Book Reviews

Now that this year's Whitney Awards gala is over, I can reveal (probably) that I got to be a judge in one of the categories for 2017. I got to read a lot of good books.

What'll follow in the next week or so are reviews I wrote of the books as I read them. Maybe not a good idea, but still.

Making Prime Work Part III

NOTE: This is the start of a very intermittent series on this blog, wherein I review anything I may have watched, read, or otherwise gained from our Amazon Prime membership. This is partly to continue justifying the cost of Amazon Prime as it takes yet another leap, and to remind me what a wonderful cornucopia of media there is out there that I have yet to witness, or re-witness as the case may be.

Part One: Mixing Fact With Fiction Diminishes the Fact

As a space exploration junkie who, for a time, had Apollo 13 on a near-endless loop at our house, I was thrilled to see 2017’s Russian film Salyut 7 available on Amazon Prime. I’d been familiar with the impressive and successful rescue of the Russian space station by two cosmonauts and thought watching an Apollo 13-like dramatization of the mission would be a lot of fun.

Fun it is.

And yet.

The fire on board, caused by a short-circuit when a random drop of water seeps into some electrical component. I can’t find any evidence that it happened.

And clearly, watching that sequence as cosmonaut/engineer Viktor Savinykh works with a fire extinguisher to put the fire out, dressed only in his blue uniform, to suddenly seeing him spewed out of the station in a fireball, clad completely in his EVA suit, I have to surmise: The fire did not happen. It was included in the film for dramatic effect.

Which is a shame, as the fictional event draws away from the fact of this technically significant rescue in space.

Do I have any evidence the fire did not occur?

Officially, I suppose, I do not.

But while the Internet is aglow with discussion of the Salyut 7 angels – unexplained light phenomenon that cosmonauts saw on more than one missing – I can’t find a thing about a fire during the repair/rescue mission.

So I have to assume the fire story is false.

UPDATE: Spent some time off and on over the last 24 hours searching for any fire connected with Salyut 7 or Soyuz 13, the craft sent to rescue the space station. Or any fire in space involving any Soyuz craft. Can’t find any evidence online, which leads me to surmise not only did the fire not happen during the rescue, it never happened during any Russian space flight. So again I ask, why include it in a “true” telling of the already significant rescue of the space station, other than for tawdry dramatic effect?

Additionally, there’s this bit of Russian paranoia about a Space Shuttle Challenger mission going up shortly after Russian mission control lost contact with the space station and the sinister suggestion that Challenger was going up with an empty cargo hold with the exact capacity needed to bring Salyut 7 to the United States.

Facts are there were nine shuttle missions in 1985, three within the Paranoia Window when Salyut 7 was out of contact.

Shuttle Discovery went up  in June, carrying three communications satellites. A Strategic Defense Initiative [cue sinister music] experiment went up as well.

Shuttle Challenger (the one specifically mentioned in the movie) went up in July, with experiments related to life sciences, plasma physics, astronomy, high-energy astrophysics, and other sciences went up. Not with an empty cargo area.

Discovery went up again in August, with another trio of communications satellites.

Not saying, of course, that there weren’t General Turgidsons probably thinking a shuttle mission could go up, snag Salyut 7, and bring it back home, but you have to wonder why a shuttle – prime examples of 1970s and 1980s space technology, would want to snag a foreign space station, with very likely similar technological achievement levels. It would be like me driving a Uhaul into the heart of Los Angeles and using it to swipe a 1985 Toyota Corolla. A fine piece of machinery no doubt, but nothing that couldn’t be more easily replicated by using parts I’ve probably already got lying around at home. And there’d be no international incident to have to explain away.

The paranoia runs deep, and apparently sank into this film.

Part Two: Idaho the ZZZZZZ

Now, I’m a native Idahoan. So when I saw Tim Woodward’s “Idaho, the Movie” available via Prime, I thought, let’s give it a shot.

