsons, American Dad, and Bob's Burgers (Family Guy was a rerun). I think the Simpsons episode did a good job of parodying eighties sitcoms, and Bart's attempt to sell nuclear secrets to China for a minibike was an interesting twist. I noticed quite a few jokes that I think were really stretched out, though, like the bit with the initials on the vans and the ending in general. Overall, though, I think it worked. I'm kind of surprised by the joke about the World Trade Center address, not because I found it offensive, but because I have to suspect someone still would (or at least pretend to be in order to generate publicity).

I haven't seen Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, and just about every review I've read suggests I probably shouldn't. I mean, I'm sure I'll watch it when it comes out on DVD, but not at the theater. One thing I remember seeing about it (and I obviously can't confirm this) is that there's a big action sequence near the end. It looks like that's pretty much inevitable for fantasy films these days. Hey, Lord of the Rings was successful, so let's make every other fantasy movie an action epic! Really, I even question some of the fighting in LotR. If taking out Sauron was the key to winning the war, why even bother with all those other battles until he's dead? I'm not saying that killing Sauron would have ended it all, any more than assassinating Hitler would have brought World War II to a screeching halt, just that any orc-killing done while the lord of evil was still around would be akin to moving the contents of a sandbox with tweezers. Still, that was what happened in the books, so I can't blame the movies for following suit. Besides, we got war elephants and fighting trees! When adapting a different sort of book, though, why is it necessary to follow suit? Hey, the Chronicles of Narnia had plenty of battles of their own, but the screenwriter for Prince Caspian still decided he needed to throw in more. And it seems like the only historical films that receive much attention are ones about war. People loved 300 (another one I haven't seen), but it seems to me that the Spartans were one of the least interesting societies in ancient Greece.


Considering who I am, you knew I was eventually going to bring this around to Oz, right? The MGM Wizard of Oz was made in a different time, and it's interesting to note how much LESS violent the movie is when compared to its source book. The book had Dorothy's companions battling wolves, crows, bees, Kalidahs, a wildcat, and a giant spider, usually in confrontations that ended quite badly for the belligerent creatures. None of this was in the movie, but on the other hand, they made the showdown with the Wicked Witch of the West into more of an epic conflict. The film had the Witch's death at the end of a scene with Dorothy's friends breaking into the castle and fighting the guards, while the equivalent in the book occurred when Dorothy was scrubbing the floor for the Witch and became angry at the hag's stealing one of the Silver Shoes. Then again, while the Dorothy of the book certainly didn't know water would kill the Witch, she did fully intend to douse the nasty woman. The splashing of Margaret Hamilton's Witch was collateral damage from Judy Garland's trying to save the Scarecrow. More epic, but also much more polite. Funny how that worked out. I've joked before that a modern remake of The Wizard of Oz would have Dorothy leading a regiment armed with Super Soakers, and unfortunately that probably isn't too far from the truth.

I was somewhat randomly (by which I mean I'm sure there WAS a logical progression within my own mind that led to it, but I can't recall what it was, and it probably wouldn't make sense to anyone else) thinking of The Magician's Nephew recently. This is the book that describes the origins of Jadis, who came from a dying world with a red sun, and had super strength while on our world. Sounds kind of familiar, doesn't it?

Last night, bethje, Dorothea, and I went to see Bill Maher's movie, Religulous, which was quite enjoyable. Some people have said that Maher is basically preaching to the choir, which might well be true, but it seems like he's also trying to get the people who agree with him to come out of the woodwork. As far as Maher's own opinions on the subject go, he sometimes gives the impression that he wants to have it both ways. He'll talk about how his primary view on the supernatural is that we just don't know, but he'll also sometimes say stuff like, "Oh, still talking to your imaginary friend in the sky, huh?" I get the feeling that his views are kind of similar to mine--not feeling that I have the authority to say that I know what's going on behind the scenes any more than anyone else does, but thinking that most perceptions of God don't really hold water--but he'll often go more in one direction than the other when he thinks it works. But then, he IS a comedian, and the movie WAS funny. I found his talks with the televangelist and the Latin guy who claims to be the Second Coming because he's a blood descendant of Jesus to be particularly amusing.

A lot of Maher's arguments were ones I've come across many times before, like the one about how most of the elements in the Jesus story had already existed in other religions. I know that, at one point in history, the common argument against this was that Satan must have looked into the future and come up with parodies of the truth, so as to drive people astray. The more amenable C.S. Lewis preferred the idea that these older myths were meant to prepare people for the true gospel. But then, we ARE talking about a guy who had Bacchus working alongside his Christ figure, in a scene that I'm quite disappointed didn't make the film version of Prince Caspian. Another argument that Maher didn't come up with but that I thought was good was the one that, if God is all-powerful, why He sees the need to communicate through prophets, instead of just talking to everyone all at once.

