After 2026—What?

.

On our trip to Montana, I brought three books. The first I started and finished en route. The second I started en route and finished flying home. Of the third I read the next four chapters while BARTing home. But that doesn't mean Moby Dick will be showing up here any time soon. I'm still only on page 162.

Long book, that Moby Dick. But I have finished these:

☞

030) Saints Volume 3: Boldly, Nobly, and Independent, 1893–1955, finished April 11

I loved this book, the first of Saints that I've read through (slightly embarrassing as I have a number of friends who've worked on them). First, I recognize this is something of a trendy book in that it believes history isn't just Great Man but examples of all the other people as well, "smaller" people doing "smaller" things. The thing is: I think that is great. We need to know what's happening in Cincinnati and Berlin as much as we do inner Salt Lake sanctums. Otherwise, it's not a history of the Church.

Anyway, I've already cited it in talks and even more in conversation. I liked getting to be friends with people now dead. That's one of my favorite things. Love it.

Plus, it's written in a cheery accessible way (without avoiding necessary darkness) and in bitesize pieces which make it perfect for pulling out during a solo breakfast or while waiting for someone to finish their shower. Which is largely how I read it.

Plus, knowing the amount of work that the team put into capturing things with accuracy—every quotation is a quotation, every sunny day was sunny in just that way—while making everything feel as natural as a Judy Blume novel, is just an astonishing accomplishment of both scholarship and artistry.

(Also, hilariously (but thought-provokingly), share this fun fact at your next writing group, they built the books using savethecat as a model.)

almost four years 

☞

031) Wrapped in Plastic: Twin Peaks by Andy Burns, finished April 11

Six years ago I read the Pop Classics on Calvin & Hobbes which remains one of the finest (and most pleasurable) works of criticism in my experience. This volume on Twin Peaks doesn't reach that level—it's more praise and fun facts—but absolutely worth the time I spent reading it. Plus, it's persuaded me to seek out other things (eg, the Psych episode that has over 700 Twin Peaks references which was delightful).

They've released a lot more since I last checked (Jurassic Park! Clueless! Labyrinth!) and, as there are now more I want to read, Imahafta.

But, also, it makes me want to finish my Napoleon Dynamite pitch. Someone needs to write that book and here I am, right here, available. (Soon as I finish this novel....)

perhaps a month

☞

032) After 1903—What? by Robert Benchley, finished April 15

I love Benchley's short videos which is why the last time I read one of his books, I made a vaguely Benchleyesque video in response:

More recently, when I interrupted my Benchley reading for Dave Barry's memoir, I was delighted to learn that Dave Barry counts Benchley as one of his heroes and continues to reread him to this day. I felt in good company.

And a Benchley collection really is the ideal bedside companion. He's a charming host, sometimes very funny, pleasantly old-fashioned, and the essays are all very short. I assume they were written for newspaper syndication but the book never says.

Speaking of, what the heck does After 1903—What? mean, anyway? The collection came out in 1938. So 1903 was 35 years earlier. Robert Benchley was born in 1889 so he turned 14 in 1903 and 50 in 1938. This does not help me any. I suspect it was a funny title in 1938, but why? Why???

Here's my copy:

Here's another version:

Neither of these covers makes the title any clearer to me.

You're welcome to read it yourself and explain the thing to me.

Or you can watch an actually entertaining video from the man himself:

could be less than one year or maybe it was two

☞

033) Money: The True Story of a Made-up Thing by Jacob Goldstein, finished May 4

Loved it. Goldstein is a Planet Money reporter and the book shares that smart but accessible vibe. It covers everything from about four thousand years ago to 2020 and it opened my eyes to a lot of things I thought I understood and things I did not understand and even things I already understood. It's a swift journey through posibility, which is the real thing. Things need not be the way they are. We know that because they haven't been that way long. They haven't been any way long.

Solid work of popular nonfiction. Recommended. 

one or two or three weeks 

☞

034) Montana 1948 by Larry Watson, finished May 6

We have five essentially new ex-library copies of this novel. Some teacher had got them purchased then couldn't have used them more than a time or two. Then they sat for a decade or more before being tossed.

I grabbed five because "Montana." The Big O was considering Missoula for school and I thought maybe reading this together could be a fun family activity. Currently we're flying to Missoula for O's graduation so obviously that didn't happen. But Lady Steed grabbed two of them for us to read on the trip then give to O and his girlfriend when we finished. 

Well, it's probably best we didn't read this with a 12yrold even thought that's the age of the protagonist. Some of the blurbs compare this to To Kill a Mockingbird and part of the reason is the integrity of the father figure but it's also because of the darkness that fuels the novel's plot.

