Choose books by their covers

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Not saying all these covers are excellent but if we were to line up all book covers ever, they're probably all in the 20th percentile. That ain't nothin.

Anyway, wild variety here. And some significant books. Among things I'll never think about the same having read these are children's literature, Job, Ecclesiastes, the Salem witch trials of 1692, and the Algonquin Round Table. When you think about it, that's a huge list. Huge.

☞

063) Make Believe: On Telling Stories to Children by Mac Barnett, finished October 13

Literally the only bad thing I can say about this book is the asterisks were too easy to miss. Make bolder asterisks, book designer!

Literally everything else about it was absolutely brilliant. Not only was it an excellent argument for and about children's literature, it's one of the finest works of literary criticism I've read in some time. And so accessible! The book is a delight to read.

 It helps that we share some of the same interests, perhaps. Although I had my complaints about the book at the time, I too am convinced that Margaret Wise Brown was a mad genius who deserves more appreciation. I'm also convinced that Mac Barnett himself is one of our best living practitioners. (Although I think his best work is with Jon Klassen who, himself, might be even better. But we're not here to rank artists. What a distasteful activity that would be.)

He spends a lot of time (appropriately) taking adults to task for our literary crimes against children. He also spends a lot of time (apppriately) praising the literary bonafides of young readers (and readuntos). I literally sent photos of some pages to my AP Lit students explaining what literature is for and would have sent a lot more if I believed they would get read. I would love to teach it somehow. This is an excellent introduction to literature through the marvels of literature for the youngest members of the literati.

Anyway, I'm not explaining this well. It's a short book and a wonderful read (except for those goldarned asterisks and daggers and doubledaggers, etc) and I'm open to reading it again. It's a brilliant piece of work.

maybe three days 

☞

064) The Wisdom Books: Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes translated by Robert Alter, finished October 15

First, excellent. Loved it as much as reading Alter's Torah. Job rocked my world (also because of having just read it in another translation and rewatching Tree of Life and rereading Moby-Dick and really just not being able to leave Job alone). I enjoyed Proverbs much more than anticipated, largely because of the fresh translation and Alter's voluminous footnotes. And Ecclesiastes (aka Qohelet) remains among my favorite books of scripture. I'm not putting The Wisdom Books away—I'm rereading Ecclesiastes starting tomorrow, sans footnotes, in an attempt to put the whole thing in my brain. I'm trying to wrap up my Napoleon Dynamite book proposal and possibly write my Barbie / Book of Moses essay, but this is the time for me to finally write my Ecclesiastes essay as well. I feel its deeply misunderstood. It's not pessimistic. It's realistic. And I know that's the sort of thing pessimists say all the time but I am not a pessimist. The book is joyful and it's time, methinks, to put it in writing. Though I don't think I'm up for an entire book as I hinted might be the case in 2007 (2007!), I do want to get into it.

We'll see.

The good news is Ecclesiastes is short and I can, at any moment, reread it and be ready to go.

two months and eleven days 

☞

065) More Weight by Ben Wickey, finished October 16

This story of the Salem witch trials is atmospheric and sucks you into that period of time. By "that period of time, I mean 1692, although there are also many pages of Longfellow taking a tour of Salem with the ghost of Hawthorn, and a greater-than forty-page coda taking us through Salem's history to the current day (the book was published in 2025). That section is good and thoughtful and is essentially an entirely different work of an entirely different genre. And that's not even mentioning the over fifty pages of small-print notes (which I only skimmed)! This is a hefty book: 10×8 (ignoring what comes after the decimal points) and over three pounds heavy. These are big, dense pages.

I'm fascinated by the different styles of art Wickey employs for his different stories and eras—and how these styles of art can bleed into each other as do the stories.

Apparently, there is more available (and more accurate) information on 1692 now than at any other time and although the notes make clear what is documented and what is filled in, it seems safe to say this is the most accurate fictionalization of the story to date. The coda with Wickey's perturbed ramblings concerning the lack of true grappling with horrific events that even just a few months later everyone knew had been absurd, and concerning the tacky and ahistorical and irreverant embrace of mass murder as touristy kitsch are utterly persuasive, having lived through the stupid terrors over several hundred pages.

In short, it is large and unweidly and perhaps too much, but it is fascinating and compelling and truly excellent. It is an ambitious and honest work. It's too great to be perfect and too good to be ignored.

You would do well to pick it up. 

(Looking forward to watching his Wickey's vaguely related short film.) 

a couple weeks 

☞

066) So Big by Edna Ferber, finished October 20

I bought this book as our local Barnes and Noble was being pushed out by its landlord. (The building has since sat empty for almost two years. Typical. Reminds me of the three downtown-Berkeley movie theaters that have closed in the last seven years (and the one in Albany) so something else more profitable could replace them. They all sit empty and undeveloped. It's like the Skydance deal on a local level. Anyway.) I don't remember exactly why I chose this as one of my on-clearance purchases—possibly I recogized her as a member of the Algonquin Round Table—possibly I liked the idea of reading a Pulitzer Prize winner (they've been giving them out since 1918 and this is only my ninth)—maybe I liked the cover:

Dunno. Anyway, I bought it and now I've read it.

I'm amazed it took me as long as it did. I loved it from go. Edna Ferber's an incredible writer (probably best remembered now for novels that became classic movies [Show Boat, Cimarron, Giant] but in her time one of the most admired writers on the scene.

I expected the book to be about So Big (what Dirk DeJong's mother called him when he was a little boy), and it is, but we start with Selina Peake, one of the most vibrant characters I've met in some time. She's so wonderfully alive. She will inspire envy. She finds cabbages beautiful which puts her new neighbors off her. She young and falls in love and becomes an overworked farm wife. For those of us who saw her young and galmorous with rich friends and a bright future, this feels like disaster. But Selina remains full of life and our pity can't keep her down. And when her son Dirk goes on to make a lot of money and know all the right people he can't allow himself to understand why she finds his choices a tragedy.

To get even more spoilery, at the end, when we get one brief scene with people who, like Selina, find beauty and living more important than wealth and seeming—and have dedicated their lives to that belief, we no longer mourn what Selina lost, but only what Dirk has lost. He's still on his way to riches and he still has fine suits and he still has his "Jap servant" to meet his whims—but he himself is lost.

Oh, the things we sacrifice when we, I don't know, think the purpose of college is to get a "good" job or whatever. It's so easy to lose track of what will matter later when we can trade it for more, now.

I'm sorry. I'm making So Big sound all moralistic or something. It's not.

But what kind of love interest are you making yourself worthy of?

Anyway, terrific read. So fun. And only 252 pages.

My only complaint is that my version (Harper Perenniel) came with excellent about-the-author codas—27 pages in total! Of which six (six!) of my pages were blank (blank!). Just utterly failed to accept ink. And the quality of these appendices was excellent. I woulda loved all twenty-seven pages, y'know?

something stupid like five months maybe 

☞

067) The Story Eaters of Yamm by Kevin Hincker, finished October 24

(I received this novel gratis in exchange for this review.)

I have a high barrier of skepticism that pops up whenever a book immediately announces that it is funny. And from page one, there's no question that The Story Eaters of Yamm is funny. In fact, its funniness had totally set me off reading it until my 2026 Job obsession made me wonder if this Yamm were the same Yamm God conquered in ancient Canaanite myth. Which is as good a reason to start a novel as any other, I suppose.

This is Hincker's ninth novel. If I'm correct, he's published them all himself. The man's got good hustle, picking up Kirkus reviews. I don't know how the other books are, but this one won me over.

