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Thoughtful violence.

I use that seeming oxymoron to describe the movie Collateral. This was a compelling film. Yes, it’s violent, and the violence isn’t necessarily thoughtful, but the film doesn’t get caught up the action. Instead, the explosions of bullets that occasionally erupt punctuate the film, and change the pace.

The beginning of this movie grabbed me, without being loud or fast or aggressive. Jamie Foxx starts his shift as a taxi driver, demonstrating his competence while at the same time showing how much he’s a victim of his routines. Then the movie really kicks off with some quiet moments while Jada Pinkett Smith rides in Foxx’s taxi from the airport to her office. She’s a prosecuting attorney, and we get the first reminder of how revealing anonymous conversations can be. Taxi drivers must hear and see all kinds of things, and the movie builds off a few examples. Once you add stress — which this movie does — the wall between driver and passenger breaks down. Those breakdowns are part of the success of this movie.

The best parts of the movie are where two people are talking, or not talking. After the opening, this is mostly Jamie Foxx and Tom Cruise. Foxx is not funny in this movie, and that’s a complement. His presence as the focused, competent, self-deluding taxi driver makes the movie. He’s the hero, without being heroic. Tom Cruise as the contract killer, by contrast, is evil, but in a deliberately neutral way. There is nothing redeeming about him, but his clearheadedness is striking. Like Foxx, he is a perfectionist about his job. Together, they draw each other out, mostly via Cruise’s persistence in keeping Foxx focused so he doesn’t lose his equilibrium in the chaos that Cruise’s tasks bring about. Cruise is an unchanging catalyst for Foxx’s changes… and it’s all coherent.

Go see Collateral.

Patrick O’Brian clearly enjoyed writing The Golden Ocean. Three years later, in The Unknown Shore, he used the same source material. The true story of a 1740 Royal Navy squadron sent to the Pacific to take a Spanish galleon becomes the platform from which O’Brian creates a separate story. One of the vessels, the Wager, carries midshipman Jack Byron and his friend the surgeon’s mate, Tobias Barrow.

“In Jack and Toby,” crows the book jacket, “O’Brian fans will thrill to catch fascinating glimpses of Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, famed heroes of the great Aubrey/Maturin series to come.” That’s fair. The mix of Jack Byron’s high spirits and sea knowledge certainly feels like foreshadowing of Jack Aubrey. And Toby’s landlubber characteristics, combined with his love of natural history, more than hints at Maturin, though without the tortured internal life and intelligence agent role.

The Wager shipwrecks off the coast of Chile about halfway through the novel. The continuation is a less interesting tale of the lengthy journey back to civilization, first in Santiago and then eventually back to London.

The brief time in Santiago is vividly drawn, and I am amazed once more at the fact that O’Brian never travelled, and wasn’t much of a sailor, either. Goes to show you that an imagination is sometimes better off unencumbered by visual impressions. If all you know is what you’ve read and researched, then it’s up to you to turn around and find the words to share your internal vision. O’Brian got better and better at doing that. I finally ordered #18, The Yellow Admiral, from Amazon.com, so I’ll finish the final three in the Aubrey-Maturin series before the end of the year. Then what?

I’ve spent a lot of time rowing. Not recently, unfortunately, but it was a major focus for a decade or so. So I could smile at these two quotes from the September issue of Rowing News. I don’t even know which article they are from, since I ripped the page out of the magazine solely to remember these lines.

Other than waiting for aliens, it’s hard to imagine many things that provide as little tangible benefit for so much effort as rowing.
…
I can’t remember how many times I’ve heard rowing referred to as a cult.

I think the author should apologize to the cult of Scientology. There aren’t enough rowers to count as a cult!

Seriously… Rowing News was founded in 1994 by my high-school classmate, boatmate, and friend, Chip Davis, as the Independent Rowing News. IRN, as it was known then, published every two weeks and was a real break away from the only other American publication focused on rowing, USRowing, the official publication of the organizing body. Chip has succeeded, incredibly, and Rowing News is now a monthly glossy that still includes its trademark race results and has grown to include stellar photos and a range of articles. If you care about rowing, you should subscribe.

I contributed a few articles in the first year or two, including one savaging USRowing for its treatment of the junior program and a book review of Brad Lewis’s “Wanted: Rowing Coach.” He doesn’t even list that book on his website. While the book didn’t have enough appeal for anyone outside the rowing community to read, I found it interesting for the (small) audience who would recognize the cast of characters to be found on a smaller college crew. Anyway, that was about my last published writing, along with a few hundred-word Almanacs for The Atlantic Monthly… until this vanity press came along! 😉

I’ve spent the afternoon indoors, mostly, but San Francisco is hot today. Up over 90 degrees. Felt great during my run this morning, when it was probably a few degrees cooler, but this is startling. September is often the best month, weather-wise, but what a contrast to the hurricane season lashing Florida right now. I may eat my words, but I’ll take earthquakes. The anticipation won’t get you. I hope the family I have scattered on the eastern seaboard of Florida comes through without too much disruption, beyond the obvious evacuation.