As might be expected, several of the people interviewed resorted to the Apple Jacks defense ("We just DO, okay?"), while others just walked out (or, in the case of the Mormons, had Maher thrown off their property). In fairness, we don't know how much material from these scenes was left on the cutting room floor, but I do have to wonder how strong people who aren't even willing to hear any arguments against their religions really are in their beliefs. When some religious group urges people to boycott (or, in extreme cases, declare a fatwah against) anything that mocks or debates their faith, can they really be that certain in their own faith, or do they have an ulterior motive? I mean, I doubt anyone with a really strong belief in Christianity would say, "What? Some comedian said Jesus might not have existed? I guess I have to throw away my entire belief system, then!" On the other hand, people who have just always believed because that's what they were brought up to do might, and I'm sure the religious authorities don't want to lose those people.

Man, I just got my car's windshield replaced, and there's already bird crap and pollen all over it. Can't I have a clean one for just a few days?

In other news, bethje and I saw Prince Caspian yesterday. ( Spoilers ahead! )

Also, happy belated birthday to annarama!

Here's a meme-style game I just recently thought up, which for lack of a better title I call "Things You Dislike About Things You Love." Basically, you list some things you enjoy (I ended up listing seven, but I don't think the number should be set in stone; it's cool if you think of more), and then mention an aspect of each that you don't like. You can be creative with them, but try to go with something that's more of a general trend than a specific item. For instance, don't choose a particular episode of a TV show, or a particular song by a band. That might also make (and probably is) a good meme, but it's not what I'm going for here.

1. The Simpsons - The overabundance of jokes that simply consist of Homer being seriously injured. Sure, these are funny occasionally if done cleverly (everybody loves the fall down Springfield Gorge), but I think too many episodes will have a five-minute scene of, say, Homer being electrocuted in lieu of any dialog or plot development.
2. Futurama - Yeah, this is a nerdlinger criticism, but I kind of wish they were more consistent about the level of technology. I don't mind things like the Professor using an overhead projector or a dot matrix printer, because those are funny. I mean like how there are episodes where the characters don't know what wheels are, even though we see a bunch of them in other episodes.
3. XTC - That they apparently can't just get together and record an album every once in a while.
4. The Oz Books - One issue that tends to make my head ache when I think about it (okay, I'm exaggerating a bit, but still) involves animals. We're told a few times that all animals in Oz can talk, and that no animal ever dies (with the occasional exception to this latter item). Yet we still see predators eating other animals, and people eating meat. Some of this meat does appear to grow on trees, but The Lost King of Oz gives us a case of a cook planning to kill and cook a goose in the usual way. So we have situations where people and animals apparently have no qualms with eating other sentient beings, and of animals that are presumably still alive while being cooked or devoured. It gets a little messy when you think about it, doesn't it? Then again, the idea in the Chronicles of Narnia that it's not okay to eat talking animals, but it's perfectly all right to eat non-talking animals of the same species, also comes across as rather messed up (and more elitist than in Oz, but then Narnia seems more elitist in general).
5. "Weird Al" Yankovic - One thing that comes to mind especially with his recent work is that he seems to think the word "midget" is inherently funny.
6. They Might Be Giants - The demise of Dial-A-Song. I mean, I understand why they had to shut it down, but it still sucks. Also, they no longer seem to have much interest in doing themed concerts, and I never got to see any shows back when they did (well, aside from a Flood show).
7. Role-Playing Video Games - I've mentioned this before, but in the spirit of the meme, I'll repeat myself. It bugs me when there's a big, long, unskippable bit of dialog before a difficult battle, which probably means you'll have to sit through it a whole bunch of times. I had that problem with the Valentina and Dodo fight in Super Mario RPG.

If anyone else wants to perpetuate this, go right ahead. I imagine it will go the same way as anything else I've attempted to start, though.