He is giving himself a real challenge in the marketing, though. For one thing, he left his name off the cover.

Which, even with a beautiful cover like this, screams rookie self-publisher. Although—ands up—there is a reason for no author on the cover. It's not a huge payoff, but it's enough of a payoff to justify the choice artistically. But will it impact book sales? I wonder.

Anyway, as I was saying, I came in skeptical. The humor is shades of Douglas Adams, Kurt Vonnegut, and John Kennedy Toole, which is quite a mix. He has a handful of truly excellent running gags and bounty of pretty good ones.

The story is about Larry, a bad science-fiction novelist (bad in terms of his writing, not his morality, though his morality is a tad funky). He falls into a job with some other bad science-fiction novelists (ditto) to imagine an alien invasion. Chaos ensues.

The book proceded from there to developing into a genuinely interesting work of art. But before my conscious mind realized it, the book turned into Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die. (I know my subconscious was ahead on this one because before I realized the novel was playing the exact same game as the movie, I started thinking about the movie in some depth in a way I hadn't since the week I watched it.)

What's in the air? Both the novel and the movie were in the works long before either came out, then within a few months of each other, here they are. Offering the same dismal, pessimistic themes in bright, fun wrapping paper. If we don't want this future, science-fiction novelists seem to be telling us, maybe we should do something.

Anyway, the book works. If you want something genuinely funny that has fun with modern anxieties, dive in.

about a month

☞

068) The Poet by Michael Connelly, finished November 5

Based on what I wrote thirteen years ago, I think this is my favorite Connelly book. I wanted to read this book because it's a thriller called The Poet and it has a raven on the cover. Way to signal that Theric might be interested.

I have both those copies (although the gray one has twice as many pages and its length and width are a good 150% the size of the black—don't trust everything you see) because when this raven-bedecked book occasionally appeared in giant stacks at Costco, I was tempted. I picked up a couple free copies of the years then was paralyzed because which one do I read???

I kept one in the house and one in the car. Ended up reading the big heavy gray more. Just because it was too big to leave in the car and I read less outside the car.

Anyway, I'm done now. I always planned for this to be my final Connelly novel and that will probably hold. Unless they put and even cooler bird on a future novel.

Anyway, the killer is a guy who kills kids (or kid-adjacent adults) then kills the detective following the case. Or that's the FBI's working theory. They have an alternate theory and leave what seemed to me the most likely theory utterly unconsidered. This is a challenging aspect of writing a mystery and exactly why detectives should work in teams. More brains, more ideas. One brain, you overlook some stuff.

Anyway, our pov is a news reporter who stumbles onto the fact that we've a serial killer on our hands and brings his research to the FBI. He then gets imbedded as part of a deal to keep him from publishing.

The novel also offers its weirdo murderer as a pov but it has the same sort of problems I had with the Kinsey Milhone books when she switched to thriller mode, giving us additional povs. If the conceit is that This Book Was Written By Its Protagonist, then how the heyhey are we getting these slices from a person whose perspective we know is never understood by said protagonist? Drives me crazy. Either write a book that's from multiple povs or write a book that's written by one of the characters. I don't think you should do both.

Still, I liked the book. Fun read. I saw the first twist just before it arrived but that left me utterly unprepared for the second. Which is as spoilery as I'll get.

Maybe my favorite part of the book was its journalistic attention to what it was like to be Very Online in 1996. I wasn't online at all until 1997, and then not as a professional and not deeply. It's a fascinating little timecapsule. If you weren't even born then, I hope you'll read The Poet and tell me what it's internetting aspects are like for you.

I'm not surprised the book's never been adapted. Not only does it have to make boring stuff cinematic ala All the President's Men, it also has to deal with child pornography and other brutal stuff.

I did like the leads, however. I suppose if a book about Jack and/or Rachel shows up in a Little Free Library, I'd probably grab it. But I'm disappointed we'll never see Jack's sister-in-law again. Apparently we never even learn if her son is born. Boo.

two or three weeks 

☞

 

previous books

Pre-Thanksgiving Christmas Music (not a diatribe)

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[click on any album cover to open it up in youtube music]

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I’m a longtime subscriber to the idea No Christmas Music Until After Thanksgiving but . . . Christmas music is great. And that rule allows, like, a month to fit it all in. That’s crazy!

So I’d like to promote a compromise. Certain kinds of Christmas music, I’m proposing, may be played after Halloween.

I’ll suggest three albums as type species and perhaps we can extrapolate from there.

(Note: I’m not considering classical music in this discussion. I think a good mass or the Messiah can be played any day of the year, even if humming for unto us a child is given does seem pretty darn Christmassy.)

I can’t remember how I came across this album but I listened to pretty much nonstop last December. I wrote about it for Ships of Hagoth and I’m probably going to pitch a second write-up before the season’s over.

I love their sound, first of all. Sometimes neopagan, sometimes Nineties shoegaze, sometimes Twin Peaks closing credits—all those sometimes add up to something amazing.

The songs cover the traveling magi, Santa Claus, holiday kisses, lighting candles in an old Church—proper holiday stuff. But at first listen, this doesn’t sound very “Christmas.” You won’t catch immediate references to Bing Crosby or Nat King Cole or Andy Williams. Doesn’t sound like those fellas at all.

But as you listen to it and let it seep into your soundscape, the more it’s pure winter essence clarifies.

I don’t know who’s editing the Smoke Fairies’ Wikipedia pages, but they’re clearly a fan and someday a spoilsport will probably get them blocked and decimate the pages. (Don’t use italics, lil editor!)

But at the moment they have more interesting quotations than one might expect for a niche band.

Like this from “the band”: “…writing about the winter seemed to come pretty naturally to us, regardless of what was happening outside. There’s so much to say about that time of year. It’s an interesting combination — the way it was recorded, the time it was recorded (in the summer), and the subject matter. I think it’s produced something quite strange out of all of that.”

Or these from critics: “Smoke Fairies resist the chintz of traditional festive sonics, instead using spectral guitars and sprawling desert-rock soundscapes.” / “…wrapping dense guitars alongside spectral harmonies and Krautrock grooves for a collection that feels wintry but definitely not festive.” / “‘Three Kings’ rides a danceable bassline and ‘Bad Good’ sits awkwardly on Santa’s knee (”Have you been bad/Or have you been good?”) before the plaintive melody on ‘Nothing To Divide Us’ ends a record that, despite bleak inspiration, leaves a warm feeling.”

It’s a fabulous record.

I’ve written about Low’s Christmas before and Ships of Hagoth has written tons so I won’t spill as much here, so let me just say that although this isn’t all originals ala Wild Winter, even though it’s got stuff like “Blue Christmas” and “The Little Drummer Boy” on it, this album distrupts our understanding of what Christmas music can be.

 

It’s no wonder the one Christmas song indie bands cover is Low’s “Just Like Christmas.” It manages to tell us something true about the holidays that music so often overlooks. And it does it with lyrics only barely above their usual minimalism.

If you know about this movie, you likely only have a vague memory that it was a notorious flop. Even with Oscar nominations for art direction and costumes, it hasn’t become anyone else’s cult classic. Best I know, I’m still alone in the Toys cult.

I really dig the movie but the soundtrack is, in my opinion, one of the greatest albums of all time. I kid you not. If I were asked to submit my votes to the next Rolling Stones top 500 albums I might not include any soundtracks as a matter of principle but, if I did, the only ones getting serious consideration are Toys, The Muppet Movie, and Bambi.