Snoresville.

Lotsa glory shots. Other writers and artists offering scenic blather.

Now Idaho is a nice place to live. Many beautiful places to see. But this film was a sleeper. You get the perspective that Idaho, like The Good Life, shows a place filled with lovable, middle-aged eccentrics.



And absolutely no cities.

Which is fine, since any film focusing on the state’s cities would probably spend far too much time in Boise. Ick.

Making Prime Work, Part II

NOTE: This is the start of a very intermittent series on this blog, wherein I review anything I may have watched, read, or otherwise gained from our Amazon Prime membership. This is partly to continue justifying the cost of Amazon Prime as it takes yet another leap, and to remind me what a wonderful cornucopia of media there is out there that I have yet to witness, or re-witness as the case may be.

Part One: Were there Any Characters in this Movie?

I wasn’t sure at the outset if I was ready to watch a film based on 9/11, and as the disaster at the World Trade Center unspooled, the planes hit, and the buildings crumbled, all the feelings of that day came rushing back.



But as “World Trade Center” rolled on past the stuff we saw repeated and repeated and repeated on the news, the film felt empty. Like an obligation that, well, someone’s got to make a film on this event. May as well be Oliver Stone.

Oliver Stone, who left us under a different obligation: This is New York. This is the World Trade Center collapsing. These are Port Authority cops and their families suffering through the collapse and its aftermath. You will make emotional connections to these people. You will feel their pain.

Except, no.

The story, with that obligation, left so much lacking.

I found it hard to tell the difference between one family and the next. The story left for granted we were to pity these people, share their suffering. I wanted to. But it’s as if each character already knew the outcome, and thus met every even with quiet reserve, knowing Everything Would Be Okay. Even when the okayness was in doubt.

And that idiot cop from Wisconsin, whose line is supposed to sum up the nation’s anger over the attack? No, no, no. Emotions were high that day, and in the weeks that followed. But there was much more than “Bastards!” floating around out there.

Then there was the ex-Marine who went to the WTC. I don’t even remember his name.

There were human beings in this movie, but there were no characters. There were rote people performing rote actions that we were supposed to connect with, to cheer for, but there was none of that there. May as well have featured an all-machine cast in the movie, and the emotional connection would have been the same.

Part Two: Speaking of Machines

There was definite character in this film, even if the most prominent is the Saturn V rocket.



Truth be told, I have vague flashbacks of the actual humans who appeared in this documentary, but vivid recollections of the rocket and its power used to get the United States to the Moon.

And that’s about it. It’s a good rah-rah movie about a significant technical achievement.

A Writer Reads. And Should Help His Readers See A to B.

It’s clear in reading Louis L’Amour’s “Education of A Wandering Man” that Mr. L’Amour read a lot of books.

That’s as it should be. A writer ought to read a heck of a lot more than he or she writes, just so there’s enough information inside one’s head to draw on when the writing begins.

One thing I felt lacking, however: A connection between A and B.

It would be highly valuable for any aspiring writer to see how an idea gleaned from a book helped influence something an author writes.

For instance.

On page 198 of this very book, L’Amour writes:

I believe that man has been living and is living in a Neanderthal state of mind. Mentally, we are still flaking rocks for scraping stones or chipping them for arrowheads. The life that lies before us will no longer permit such wastefulness or neglect. We are moving into outer space, where the problems will be infinitely greater and will demand quicker, more accurate solutions. We cannot trust our destinies to machines alone. Man must make his own decisions.

What an inspiration and motivation for the Hermit of Iapetus. If I ever get back to that book, this passage will be a big guiding post as I work on it.

That being said, L’Amour’s book is still a valuable one for the writer, even if the how isn’t explained all that well. What’s important is the example. One might think that writing for the “frontier” or the “West,” as L’Amour did, would be easy, as there are a thousand tropes enough for a thousand novels per author. Nevertheless, L’Amour hints at how his long studies and experiences helped him shape his stories into something more than they would be if he had to invent every damn thing out of whole cloth.