My goal of re-reading the Chronicles of Narnia has now come to fruition, now that I've completed The Last Battle. ( You know the drill by now, I'm sure. )

The single-volume edition of the Chronicles also includes an essay by Lewis, entitled "On Three Ways of Writing for Children." These three ways are writing what you think children want, writing with particular children in mind, and writing a children's story because it's the best way of saying what you want to say. He refers to the first one as "generally a bad way," and I think I would have to agree. That's the kind of thinking where people use half-assed marketing research and pop psychology to come out with something that's supposedly what some narrow audience wants, and it probably results in crap more often than not. Lewis goes on to defend children's fantasy, writing, "I am almost inclined to set it up as a canon that a children's story which is enjoyed only by children is a bad children's story." He also makes a good point when he says, "They accuse of arrested development because we have not lost a taste we had in childhood. But surely arrested development consists not in refusing to lose old things but in failing to add new things?" That's part of why I tend to get annoyed when people insist they've "outgrown" some book or band or something. Perhaps the word is appropriate in certain cases, but it carries the connotation that this something must be childish and immature. I remember an argument on the alt.music.tmbg newsgroup about whether it was possible to "outgrow" They Might Be Giants. My thought on the matter was that, yes, some people stop liking them as their tastes change, and that's perfectly fine. But to use the word "outgrow" implies that people who still like TMBG as they grow older are somehow immature.

This also ties into something I was thinking of not too long ago, regarding how I see the terms "adult" and "grown-up." To me, the former is mostly a matter of responsibility, and the latter a matter of dignity. "Grown-up" seems to me to carry a sense of snootiness and imagined superiority than "adult" doesn't. Does anyone else see it that way, or am I alone?

( Yes, we do have more quiz results. )

Last night, bethje gave me my final Christmas present, which was a DVD set of the two Ghostbusters movies. I'd been wanting to watch them again, so it was a good gift. I actually knew about it beforehand, so it wasn't a surprise or anything, but still.

I went to get dinner at the Burger King drive-through last night, and it was totally crazy. First of all, the lady I was ordering from kept calling me "ma'am." Then I said I wanted two plain Tendercrisp Sandwiches, and she asked me "which one" I wanted plain. Okay, I can understand that she might not have understood that I wanted both plain, but what kind of question is that? So they tell me the price is $17.01, and I pull up to the window and give them a coupon (which I totally told them I was using back when I was at the order box), and this kid there says, "Go." When I ask, "Go where?", he tells me to pull around to the front of the building. They do this all the time at that Burger King, for some unknown reason. But usually, they wait until AFTER you've paid. Apparently they thought it would be easier to take my money outside, go back inside to make change, and then return that change to me. Who knows what they were thinking? But anyway, after I pull around, the kid says the price is $17.01, and I tell him that's what it was before the coupon. So he says something about not being able to process the coupon because "there's no room on the screen" (whatever the hell THAT means). So eventually I end up going inside to pay for what was supposed to be a drive-through order.

Thanks to the AOL welcome screen, I know about such fascinating things as Angelina Jolie's pregnancy. Didn't she just adopt some foreign kids, though? I don't like Ms. Jolie, but I think adopting kids is usually a laudable action. And I assume she could adopt other kids if she really wanted to, right? So why bother getting pregnant? I guess that's something I don't entirely understand about many people, not just psycho celebrities. What's so great about having the baby come out of your body, rather than someone else's? It just seems a little odd to me. But then, I don't want kids at all.

My latest conquest in my re-reading of the Chronicles of Narnia was, as you might have guessed, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. ( Spoilers, as usual )

On Wednesday evening, I was stopped at a stoplight, and someone crashed into the back of my car. It looks like the bumper sustained most of the damage, and the car can still be driven. I'm probably going to take it to a garage and get the damage assessed tomorrow.

Bill O'Reilly had an entire segment on his Wednesday night show about the David Letterman interview the night before. As might be expected, when back on his own turf, he was totally defensive and (whether purposely or just because he's an idiot) missing the point. On the same show, he discussed the War on Christmas, the War on Marriage, and (for a little while, anyway) the ACTUAL war.

Last night, he showed some e-mail messages he'd gotten about the interview, and, as usual, did his stupid "Kool-Aid Alert!" bit. I'm not particularly fond of that expression anyway. I don't think what they drank in Jonestown really WAS Kool-Aid, and even if it was, it was hardly Kool-Aid's fault that their product was utilized in this manner. So people who use this expression publically are essentially slandering a tasty beverage. It's a good thing for O'Reilly that the manufacturers apparently aren't litigious. But fair or not, the expression has entered the vernacular, so that's not the main issue. The bigger concern is that O'Reilly uses it to describe anyone who disagrees with him, whether or not they're going along with someone else's ideas, and never in regards to people who mindlessly agree with him. I guess it's beneficial for someone like O'Reilly to present those who agree with him as intelligent thinkers and the opposition as brainwashed, but whatever happened to "no spin" and "fair and balanced"? I mean, does anyone still BUY that crap?

Finally, I finished re-reading The Horse and His Boy yesterday. ( SPOILERS )