Lady Steed was recently on a Reddit page or a Facebook group or something of Tori Amos fans and they were having a discussion about having an obscure song as your favorite and she was disgusted by all these tourists thinking their faves were in the least bit obscure. She suggested I hop on and claim “Happy Workers”—now that’s obscure. She doubted most those bozos had any idea it existed.

And what a shame. Because it is awesome.

The soundtrack (slash movie) starts with a holiday concert and spends most of its time in a parallel universe’s Santa’s Workshop and while it’s hard to claim with absolute confidence this is a quote Christmas movie unquote it definitely is. And the soundtrack even more so. It has the vibes. By which I mean the complex and layered mix of nostalgia, longing, joy, and loss that all three of these albums have.

In short, while I could be satisfied by a playlist filled with “Bleak Midwinters,” these three albums engage in that classic’s brand of piercing strangeness, but spread it out through soundscapes and heartpangs in order to examine the beauty of and need for Christmas.

One month isn’t enough for the full breadth of heart-pumped blood proper celebration demands.

Might as well get started now.

 

 

smoke fairies on spotify / amazon / itunes
low on spotify / amazon / itunes / bandcamp
toys (sorry—you’ll have to stick with youtube as linked on the album cover)

Halloween or Halloween't

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Another October spent doing Halloween stuff instead of watching Halloween movies. You should've come by our house.

Anyway, I changed my favorite four to get into the season. Click on the previous favorite four to see the new four:

So many good movies in theaters now (or out already) and so little ability to get into a theater! Why does life have so many good things? And why are humans always asking the stupidest rhetorical questions?

Anyway. I'm fine. How are you? 

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ELSEWHERE
something shady

Rope (1948)

My stupid school system is broken. Nothing involving an hdmi cord will play and so my bluray player couldn't share it's delights and so a student found a nice little piracy solution to our problem. A brandnew bluray purchased for the class and we can't use it! Very frustrating.

Anyway, because of all the hassle, the movie played a couple past the day-ending bell. Very few students left. Almost everyone stayed. Because how can you leave before Rope ends? Such a good movie.

I hope they remember everything they wanted to say when we reconvene tomorrow.

HOME
library dvd

Jumanji: The Next Level (2019)

I mean, there are a lot of movies out there. It would be fine if I'd never gotten around to them. But you know what? They're a pretty great example of what broad blockbuster entertainment can be.

Plus. Awkwafina playing Danny DeVito? The world needed that.

HOME
Peacock

Death Becomes Her (1992)

I knew so little about this coming in. For instance, that it ends in 2027. Maybe I should have waited one more year!

Anyway, it's campy and dumb and fun and went better places than I predicted.

Gotta take care of those bodies, folks.

[just redid the math---ends in 2029]

(Vibeswise, reminded me at times of Joe Versus the Volcano and Beetlejuice—both in good ways.)

ELSEWHERE
our bluray

Modern Times (1936)

They were lukewarm on Keaton's "One Week" (what?!?) and unimpressed by Lloyd's "I Do" (fair) but Modern Times was a hit. I honestly think if you're over the age of thirteen and coming to silents for the first time, one of the great comic features is the way to go.

Of course Modern Times isn't technically silent. The boss speaks in those opening scenes. It has a score. Chaplin sings a terrific nonsense number near the end. But it largely behaves like a silent.

In the Criteron Collection's notes is this great quotation from Chaplin:

Chaplin once told fellow filmmaker Jean Cocteau that a film was like a tree: when shaken, it shed everything loose and unnecessary, leaving onnly it's essential form. For the man who had created the most beloved film character of all time, spoken dialogyue was merel a decorative leaf distracting attention from the strdy oak of performance.... Chaplin's Tramp had needed no words to communicate.
      --- Saul Austerlitz

This is so wise. Austerlitz goes on to remind us that characters yapping "slows action because action must wait on words." Now, I love hyperverbal film (Marx Brothers! My Girl Friday! that final scene of Clue!), but I think we've plenty of room to let some movies shake that all off and reveal what's left. Bring it on.

HOME
library dvd

Hoppers (2026)

I think I wasn't excited about this movie because the trailer gave me Big Hero 6 vibes, a movie I did not like. Then I heard some online chatter. And while some was positive it was mostly negative.

But now I've seen the movie. And . . . I think some people don't read film very well.

Apparently a lot of people saw cute animals and guy who wants to build a freeway and felt like the movie was a simple eco-fable. Or a simple marxist screed. Or something simple and allegorical.

But this movie is not that simple. It can be read simply, but any simple reading is going to be slightly off. Every simple reading has at least one moment in the film that straigh-up disagrees.

I just started reading a book called Re-Reading Job and in the early pages one of its main arguments is you need to read a text as it asks you to read it. Don't complain that the Inferno doesn't correctly model the Earth's mantle and core, for instance.

A common problem with movies is that trailers teach us to watch one movie when the movie itself demands to be read a different way. Maybe by having characters say

— Whoa, guys, this is just like Avatar.

— This is nothing like Avatar!

might be intended to tell us the movie's nothing like Avatar but when it's the trailer's clearest message it hand, in fact, the opposite effect.

Anyway, my point is this is nothing like Avatar. (As far as I understand Avatar, not having seen it.) It's also not right to complain about the details of this film's science (physics, biology, tech). While the film has some secondary messages about the environment and the biosphere, what the film is actually about is people. And it rejects the rejection of compromise. This is a film that believes in listening, even to the enemy. Believing in others, even though who have failed you. These are difficult messages. And that's why the film contradicts every single one of them.

Also? Hoppers is hilarious. The back of the dvd had a critical blurb claiming it's the funniest Pixar movie ever, an astonishingly bold claim. Reckless, even. But I tell you what. It's a very funny movie. I'm not the one to argue funniest, but reasonable people may.

Point is, if you judged this film by its trailer or from Bluesky comments about how its liberal credentials were sullied by it's insufficient alignment with the revolution, maybe leave all that to the side and read it for yourself. I think you'll be glad you did.

HOME
Peacock

Coraline (2009)

Lady Steed and I saw Caroline when it first came out. Although there's not tons of competition, it remains easily the best 3d experience I've ever had.

Every Laika film has been brilliant (yes, some better than others, but all marvelous) and I'm excited for Wildwood next month. And I intend to prioritize it. No more making the mistake of watching a subpar Disney film instead of Boxtrolls or even a good Marvel movie instead of Missing Link. It may open the same day as temptations like Clayface, Klara and the Sun, The Only Living Pickpocket in New York, and Wicker, but Wildwood it is! Hold me to this.

Anyway, how does Coraline hold up? It's been almost twenty years, after all.

Well, that's one of the magic of making real things. It still looks amazing. It's still beautiful and strange and warm and cold and surprising and terrifying and delightul.

Planning to cram Paranorman into this Halloween season too. I think either it or Boxtrolls is my favorite and it's been a while. Let's do this. Let's watch Laika movies.

HOME
library dvd

The Good Shepherd (2026)

This film is beautifully shot. The incredible cast does good work. The dialogue was well written. It's edited into a complex but coherent form. It's morally complex with high stakes. The characters are interesting and compelling. Everything is subtle and respectful of the audience's attention. The puzzlings are puzzling and ultimately satisfying. Makeup, costuming: both excellent. Thematically rich. Solid motifs galore. All the pieces, in other words, are pretty darned great.