Next time, take a few of the hints into a deeper look, just to help a fella out.

Draw the Moon

As you perform your peer reviews this week (and in subsequent weeks; this won’t be the last time we do these) remember one thing:

You probably see things differently than the writer.

Each of us have different experiences. Different backgrounds.

For instance, throughout the Book of Mormon we see the people of Christ – whether they be Nephite or Lamanite – defend themselves with the sword from their enemies. Prophets like Alma, Nephi, Mormon, and Moroni defended their rights, their lives, in battle.

But Alma tells us the people of Anti-Nephi-Lehi had a different perspective:

And the great God has had mercy on us, and made these things known unto us that we might not perish; yea, and he has made these things known unto us beforehand, because he loveth our souls as well as he loveth our children; therefore, in his mercy he doeth visit us by his angels, that the plan of salvation might be made known unto us as well as unto future generations.

Oh, how merciful is our God! And now behold, since it has been as much as we could do to get our stains taken away from us, and our swords are made bright, let us hide them away that they may be kept bright, as a testimony to our God at the last day, or at the day that we shall be brought to stand before him to be judged, that we have not stained our swords in the blood of our brethren since he imparted his word unto us and has made us clean thereby.

(Alma 24:14-15)

Both the Anti-Nephi-Lehies and the Nephites who welcomed them and protected them believed in the same God, in the same salvation. But they saw war and bloodshed from different perspectives.
To understand why we see things differently than others, that is learning.

We learn from Alma that the Anti-Nephi-Lehies wanted to show gratitude for the Atonement and their forgiveness by forsaking the sword (see verses 11 and 12 in the same chapter).  Yet we may have difficulties fathoming their conviction, not having experienced the same things as they.

Another example:

“When Galileo looked at the Moon through his new telescope in early 1610, he immediately grasped that the shifting patterns of light and dark were caused by the changing angle of the Sun’s rays on a rough surface. He described mountain ranges ‘ablaze with the splendour of his beams,’ and deep craters in shadow as ‘the hollows of the Earth’; he also rendered these observations in a series of masterful drawings. Six months before, the English astronomer Thomas Harriot had also turned the viewfinder of his telescope towards the Moon. But where Galileo saw a new world to explore, Harriot’s sketch from July 1609 suggests that he saw a dimpled cow pie. Why was Galileo’s mind so receptive to what lay before his eyes, while Harriot’s vision deserves its mere footnote in history?”

Gene Tracy, founding director of the Center for the Liberal Arts at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, suggests the difference between what Galileo saw and what Harriot saw was that Galileo was surrounded by artists and may have also studied the Italian art of chiaroscuro – the treatment of light and shade in drawing and painting.

“When Galileo looked at the face of the Moon,” Tracy writes, “he had no trouble understanding that lunar mountaintops first catch fire with the rising Sun while their lower slopes remain in darkness, just like they do on Earth. Galileo therefore had a theory for what he was seeing when those pinpricks of light winked into existence along the terminator line of day and night; he even used the effect to measure the heights of those mountains, finding them higher than the Alps. Harriot, a brilliant polymath yet possibly blind to this geometry, looked at the same scenes half a year before Galileo, but didn’t understand.”

Both learned men looked at the same object – the Moon – using variations of the newly-invented telescope. But because one had a different background in art, he was able to better understand what he was seeing.

My point to this? Fourfold:

1. As writers, we have a duty to try to explain to the best of our ability what we mean. If, in peer review, we discover our readers don’t quite understand what we mean, we need to take them seriously. We need to ask questions to discover what it is they do not understand, and make efforts – often multiple efforts – to better explain ourselves.
2. As readers, we have a duty to not only point out when we do understand, but to indicate in detail when we do not understand. If we do not share praise and criticism, the writer whose prose we are reading will not learn to be better communicators. Merely saying “This is good,” or “I don’t understand this,” is not good enough. Strive to include as much detail in your review as possible.
3. As readers, we may have knowledge or a different approach on the writer’s subject that we can share with them to help them better explain themselves. We have to share that.
4. As children of God, we have a duty to continue learning, even in areas that lie outside our principal interests, because we never know what learning in one field will help us understand concepts in another.