Matt Damon does the sequel right. The Bourne Supremacy keeps moving, and was a worthy evening of entertainment in Lake Placid, New York a couple of weeks ago. The movie Bourne doesn’t have all the darkness and complexity of the book Bourne, but who wants that anyway, in a movie. The performance of the Russian taxi Bourne drives like an indestructible Ferrari was a bit much, but a little suspension of disbelief never hurt anyone.

Yes, I’ve been on a recent Ludlum kick. I think I’m done for a while now.

More vacation reading from a few weeks ago. After my speculation about who’s writing the Ludlum books that keep coming out, at least The Bourne Legacy, the newest one, acknowledge that the author is someone else: Eric Van Lustbader. The cover screams “Robert Ludlum’s Bestselling Character Jason Bourne,” but does say “A new novel by Eric Van Lustbader.” No surprises here, just your usual international conspiracy foiled by one man. Only real twist is that Bourne meets his son, who he had thought long-dead (boring/contrived backstory). His son is named Khan. All I could think of was William Shatner yelling “Khhhhhaaaaaannnnnnnn.”

Anyway, this is a quick read, and a reasonable 21st century “palate cleanser” before I returned to the 18th century.

Van Lustbader has written many books under his own name, with his own characters. I know that I’ve read The Ninja, sometime back when I was a teenager, but beyond the fact that there were sex scenes mixed in with the obvious martial arts violence, I can’t remember a thing. Apparently, that was the first in a series. Who knew? His biography page doesn’t let on whether the name is a pen name (doesn’t it have to be??), but it does tell us that “He is the author of more than twenty best-selling novels including The Ninja in which he introduced Nicholas Linnear, one of modern fiction’s most beloved and enduring heroes.” My memory failed me, clearly, since despite reading the book, I couldn’t remember the name of the “enduring” hero. Snarkiness aside, I’m sure the rest of the series is good airplane reading, too.

Back to The Bourne Legacy (briefly): I preferred The Janson Directive, whether it was written by Ludlum himself or not. Steve told me a couple of weeks ago, after seeing my curiousity, that he’s heard none of these were written by the Ludlum himself. Guess that estate won’t “kill the golden goose”… even if it’s already dead!

Since Stacey’s didn’t have volume 18 in the Aubrey-Maturin series handy, I picked up a couple of other Patrick O’Brian’s, including The Golden Ocean. This novel was written earlier (1956) than the series which made the author famous, but it’s in print now thanks to his other success. The Golden Ocean is a historical rewrite of a 1740 Royal Navy expedition to grab a Spanish treasure ship. To do it, the Navy sent five ships around the world. One made it home, albeit with vast sums of gold and silver.

O’Brian’s style isn’t fully recognizable here, and the start of the novel (getting the protagonist from Ireland to his new ship) is painful, but the sailing makes up for it all. This story doesn’t rate up there with the later series, but the real events retold here were amazing enough for their time. I would not have picked up the novel without being a committed O’Brian fan, and I would not advise starting here, but with those caveats, a reasonable read.

The kids and wife have been out of town all week. Life is different on your own, running your schedule without accounting for other people. That doesn’t include the office, of course, but I avoided spending all my extra time at work. Phew.

My mania for consuming media — so much easier than creating it — gets more time, which may or may not be a good thing. Fortunately, the only TV I’ve been watching is English Premier League soccer that I’ve TiVoed. If I really wanted to spend more time in front of the TV, I’m sure I could find something interesting to watch. But even though it helps to turn the brain off now and again, TV time feels like a luxury, given the stack of projects I’d like to tackle.

My attention has been diverted from clock, too. First there was a vacation, then there was a busy catch-up week, and then my bachelor week. Everyone comes back tomorrow, so time to record a few of the things I like to remember.

I’m looking forward to normal life again, despite the hours of extra time this week. When I went out to dinner last night at 1751 social club, a local place, I checked to see if they have high chairs. (They do.) Yes, I’m a family man now.

I won’t be filling any aggregators for a while. Back in a while.

Reuters gives the article a less provocative title, but “Gene Blocker Turns Monkeys Into Workaholics – Study” is really about procrastination.

“The gene knockdown triggered a remarkable transformation in the simian work ethic. Like many of us, monkeys normally slack off initially in working toward a distant goal,” he added.

I know we’re 97% the same genetically as chimps, but are they calling me a simian?

Although some employers might take a distinct interest in the work, the NIMH team said they are hoping to understand mental illness.

And people worry about stem-cell research. Can’t anybody stop these mad scientists??!?