Day: July 27, 2007

Last night, I caught up to the rest of the family and saw Ratatouille. Pixar fun, with a nice short to lead off the film per usual. Metacritic score of 96 is stratospheric. I enjoyed it, but wouldn’t put it up on that pedestal. A G movie that works for children but never talks down to adults. For foodies (not me), even more enjoyable.

I had a lot of fun seeing Live Free or Die Hard two weeks ago. Metacritic score of 69 is a touch low. Aside from the poor riff on True Lies (the jet scene), suspending disbelief and just going with the flow is fun. Not sure why Bruce Willis defines sardonic humor, but it’s a nice touch for an “action hero.” As much as The Sixth Sense was brilliant, the Die Hard franchise feels like Willis’s home.

Jarhead is a book I wouldn’t have picked up without seeing the movie. Subtitled “A Marine’s Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles,” Anthony Swofford’s memoir makes me wonder again that my father was in the Marine Corps reserves. Just doesn’t feel like my father’s kind of organization, but then I didn’t know my father as a young man. I never considered how much the military (especially the Marines?) still live up to the reputation of sex, drinking and general hell-raising…even (especially) at overseas postings. Tough to be an ambassador when you’re under 21, loaded, and horny. Hmmm.

The book isn’t political. It’s personal…which makes the observations stronger. All of America is aware (now) that the restraint of Gulf War 1 was smart, not weak, however disorienting and disappointing it was for Swofford and his mates at the time. The lack of combat is maddening, though, to both author and reader.
Side note: reading Swofford on their crappy gas masks (fortunately never required), it’s disappointing to see that the military couldn’t improve much in the 70-odd years since World War I.

Now that I’ve read the book, it’s even more surprising this was made into a movie. But I’m glad it raised my awareness enough to pick Jarhead off the library shelves.

Such an airplane book… The Book of Fate by Brad Meltzer… if it hadn’t been sitting in a pile, I wouldn’t have remembered reading it. And it took the jacket blurb to clue me in to the story again. And that’s maybe three weeks after reading the book. Enough said.

In past years, I’ve watched several days of the Tour de France in the early morning, or catching the repeat on OLN (now Versus) in the evenings. Some of my fonder moments a few years ago were getting up early with the boy and teaching him who Lance Armstrong was, as we ate breakfast in front of the Alps or Pyrenees. Like most Americans, some of my interest diminished when Lance retired, and Landis’s breakthrough rise and fall last year was maddening. I can’t help but join those who wonder about Lance, too. When everyone from Basso to Ullrich and beyond was caught or implicitly acknowledged “mistakes” in the last few years, and the Tour finds itself with a much diminished field each year… how could it have been so different during Lance’s seven years?

Still, I watched a few hours here and there, mostly last week. Liggett and Sherwin are marvelous commentators. Makes me want to go out and ride up (shorter, less steep) hills. Bike racing is much better on TV. And so much worse in person, unfortunately, if you actually want to see anything.

Then Rasmussen, the surprise leader, gets tossed. Argh. I’m still going to watch part of the final time trial tomorrow. Yet it feels like watching Barry Bonds chase the home run record. No matter how much you’d like to get caught up in the moment, how can you commit the psychic energy of fandom to any of these athletes?

Simon Winchester published A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906 less than a year ago, in October 2006. Since April 18, 1906 was the earthquake of the title, he just made the centennial — hardly a coincidence.

After my other recent earthquake book, I’m now fully aware of the dangers of my hometown. So be it. The first half of this book was education and explanation for those who need an introduction to plate tectonics. Not me. So I was annoyed for a while, and then amused by Winchester’s efforts to stretch this momentous incident into a hinge for the new American century. Hmmmm.

Certainly, the transfer of the economic center of California from Northern California to Los Angeles and its environs was made possible by the quake (among other factors). But Winchester’s tale loses momentum after he describes the quake and the first few days. From the title, fair enough — but he hinted at broader goals, and then lost them in the fire which consumed the city and his story. For a history of the quake itself and the reconstruction, I’ll have to look elsewhere.

I read Winchester’s The Professor and the Madman a few years ago. That quirky double biography with its deep love of words enchanted me. A Crack in the Edge of the World educated me a bit, engaged me at times, but never grabbed me.

I returned Mad Dogs by James O’Grady to the library a few weeks ago. I liked the flashbacks in this thriller, which made the reading slightly more than just brain candy. The characters are more memorable than the ending, at least these few weeks later. I’ve heard of Six Days of the Condor, but never read the book nor seen the movie. Funny to read that six days was too long for a movie, so they shortened it to Three Days of the Condor. I know you have to abbreviate a novel into a movie, but that’s…blunt.