Top Five (or so) Christmas Movies

 In the grand tradition of holiday list making, I offer my list of absolutely go to every year holiday movies to watch, and when.  Brooke and I have differing tastes for these, so I (and she) end up watching a lot more that maybe wouldn't make our own lists, but here we go with: 

Top Five Christmas Movies!: 

1. Elf (this one lands near the top of both our lists)
2. 
   Love Actually (after some post Me-Too hemming and hawwing over this one, I've brought it back into my fold - of course not every character is fully virtuous nor all their actions blameless, but name me an interesting movie where that is the case! It's such an overall emotional build-up, absurd and completely unrealistic and I love it!)
   
   Both of these first two movies are ones that we often first watch early on in the season, and then again closer to Christmas Day (although Brooke's love of #2 has not recovered much after taking a hit around 2017...
   
   
3. Die Hard (Sorry, Obama, but this is definitely a Christmas movie, and it's a banger!)
4. National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
5. The Holiday

I'll finish this post later, but wanted to get it up and running to start the conversation!... 

It’s really a Medieval Fair…

 We’re now Ren Faire adjacent people - 2 years running, that counts, right?  I am pretty sure that I have the capability to be an all out-in on Cosplayer be it LARP-ing or theater or more RenFaire situations, but I married in to a life where it was quite clear early on that I wouldn’t be allowed  (it was a different time …), and over the years I’ve gotten her to a place where she’s the one who gets us to the Renaissance Faire, not me…

Forget about trying to parse this but it’s a bridge (classical construction), over an ancient (or perhaps Anthropocene-constructed, hard to tell) body of water. It certainly feels like it all might collapse whilst we traversed (so again hard to say if that’s a product of it being so old or too modern and flawed because of the curse of capitalism…)

There was a man, a man named Crack, Adam Crack (it might’ve been Ethan), and woh, could he whip. Whipped it good, he did. This sounds underwhelming (or at least whelming, in Europe, if Clueless is to be believed ), but it was not only a whip show, but a fire whip show, and like time, you add fire in front of anything and it improves, measurably.

And yes, it mostly was, but we were at the Ren Faire (Fire Ren Faire?) and so looking forward to good stuff that we were part of a pretty amazing demographic. 

The highestLight was by far was the Dungeons & Shakespeare show, which brought four willing and thespic Fairegoers up on stage to randomly choose Shakespeare characters from across the Ouvre or monsters from throughout the Manuals (or the Folio, presumably), and act out the Host’s (Public DM?s) narration as Regan from King Lear teamed up with
The Nurse from Romeo & Juliet to defeat a bugbear en route to find The Necronomicon locked away high in an Elven tower guarded by Yeti who killed them. 

And then over by the jousting fields, we find The Insult Artist who spends all day hurling insults at the humans who step up to thrown tomatoes at him. 

It’s definitely my people. 

Row, Row, Row your Desk!

 I have the privilege today to be taking part in what I expect will soon become the hottest new trend in remote work and a bold new path in the search for true work life balance, the Canoebicle.

As work itself has become more and more absurd, with the very latest trends of the corporate landscape^ on the one hand beginning to mimic the trappings of the educational system that many of the trendier employees have so recently left behind, while at the same time seeking to fulfil a kind of performative community of woke third space, the need arises to find creative and restorative outlets for working in your own context.

I have been a long time advocate for the Work-From-Canoe lifestyle as an option, to allow people a better work / canoe balance.  I am glad that, at last, Leinenkugel's has decided to recognize this important demographic.

Having been a pioneer in Work-From-Beach, Work-From-Motor-Boat-With-Questionable-Fuel-Line, Work-From-In-Laws'-Driveway, and Work-From-Bar lifestyles long before it was made all the rage by the COVID-19 Pandemic, I appreciate the opportunity to be a part of this bold new experiment. 

^ I know I know what you're all thinking is that, "Joel, you don't really have a real job anymore do you?  And haven't had for a few years now?  Who are you to critique working conditions in America?"  And while this may be technically true, in the overeducated white middle class sense that I have not been invited back into the corporate life after my untimely demise, I am still an observer of the lifestyle (that is, having jobs), and I feel connected to the current moment of work

Characterization of the New Generation^

^Ordinarily, I would hide this footnote away at the bottom of the post in tiny print, but in this case, I think we need a bit of opening throat clearing for this post... I came across this brief fragment by Walter Benjamin as I continue my way through volume 2 of his collected writings, and thought, here is a bite-sized (aka RNJ-sized post) work of his that was unpublished during his life that probably hasn't received too much attention over the years, so maybe I'll re-create it, postulate for postulate and sentence for sentence for a modern audience.  He was on the verge of 40 looking at the new generation of writers coming up, and I am starting out on the back 40 seeing what's next for us, but instead of rephrasing his comments, I found as I started to re-read them that they were in fact quite on point, albeit a little out of context, so instead of rephrasing, just a little reframing was what was called for (my comments).