And yet—and maybe this is just because it is two hours and forty-eight minutes long and we watched it over the last three hours of the day?—it didn't really build up to much. I think I'll remember all the good stuff, but the movie itself left me a tad hollow and uncertain. Not in a good way, Just in a hollow and uncertain way.

If it weren't so danged long, I'd definitely have to watch it again to see if I appreciate the whole more once it's already in my head.

This is a real downside to making movies that are two hours and forty-eight minutes long.

HOME
library dvd

The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Lady Steed's first time. She had been very afraid and found it very stressful and never wants to see it again but it doesn't seem to be nightmare fuel.

Me, knowing the major beats (although many details were left to resurpsise me), was able to enjoy it the way I enjoy Psycho, probably my favorite movie of the genre. But honestly, this isn't a lick behind, neither in suspense nor filmmaking.

But Demme's not the only star of the show. Hopkins and Foster and both topnotch, absolutely deserving of their Oscars. But the camera heightens their performances. That back-and-forth in Memphis! It's a real team effort and no wonder they all went home with prizes.

We have the Criterion from the library and there's lots of cool stuff on there. Not sure I'll get a chance to watch any of it, but here's to hoping!

ELSEWHERE
our dvd

Barbie (2023)

Between a day off, a guest speaker, excerpting 2001, a couple experimental films from the '50s, and screening two student films, we did very little of the much much reading I had planned for this week. We crammed in ten minutes of writing before going home (on Barbie as a Garden-of-Eden story via gnosticism and bodies) and had to call it good.

Watching it broken into three days (not ideal) and I did feel the kind of NO feelings lots of old men have complained about over the first two thirds of the movie. It is, yes, over the top and kind of a lot. But even coming into the finale not fully in the right place, I wept and was completely onboard with the uttre beauty of the conclusion.

This movie's something special.

Incidentally, the trailer's out for Greta Gerwig's next movie and were it not for my utter faith in her, I would be tapping out. But I believe in you, Greta. Please prove me right.

HOME
library dvd

Good Fortune (2025)

Some obvious nods to Wings of Desire but Keanu's much more fun and personable. Overall, this quasi–body-swap comedy works well. It's an entertaining movie and doesn't make obvious choices until the end. Seth Rogan's final speech is a bitpandering to a contemporary audience, but I'll bet it works for most people.

Overall, a fine movie. Time well spent.

THEATER
The Roxie

Lost Highway (1997)

Well, I mean.

Of course, we went in expecting it to be strange and uncomfortable and confusing. And it was all those things.

But talking about it later, we worked some things out. Still have plenty of questions (not all, I think, can be answered). And our conversation, if anything, made Lady Steed like it less, but having the pieces come together gave me more appreciations.

In short, it's a time-travel–paradox movie with vampires. It's clearly in conversation with Double Indemnity and Vertigo (and the whole Hitchcock project), but the supernatural stuff is probably impossible to disentangle. And maybe rightly so. If we suddenly fell into a world with such different rules, would we figure it out?

It's very much a movie about sex and violence (particularly, sex as the fuel of violence), and Lynch seems to be working some things out he'll come back to in Mulholland Dr..

Lady Steed complains that the movie largely seemed an excuse to put boobs on the screen and that's fair (although the way he shoots Patricia Arquette's lips is arguably sexier). But we both agree that the tailgating scene (also violent) is one of his best comic scenes. I think if I were listing my top-five Lynch scenes, it'd probably make the cut.

[RELATED ANECDOTE: Lady Steed brought the Lost Highway soundtrack into our marriage. It's pretty good, and loaded with music I otherwise never would have heard. The only stuff I didn't like was the two Marilyn Manson songs. But I think I'm right about disliking them BECAUSE we found that this was an excellent cd to play while driving around because it would put Baby O to sleep. It was one of the most surefire ways to help him sleep in the car. However. It was necessary to skip those Marilyn Manson songs as quickly as possible because they would wake him right up and set him to screaming.]

ELSEWHERE
Kanopy

The Old Dark House (1932)

A prototype of future slashers where randy innocents show up at some out-of-the-way place and get themselves killed, everyone survives here and it's even a proper comedy with an accepted proposal to end things out, but the film was excellent and genuinely unsettling. I'll need to think about it, but I think this might be the most James-Whalian horror film, even more than his Frankensteins or Invisible Man. It's so elegant and weird and queer-coded (especially at the end). Ernest Thesiger (Bride of Frankenstein's Pretorius makes a terrific appearance here.

Honestly, it's such a great movie. Just after the introduction of the code or I think a couple moments might have been even more awful. But in short, I really liked it. And only 71 minutes!

ADDENDUM:

Other things I meant to say but I was in a rush.

1) The movie looks great. Some cool depth-of-field stuff. In one scene the faces were distorted as if in an attempt to make Bunuel jealous.

2) Made between Whale's two Frankensteins, he makes strong use of Karloff in a similar role. It's the differences that are striking.

3) The handsome young male leads are good (props to Charles Laughton doing a stellar British John Candy) but the handsome young female leads are dizzying. Lilian Bond gets topbilling and she is vivacious and charming, but Gloria Stuart is a nonpareil beauty.

ELSEWHERE
Hoopla

Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)

I feel like this and Manhattan (and maybe Hannah and Her Sisters) are the films most often noted as Woody Allen's highest achievements. This is the first of the three I've seen. (Somehow, our checklisting of Woody Allen fell off over the lsat decade. I wonder why.) And it's excellent.

You'll be glad to know that today's teenagers are down on infidelity and murder. And very happy to debate morality and existentialism. (This really was a good film for talking about Sartre.)

The structure of the film is so interesting. It's almost like the two plots—like the one is a foil to the primary one, like the one exists primarily to give us a secondary angle (or further depth?) on the primary.

It's amazing that a solitary scene of magical realism can work in a movie.

The cast is great. I love the way Allen uses actors. He casts so well then provides the right things for those actors to do. And although many of the extended-family characters don't get much to do, they feel like real people in a real world.

Anyway, choose love. Choose happiness. Choose beauty. And don't leap out any windows.

HOME
Tubi

Attack of the Giant Blurry Finger (2021)

I can't believe I watched it either.

I was looking for something halloweeny and short and this came up and I laughed and I clicked on it.

I doubt I would have made it through had I not been watching it at 1.8x. I mean—it's a zero-budget pandemic film. One should not expect that much.

It's a two-hander: scantily clad girl and giant blurry finger (who also cowrote and, you know, did everything else as well). The size of the giant blurry finger and exactly how he moves through space is never entirely clear.

It starts off as a horror movie (I'm about to tell you everything without feeling the least bit bad) then turns to softcore then becomes a romcom as she teached him about movies and the earth and literature and banana pancakes then back to softcore before turning into a videogamey domestic-violence drama then cycles through a number of violent touchstones including a macguyvery scene where she makes body armor and a weapon, then back to softcore just long enough to kill him a second time (papercuts) then they totally love each other and then he flies away and destroys the earth. Phew.

Look, I'll bet this was a lot of fun for them to make. But like a lot of things that are a lot of fun to make (I'm looking at you, James Joyce), no one else needs to see this. But hey. Good for them.

ELSEWHERE
our dvd

8½ (1963)

Lady Steed and I watched this when we were first married as we decided to culture ourselves. We rented an old, worn VHS tape and watched it on our tiny lo-res tv and could barely tell what the images were and could hardly read the subtitles. Amazed we pressed through the entire 138 minutes.