GALILEO'S MOON

HARRIOT'S MOON

Roof Report, Life with Solar, and ‘The Colonel’s Horse’

You’ll recall back on April 7 we had a severe (for Idaho) hailstorm occur, damaging the shingles and the siding on the back of the house. I can now report that repairs are underway.

If I’ve calculated correctly, we’ve replaced about 2/5ths of the shingles on the house, all on the lower part (the only lower part left is over the front porch and a tiny pop-out above the kitchen window). If my calculations are right, we’ve got about 55 of 85 bundles left to do to finish the house.

I can report this:

1. I have one finger that’s not really speaking to me at the moment. I managed to mash it at least once each day over the three days we spent doing shingles this weekend.
2. Of our three children, Liam and Lexie have swung hammers to put shingles in. Isaac came out on the roof for social purposes and moved some loose shingles around for us, but that’s about it.
3. Mother Nature saw us on Friday putting shingles up and decided we looked hot so brought over a rather intense thunderstorm (including new hail) and just sorta stalled it over us.
4. Houses need shingles because otherwise their roofs leak like sieves, as we discovered during said storm as the garage turned into a shower and the closet in the laundry room into a waterfall (fortunately a minor one).
5. My wife is a shingle-driving fiend, particularly when her laundry room is threatened with additional flooding.
6. The nifty little homemade ladder elevator I saw on YouTube, the one that featured the power winch I figured was optional, probably would have worked better if I hadn’t regarded the winch as optional. As it was, we slung the 30 bundles of shingles up on the house via the time-tested method of me humping the bundles into the back of the truck and handing the shingles four or so at a time to the kids, who stood on top of the truck box and flung the shingles onto the roof.

Good news is once we’d shingled the exposed roof and it rained again, there were no new leaks. I had certainly hoped that would be the case, but you never know. I’m always so optimistic in my pessimism.

So the bigger test comes later this week now, when the Blue Raven solar people come to remove the panels for us so we can re-shingle that portion of the house. They balked at first when we suggested they do the work for free, but after Michelle pointed out to them that their crew opted to put the system up under the following conditions that it was probably best to do the work for free:

1. It had snowed the previous night so they had to shovel the roof in order to do their work, thus making it harder to see any damage.
2. Their “roof inspector” guy never actually got up on the roof to look at the state of it.
3. We told them we’d had a hailstorm and they could see the damage to the siding, and knew our insurance adjustor hadn’t been by yet to inspect the house, yet opted to do the install anyway
4. They found one hole in the roof, straight through the waferboard, indicating again the roof might need repair.
5. When they suggested we cover the cost of the removal and reinstall with our homeowner’s insurance, we pointed out the panels hadn’t been up there at the time the damage occurred, so the insurance company was very likely to say “Nope. Ain’t gonna.”

I feel a little cheap about it all – but not cheap enough. There were enough error precursors there for their crew – which we were trusting to do things right – to say, “Yeah, we’d better wait until after the insurance adjustor takes a look first.” I should have done a lookie at the roof as well, but it’s very high.

Aside: As I posted about the shingle job on Facebook, a friend reminded me of this quote from MASH:

Hunnicautt (after talking with his father-in-law Floyd on the phone): Colic. Her intestines are blocked. We gotta keep her on her feet, so they won't twist. And we gotta clean her out. Lots and lots of warm water.
Hawkeye: I think I'll stroll up to the front to see how the shooting's going.
(Next scene)
Hawkeye: Hook this to the spigot up there.
Hunnicutt: It looks awful high.
Hawkeye: You want the other end?
Hunnicutt: It's not so high.