1.  These people (that's seriously how his starts!) make not the slightest attempt to base their activities on any theoretical foundations whatsoever. (OK, yes, I would say this remains true today, although I'm not sure our contemporary sensibilities know quite what this means.  But I will say it seems a common thread that youth tend to assert, and perhaps, act, without taking much time to consider the underlying basis for all activity that came before).  They are not only deaf to the so-called great questions (YES, this feels even more apt than that last), those of politics or world views (young people - and this is probably Millennials or maybe even starting with my generation, which is the youngest of the Gen Xers, LOVE to say how not in to politics they are, although this is probably a result of our recent conflation of the political with practical politics); they are equally innocent of any fundamental reflection on questions of art (yes, again, although what we mean by this today probably resembles something more like, "they don't even like to watch whole movies anymore, just YouTube clips!").
2. They are uneducated. (Well, no, or yes, depending on what we think education is.  They certainly have a whole hell of a lot more degrees than any previous generations have had, but they are for the most part in specific applied fields - I know a guy, for example, who is a professor in Healthcare Communications, which it seems there is a whole degree in.  Anyway, they are certainly uneducated in the sense of having an accurate understanding of the larger world around them.)  Not just in the sense that their (general) knowledge is very limited, but above all because they are incapable of extending their diminishing knowledge in a systematic manner (again, I think this is exactly right, but is a little hard to parse in a modern context.  I would say this is something like being outraged by all the over-woke causes like personal pronouns and land acknowledgements {which are overall good and decent things}, but failing to bank any outrage whatever at current exploitation of the developing world or the underclass by capitalism).  Never has a generation of writers been so oblivious to the need to understand the techniques of scholarly work as this one (I guess so..?).
3. Although these writers stride blithely on from one work to the next (Tik-Tok), it is impossible to discern any sort of development--and above all any consistency--in their work (also Tik-Tok), except at the level of technique (still Tik-Tok).  Their efforts and their ambition seem to exhaust themselves in the acquisition of a new subject or a grateful theme, and this is enough for them (I think Benjamin wrote #3 all about Tik-Tok somehow).
4. Popular literature has always existed--that is to say, a literature that acknowledges no obligations to the age and the ideas that move it, except perhaps the desirability of presenting such ideas in an agreeable, fashionably packaged form for immediate consumption (is all of the rest of this thing about Tik-Tok?).  Such consumer literature of course has the right to exist; in bourgeois society at least, it has its place and its justification.  But never before, in bourgeois or any other society, has this literature of pure consumption and enjoyment ever been identical with the avant-garde at its technically and artistically most advanced.  This is precisely the pass to which the latest school (i.e. Influencer Culture) has now brought us.
5. Give respect to economic necessity where it is due: it may well force the writer to produce much inferior work (click bait is oh so much more profitable than those good, nuanced Tik-Toks).  The nuances of his writing will then show what stuff he is made of.  However dubious much literary journalism may be, there is hardly anything so bad that it cannot be salvaged from the worst excesses by certain aspects of its content and especially its style.  Where a writer succeeds, he owes it to his grasp of technique; where he fails, it is the moral or substantive foundation that is lacking (yeah, this all may seem a bit out of date and out to lunch...).  What is astonishing is how completely alien to members of the new school the salutary, protecting reservations are--not just the moral ones, but even the linguistic ones too (but THIS is definitely a reference to safe spaces, right?).  And how these new writers absolutely take for granted their right to display an infinitely pampered, narcissistic, unscrupulous--in short, journalistic--ego (this feels definitely on point, the world has gotten these last few years to feel a lot more personal).  And how their writing is imbued to the very last detail with the arriviste (arriviste: a pushy upstart - and isn't that what is good about youth culture in the end, is that no matter how exasperating it may be, it does push us forward, we take the good, and eventually {hopefully} cast off the silly fads, and are better--improved--for it) spirit!

the Radical Grace of Dolly Parton

 As you may have noticed, I've been on a bit of a Dolly kick lately.  We re-orchestrated a road trip to Georgia to include an evening and a night in Pigeon Forge, TN in order to experience the Dinner Theater Insanity that is Dolly Parton's Stampede!  

En route to Pigeon Forge, we listened to Dolly Parton's America, a WNYC podcast that asks the question "Just what is the deal with Dolly Parton?" (or, "why is it that everyone {and by everyone we mean every constituency of the American populace} is pro-Dolly?")

At one point in the podcast ("Dollitics") they are talking about Dolly's refusal to talk about politics, but digs in to the political bent of her music, and they come to a moment during an awards show (CMAs, I think) in recent years when there was the first reunion of the 9 to 5 trio of stars, Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and Dolly.  The host talks about a moment when first Fonda and then Tomlin lay in to a newly elected Donald Trump, and when Dolly's moment to speak comes she makes what could be read as a painfully banal statement about "why don't we just pray for President Trump [and all of our political leaders] rather than defaming them?"

It makes me think a little about those yard signs you see around that espouse a hate-free space (a space with grace, in other words).  I like those signs (we've talked about getting one, but haven't as of yet), but they make me think about the real level of commitment to such an ideology.  Not hating is easy when it's object is something you're aligned with (refusing to hate based on race or religion or because of who someone loves, etc.), but I would be curious to have genuine conversations with the raisers of those signs about being anti-hate when it comes to Donald Trump or white nationalists or other people who are committing acts of hate in our world.  That is where Dolly's brand of radical grace comes in: it's meeting and accepting people where they are.  It doesn't mean accepting the bigotry and violence perpetrated in its name, because grace isn't about thoughts and feelings (or even actions), grace is about the humans that do all of those things (and also do all the good bits, too).

Radical Grace, in the form that Dolly seems to embody it, is about being willing to meet people where they are, and engaging with them, and understanding with them that just being in the world is a fairly hard damn thing to do.  Hate isn't created in a vacuum - it is fed by flames of inequality and resentment, but also by avarice and isolation and spite.