So why has this 1993 novel not had the lasting power of TKAM? They are similar in theme and quality. Its darkness might be slightly too clear for most high-school teachers. And it's probably slightly too short. But the biggest reason might be the title. Montana 1948 is fine, I guess, but it had little evocative power compared to, say, To Kill a Mockingbird. No competition.

I was looking in the text for a better title for the novel. I found options, but it's too late now.

It is a good book, though. I wonder if it will grow in my estimation as time passes.

[Spoiler: between handwriting this review on May 6 and typing it May 13, it already has.] 

from sfo to slc 

☞

035) Clever Girl: Jurassic Park by Hannah McGregor, finished May 11

A lot of "populist" queer writing shares a rhetorical problem: it makes no space for people who don't already agree with whatever is being said. (Sometimes it even makes enemies our of allies for good measure.) Unless you're already fully converted, you're a damn fool and there is not enough time in the world to explain things for you.

This sort of anger is understandable—plenty of queer people fairly feel the world feels this way about them, but this stance not only fails to gain converts, it can't even attain an audience.

Which isn't to say Hannah McGregor isn't angry. In her acknowledgements she calls Clever Girl an angry book. But her writing here is also sad and open and funny and deeply personably. Even if you came into Clever Girl convinced she's wrong about averything, you'll leave the book feeling friendly toward her and understanding why she feels the way she does, how she came to feel that way, and probably sympathetic to her argument. 

(It occurs to me that one of Clever Girl's themes—the depth of time—might partly explain how she's able to provide this context even to those who might start off assuming she's batty.)

Which argument is excellent, by the way. No just her exegesis of Jurassic Park, but every part of reality which it comes into contact with.

This is the most personal of the three Pop Classics I've read, but that deep personal connection is the engine that runs the intellectual vehicle that is Clever Girl.

Good stuff.

(recommended companion readings: my favorite thing is monsters one and two)

one week

☞

 

previous books

April Come She Will

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I started the month by having already blown it. The first three movies here were part of the dystopia unit I teach; each class voted on a different movie. Blocks one and two respectively chose 12 Monkeys and Children of Men and class ended March 31 with plenty of minutes left for April 1. I had to sub third block and used that time to post March's movies, knowing I wouldn't be watching anything that evening. But! I failed to consider that Strawberry Mansion is significantly shorter! The credits started rolling about 45 seconds before the bell! School dismissed! And so, technically, it should have been a March movie. But we're not done with it and it belongs with those other two movies, so I don't feel so bad.

Feel free to shake your head in disappointent, but I'm afraid April began eight and a half hours early this year.

.

ELSEWHERE
Hoopla

Strawberry Mansion (2021)

First, I like how Birney isn't afraid to connect his movie through reusing props or even characters which making no attempt to suggest this is some sort of shared universe.

Second, I love how deleriously weird it is and yet students don't hate it. I'm bummed we finished right at the bell. I should have intentionally started it twenty minutes late so conversation could pick right up as the movie ends, but I trust it'll go well tomorrow. People were mostly saying good things as they left the classroom.

Also, so nice to have some pink after starting the day with 12 Monkeys and Children of Men. This might even have a happy ending! Maybe!

ELSEWHERE
our dvd

12 Monkeys (1995)

I don't know why I'm not a bigger Terry Gilliam fan. Feels like his aesthetic should appeal more to me. I'm almost a hundred pages into Gilliam on Gilliam right now! But I don't love any of his movies. It's kind of a bummer.

But I did like 12 Monkeys on this rewatch. I've seen La Jetée several times since watching 12 Monkeys the first time circa 2003 and so this time I didn't really need to figure out what was going on. Or so I thought. I did not pick up on the identity of that woman in the final scene even though the subtitles identified her as Astrophysicist. Thank goodness I have students around to explain things to me.

Anyway, I like that there's this ambiguity about his sanity but the movie never really takes that seriously. We have empathy for poor confused James Cole but we largely only believe he's confused because the movie insists on it. There's nothing in the storytelling that makes us doubt him.

It gets into the tragedy of time travel's inherent, paradoxical nature while being a fun mid-to-low-budget star vehicle.

ELSEWHERE
our dvd

Children of Men (2006)

Arguably the most acclaimed dystopian movie I haven't yet seen. A mid-apocalyptic film. No baby's been born, anywhere in the world, for over eighteen years. What governments are left are autocratic nightmares, rounding up refugees and doing nothing good with them.

And then: hope.

I don't watch a lot of war films so keep that in mind when I say this film gave me more sense of death is entirely out of my hands and anyone could die before this scene is over than just about anything else I've seen. But this time, the baby!