Bottom line is: If you’re going to have solar panels installed and you’re not sure what condition your roof is in, have it inspected professionally beforehand – don’t trust the solar installers to do the job.

On a positive note for Blue Raven, they’re willing to work with us (though we had to talk with three different people to make sure this was filed under “you’re fixing your own mistake,” and they did send someone out to see why our inverter kept shutting down, and seem to have fixed the problem.

We still haven’t seen an impact on our power bill, but this is only the first month after we got the system installed and running, and I’m not exactly sure how it all works. Next month’s bill will tell. And it had better, else Blue Raven will get yet another phone call from us. And likely Rocky Mountain Power will hear from us too. We’re crossing our fingers that once the removal and reinstall are done, it’s smooth sailing from here on out. And we’ll have a roof underneath that’ll more than match the expected lifespan of the panels.

Magicians’ Hats and Nixon on the Piano

“A writer’s brain is like a magician’s hat. If you’re going to get anything out of it, you have to put something in first.”

Louis L’Amour, in “Education of A Wandering Man”

What, may I ask, are you putting in your hat?

I hope, as you research your topic and prepare to write a rough draft that you are indeed putting something in your hat.

Not that your hats are empty. You picked your topics because you already had an inkling or an interest in that subject; you already had stuff in your hat.

But those who really want to learn know you shouldn’t rely on the same old tricks.



My challenge to you: Put new stuff into your hat. Learn something new about your topic. Learn several something news about your topic. Widen and deepen your knowledge. You’ll find the more you learn, the easier it is to write on any topic because you have more experience already inside your own head to draw on.

But remember David McCullough’s caution from his essay “A Love of Learning” (emphasis mine):

Learning is not to be found on a printout. It’s not on call at the touch of the finger. Learning is acquired mainly form books, and most readily form great books. And from teachers, and the more learned and empathetic the better. And from work, concentrated work.

Did you know, for example, that former US President Richard Nixon plays the piano? And quite well, if I’m any judge of piano players:



(For some reason, the sound in this video cuts out at about 2:08 in. Ironic, given Nixon’s later experiences with an audio tape with no sound.)

Knowing Nixon played the piano is, however, only information.

Learning this, however, gives me another character trait to include with the hallucinatory Nixon that entertains and befuddles the protagonist of a novel I’m working on. It’s one more bit of information in that magician’s hat that may eventually help me produce a book someone else wants to read.

It’s the same with you. You have lots of information in your hat about the topic you’ve chosen. Add to the hat. Make connections between new information and old information. Then show us those connections as you work to convince us the problem you’ve identified really is a problem, and that there exist solutions to that problem that’ll make the problem go away.

Fill up your hat. Then show us your tricks.

Pomp and Circumstance. And Suction Cups.

Sometime in the not-so-distant future, our oldest son will graduate high school. Meaning, among other things, we will hear some version of Edward Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance.” Which means, thanks to my brain’s ability to cling to odd bits of information and imagery, I will be thinking of octopuses.

I blame Sesame Street.



I have no idea why the videographers at the Children’s Television Workshop chose Elgar’s piece to accompany this footage of a weird-looking octopus (oddly, I don’t remember it being an organ version of the music, but clearly that’s what it is), but I remember watching this as a kid and thinking, just exactly how big is this thing and WHY ARE THEY SHOWING US ITS MOUTH OPENING AND CLOSING.

I now realize that is the octopus’ breathing apparatus, and had I seen the actual mouth – that terrible parrot-beaky thing – I would have been more traumatized by this video than I ever was by the Operatic Orange.



Posit: Bugs Bunny did more to help me develop a love (or at least familiarity with) classical music because they chose to present them with non-threatening imagery (including Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny chasing each other with increasingly larger bits of weaponry AND a sentient electric shaver) that Sesame Street did, with their FREAKING singing oranges and their octopuses flapping their breathing tubes and suction cups at me.