I knew some students would like the movie (and luckily I was right) but I worried I would not, given my distaste for La Strada. And I did not. I was bored as all get out. There might be a seventy-minute good movie in here, but c'mon. Buñuel knew not to sit us down this long. But! As I said! Some people like it. Even modern teenagers. And I like plenty movies that could be described as this (or another Fellini movie) is, so why my distaste?

I think the movie's morality is part of it. Buñuel means his nonsense. Fellini's is an excuse. Malick believes people and the world matter. Fellini thinks he matters. 8½ has some great shots but they feel incidental, accidental, superfluous, indulgent. In other words, 8½ feels less like a discrete and coherent work of art and more like a bunch of stuff.

Anyway, this is the movie I'm least likely to bring back to class next year.

(But it's still better than Beau Travail.)

ELSEWHERE
library dvd

Blue Moon (2025)

This library dvd is blue, like a dvd-r. I've never seen a legit movie dvd be blue before (and by all other measures, it seems legit)—was it a clever thing because of the title? Anyway, it wouldn't work in the player I usually use, a little thing that connects to a computer. Had to use a dedicated player to make it work. Curious.

Anyway, I get the praise heaped on the film. But as good as Hawke and Kennedy and Qualley and they all are, what makes the movie truly work is Andrew Scott. His love for the Ethan Hawke character and his disappointment in him and his discomfort with him and his sadness for both him and what they once had is tangible, haptic. It's not big. But it's there. And that complicated mix of emotions is what clarifies every other scene and relationship in the movie. Not that the movie is a muddle or anything otherwise, but that ray of absolute pain and love woven together puts every other thing into its proper place.

(I was a little annoyed by the invented just-so where Hart give EB White the idea for Stuart Little. A little Forrest Gumpy, I thought. But I did like the choice of Andy as foil.)

Previous films watched. . . .

The Speaking-on-Sacrament-Meeting-in-Sacrament-Meeting Svithe

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President Oaks was one of several at the last General Conference to promote sacrament meeting. He told us to “protect [ourselves] with the weekly renewing of [our] covenants by partaking of the sacrament.”

I think he’s onto something there. And so do a lot of Conference speakers, apparently. Lots of promotion of sacrament meeting. And so I think I’d best start with an apology, as I’ll be slipping out of this sacrament meeting to rush back to Berkeley’s in hopes of catching my daughter’s talk in her second-to-last Primary Program.

Joseph Smith had a pet peeve: people who leave a meeting just before its close. He called it an insult. If anyone has to leave a meeting early, he said, let them go half an hour before it ends. No gentleman will go out of a meeting just at closing! In that spirit, you’ll see me run out well before the last minute. I especially apologize to the other speakers.

I teach high-school English. At the beginning of each year, along with the syllabus and the late-work policy and so on, I talk to the new batch of kids about safety. And I share with them this story:

One year, it became the cool thing for freshman boys to pull the fire alarm. We were evacuating almost every day and sometimes more than once a day. The admin team starting jumping on the PA to announce that it wasn’t a real fire and they were getting it turned off and we could stay in class and keep working, as if it were possible to work with that klaxon screaming right above our heads. Flashing lights. Misery.

Anyway, as the fire alarms kept crying wolf, we stopped hurrying to exit. We’d plug our ears and sit, waiting for them to tell us not to leave. Which they would.

One time, after three weeks or so, off goes the alarm. It went off and went off and kept going off and kept going off. Finally, I said I guess we better leave, so start grabbing your stuff verrrry slowwwwly and slowwwwly walk to the door and by the time we’re halfway out, they’ll call it off. While the students were packing, I walked over to that door and pulled it open. I could not see the water fountain directly across the hall because the hallway was filled with smoke. I yelled for everyone to get going and get going we did.

The moral to the story, I tell my students, is I will take every possible emergency seriously. I would rather waste half an hour walking back and forth from the football field than for us to burn up in our seats.

I’m going to apply this to sacrament meeting. But first let me tell you my favorite line from Conference. Probably because I am an English teacher.

This is Elder Uchtdorf:

Have you ever noticed that the sacrament is the only ordinance we receive during which we are not addressed by name? Rather, it is performed for “the souls of all those who partake of it.” The only names that are used are those of God the Father and Jesus Christ. We partake individually but also as a group.

This is an enormous part of my testimony. We are, individually, the children of Heavenly Parents, yes, but by getting baptized we also became the children of Christ our Savior. And as Alma made clear, that is something we do together:

Now, as ye are desirous to come into the fold of God, [he said] and to be called his people, and…willing to bear one another’s burdens, that they may be light…and…willing to mourn with those that mourn…and comfort those that stand in need of comfort…. I say unto you, if this be the desire of your hearts, what have you against being baptized in the name of the Lord, as a witness before him that ye have entered into a covenant with him, that ye will serve him and keep his commandments, that he may pour out his Spirit more abundantly upon you?

If we are renewing our covenants when we partake of the sacrament, this is what we are promising to do—to be there for each other.

When I go over the safety protocols with my students, I tell them they all, each of them, need to know where we evacuate to. We need to make sure everyone gets there. In a real emergency, we’ll get separated from each other. You may not be able to see me. You still need to arrive safely.

The two main causes of real fire alarms at Little Hill High School are one, unattended microwave popcorn, and two, chemistry-classroom error.

One year we lacked a chemistry teacher and so, for months, it was a bunch of sophomores and a sequence of subs. Who could be surprised when one day a couple girls accidentally made a bomb that went off in their faces?

As we were evacuating, I bumped into those girls, crying, terrified—one of them unable to see. I left my students and took these girls to our campus clinic and got them to eyewash stations and I stayed with them until parents and an ambulance arrived. For well over an hour I was not with my students. But every single one of them knew where to go. And they made it there safely.

General Conference was filled with calls to come to sacrament meeting. A couple more of my favorite lines—

Elder Uchtdorf again: “Let us not miss the unifying power of the sacrament.”

Elder Chigbundu: “As we partake of the sacrament, we can ask ourselves, ‘What would He have me do?’ As we remember Jesus Christ throughout the week and strive to keep His commandments, our lives are gradually refined and reshaped. Our ‘Why me?’ questions will be replaced by ‘What can I learn, and what can I change?’”

Elder Schmeil: “In the sacrament prayer we have a good reminder that we do not need to be perfect to partake of the sacrament. We need to be willing to take upon us His name, remember Him, and keep His commandments, and in return we have the promise to always have His Spirit with us. The sacrament is essential to have the Spirit and the strength to continue on the covenant path.”

Elder Schmeil also quoted an old Elder Renlund talk, where he warned that “the time will come, in each of your lives, when there will be a hesitation to go to church and partake of the sacrament. If it hasn’t happened yet, it will. But know this: if you follow the Savior’s direction and go and partake of the sacrament, with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, blessings will pour upon you that will keep you firm, that will keep you solid, that will keep you established on that firm foundation that is Jesus Christ.”

Elder Schmeil, to emphasize the importance of the sacrament, took a story from the Church’s early history and explained that “the Lord could not magnify their efforts because their actions were not aligned with God’s will.”

And how do we align ourselves with God’s will?

By renewing our covenants. Together. “We partake individually but also as a group.”

And what is the will of God?

The first and great commandment is to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

What better way to do that than to sit here and covenant with God—together.

Perhaps last week you accidentally built a bomb that went off in your face—and today you came to church to partake of the sacrament and be healed.

Perhaps that bomb will go off next week. But you’ll be prepared because you were here and you partook of the sacrament. And we will be prepared to help you because we, with you, partook of the sacrament.

And we all know where to go for safety in case of emergency.