It's beautifully shot. The famous long shots aren't showy in context. The accidental bloodsplatter works great but I'm happy it was an accident.

Look forward to someday watching it again and glad I own the novel!

ELSEWHERE
YouTube

The Hamster Factor and Other Tales of Twelve Monkeys (1996)

This is a terrific verite making-of. It's fascinating to watch Terry Gilliam at work.

The title of this doc comes from one scene with a hamster in the background which, if you're like me, you probably have not noticed, which brought production to a near halt until they could get the darn thing to work.

You wonder if Terry Gilliam would be happier if he'd stuck with animation and put together a Don Herztfeldt–style career.

But then he gets a happy ending—his movie opens at number one in every country it opens in. But can he be happy? Doesn't seem like it....

There's probably a lesson in here for us. Maybe it's on this tshirt his editor wears.

HOME
Peacock

The Prince of Egypt (1998)

First time watching this since 1998 in a Bakersfield theater where I also saw As Good as It Gets (the new Bond film was sold out; I suspect I liked what I saw better than I would have 007; anyway, otherwise I wouldn't have ended the night a Greg Kinnear fan). I really liked it. Lightning enlightening the Red Sea remains one of the most awe-inspiring movies I've ever had in a movie theater.

But I haven't seen it since then and remembered very little about it. For instance, it's a musical! I didn't know that! Even as it went on, the only music I recognized was the priests' playing-with-the-big-boys-now number and the final flourish before it cuts to credits.

It's a beautiful film, still. Some of the cg doesn't slide in perfectly smoothly, but the mix of 2d animation with clear computer elements (I know: it's all cg, actually) largely looks great. Whoever animated Moses's face is a terrific actor. Whoever animated Rameses' face is an expert at transformation. Zipporah's face always seems a little out of time, however. But Miriam and Aaron are great!

It really is a slimmed-down and modern-friendly adaptation, but it's still seems daring for the time and hard to imagine existing today. I think this is the last great Bible epic? Unless you include Passion of the Christ has there even been one to achieved broad popularity since 1998? I'm not doing any research, but I can't think of one....

In the end, it's quite good. And I think my favorite cinematic Moses. It's a well structured film and it gave me meaningful feelings. A fine thing for Holy Saturday.

THEATER
Grand Lake Theatre

Project Hail Mary (2026)

Happy to say I really liked this. I don't knowy why people were complaining about act three (just that they were) but I would be willing to agree the pacing was a tad off. Lady Steed thought the ending had a tad too much Hollywood cheer. I'm fine with it although, on reflection, perhaps Ryan Gosling should have looked older.

For some reason, my review of the book was in the top two or three most popular posts on Thubstack for years. Why? I don't know.

Al my complaints about the book are still true but so is all my praise. I enjoyed the book a lot and the things that bugged me about it I don't remember (or didn't until just reviewing my review). The movie loses a lot of the fun intellectual-puzzle aspects of the novel, but it's still just a lot of fun. Sonthree cried a lot, I cried a little, we all laughed a lot. Ryan Gosling's a movie star. Not everyone can star in Cast Away. Even with a costar that can emote better than Wilson.

(It was fun to listen to the audience react to Rocky.)

Anyway, he probably won't but I hope he gets awards considerato in at the end of the year. And I can't wait to see what Lord Miller does next.

HOME
library dvd

The Old Man & the Gun (2018)

A charming and lovely film. And so different from The Green Knight. Same writer/director—nice to know there are still eclectics in the world.

Great cast and a simple story about taking joy where you find joy. Takes all types, I suppose.

I liked the moment where the brakelights flushed Sissy Spacek's face. It's the little things, you know?

(Also, the special features were so great. I challenge everyone to make their cut scenes so beautiful. Sad I cannot also log "Everything Else We Shot" and "Prison Cats" on Letterboxd so I could then praise them in more detail.)

HOME
our dvd

The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1966)

Here are some things this movie does that movies just don't do anymore and it's a shame.

1. Make liberal use of charming and hilarious old ladies. The world is filled with aged actresses who can light up the screen. Why aren't we still doing this?

2. Innocent romance. The first kiss between Luthor and Alma is so sweet and pure and simple that I count it among my favorite movie kisses. (Even though Don Knotts is 42 and Joan Stapley is 24.) (It's a shame Don Knotts wasn't being asked to make movies like this in his twenties.) (His first credit came at age thirty.) This is sufficient romance for a kids movie, thank you.