I think that the reason that we feel so on the brink (of a hate-pocalypse, of a neo-fascist era, of a cold civil war) is largely due to the fact that we have forgotten how to talk about politics (or economics or history or anything really).  Saying Dolly Parton is a-political is a complete misunderstanding of politics.  We have come to think of the word "political" as meaning only 'practical politics' (or electoral politics, featuring party politics), when in fact the political is just about anything that has to do with people.  Dolly Parton is one of the greatest political songwriters of all time (having inspired not just humans, but oppressed, down-trodden civilizations across the galaxy!) In the same way that politics is not just the biennial tradition of casting a ballot for (and usually against) someone or another - in fact that's the worst part of it, so too we have come to think of the economy in an equally toxic way - as if it is only the financial sector that is "the economy" and not all of the activities of our daily lives. 

It hurts us to think only in terms of practical politics or practical economics, because then, when our efforts don't show up on the scoreboards (our bank accounts or the outcomes of specific elections rather than the outcomes enacted for us in the world by our elected leaders) we are each of us diminished.  I found it interesting, when I was looking for links for some of my various Dolly Parton, and first exploring the term 'radical grace' I found a lot more out there about radical self acceptance than I did about radical acceptance of others, and I think that's also telling given the era of mental health crisis that we also find ourselves in.

So let's all be hyper-political like Dolly in our daily work and lives.  Like Dolly would have said, "Be Excellent to Each Other..."

This is COVID-2 of COVID-19, not COVID-1...

 I have once again contracted the hottest not so new infection, COVID-19, and similar to my last encounter with the biological assault, I am finding the social ramifications amongst the most noteworthy. 

But first, at the strictly physical level, man this version that I had this time is so much worse than the 2020 model.  I'm feeling okay now (thanks), but these new strains really kick your butt - even your vaxxed and boosted butt...

The confirmation process of "having COVID" has changed a lot - In November 2020, I drove to Miller Park, and sat in my car in in hundreds - of - cars - long line, and had an armored (in PPE, as if for a minor nuclear disaster) health care professional stick a seemingly far - too - long swab up my nose, and collect a sample that would eventually confirm my diagnosis (which was, pre-vaccine, to be sure, a very very minor case).

This time around, when my wife suggested I take a test because I was coughing and sneezing on Friday afternoon, I walked upstairs and grabbed the little box - read through the instructions (this was just the second time I'd taken an at - home test), and set all the bits and bobs out to be ready to take it.

And so I took my test downstairs in the kitchen whilst Brooke was working in our upstairs "home office"* and I stuck a short-ish swab up my nose and rooted around a bit (quite a bit, as the instructions encourage).  And then I was standing there downstairs and I had (one line, two lines? a dot and and a line?) a positive result... And I was like, "oh fuck" [not, to be clear, because I was any longer worried about getting COVID having been vaxxed and boosted^), "I am going to be in trouble with my wife" because her work had specific protocols for close contacts testing positive.

So I thought - I have a choice here... Obviously, I had COVID, but that knowledge was now entirely in my own control.  I didn't report my positive test to the State or Federal government (and didn't have any sense of how to do that if i had wanted to), and it was entirely up to me to whom or whether at all I report this latest contraction...

See, as we enter the post-pandemic phase (and I think the US government is planning to make it official in a couple month's time) and the disease itself is no longer a terrifying and life threatening affair in most cases (at least for those properly vaxxed and boosted) the disease has become a socio-economic one.  Because I am presently working health care adjacent, a positive test necessitates missing work (unpaid) until I secure a negative test.  Similarly, the day I tested positive preceded a week for my wife's work where she was meant to be heading out to several in person events (and not the fun, celebratory kind, but the work your ass off for whomever happens to be in charge of this one kind).

As an earnest and conformist person, I followed the rules, and missed out on a week of work (and also forced my wife to renege on her work obligations... but it easily could have been different had I made a different choice.  I think this has become a common theme for me here, but we seem to be building a culture that is primarily driven by resentment and shame.  When I was back at work a couple weeks later, and telling people why I had been absent, the most common question I heard was "where did you get it!?" (even from people who had had it several times!) as if it were a social shortcoming to have gotten it once again.  As long as this is our collective response to COVID (to ills of all sort, really be they medical, cultural, economic, etc.) those people who 'just have allergies' are going to creep back in to workplaces all over, and we're going to continue to get unhealthier in all sorts of ways... 

a books report

 Writing fiction is a thankless endeavor - I think - really any writing at all,,, putting words out there in the world for others to read and think about and judge.  To be a "best-selling" author, with hundreds and thousands of people buying (as Kai was told, "nicht geraucht, sonder gekauft!") and then judging your stuff... 

I recently have been reading fictional essais by a couple of former clients of mine (two who I genuinely enjoyed as humans and who I felt might actually have some insight and understanding as to what at least part of the human condition was all about^), while also reading a few parallel novels by more established writers (or at least more universally accepted books in the book and adaptation world...)

I have long been a student of literature (and I guess humanity?) - but my interest I think was always really about understanding the disparity between 1) Human Experience, which is (I think) an idiosyncratic, personal, and (possibly) unshareable experience [and a small aside here, but I think this is quite fundamental - I'm not saying that we as humans can't share our experience, but that the overall total version of our worldview may be different for each and every one of us {kind of like the what if when I see blue, other people are seeing red...} and this separation may in fact be the source of our larger inability to cohabitate on earth.] and that of 2) Human Expression, I'll admit, my initial bias here has always been through the written (and sorta spoken) word, but this is everyone's expression of musical, conversational, comedic, artistic(al?), filmic, poetical, historical, sociological, personal...