O God, the Eternal Father, we asked thee, just a few minutes ago, in the name of thy Son, Jesus Christ, to bless and sanctify bread and water to our souls. We, all of us, together, did this in remembrance of thy Son, who died for us—for us!—and we witnessed unto thee that we will always remember him, that we may have his Spirit to be with us. And how grateful we are that we did. And how grateful we are we can do this Sunday after Sunday after Sunday. And that we get to do it together.

We are grateful for the sacrament. This I proclaim in the holy name of Jesus Christ, a name we have once again taken upon us, amen.

 

= = = = 

 

previous svithe on thutopia / thubstack

And baby makes sixty-one

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Well, it's October and we finally made it to sixty. I'm just about out of danger, in terms of finishing the fewest since recording. We're passing 2010 in the next post (maybe 2016 too!).

I don't feel bad (or am trying not to feel bad) about the numbers. Moby Dick was a big lift! The Torah-with-more-notes-than-Torah was a lot of words! I've read a couple hundred more pages in The Stand! the big danger of a project like these posts is getting trapped by metrics that are not the point. If my goal is to make up for this year but hitting 200 next year, no way in gazzoobiss am I picking up George Eliot and, well, how nice to pick up George Eliot?

(That's what George Henry Lewes said!)

 That said, every book on today's list is quite the quick read. So.... Who knows what I'm talking about. 

.

☞

054) Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare, finished September 21

This is a weird play. It's shaped so differently than the other plays with things that feel like final calamities happening over and over again.

Harold Bloom says that Antony and especially Cleopatra are among Shakespeare's greatest characters, in large part because they're contradictory messes. I mean. Okay. But, on the other hand, really? Bloom ranks Cleopatra with Hamlet, Iago, and Falstaff as the characters with the greatest interiority but man, I'm having a hard time seeing it. I finished reading the play today and I watched it yesterday and . . . I dunno.

Excited to do it with students! Maybe they can help me come around. We'll find out!

eight days 

☞

055) We Can Fix It: a time-travel memoir by Jess Fink, finished September 23

I don't know much about Jess Fink other than she's supposed to be funny and she's supposed to be sexy and that people I like like her.

I love the concept of this book: an autobiography from the perspective of now you visiting various past yous. It's largely silly and sometimes sad and certainly largely skates across the surface ending with a pat and generic time-travel moral, but it's a fun little journey and time well spent.

two days

☞

056) The Sculptor by Scott McCloud, finished September 25

It's funny. You start reading this and it's very good but a tad short of great. And then you read the last few pages and feel everything the book has on offer in one great explosion of emotion. And maybe it is great.

Anyway, it's about love and death and life and art and, yeah, it's pretty darned great.

I wonder if part of what makes it great is that Scott models Meg after his own wife. Which isn't to say they're the same person, but Meg's genesis is in the person Scott loves. Which reminds me she died in a car accident a few years ago. And this book allows me some parasocial comourning which sounds like I'm joking or being silly, but no. Art brings us together. Which is exactly what The Sculptor hopes.

 

I've been wanting to reread it since first reading it and now I want to read it again. See you in 2036.

probably over a week 

☞

057) The Last Words of Dutch Schulz by William S, Burroughs, finished September 26

I have a friend who is the Dutchman's . . . great-grandson? Anyway, he've given me a couple books about the famous gangster and this shorter one (a screenplay) is the shorter and more easily finished.

But I had read the chapter in the other book that is just the transcription of his last words as recorded by a police stenographer in the hospital as his shot-up body gave out. These words are alleged to have inspired the Beats and other stream-on-counscious–curious writers. And here Burroughs borrows from them (and invents plenty) as he gives us Arthur Flegenheimer entire biography.

It's well understood that Burroughs's screenplay was never meant to be filmed, was only meant to be read, but I can't read it without seeing his fantasies of maybe just maybe it making it to screen. But honestly I don't think it would be a very good movie. A cross between Scorsese, Malick, and Tarantino might sound good, but . . . I'm not so sure.

But the final pages really came together as a read and there the story really worked. Hard to say how close to reality they come, but who cares?

The book's heavily (and impressionistically) illustrated with photos from the period (largely photos of the players) and honestly that makes the whole thing a better experience.

Incidentally, someone else has had a similar idea and made a one-act based on those dying words. 

under a month 

☞

058) It Girl and the Atomics: Dark Streets, Snap City by Jamie S. Rich and a slew of other people, finshed September 28

I've never read one of the It Girl books that isn't a Mike Allred original. The team did a good job capturing the zany fun and sideways innocence of the Madman universe. The art played sensibly with the writing and it all felt very Allred, which feels like the real goal here. I'll admit, less than making me want to read more non-Allred Allred comics, it made me want to heck out Rich's other penned comics and see what he does with his own worlds and characters.

And it made me want to reread all the Madman stuff the Allreds made. Might be time to write about them again....

under a week 

☞

059) The Holy Covenant: Living Our Sacred Temple Promises by Anthony Sweat, finished October 4

This is one of three short books (#2) ol' Tony Sweat has written about the temple. They're well regarded and rightly so. They are compact and clear.

My biggest compliment will be a bit of a surprise, because one aspect of this book is Sweat's reliance on patching together temple language from carefully footnoted other sources. He's trying to set free temple sentences and vocabulary from the prison skittishness has placed them in. And everytime he says something direct from the endowment, he footnotes it with identical language from a Conference talk or the Genreal Handbook or something. At times, this feels as much like a parlour trick as fresh analysis or exegesis.

But then he will find beautiful language to turn all that recylced language just slightly such that it reflects a new collection of lighted colors directly to us. The final chapter is a good example of what I mean. Through subtle use or repetition, verb tense, lists—really simple tools—he crafts something utterly wonderful. Just by retelling Moses's encounter with God—largely through the words of scripture!—he recasts it and defamiliarizes it and makes it sing afresh. It's an impressive rhetorical accomplishment and spiritually potent.

I wouldn't mind reading the other two.

under two months 

☞

060) Penthouse Legend by Ayn Rand, finished October 5

I had no idea Ayn Rand wrote plays. This one is just a trial, from opening arguments to jury's verdict. The gimmick is that the jury is chosen from the audience (perhaps randomly, perhaps to put celebrities on stage) and depending on the vedict they reach, the play ends differently. I have questions about how the jury was managed, but whatever.

The revelation of information as the trial proceeds is at times pretty fascinating / exciting / compelling. But then the characters pause to tell about rand's great-man theories and the gears grind. The final speeches from the defense and the D.A. tell us that what's really on trial is Ayn Rand's philosophy and not an alleged murderer. And so the startling and provocative physical elements are thus subsumed to some flabby ideas and the entire piece is the weaker for it.

I can see how this could be a fun night at the theater but I'm doubtful anyone remembered it later. The difference between one ending and the other is slight, for one thing, and while good actors could really make the thing sing, it's about its gimmick and its philosophy and those are the two least interesting things about it.

one day

☞

061/062) Antony & Cleopatra by William Shakespeare, finshed October 8 and 9

Rich and strange and confusing and weird and delightful and funny and tragic and kind of a lot.

I don't think I've ever had two classes so out of sync in reading. Not sure why. Did one class really have that much more commentary and discussion? Hard to say.

Anyway, it's feels like an outlier of a play. If you have opinions on it, I'm interested to hear. I've read Harold Bloom and Marjorie Garber's thoughts, but I'm open to more. 