3. Goofy scores in kiddy horror comedies.

4. Nutsy mysteries that don't care what Cinema Sins says, the just offer a fun excuse for jump and gags.

5. No-apology silliness.

Where this level of dumb fun in 2026?

We watched this because the 9yrold wanted to watch something and I sent her into the dvds to find something under 100 minutes. Then there was a bit of a narrowing-down process but we arrived here and we had a great time.

Although the 18yrold refused to join us. Being scarred by this movie is a treasured memory for him.

HOME
our dvd
(don't ask me where
they all come from;
I don't know)

A Few Good Men (1992)

A couple things haven't aged well (the score, the credits) and I'm not totally convinced the movie would enjoy its current reputation if it appeared today, but it's still pretty great. Such a cast and who doesn't love an explosive conclusion to a courtroom drama? That's what we crave! Even if it's not in the courtroom proper (eg 12 Angry Men), we gotta have that moment. And this one is, I'll grant, particularly earned. And the explosion is particularly explosive. And the risk Tom Cruise's character is taking makes the whole thing particularly fraught.

You know what? I think I've talked myself into it. It's better than just pretty great.

HOME
our dvd

The Fighting Preacher (2019)

Objectively, this isn't a great movie. But it features comic scenes that are perfectly executed. It has moving scenes that are very effective. It has bits of dialogue and character work that are excellent. And in between those are shots and blocking and other choices that are so obvious as to be inadvertently funny, and egregious fan service. (Only instead of, I don't know, Spider-Man, it's Gordon Hinckley. That sort of thing.)

In other words, it's a very T.C. Christensen movie. I end up really liking it, even though my better judgment has written a long list of reasons not to.

Previous films watched. . . .

Magpie Novelwriting

 

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Saturday at 8:43am Pacific, I finished the first draft of my new (as-yet-untitled) novel. This is exciting, because the novel begins today, no earlier than 6:30pm Mountain (probably more like 9pm Mountain).

When I started the original short-story version of this tale in fall 2024, it was set in April/May 2025. The goal was to get it into the world before the events occurred.

But it never was a short story, so I’ve spent the last year expanding it into a novel that begins April 28, 2026 and ends Monday May 4, 2026. It had to be then (now) because the protagonists needed to graduate from BYU and get married before things start, as you can see from the first page of my MS:

Temples are closed on Sundays and Mondays. Can’t get them married then. And we need a couple days of action before the weekend hits. Tuesday, April 28 it is.

Pre-dating is standard operating procedure with me. Byuck takes place in the 2000–2001 school year. I started writing it in 1999 and finished the first draft in 2004. Just Julie’s Fine takes place fall 2005. I started in in 2004 and finished its first draft in 2012.

I guess I want my books to take place the exact same moment their first readers read them? If so, I haven’t pulled it off yet. And it would take a miracle for this book to appear even next year. Tuesday’s out of the question.

Anyway, at least I got the rough done before the novel starts this time. I’m feeling good about that. I’m undecided if I should dig into the rewrite immediately or follow Stephen King’s advice and sticking it in a drawer until I’ve written something else. We’ll see.

To celebrate draft one though, I wanted to share a bit of how the short story became a novel.

First, it always was a novel. It was apparent from go that I was trying to cram way too much into 6,000 words (ultimately almost 12,000, notwithstanding my efforts at brevity). But still—how did that grow into this?

(Incidentally, mystery novels should generally land between 70,000 and 90,000 words and I was aiming for the upper count. Nailed it!)

How did I get to 89,035 words? Well, of course, I filled in the parts that had gotten short shrit before. But another part of it was simply taking what surrounded me and shoving it into the novel. Here are some examples.

I probably stole more ideas from this book than I remember. I would already own my own copy of this (remember: I loved it) if Lady Steed wasn’t so freaked out by the cover. And, if I did, I could then thumb through its pages and see what else there is to admit to, but here’s one thing I definitely took from Chuck:

He said add a dog.

I added a dog.

I was at Stuff, gosh, two or three months ago? As per usual, alongside the LPs and tiki crafts and midcentury political buttons and funky furniture, there were piles and piles and piles of Playboys. On the top of one of these piles was an issue that didn’t look much like the other issues. For one thing, it didn’t star a buxom beauty on the cover. If I remember right, there was one of these but she was small and up in the corner of her issue’s orange-brown cover that otherwise was just a list of authors interviewed within. Ray Bradbury. Joyce Carol Oates. I think Normal Mailer and Joseph Heller were on there. Dozens of names.