This may shock you, but I am a very judgmental reader - I think of things pretty harshly as very well written, not very well written, horribly written, etc..  I am simultaneously a voraciously omnivorous reader, willing to read not only across almost any genre, but also any quality.  I love bad writing almost as much as I like good writing - certainly I have learned a lot more from bad writing than good.  It's a lot easier to identify what exactly is bad in bad writing (and thereby try to excise it from your own writing) than it is to identify what exactly makes good writing good - it's all good or great, but what is it, exactly, that they just did there?  

In conversation with my wife about "needing a new book", I have tried to have her parse out a bit what it is she is looking for in a great reading experience, and she framed it this way:

"I don't like it when writers are writing obscurely, just for the sake of being obscure.  Neither do I like it, though (this isn't really how she talks), when writers just come out and say what they mean, like Stephen King (she's not a fan), he has a thought, and then he just writes it right out there for everyone to see.  I want a writer to couch (clearly, this is me, but I am summarizing her) their point within their prose a bit, but not to be too obscure."

A couple of recent examples of books that fit this bill that she (and subsequently I) both really enjoyed are Cloud Cuckoo Land, by Anthony Doerr and The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern.  Clearly she likes a little bit of magical realism too, and it certainly helps for a book to be about books, too...  In both of these example books, the reader feels a bit adrift in the early going, wondering just what is going on, and how the disparate chapters &* characters might fit together with one another, and what it all amounts to.   

Another book that we both recently read (this one my choice, rather than hers) was The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle (which I have just learned is also alternately titled The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, which is exceedingly strange to me).  This book, though not about books, was largely satisfactory to Brooke's books* criteria up until the very end, when the author, one Stuart Turton, comes out and tells us just precisely what's been going on here.  I still quite liked the book, and highly recommend it, although it did feel a bit M. Night Shylaman-y there at the end.

Another book I read recently that purports to be about a strange, scary phenomenon happening in the sewers (among other places) of a fictional small town near the coast was Phantoms, by Dean Koontz, and man-oh-man does he shit the bed whilst fully explaining the phenomenon that has been haunting the town with a "scientifically viable" (he assures us in the author's note afterward) account of what the characters discover.  And this is not remotely the worst part of this book.  While the similarly summarizable* novel, It, has seven kids at the center of it who we get to know and care about, there is exactly nobody in Koontz' novel to care about and so the story has no stakes.  I think this is because the characters, rather than acting like (or being) thinking, feeling humans, are more akin to walking talking resumes of humans (or maybe they're more like LinkedIn profiles).  So too in those novels by my clients, never, anywhere in them, do I get a sense that anyone remotely real is nearby the narratives.  

It Happens in the Hamptons is a (sometimes shockingly) tawdry novel of manners set within the Old Money / New Money / No Money world of the Hamptons, but despite the constant crashing together of characters from widely differing backgrounds nothing ever really feels at stake, I think because all of the characters really feel more like summaries of backgrounds, rather than anyone who resembles

anyone who might be real.  Contrast it with the similarly set Fleishman is in Trouble or even Diary, by Chuck Palahniuk.  In that last, none of the characters feel at all real, both because the novel is written all from one perspective - one voice, but mostly because we're in the midst of a nightmare fairy tale, but the stakes for everyone involved are such that we care about the characters in those books. 

The Last Ember is a (sometimes shockingly)* Jewish clone of The Da Vinci Code where every character who enters any scene is literally handing everyone else in the room their resume^^.

And, even after all that effort of putting words to page, you find my surely-soon-to-be-defunct blog that is drawing more attention to your prosal* efforts, never quite coming out and saying anything, just commenting on it all, generally negatively.

*sigh*^^^

^After several occasions meeting both of them it became eminently clear that neither of them in fact did, but it was also obvious that it was very important to both of their senses of self that I thought that they did (even though it was also obvious that in their account of the world what I thought mattered not at all).  In fact in all of my decade plus at MPS I only ever encountered one single client who seemed to have any insight into this at all).
* Then there's me, who uses an Ampersand just because the "ch" sounds in two neighboring words are different, and that's fun to draw them a bit closer, or uses unnecessary words in sentences to make fun rhymes (both literal and thematic) happen, or creating words that should be (but probably aren't).
^^No, they aren't.
^^^These asterisk brackets are unrelated to the previous footnote usage of the asterisks earlier in this post, and any similarities are incidental^^. 

The Games; a foot!?!

What do semicolons do, really? (That being said, it seems a real missed opportunity in modern American prose {modern poets use semicolons constantly - I assume, I haven't read a "new" book of poetry since around 2004, but I'd guess it's rife with them - because it's a way of "splitscreening" a sentence and can be liberating for poets because you can avoid a bit further fully saying what you're saying with a half a contradictory sentence} what with all this postmodernity going around...

Anyway...

Sports!  or; more properly; Sport!

That's why I was coming here today - to celebrate the official start of the 2023 SeegerOlympics with our Event Selection "show" on February 1st.

So far, only two events are "live" and they're the two (new!) Musical events: 1) a Music League event with 5 Rounds to work themselves out over the next 10 months and 2) a Christmas Song-Writing Competition, where pairs of Seegers (Reese/Claire, Davin/Jen, Brooke/Andy, Joel/Tim) will compete by composing and recording a Christmas song to be judged by a panel (to include Shane {sorry/thanks Shane} and others to hopefully be determined soon!) of judges who've earned the respect of (at least most of) the competitors in Christmas Song Appreciation...