Well, except for the alum. The alum freaked me out too. Maybe Bugs Bunny isn’t as innocent as I think.

http://misterfweem.blogspot.com/2017/05/rational-childhood-fears-alum.html

Steinbeck in Space

The last story in Robert A. Heinlein’s “The Green Hills of Earth” could have been written by John Steinbeck, if Steinbeck wrote science fiction.

Save for the setting on Venus, “Logic of Empire,” which follows two Earthmen unequally convinced that slavery exists in the “colonies” of Earth and decide to find out who is right by signing on as laborers on Venus for a six-year sting, sounds clearly like Steinbeck’s tales told from the orange groves and fields of California. They quickly discover that the tales of servitude they’ve heard are true and that the songs of Tennessee Ernie Ford could just as easily be sung about the plantations of Venus as they are about the coal mines of Appalachia.

Maybe Heinlein was inspired by Steinbeck as he took social strife to the stars. Or maybe this is Heinlein before he got a bit weirder as his career went on. In any case, it’s better than the typical utopian sci-fi where the Enlightened Earthmen and associated hangers-on go hurtling into the cosmos to solve others’ problems because everything back home? It’s peachy.

In any case, “The Green Hills of Earth” is an interesting read as we see the cares and woes and triumphs and tragedies of life on Earth spread to settlements on other worlds and moons in the solar system. It’s an interesting contrast to the typically utopian view of the settlement of space.

Heinlein introduces us to space hoboes. He introduces us to a spaceman who overcomes his fear of falling in a rather unique way.

Had I read these tales as a younger version of myself, I may not have been as excited to live on the Moon or further afield – as I fully expected the opportunity would exist. Who wants to be a slave on Venus, or an effete twerp who moves back to Earth from the Moon only to find out you miss Moon Culture too much?

In a way, some of the stories reminded me of this:



Which may go a long way in explaining why the more utopian view of space settlement is more popular.

However – I find I like writers before they get too strident in their finger-wagging. I don’t mind the subtle wag as they’re often fun to identify. But when all that’s going on leads to the author winking and blinking and wagging his finger, I get put off.

Also: Steeeeinbeck Iiiiin Spaaaaaaaace!

Keep the Lord in Your Writing

I had an epiphany, sitting in Sunday School this weekend: I’m struggling with my novel because I haven’t been reading my scriptures.

Oh, I’ve been reading. Lots of fiction and non-fiction alike, paying attention to how authors use words to tell their stories or convey their facts.

But I have not been reading my scriptures regularly on my own.

And that’s a problem.

Particularly since the novel I’m struggling with is spiritual in nature.

It’s like needing water, standing next to a clear, cold pool of it, and trying to quench my thirst by licking the dew off the leaves.

The Lord reminded the Israelites of this:

When thou has eaten and art full, then thou shalt bless the Lord thy God for the good land which he hath given thee.

Beware that thou forget not the Lord thy God, in not keeping his commandments, and his judgments, and his statutes, which I command thee this day:

Lest what thou hast eaten and art full, and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt therein;

And when they herds and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied, and all that thou has is multiplied;

Then thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget the Lord thy God, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage;

Who led thee through that great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents, and scorpions, and drought, where there was no water; who brought thee forth water out of the rock of flint;

Who fed thee in the wilderness with manna, which thy fathers knew not, that he might humble thee, and that he might prove three, to do three good at thy latter end;

And thou say in thine heart, My power and the might of mine had hath gotten me this wealth.

(Deuteronomy 8:10-17)

As we write the Argumentative Synthesis – or any other bit of writing for that matter – we do enter a kind of great and terrible wilderness, where we’ll encounter not scorpions and drought, but word counts, feedback, writer’s block, difficult research, and varying demands on our time.