I didn’t think much about it at the time—it was just one more Playboy in an antique consignment shop—but I kept thinking about the issue. And thus the issue came to play an important role in an extended flash back I intended to write. I wasn’t worried about being able to learn more about this issue when the time came because, as I believe I mentioned, there are endless Playboys in Stuff and this one had a particularly unsexy cover. It would still be there whenever I got around to returning.

Well, I didn’t get around to returning until I was ready to insert it into the plot. First, I did some looking around online but couldn’t learn the details I needed. In fact, I couldn’t even prove the issue existed. So I went back to Stuff and went through every single pile of Playboys without success. I took a deep breath and asked the proprietor and he was like, uhhhh, do you have any idea how many Playboys we have in this place? I took his point and went home sad (albeit with my wife’s birthday present in tow) (which I should mention is neither LP nor tiki nor politics nor furnishing nor Playboy) (and only cost me three dollars) (plus tax).

Anyway, back the internet. Searching and searching and searching. Playboy is a hugely popular brand and you can find anything you want. Except evidence that this orange-brown (special?) issue I saw with my own eyes exists in this timeline.

The issue was, gulp, out of the novel.

Yes, I could make up details, but that’s cheating. So now the two interviews I needed would have to come from individual issues. Wikipedia helped me out here, and luckily the interviews I wanted did exist and I did find them online. But now I had to rethink how the scene would play out. In the end, the differences weren’t that great and Playboy diehards will have fewer reasons to send me angry correspondance.

I didn’t read East of Eden recently (it’s been over five years), but I keep trying to capture its multigenerational epicness in shorter form. Now in the form of a mid-novel digression. I’m not sure what first gave me the idea but it may have been

Carla Kelly’s amazing novel about Utah coal mining or

a fascinating little article I read from a free magazine we picked up at Smith & Edwards last summer about prostition among said miners. (Ends up, I could’ve pushed the prostitution angle much longer than I did!) Both of those certainly had influece on my creation of Copper, Utah. But while they provided suggestions for the early years of my mini-multigenerational-epic, what would bring it into the present day?

An early assist was given by Murderland. This gave me information about the end of the first era and it provided context for the decades preceding now. Stuff from Murderland fit in nicely with the already extant history of Copper and provided help building out the nature of the place—a place that now had a suitable number of red herrings.

But the middle years were still missing.

Red Harvest is incredible. Maybe my favorite hardboiled noir. The Continental Op is cold and dangerous but moral in his own strange way. But that much is true of all the noirs I’ve been reading of late. What Red Harvest did separate from the rest is provide a template for Copper during the same era the Continental Op. Copper isn’t identical to Personville but aspects of the Continental Op’s discoveries absolutely influenced the way the mini-epic plays out.

If the book were being published this month, I would have got some things slightly wrong. Nothing fatal, but man—the price of gas matters here!

In December, on our way back from the Charles M. Schulz Museum, we stopped to see the holiday lights at the Marin County Civic Center. And, as it ends up, visit a churro truck. And, as it ends up, enjoy rooms filled with the work of local photographers.

Straight into the novel.

Around the same time as the Playboy crisis (and possibly engaged in because I was avoiding the Playboy crisis), I decided to name a character who had not yet made her appearance (and would be appearing just moments before the Playboys). I looked around here and there for options. Nothing felt right. What about naming her after a Norse goddess? Maybe.

This page convinced me that both Freya and Skadi were deserving namesakes. But would this character prove more a “goddess of love, beauty, fertility, and at the same time, war and death” or a “goddess of winter, mountains, and hunting”?

I liked the name Freya better and it definitely would work for the little I knew about the character. But Skaði was more precisely accurate. Given the, like, two tiny traits I knew about her.

In the end, the name made a huge difference. I altered the name to Scandy (it may change again, but she will remain Skaði’s namesake regardless) and with this new name, she because someone quite different than I had imagined. Ho boy, but did things get interesting with a Scandy in the house. Don’t know how similar a Freya-based high-school girl would have turned out. And now we’ll never know.

Anyway. You pick things up. You set them down. Some of them work their way into the story. Some become vital.

And the same thing will keep happening in the rewrite process. Who knows what silly YouTube video will result in a completely new scene.

But I made it. Draft one done.

On we go.

700 words at a time.

Top Five X of 2001–2025: RomCom

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I have a few of these posts in various stages of incomplete (or dishabille, if you prefer). Each of them give different reasons for the project. As I work on them, I don’t know which will be posted first, so I’m letting their competing raisons d’être stand.

Anyway. Romcoms. Hard to talk about romcoms of this century coming, as they do, immediately after one of the great romcom eras: the 1990s. I also made my definition so strict that it became difficult to make it all the way to five:

‣ No kids in the romance roles. Ergo, no Moonrise Kingdom.