☞

 

previous books

The art of the opening

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Immediately after reading Robert’s post last week which included a section on Ryan Habermeyer’s opening sentences and paragraphs I started making a collection of my own. I’m always intrigued by this question of what makes a great opening. And I’m for killer first lines, though I’m also willing to play it quiet for the sake of the story.

I once read a book about first paragraphs (an idea I still like) and I hated it. I’m trying to avoid its sins by not making any commentary. I will read these and have my own thought. If you wish to read them and have your own, I’d love to hear them. But I won’t comment unless upon someone else’s comments.

What you find below were taken from my published short fiction currently online (either free at the link or available for purchase; there are more published works but they’re a bit harder to come by).

I was slightly undecided between first sentence or first paragraph. I ended up including the first paragraph but only linking off the first sentence. So you can stop reading at that point without putting much effort into it.

Here we go.

= = = = = = =

Four years had passed since Mary had died; Torrance still wasn’t comfortable dating and yet here he was, getting married. Five years with Mary may have been too short, but it was still a lifetime’s worth of love, and for Torrance it was enough.

Satan and the snake had watched each other for a long time before either spoke. It was mid-morning—it was always mid-morning—and the breeze was pleasant and warm in the thick tangles of shining dark leaves. The snake, a long purple shadow, was hanging in negligent coils from a branch of the tree hanging with blue-spotted white flowers and dark red fruit. Her large head rested on her casually muscled form and she watched Satan, who was sitting on a rock in a dusty clearing, rubbing his shoulders where his large black wings sprung, grimacing from time to time and keeping a close eye on the snake. (cowritten with danny nelson)

The angel was having a hard time explaining the concept of a year to Adam & Eve. Having lived so long in a place with no time, the idea of things changing with the passage of what? What do you mean passage? was as foreign a concept as death or childbirth or burnt sacrifice, concepts the angel had tried to explain on earlier occasions. He sighed and looked heavenward, but he knew that they were his problem—at least for the moment.

I was born when they were building it, you know. And I was just a boy—about your age, I guess—when my grandfather opened the doors and we walked back into the open air. Before he let us out, he had shooed out the hungrier, meaner ones—to clean things up, he said. I didn’t understand then, but— I wish he had never said it.

Solomon stood atop his palace in his famous gardens smelling jasmine from Aramaea, saffron from Thrace, and the blossoming ume tree from Zhou. In the middle of his garden, in an elaborate pot of gold and jewels and lupis images of a sheban goddess, was his most famous flower of all. A blood-red jule rose—the sole honest one among the thousand fakes delivered him by the Queen of Sheba. As he watched it, a bee crawled from the topmost bloom. The best of omens—no matter how much that old fuddy-duddy Ahimaaz groused about omen-finding being pagan. It was like Solomon told him: God didn’t come to your bedroom and make you the wisest man in the world so shut up. It was appalling how those priesthood types thought they knew more than him. No one knew more than him! He was Solomon!

Look, you know this Jesus stuff, right? You seen that Da Vinci movie? Ever read the Gospel of Thomas? That $#!X’s hardcore, man.

From: zechariah@jew.judah.prs
To: ezra@temple.judah.prs, nehemiah@governor.judah.prs
Subject: New Prophet

Frank walked around the chapel comforting his family, aware yet unaware that they were mourning him, that he was no longer with them. He told old jokes to old friends and reached out to wipe his beloved’s tears, his hand passing through her cheek just as his punch lines had passed through the air unheeded, unheard, unpresent.

Davey Dow was walking down the street a bit earlier and a bit happier than was usual for a Friday afternoon (Friday, usually, being the least halcyon of his days), and anyone on the street who may have known him would have swiftly gotten out of his way with that long and peculiar sidelong glance reserved for the irredeemably weird.

The signs were all over the city. The positive response to Mayor Graff’s reelection bid had astonished the newspaper editors and local political blowhards. When the major opposing candidate, “Long” Joel Smith, had cornered the mayor with a local news crew, he could hardly have guessed that his sneering reply to the mayor would become the most successful campaign slogan Boitown had ever known. Mayor Graff’s campaigners had even taken to saving time at the end of their tv spots for the clip:

Across the bay and beyond the hills from San Francisco, the city lights reduce to a dull orange glow behind a hill. Browning wild grasses blanket the gentle slope, and father and son lie together and look at the sky. Off to one side, the blinking lights of planes attempt to outshine the stars, but the boy ignores them. And remembering the question he always used to ask, says, “Where were you, Daddy?”

Maurine slapped down onto the plush double bench across from a man in a well kempt but slightly old-fashioned suit. His face seemed to grow out from a pair of small round spectacles and a graying moustache. He did not seem to have noticed her as his eyes remained directed at his book. She set down her satchel and tried to peer over the top and see its title.

Laurel Wistian refused to be called “Miss” Laurel which set all her professors on edge. Particularly since it was well known that her family provided the university with the massive Wistiana Endowment shortly before her birth, providing income to run both the Agroästronomy Department (which Wistian money had founded a decade earlier) and the College of Engineering. The faculty also well knew that her father in particular was none too happy with her rebellious turn into the School of Journalism. “Nosy hoodlums,” he would bark before calling the libel lawyer he kept on retainer. His daughter meanwhile perpetually squinted her eyes behind her blocky black spectacles (worn only during classes and interviews) and demanded that her professors call her Laurel Just Laurel. She wore Dior Noir sweaters customized to accentuate her ample bosom and hide her absent waist, and pleated skirts that fell just so at her knees, and was so clad as she knocked at the door of Dr. Mortimus Alexander Fitzbottom, PhD, AlcD and he called out something she chose to interpret as a welcome.

The stronger winds of last year’s late-arriving hurricane never hit Alabama, but the hot and heavy rains came far enough inland and lasted for days. The basement apartment we rented to the Mormon missionaries had flooded days ago, and they’d gone to stay somewhere else. We would see them around town picking up fallen mailboxes or boarding windows or piling up kudzu, and they told us they’d swing by on Mondays to pick up their mail until they moved back or found somewhere new. Janice and I hoped to get the apartment back together quick enough to keep them—they were quality kids who always paid on time. But no point getting on that till the rains let up.

Ours is a make-believe world. Santa is real but constrained to maintain his seeming fancy. When his presents arrive, parents always assume the other or some other brought that little extra, and Santa knows exactly how much he can get away with. Which means the rich kids get much and the poor kids little and there’s nothing Santa can do about it. He may hate it but that’s the way it is. He can’t risk being discovered by those with the power to legislate and to enforce and he is, after all, make-believe. Even children only believe that he is some sort of realer make-believe—not that he is real—and thus it must remain. He wouldn’t have it any other way, and thus he is limited.

I sit at my desk taptaptapping. If the great Mormon novel of the 20th century was ever written, it was set in the Rocky Mountains. To stick the 21st-century version there would be hopelessly shortsighted. The Church isn’t stuck in its mountain-home-so-dear any longer. But then, to ignore the weighty presence of the West specifically and America generally is to miss the Mormon experience entirely.

A couple of chairs, a couch—sometimes a studio audience, sometimes not—the business hasn’t really changed in the last thirty years. The main thing is smile, ask a bunch of dumb questions,a bunch of easy questions, laugh readily, let them promote what they’re here to promote–and if it’s all gone well, end with a question that will let their eyes well up with tears. And, if you’re really lucky, the polish will slough and the audience will glimpse a human being. The stars keep coming because they’re sure they’ll win. The ratings keep coming because those watching know sometimes they don’t.