This year's Competition will include an Exhibition Event - "Clinton Scotland Yard" (CSY), where one team is Mr. X and goes and parks a car somewhere in Clinton and walk from there and has to text their location every so often to all the other players and stay "hidden" for a certain amount of time.  CSY is one of seven (7!: CSY, "Trivial Pursuit Glory", Basketball One-Shot Challenge, Farkle, 8-Person War, Croquet, & Casino Night!) total synchronous events being declared, where all 8 competitors have to be together to play, whereas there was only one last year, which was the final event to be played on the penultimate day of the year, so we will randomly determine the order of those events, and see how many we can get in.

Familiar (but slightly changed) events from last year include a Strategy Board Game Tournament, an Arcade Console Tournament, a FIFA Women's World Cup Pick-'Em and a Sorry! Tournament with the competition being rounded out by Throwing Cheeseballs and Catching Them in Your Mouth, Mini-Golf, Tennis TieBreakers & Competitive Wordle!

It promises to be quite a year, with up to 16 points available!

Vengeance, Naked

Tonight we had the rare opportunity for An Uncorrupted Double Feature (viewing two new {to me} movies, one after the other, thereby linking them forever in my mind and creating thematic linkage).  

As an unchilded human, this might seem on offer more often than to others, but it is, truly, a real rarity...  The first offering was Vengeance - a 2022 dark comedy by B.J. Novak, who quite possibly might turn out to be the most talented person to have been on The Office.  Vengeance is Novak's directorial debut, and in addition to being highly entertaining, it's possible that it may also turn out to be a defining film of the era.  It's the best kind of lowkey potentially great movie where it is surface level charmingly clever, spreading some sort of message that feels sort of important and profound (in the case of Vengeance there are 3 or 4 of these differing, but related messages), but nothing too scathing or cynical; and then on further reflection and examination it starts to dawn on you that this movie may in fact be not only deeply meaningful and great, but, in fact, important.

"Important" works of art are ones that are not just elegant or profound or even sublime, but I think most importantly they are the ones that are exceptionally timely.  What the world needs now, is aptness, sweet aptness.  Very often the messages that are needed at any given time are political (which is why so many "important" movies or "important" art generally is often political), but I think just now the messages we might most need are cultural and critical (in the academic sense) in nature.  

At one point in Vengeance, Ashton Kutcher's character (Quentin Sellers) says by way of critique of our current moment we find ourselves in: "Everything means everything, so nothing means anything."  The quote diagnoses the extent to which we have entered, just in the past few years, a postmodern cultural era.  Postmodernity is a complicated thing to define (just ask Fred Jameson who spent 500 pages or so in an attempt to do just that).  Possibly my favorite attempt at a definition is in Jameson's introduction to his book (and in postmodern studies, you only ever have to read introductions to books... or even just the marketing blurbs!).  He offers it somewhat glibly, but I think we can retrospectively now take it somewhat seriously...  He says something like:

"the Postmodern is thinking about the present historically in a world that has forgotten its history"

We are living in an era of supreme subjectivity where everyone's thoughts and identity have become significant and actual meaning and complexity and depth have become tertiary.  We have fully blown past Colbert's Era of Truthiness, briefly paused at the moment of "alternative facts", and now exist in a time when claims of "I feel that ____" and "I know the __{insert expert here}___ says ________, but I believe that ___________" have equal epistemological standing to previously 'absolute' truths like 3 + 3 = 6 and "water is made up of 2 parts hydrogen to 1 part oxygen".  And this, I think, is closer to a postmodern sensibility:

"Nothing means anything, so everything means anything"

That mentality is perhaps more akin to a less thought about branch of postmodernity called supermodernity (which itself is thought of as a branch of hypermodernity) which I think of as the notion that the meaning of the whole of anything can be ascertained by closely examining and understanding any part of it.  It's what Walter Benjamin was on about in his unfinished master work The Arcades Project, but I think it's also what's going on, in a satirical way, in Vengeance. In the movie, one of the Shaw daughters primary aspiration in life is to be famous - when this gets interrogated, and she is asked what she wants to be famous for - does she want to be a famous singer, or a famous actor, she decides she wants "to be a famous celebrity" - and this pretty well encapsulates the thesis of the movie, but is a throwaway joke line, soon forgotten.

And so (i haven't forgotten) we come on to Juliet, Naked, a bizarrely un-timely movie that came out in 2018, but is about email - in a moment after "email is over". It's based on a book by Nick Hornby from 2009, a time when email ruled - and the adaptation took the material straight (which is generally the best choice when adapting Hornby - who has kinda always already gotten it...), but that makes for a weird unmoored feel to the movie.

Given its excessive untimeliness, Juliet, Naked is anything but important, but as is so often the case with Nick Hornby, it captures aspects of the modern human experience, and interrogates them from a myriad of angles.  Here we find an investigation of highly curated fandom - questions of who owns a work of art, the artist or the appreciator of the art.  The movie is about the fraught-ness of an artist putting themselves out there, but also the fraught-ness of putting yourself out there - committing yourself to someone despite all their foibles and obsessions and insecurities.

As with Horby's best works - really all of his work that I've encountered, whether in writing, film, or song - the central question being asked is, "what is a life?" or maybe, "what should I do in my life?"  What to do with your life feels all-encompassing, and final, but what to do in your life feels like a good question to ask - where to spend your energies, what (and who) to give your attention to.

Life is like a weird dry run where only at the end of it we realize it was practice for a performance that's never going to happen

baby please hang on...