It seems counterintuitive to say, “Hey, I need to put my studies aside and do what the Lord has asked me to do,” but we gotta do it. I was hit several times with that thought this Sunday, listening not only to things in class, but things in my heart.

God gave Moses the words to say, as Moses was obedient unto God. He makes us no less a promise.

Talking Toilets, Intelligent Satire

Two important things to consider:

1. This is the funniest satire of American television news I have ever seen.
2. It's from a children's program.

Today, This Happened

So The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced today they will drop Scouting completely as the activity arm for the Aaronic Priesthood as of Jan. 1, 2019.

A few thoughts:

1. I understand the reasons why. I won't be writing any angry letters to Salt Lake.
2. I'm concerned for friends of ours who work full-time for the BSA in LDS-heavy areas. This is going to be a career blow to them, likely necessitating a move.
3. The BSA made sure I was adequately trained in whatever job I had with the scouts. My training as membership clerk in the LDS Church entailed 30 minutes between church meetings. Most of that stuff, I've forgotten.
4. This really accelerates the need for our youngest son to complete his Eagle project so he can get that award.
5. Yes, we could move on to a community unit. And then face the institutional pressure when the community unit and the new activity program for the church schedule activities on the same night.
6. Scouting allowed me and my wife to participate with our children. We've been told that for the trek our children are taking this summer with the church, parents aren't allowed.

Maybe more thoughts to come.

Ironically, I dreamed last night I was Scoutmaster again, and we were hiking through the wilds of Lincoln, Idaho, where I wanted to show the Scouts where I went to elementary school. As we hiked, the place got wilder and wilder until we lost one of the Scouts and we were hollering and wandering all over to find him. Never did find him, because that pesky alarm clock went off.

Making Prime Work

NOTE: This is the start of a very intermittent series on this blog, wherein I review anything I may have watched, read, or otherwise gained from our Amazon Prime membership. This is partly to continue justifying the cost of Amazon Prime as it takes yet another leap, and to remind me what a wonderful cornucopia of media there is out there that I have yet to witness, or re-witness as the case may be.

Part One: Spooky Skeletons.

The House on Haunted Hill, starring Vincent Price and a cast of others I didn’t recognize. This great film felt like a tour through a spook alley: The creaky doors, the lightning and thunder, the bubbling vat of acid you knew was going to play a part in the climax, and the guns presented in little coffins to the guests. Plenty of twists and turns, all of which you see coming, but a pleasant enough film without the gore that’s sadly become part of the horror genre these days. Not that I watch horror these days. 

Aside from Price, the rest of the cast was pretty throwaway, though it was easy to pick out Robert Mitchum’s sister, due to the family resemblance. Who they were, how old they are, etc., really didn’t matter, either to us nor to them. They didn’t know each other and were there only to fill certain roles secondary to the story. Put any actor in any of the roles, you get the same output.

Part Two: Mia Farrow Can’t Sing

The Last Unicorn, starring Mia Farrow, Christopher Lee and many, many others, all done in an interesting mix of Rankin/Bass and putative Studio Ghibli. I’ll be honest, this story is meh at best. I’m not exactly sure why it’s a cult classic, but I will give it cult classic status because I don’t have to like it for the cult to survive. I do know that Mia Farrow doesn’t have much of a singing voice. Also, I heard that Christopher Lee approached the role of King Haggard with some reverence, even bringing in a copy of the book in which he’d marked dialogue that HAD to be in the movie. I’m not sure if it was his character’s dialogue or what, but I kept waiting for him to say something of note. Not much happened.

Oh, but there is Rene Auberjonois as the skeleton. That’s something I remember from watching this show as a kid:

This story/cartoon version shows something telling about characters, at least the eccentric ones. The butterfly at the beginning of the movie, ugh. If I’da been there, I would’ve skooshed him. But the skeleton. There’s a reason he sticks out in my mind, dredged up in memories from childhood. You knew somebody like the skeleton. Jokey and a bit scary too. Kinda like that one uncle you only saw once in a great while, the uncle whose English was just bad enough you didn’t know if you’d be able to communicate with him, and as a shy child, the best you could do was run past. I remember those days too.