‣ Must have a happy, get-together-at-end ending of some sort for characters who were of primary importance throughout the movie. Ergo, no (500) Days of Summer, no Once I Was Engaged, no Love & Friendship.

‣ The rom must be the primary relationship of the movie. Ergo, no About a Boy, no Damsels in Distress.

‣ The rom must be the movie’s primary plot engine. Ergo, no Hundreds of Beavers, no The Muppets.

‣ The movie cannot be sold more as drama than comedy. Ergo, many 20th-century Jane Austen period-adaptations are out, no Anomalisa.

‣ I need to think of it as a romcom—other people thinking so is not enough—even if they are clearly correct. Ergo, no Fall Guy, no Eternity.

‣ Cannot be sullied by Rob Schneider. Ergo, no 50 First Dates.

Although I consider the romcom one of my favorite genres, I really haven’t watched that many of this new centuries’ entries. As I’ve worked on the list, I’ve discovered that I generally have low expectations for romcoms, even though many romcoms count among my very favorite movies of any sort.

Compared to some of the other lists I’m working on, my romcom longlist (fifteen movies) seems to have less issue with recency bias:

I thought it might have the opposite problem because the two movies that are absolutely inarguable came out in 2003 and 2004, but this looks fairly measured over time.

(Note, these charts might not match what follows. For instance, I decided Love & Friendship didn’t qualify—I think after I made the charts.)

One thing about romcoms is that they tend to be particularly rewatchable. But of the fifteen on the longlist, only six have I seen more than once (*), and some of those perhaps entirely because I sometimes show them to students (†). Because they haven’t been rewatched, I’m not sure I’m correct in my opinions. I’m relying on what I wrote at the time for some of them and hope I will agree with myself when given the chance.

In the end, I picked the movies because 1) I love them, 2) they are tippity-top rom, 3) they are tippidy-top com, 4) the rom and the com meld together in that wonderful way peculiar to the best romcoms, 5) I’m up for watching them again right now.

Which, if I were getting paid for this sort of thing, I definitely would have done first.

My top five, in order of topness:

 

Intolerable Cruelty (2003)* (thutopia)

I do not understand how many people—even fans of the Coen brothers—dismiss this movie which, for my money, is both one of their best films and the best romcom of the twenty-first century so far. The Coens’ trademark cynicism is not a sign that they hate of humanity, but that their cleareyed form of love insists on honesty and wit. Yes, these people are deeply flawed, but that doesn’t mean they don’t deserve love. We’re all flawed. But nobody needs berry spoons.

 

Win a Date with Tad Hamilton! (2004)*

We watched this movie so many times when it was new. And I still think that the central relationship is one of the best examples of friends that could be more. When I saw it, I wanted this team to adapt Byuck to film. Friends, confusion, hurt feelings, growing up, happy ending. Watch this movie, then count your beloved’s smiles.

 

Molli and Max in the Future (2023) (letterboxd, thubstack, thutopia)

This is the newest entry on the list and I am in love with it and I really really really need Lady Steed to sit down and watch it with me. Because of Molli’s brief pass through an alien sex cult (nothing explicit, just awkward) I haven’t wanted to watch it with the kids, but my wife needs to see this and have it be one of her favorites too. What is love if not sharing romcoms?

 

Stranger than Fiction (2006)*† (thutopia, thutopia)

This is the weirdest movie on this list by which I mean the romcom elements make up the smallest percentage of the whole—certainly less than half. It’s an existential nightmare and a commentary on art and a couple other things with a romcom. But to hit up an ‘80s classic, “Hey! Hello in there! Hey, what’s so important? What you got here that’s worth living for?” (“Truuuue looooove.…”) That’s something Stranger than Fiction believes as well.

 

Crazy, Stupid, Love. (2011) (thutopia, thutopia)

It was hard to make the fifth choice, but I went with the one I most want to rewatch at this moment. Even though I had mixed feelings about it back in 2014, I did dig it. I don’t even think the couple pictured is my favorite couple from the movie. But if you concentrate meetcute and mix it with tiny overcomeable tragedies and then bake to perfection, you get Crazy, Stupid, Love. Whatever its failings, when that’s what you want, this movie’s got it.

 

Honorable Mentions

Elemental (2023) (thubstack, thutopia)

Emma. (2020)*† (thubstack, thutopia, thubstack, thutopia)

Long Shot (2019) (thutopia)

The One I Love (2014) (thutopia)

Silver Linings Playbook (2012)

The Holiday (2006) (thutopia)

Pride & Prejudice (2003)* (thutopia)

Scarpetta

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I don't often write about television. A nonexhaustive search at the archives suggests I've only ever written about (chronologically) Planet Earth, Pushing Daisies, 30 Rock (in a post that has since fallen victim to entropy), Dexter, and, the only two recent enough to also appear on Thubstack, She-Hulk and Wednesday.