I have undertaken A Song of Ice and Fire (now that I'm driving most nights I couldn't come up with any more excuses why not to start {except for the fact that the books [at least the first two!] are ridiculously popular on the library circuit with a typical wait time of several months}) and am attempting to watch along again the HBO adaptation as I'm reading along.

My understanding is that this is easy to do with the first season and first book of the series, and damn near impossible to accomplish thereafter.  I'll try to do it anyway - watching as much as I deem aligned from what I've read, and will try to comment along the way as I go.

But as I am approaching the end of the first book (and first season), I'll make some initial comments, and observations then add (either to this post or in the comments) as I make my way along.

Unlike some other recent takers on of this challenge, I watched all of Game of Thrones as it was airing, and highly enjoyed the series (and yes, even the deemed bad last season, which seemed in a damned hurry, but I thought was overall satisfying).  As it turns out, I may never watch through the entire series again, although all reports are that Mr. Martin is in acceptable enough health he still has two doorstops to write to round out the (planned) 7 book series.  After Stephen King's near death encounter with a van in 1999, I think I sort of made an agreement with myself to not risk an epic fantasy series again that hinges on an author's mortality.  Better to deal with authors who are either safely dead or series that are neatly wrapped up, 

But here we go again - and so far, I'm quite enjoying the ride.

A Game of Thrones (Book 1) / A Game of Thrones (Season 1)

My favorite surprise discovery so far has been the characterization of Tyrion, which I thought as I've been reading through the first book was quite different than the tv series.  I thought of all the casting and acting decisions made for the series that perhaps they had made with Tyrion one of their few mis-steps.  Not that casting Peter Dinklage was a mistake - he is magnificent in this role - but I thought as I was reading through that his take on Tyrion was more grand and epically heroic than the novel was making him out to be, but I realized as I watched the first few episodes that I was mistaken and my memories of Dinklage's take on the character must have been from later seasons.  In this early going, Tyrion is quite as small, in every sense, as he is made out to be in the novel.  Clever and cunning to be sure, but also petty and pitiful - a far cry from the "I drink, and I know things" hero he will grow in to.

The show and novel have some differences to be sure (e.g. in the novel it is Catelyn who insists that Ned Stark must take on the role of Hand of the King, whereas in the show it is Ned's own honor that compels him), but for the most part this is a one-to-one transliteration of the novel, both equally enjoyable and well executed. (7 January 2023)

A Clash of Kings (Book 2) / A Game of Thrones (Season 2)

By something of a fluke of schedule, I began this round by reading nearly a third of the book before even starting in on episode one.  When I did finally get back to the show and watched episode 1 (the only I've revisited up to this point) it felt a bit like a speed round of the book, quickly covering nearly everything I'd read up to that point.

As the season and book have moved along, it has been a fairly even split, and it seems like they may eventually catch up with each other.  There is a lot (as always) that has to be skipped or skimmed over for the filmic version, but what is shown is mostly shown as it was in the novels except for a few specific choices:

• when Arya is brought to Harrenhal, in the show she serves as cup bearer for Tywin Lannister because it makes for better for TV with her interacting with a primary character rather than the way she takes up the role once Roose Bolton and the north take back the castle.
• This difference is exacerbated when Arya asks Jaqen H'ghar to help them free the Northmen to take over Harrenhal in the book, but only asks him to help them escape (which totally is not nothing!) in the show
• So too where Jamie Lannister finds himself in the show in a war camp prison is not so nearly as horrible as the dungeon he is being held in at River Run when he is freed by Brianne of Tarth & Catelyn Stark.
• A fascinating conversation between Davos Seaworth and his son a few minutes into episode 9 of Season 2, where his son is blindly faithful to the Lord of Light and their imminent success, where in the novel Davos's sons are all on separate ships and far from him, but he worries for them as the battle for King's Landing is about to start.

in every iteration (so it seems) Tyrion turns out to be a hero of the night of Stanis' attack on King's Landing.  The Hound - it seems - might be a different case, where he is heroic in battle, but ultimately loses his position (but mostly, like all of us, because he deems himself unworthy rather than anyone else doing it for him...).

The TV show ties up most of the loose threads and aligns fairly well with where this second novel ends, with a few exceptions.  Bran's party remains together at the end of Season 2, whereas in A Clash of Kings, Osha takes Rickon while Bran & Hodor head off in another direction (to keep at least one of the boys safe, the hope is).  Robb Stark also marries a woman in the final episode who (I think) has not even been introduced in the novels as of yet... but mostly we are still aligned at this point. (7 March 2023) 

A Storm of Swords (Book 3) / A Game of Thrones (Season 2:10 - Season 3 - Season 4 - Season 5:1 - 6)

The opening chapter is the perspective of Jamie Lannister (his first of the entire series), and is almost entirely (although very differently)  portrayed in this book 3 while he travels south to King's Landing under the protection of Brienne of Tarth, which almost entirely occurs in the final episode of Season 2..  This final episode of Season 2 also seems to contain a lot of storyline that feels a ways off in the novelization (and the third novel's early chapters seem to have a lot of filling time that never made it to the show). 

As Season 3 of the show begins, the scene north of the wall seems to echo the prologue of Storm of Swords, but the Nights Watch who are far north of the wall are heading home rather than planning a stand against the Wildings - much of the other scenes in the first episode match up to the first 20% of the novel or so.