Part Three: Elvis Has Entered the Building

A friend on Facebook recommended I see Elvis & Nixon, an “Amazon Original” film telling the fictionalized story of that infamous photo of Elvis Presley meeting Richard Milhous Nixon, seeing as I was on yet another Nixon bender on Facebook.

So I looked it up. The FIRST movie watched for free via Prime.

So glad I did.

Preface: Yes, it stars Kevin Spacey. I don’t believe in salting the earth once an individual has been found exceptionally guilty. Besides, Spacey does the best Nixon outside of, well, Richard M. Nixon himself.

On the surface, this film does what it promises: It tells a truthy version of what led up to that infamous Nixon/Presley photo.  On the down-low, it tells, through Presley’s eyes, a tale of woe for those who crave fame, seek it, and find it. He laments at one point that he’s not sure who he is anymore, that little boy from Tupelo, Mississippi, or Elvis, the King, with the gold jewelry and the mansion and the acts in Vegas and all. He longs to reconnect, but finds it impossible in a world that only wants to see Elvis the Legend, not Elvis the man. That’s a message, ironically, that Nixon himself should have heard. So color this Nixon fan impressed with this movie. Though you should be prepared for absolutely no Elvis music whatsoever. Though they do play this song over the end credits, which is a great fit to the underpinning story:

Then there’s Mister Rogers and Me, discussed here.

A few movies makes the Prime price still pretty hard to justify. But there’s more to come.

Solar Power -- Teething Pains

It's been just over a week since we turned our solar power system on, and I think we can classify this time as "teething pains."

Sofar on the best days, we're averaging more than 21 kWh per day, which is more than we consumed in April. (Last year, 17 kWH a day, 18 a day the year before that).

Yet if you look at the chart below, you'll see a gap on May 2-3.

I've been pretty religious watching our output on a daily basis, but missed checking on those two days, until late on the third and saw we had produced zero power. I went out to check the system late on the third and saw its display was dark. So I turned it back on.

We placed a call to our installer to find out what they thought. The lady we talked to was sure the system was calibrating or something -- I forget the term she used -- and I'm not quite sure she understood the term she was explaining. I'll have to do some more research into it. But they are going to send someone out to take a look at the system and make sure it's working as it should.

This comes after I discovered last week that when they installed the system, they managed to destroy one of the control boxes for our sprinkler system by putting two screws through the back of it -- twice. Punctured the ribbon power cord and the motherboard. I put a new box in that same week, and they've agreed to reimburse us for the cost of the box, so no real harm done there. I'm just glad it didn't cause a short somewhere, because the control box was powered up at the time.

Yet to come is the temporary removal of the panels so I can replace the shingles, damaged by hail a week before the installation. I still regret not cancelling the installation until we could have the roof looked at by our insurance adjustor. Well, live and learn.

Still, we're pretty happy so far. We'll see how far that happiness extends once that first power bill comes in the mail. Not really expecting a big change, since the system was turned on late in the month, so we may have to wait until another bill comes in. By then, we'll be in full-force of our summer AC usage, but I've got a few ideas there. I do know once the rest of the family leaves for camp, I'm turning the AC down. I freeze to death when I"m home alone with the AC. And if it's too warm, I can sleep downstairs. I'll turn the AC back down when the family is coming home for the weekend.

We're also looking into more insulation in the attic upstairs; hopefully that'll help keep temperatures down more. I'm also going to put in more attic vents when I do the shingle job.

Dopey Dad

I wrote this note to our three kids Saturday morning when Michelle and I left to go on a walk. Closeup of their response to the threat follows.

As a Facebook friend pointed out, it hurts when they're better artists.