So the fact that I'm taking time to do this? Please take that as evidence that I feel strongly about this show, one way or another.

Let me start by admitting I don't watch a lot of tv. And even tv I like, I often abandon. To stick with the Amazon ecosystem for a moment, I watched the first two seasons of The Boys and all but the last episode of the first season of Invincible—and I liked them both—but I just reached a moment when I was done. And that was it. I've never been tempted to pick them back up.

TV's just a bigger commitment than I'm willing to make. And unless it's something Lady Steed and I want to watch together, I probably won't.

And then there's the fact that it's difficult to advertize to me. Even things I want to hear about, I often don't because I've set up my life to be nearly ad-free. I'm quite happy with my ad-free life, even though the movies I've missed because I don't see ads are...voluminous.

Plus, even if an ad were to make its way to me, I probably won't pay attention to it or remember it. I think I may have seen a little square or something on Amazon with SCARPETTA in big red allcaps, but beyond recognizing it was a Prime Video offering, I'm not sure I even noticed. Even with me actively noticing Nicole Kidman for a few decades now. (Probably since my friend made me watch Far and Away and certainly since she was in Batman Forever [in fact, one moment with her and maybe Jim Carrey's laugh might be all I remember about that movie now].)

So what caught my attention this time? Criticism. I was driving home from somewhere and David Bianculli's Fresh Air review of Scarpetta was riveting, compelling, fascinating, and kept me in the car a couple minutes after arrival to reach the end of his observations, which ended: "I realize this whole series structure sounds complicated, and it is. But it's rewarding, too. I've seen all eight episodes, and the plots and the characters really hold up.... There's a lot to applaud here and a lot to absorb. And the way Prime Video is streaming it, you can gobble it up as fast as you can to help keep things straight, just like a good novel—or two good novels."

Okay, David. I'm convinced.

I started watching it a couple weeks later on April 1st and finished April 22nd, which is a fast watch of eight episodes for me.

Before I start talking about what I did and did not like, let's talk about how the show works.

As hinted at by David Bianculli, the show is based on two novels in Patricia Cornwall's 29-book (so far) Scarpetta series. One from the early years, the ’90s, when Kay Scarpetta is just starting out as a chief medical officer, and one from the recent past, when she has three decades of storied excellence behind her. I've seen Cornwall's name on many a massmarket paperback, but I'd never been tempted to pick one up. Although I've been making an effort to read more mysteries and thrillers of late, I have a natural antipathy to The Biggest Names Out There.

Because there are two time periods (primarily two, but there are flashbacks to even more) the characters are played by (at least) two different actors. For instance, ’90s Nicole Kidman is played by Rosy McEwen (in what must be a star-making turn) and ’90s Bobby Cannavale (most recently seen in Only Murders in the Building—which I really like and have not written about) is played by his son, Jake Cannavale. This is great. Nicole Kidman is beautiful but she doesn't look 29 or however old she's supposed to be in the other timeline. And letting two excellent actors work on the same character lets the audience triangulate the "actual person" in a way that feels somehow deeper than what even the most excellent actor can do on their own. As an acting showcase, Scarpetta shines. And the way the two plots work together to create levels of dramatic irony and offer different surprises than either plot would on its own is also impressive—especially considering this script is based on previously existing properties that go back thirty-seven years.

Which is a chance to offer props to Cornwall. Clearly, she is a master planner.

But now let's get to why I almost quit watching the show during and after each of the first three or four episodes.

The show is largely about cracking serial-killer cases, one in each timeline, that seem like they might be related. The show has very few qualms about showing us violent, sexually grotesque murders. We see women suffering awfully, tied up, stabbed, you name it. It does have a few boundaries it won't cross but they are indeed few. It's unpleasant stuff.

But Dr. Kay Scarpetta is dedicated to treating the dead with respect. She treats corpses with dignity and demands of herself, on their behalf, to discover and tell the truth about the dead for the dead—and for those who love them.

This is noble and fine, but the camera does not share this dedication. The camera in Scarpetta is much more like the serial killers than our hero. The number of times a mid-autopsy corpse is positioned so her nipple is just visible in the corner of the sceen is dispicable. I find it fascinating how perverse and cruel the camera is in this show. Scarpetta desires to make her space one of dignity for the dead. The camera can't stop gazing at them as if their corpses are starlets in a Russ Meyer picture.