• Theon Greyjoy's narrative seems to moving forward more quickly in the show than the novel, but it's possible that this is just an illusion as he no longer has any chapters following his progress in the book.  It's possible that as he makes his transition to Reek, he may no longer get a perspective in the book, so his story is ended...
• In this novel - the Red Wedding happens just past the half way point, whereas I just started episode 5, and we won't see it on screen until the penultimate episode of this season.  In many ways, though, this season seems again a straight-up adaptation of this third book - some things are happening out of order from the other, but I think these versions of the same story are both unfolding at about the same pace.
• The Purple Wedding is just a short while after the Red one in book 3 (and in actual show time, I think ends up just being a few episodes after it), so it seems that Book 3 will be taking us well in to Season 4 of the show, without any major noticeable storylines that are far behind the novel.
• Gendry gets taken by Stanis' Red Woman in episode 6, and here's maybe the first point where the show is starting to conflate portions of the novels - Gendry and Robert's bastard from Storm's End whose blood the Red Woman uses get condensed into one character
• As I enter the final 10% of the third novel it has already blown past the end of the third season of the show, and further (I'll figure out exactly how far once I get there as I'm currently on episode 3:8).  The one aspect of the book that is much farther ahead of the show at the end of the third of each iterations is the Wildings and the Wall - the battles at Castle Black and trying to take the Wall have progressed much further in the book and seem to be leaving the show behind. 
• The "Mhysa" moment is a lot more affective in the show because it is the finale of Season 3, whereas its buried in the lost middle of Book 3.  However, Daenerys's story seems to occur in a different order in the books from a show, but hits all of the same notes. 

Book 3 ends AMAZINGLY, and it did not make the show (might have made the Tom Savini version of the show).  I do appreciate that the show gives us the chance to see a lot more perspectives, not just the points of view of the primary characters.  We see the Wildings build-up to their attack on Castle Black and the Wall in a way that it only gets explained afterward when Jon goes to play diplomat / assassin after the attack.  And we get an insight into what Theon Greyjoy's transition to Reek has been like (although, I do sense that this storyline is moving faster in the show than in the book - just as Night's Watch {and particularly the White Walker's} storylines are further ahead in the book than in the show).

Now that I am well finished with the book, and just catching up on episodes it looks like I will reach the end of Season 4 before I run out of material from A Storm of Swards, and while that is undeniable, I am not sure that there is anything happening in the show that hasn't happened in the book yet.  It occurs to me that what is ahead in the show as I watch episode 4:4 seems to be Tommen & Margaery's story - in the book, Tommen is a boy of 8, and while all of the children in the show are older than in the novels (lest the show be banned!).  Jamie also sends Brienne out in search of the Stark girls (or at least Sansa) to bring them to safety in a way that never happens (yet) in the books, and we get the adventures Brienne & Podric!  Stannis and Davos also venture to Bravos in the show (to try to get a loan, exciting banking adventures)

Bran is also way ahead of schedule in the show - he is reaching the Children / (the big GodsWood) by the final episode of Season 4, but isn't anywhere near that in Book 3.  (The Three Eyed Raven seems a lot older and a bit more "Big Trouble in Little China" than I recall him being...).  Right on schedule as the Season 4 finale closes is Tyrion who is in a box on a ship leaving King's Landing with the aid of Varys (24 May 2023)

A Feast for Crows (Book 4) / A Game of Thrones (Season 4:10 - Season 5:1 - 10 - Season 6:6)

Season 5 of the show begins much as Book 4 does - in part - Tywin Lannister's funeral and power-brokering in King's Landing, but the other storylines feel a long way off (either back from Book 3 or things that seem a long way off).  Interestingly, there are no chapters in Book 4 for Jon Snow, Tyrion Lannister, Bran Stark, nor Daenerys Targaryen - whose stories are moving forward in Season 5, so it seems some of the storylines will be a long way off by the end of this book.

Book 4 has had a lot of storyline that mostly never made it in to the show for Brienne on the trail of Sansa Stark (a quite long storyline in the book that gets wrapped up neatly in about 11 minutes of screen time in Episode 2); Cersei recombobulating her power basis in the wake of her father's... wake; the politics of Dorne, and the fate of Princess Myrcella and her King's Guard protector (which seems to have gotten translated into Jamie Lannister heading southward to insert himself in their scene); Samwell's trip to Old Town, which is just a carriage ride in the show, I think (I haven't seen it again yet), but is an arduous boat trip in the book, where he runs in to Arya Stark!; and the Iron Born's sorting out of their new king.

• The religious fervor around the new, more lowly, High Septum and all of his Sparrows is evident in both the book and show, although in the book the church's army is explicitly rekindled by Cersei, whereas their power in the show is a bit more looming and lurking and softer power. (Oh, no, it turns out it's just as explicit on the show once we get a few episodes in to Season 5).
• The battling through this religious fervor is fought through Marjorie in the books, but Ser Loras takes the initial brunt in the show
• Sansa's story is far ahead of things in the show, getting married to Ramsey Bolton, and sending Brienne off.
• And now, after having just finished the book, frack!!, I know TV series (or movies) have to oversimplify plots and sometimes combine characters, but the TV show seems to mark any character with a Valerian Sword for the Last Battle (at least as I recall it now), but a lot has changed here...
• Also, Sansa's betrothal in the book, is all to do with the politics of The Vale (maybe the Boltons are off in her future, but for now), she is being promised to the future heir to Jon Arryn's domain...
• Jorah Mormont takes Tyrion captive to bring him where he's already going in the show, which is a delightful moment that hasn't happened in the book at all.
• Arya (aka Cat of the Canals) seems to actually be on track here in Season 5 / Book 4... she gets blind, and I haven't seen the results of that in either version yet...
• In the book, Jamie Lannister heads to take out the Blackfish (instead of rescuing his daughter from Dorne), and that happens in episode 6 of Season 6

This is the best guess of episodes (Season 5: 1-6 & Season 6:6) for this book, and I've honed and revised as I watch more and start in to the next book, but because A Feast For Crows and A Dance With Dragons happen concurrently, there is just too much happening in the show that hasn't been hinted at yet in the books, I am going to stop watching any more episodes for now, but I feel like episode 6 of Season 6 is worth watching (even if it's a big jump for some bits): 

• Sam is arriving home (in the last chapter of Book 4 he arrives at Old Town, with a plan to return to Horn Hill next) 
• Margaery is playing the devout prisoner, which she is also beginning to do just as Cersei is first imprisoned (not sure if that has happened in the show yet or not).  Margaery's crimes in the books are much more inflated and Ser Loras is the one who is truly accused in the show, rather than him being killed retaking Dragonstone
• Jamie gets sent off to Riverrun...
• Benjen Stark saves Bran & Meera (which may never happen, or is at least a long way off in the books), but it seems to fulfill his role that he had for Sam & Gilly in Book 3, I think (16 June 2023)

A Dance With Dragons (Book 5) / A Game of Thrones (Season 5:1 - 10)

It's funny, the first scene from Book 5 that happens (kind of) in Season 5 is Tyrion getting out of his box, and immediately finding some wine to drink, promptly vomiting that wine, and then drinking some more wine.  While this happens, Vaerys is explaining whose house they are in, and the large cabal that he is a part of (which becomes a huge part of Book 5 with a second Targaryen claimant to the throne, Griff, {aka Prince Aegon Targaryen} none of which will happen in the show).

• Drogon shows up at the end of episode 5:2, which is being hinted at a lot by the book, but ever seems no nearer.  Given the title (ADWD) I suspect all 3 will be running wild, and protecting Dany's interests by the end of Book 5, and probably at least by the end of Season 5 
• There is a lot less religion in Book 5, at least a lot less of The Seven - maybe there's a bit more of the Lord of Light, and in the mid-going of Book 5, Bran Stark is learning a lot more about the Old Gods & the Godwood Trees than we ever learn in the show. 
• Sansa (the real Sansa) is the substitute in Season 5 for a fake Arya in Book 5 who is set to marry Ramsey Bolton.  In the books Sansa is disguised as Alayne, and Arya is actually Jane Poole.
• The death of Ser Janos Slynt in the show feels a lot more shocking having seen in on the show (Season 5:3) and the politics of The Wall are more complicated in the book, more factions and betrayals (and re-betrayals?)
• For Daenerys, it seems things happen a bit out of order - Ser Beresten dies in episode 4 (or just before episode 5) of Season 5, but he's still alive and kicking through nearly 90% of the book.  And Drogon shows up very excitingly in the book, whisking her away, which I remember now will happen in the show (but hasn't yet in episode 6).
• Tyrion, meanwhile has almost completely caught up to his narrative in episode 6, getting captured by Ser Jorah Mormont, and then sold into slavery with him (minus Penny, which is a whole other thing), and then blows right past the books in the show, taking up the role of advisor to Queen Daenerys.

I'm not sure how to follow the goings on in Dorne - with Jamie Lannister and Bronn there - a lot of the political machinations surrounding Myrcella seem to rhyme, and I expect they will both end similarly, but having Jamie there, when in the books he is up retaking Riverrun (and MEETING AN OLD FRIEND!!!) tends to muddy the adaptation a bit.  The Iron Born's story has also been almost entirely ignored in the show so far, except for Theon's suffering.  It seems to me that I need to watch at least as far into the show to see some of that.  Theon & Yara Greyjoy have just been reunited in the book with just a few chapters to go.

I've just about finished up the book this evening, with just the Epilogue to finish, and as I now begin my long wait, here is where things seem to stand:

• The trip to HardHome has been much talked about in Book 5, but has now happened in the show (Season 5: Episode 8)
• Stannis's camp is attacked in the night by Ramsey Bolton in the show (5:9), while in the book Ramsey sends a dire letter to Jon Snow, claiming to have killed Stannis, and ended his claim to the Iron Throne.  In the show, his attack on Winterfell fails, but his ultimate end comes from Brienne, who avenges Renly's death.
• So there's some stuff in the books that could never make it into a show, it's so horrible, but the one thing that isn't in the books (yet at least), but happens in "The Dance of Dragons" (5:9) is that King Stannis burns his daughter alive, as a 'blood of kings' sacrifice.
• While Tyrion did get to her a little early, Daenerys gets saved by Drogon in 5:9, too.
• Cersei makes her walk of atonement in episode 5:10.  Interestingly, in the Epilogue of Book 5, her uncle, Ser Kevin Lannister promises that his niece Cersei will get up to no more in the future.  Needless to say, in the show, she does, a lot, so we will see how that plays out in the Books to Come...
• John Snow is left for dead at the end of episode 5:10, he hasn't gotten up again in the books after he met the same fate in his final chapter, so if Season 6 ever sees him rise, I will perhaps pause, but there is more (I think more from Book 4 than 5) that is missing in the show from what has happened in the books, so I'll venture forward at least a bit, as I finish Book 5.

And so, the book has ended, and now my watch begins - the Epilogue (as several of them have been) was full of unexpected twists and turns.  Lord Varys makes an unexpected appearance (at the end of the show as well), but half a world away), and seems to be throwing King's Landing into chaos.  I will start Season 6, but feel like I won't get very far before almost everything gets ahead of things from the books.