But they're not like Russ Meyer's girls because they are dead. And since the camera has decided it won't show us certain elements of living intercourse, it subsitutes with penetration of the dead. Scalpels cut into the flesh, gloved hands dig around in severed necks, fingers push inside bullet holes. Frankly, it's gross. Recounting it for you, I'm amazed I kept going. Because, no joke, it's...just really gross. It feels like violation after violation that can only be justified because, listen up, this is Prestige Television.

The only thing that brought me back in those early episodes was the excellent character work and, later on, questions of plot and identity that became too compelling to ignore.

And this is where I'm throwing out a spoiler warning because now I'm going to start talking about important things that resolve (or do not) towards the end of the series. If you want to continue, resume after the image. Otherwise, feel free to skip down to comment-leaving.

did you know "scarpetta" means mopping up the sauce on your plate with bread?
so appropriate!

As you might guess from what I've already said, these questions of who did what and how does who feel about whom wouldn't matter if we weren't so invested in the characters. Kay and her sister Dorothy are fighting with a constantness I find wild, but they also have moments of deep connection. In both timelines. Their relationships with their husbands are complex and messy, and we're not sure, not consistently, how much we're rooting for either marriage to survive. Kay's niece / Dorothy's daughter, whom they co-raised (messily), is a precocious child then a suffering widow, who can't quite find her footing.

These things matter. Should Lucy be spending so much time with an AI version of her dead wife? Do our feelings change when we learn the dead wife invented the tech but did not approve of it and made Lucy promise never to use it? Does Pete actually love Kay more than his wife, Dorothy? What are his responsibilities to his boss versus his wife? does the longer length of the former relationship alter that math? Is Kay's husband a sociopath who uses his job as an FBI profiler to get men to confess to his murders? And hey—who killed the AI wife? Is Lucy safe with the grief counselor with a grudge against the family? Is that possible danger part of why she's there? Who in the world is Kay looking at in shock as her blood-spattered face stares off-camera in the final shot of the season?

Yes, the show ends on a cliffhanger. An excellent one. But still. Cliffhangers....

These questions work better because all these people are total messes. The heroes are screwed up in deep and painful ways. But this isn't really a matter of engrained cynicism. Kay's a mess but she genuinely is on a mission to serve the dead in righteousness. Ben really is a sociopath attracted to serial murder but he's also doing a good job not murdering women. (It's a higher bar for some people than others.) Pete probably could love Kay but he's mostly a gentleman. Even if he is a cop about to face consequences (for the first time) after beating a suspect.

All people are a mix of good and bad. You have to see both to tell the truth about them. And, in melodrama (even with good lighting and acting, this is still melodrama), the good and the bad need to be n-times greater.

That's what Scarpetta offers.

For all my reservations, in the end, I think I loved it.

(I wonder if the second season will arrive quickly enough for me to return?) 

Accountability challengean invitation to harrassment

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The events of the novel I’m currently writing begin the evening of April 28, 2026. If you’re good at calendars, you may recognize that date as next Tuesday.

What I have left to write:

• two embedded short stories

• the climax

• the closing scenes

The good news is:

• the first embedded short story is completely outlined and parts of the end are written

• the climax and closing scenes exist in draft form, but they have to be rewritten to officially count as part of the completed first draft

That second short story is in a maybe 300-word shape when it should be between five and ten thousand words and I don’t really know what it’s about yet. Thus, I anticipate it being the biggest remaining hurdle to a complete first draft.

My time is not entirely free between now and the evening of April 28 but I think I might be able to finish that first draft before the novel begins, Tuesday evening.

I’m gonna go for it.

Wish me luck.

ps: the post that will arrive here tomorrow was written and scheduled yesterday before I saw the cosmic necessity of this firstdrafting plan

Alas, teacher training (a poem)

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I found this poem folded up in a book published in 2018 written on a piece of paper from a teacher training that’s dated 2018–2019. So I suspect we date this work of art to some meeting at which I was bored right around that time. It also had notes for some unrealized variation on my dystopian-literature assignments, which I will include as a bonus after the poem To illustrate this post, I went to Pexels and typed in three key words from the poem and chose from the first page of results.

“Reflection’s the Heart of Induction”
   At least, I hear, that’s what they say
But applying the art of deduction
   I think it could also be hay

If hay were the heart of induction
   Then horses could teach—yes! it’s true!
We’ll feed them; they’ll begin instruction
   And our state scores will go through the roof.

*  *  *

dytopian angles

language
sex
love
reproduction
thought
association
communication
technology
choice
distraction
violence