Possibility one, extrapolated from what Betty, second clarinet, said about what Tabitha, first clarinet, did last Saturday:

“Did you hear that?” Dave fiddled with these and those switches and dials and flung his hands across a dozen touchscreens. “Huh.”

Excerpt from But Very Little Meat, the new historical novel based on the lives of vegan Latter-day Saint pioneers Stephen and Stella Stoop.

Usually only toothy, nether-dwelling monsters or horned, vase-breaking imps hide out of sight of the adult mind, but she didn’t seem like a monster or an imp at all. When the boys of Miss Garner’s third-grade class saw her pass the school yard during afternoon recess wearing nothing but a Polly Pocket backpack over one shoulder, they hid behind the evergreen bushes and watched, fearful the monitor would see them and call their parents. It didn’t occur to them that a woman without clothes next to an elementary school might be the one who would get in trouble—or at least in more trouble than the naturally curious third-grade boys watching her. She was grown up, and grown-ups don’t get in trouble. Boys get in trouble.

Angry Sunbeam does not want to wear a pretty bow in her hair. Angry Sunbeam does not care for raisins in her oatmeal. Or for oatmeal, which, best you recall, was her favorite food yesterday. Angry Sunbeam does not like that you have moved her seat to the passenger side of the car. Angry Sunbeam will not fold her arms or bow her head. She will not just look at the Friend. Angry Sunbeam probably does not need to pee for a third time but neither can you risk not taking her. Angry Sunbeam yells at you to leave the stall so you stand outside and hold the door closed while she sings “Come as You Are”—the part about the gun—how does she know this?—and, as you will shortly learn, unspools the toilet paper onto the floor. Angry Sunbeam has to be dragged to Primary, then bursts into tears when you pick her up—“I don’t know why! She was so good today!” says her perky twenty-year-old teacher with the enormous eyes and the tiny breasts and the impossibly cute dress and about whose waist is hung the arm of a cut-jawed husband clearly desperate to get her home from church and out of that dress. In the car, as you buckle Angry Sunbeam in, she shows you a picture of herself holding hands with the father she hasn’t seen in three months and of a dinosaur, the dinosaur she says ate her real mother, a dinosaur of sharp black angles and spilled green wax. Angry Sunbeam giggles, then falls asleep as you drive home. And stays asleep when you lay her on your bed, snuggle up to her, kiss the top of her head.

I never got to do it when I was a twelve-year-old Mormon boy even if it is, technically, as much a duty of a deacon as passing the sacrament—and I doubted anyone in my presidency ever did it when they were twelve either. Certainly, the boys we’re responsible for had never done it so, when the bishop referred Jake Miller’s widow to me, at first I wasn’t sure I’d heard her right.

Stanl33 was excited to be turning eight. Besides finally being old enough to take a personal pod offworld to his school, he was going to be baptized by his father, Stanl32, this Saturday!

The first time I saw Devin, I had just gotten into bed and was still wide awake when there he was, crouched over, dirty little talons holding onto the pole that swoops up from the footboard of this old bed from Grandma’s. He was maybe two feet tall, and my first thoughts were, like, he had come to drink my blood or something. But he was silent and still and pretty much has been since. Sometimes he closes his eyes and sometimes he opens them, but I’ve never seen him blink.

Old George sat on an upturned half-barrel cleaning his gun. It only ever shot blanks these days, but that didn’t matter much. A fellow outlaw’d once told him the state of your gun’s the state of your soul and George liked the sound of that religion as much as any other he’d come across. Least it had clarity; that much was sure.

Dear the Last Time I Carried You Back to Bed:

In 2025, to ensure the local availability of a sufficient teacher workforce for local schools, West Contra Costa Unified School District set aside $25 million dollars and a) purchased land between the train tracks and the bayshore bordering the western edge of the former Seaview Elementary School property now utilized as additional administrative facilities, and b) built a series of six-story apartment buildings, the purpose of which was to house district teachers, providing them reasonably close access to their teaching sites without the cost of housing generally associated with living in the Bay Area. When applications were first accepted, 3,000 were submitted for the 600 units. At first, the district implied they would be biased in favor of teachers with children, but a threatened lawsuit led to a purely random assigning of units to applicants.

DAVIS — UC Davis has one of the nation's most vigorously scientific agriculture programs and has been making important advances in food production for decades, most recently in lab-made meats. Advances not only in cultivated animal proteins but in meatlike products made from plants and fungi are so promising that certain other projects are now being shut down. The most exciting of which to many was Daisy, the sentient cow.

When the elders first saw Kim Kumi, they mistook her for a child. She walked down the bus aisle and sat in front of them, turning her body to engage Elder Kim in conversation. When Elder Charles inserted himself, she was amazed that this waygukeen spoke Korean. When it was time for the elders to get off the bus, Sister Kim had asked them to come visit her. They replied they would need to ask her parents’ permission but—

Benjamin Haezer, age 35, vice-president of a chain of hospitals across Michigan/Wisconsin/Minnesota, stood shivering outside his car. The car itself was crumpled, its sexy Tesla face wrapped around some huge pine maybe ten feet off the road. The car’s rear seemed almost cheerfully unaware of its frontal trauma—bright red LED eyes, shining innocent in the night.

After one of her parents’ weekly reminders to “do something Sabbath,” Margaret decided to google the more irritating ward members in search of facts hypocritical. And thus she found Upside Daisies on Amazon and read the free ten percent of its seventy-four pages, only to find herself unexpectedly moved by this:

Nikos Gregopolis worked on merchant vessels. Although he had set foot in every port, island, and pier across Europe and up and down the east coast of the Americas by 1887, he did not care for any of these places. He went ashore mostly just to remember steady ground and why he lived on the sea. He might try some food or pay for a woman, but the full horizon was his homeland.

I don’t know who was sick. Maybe it was you. Let’s say it was.

It appears a standard orchestra. Smallish, perhaps, just a couple dozen musicians, all women, in black dresses. Experts at their craft. But as the music proceeds, instruments fall out as certain women put down their instrument and slide a hand into a modestly designed slit in the fabric of their dress and begin to masturbate. Masturbation is an unpredictable process and these are regular women, acting outside their musical training, and not porn stars accustomed to this type of public performance. They do not come when their conductor directs them to. Sometimes they do not come at all. Perhaps we should not be surprised that they generally come when the music, too, climaxes, but this is not always the case. Sometimes their cries or whimpers of extasy seem entirely out of alignment with the music. This is part of the artistic statement the orchestra is making.

My grandmama taught me something about craftsmen. True craftsmen. And craftswomen. Craftspeople’s probably not a word. Crafters is something else entire. Anyway, you’re the writer, not me. And this pen I lifted from a roadside motel from a nowhere Nevada town. Nowhere Nevada town’s not so bad. I’ve written enough books now to recognize a good phrase. It’s necessary because even the best writers still write a crapper now and then.

1. My mother died in my infancy.

Sister Bowden was relieved, while in Provo at the Missionary Training Center, to hear what percentage of her time would be spent “in service” rather than “proselytizing.” Not that she was against teaching people the Gospel—she just…had an easier time imagining herself feeding orphans and building shelters than knocking doors or soapboxing on street corners. She believed in helping people. And physical needs were more immediate, easier to see. Jesus gave the people fish. That’s what she wanted to do.

The rain is heavy, but I stand in it watching plants take a beating from the source of their lives. “A Flower Speaks the Impossible,” I say into my phone, and my wife laughs. “A Flower for the Scrapper, maybe,” she says. She’s always been inscrutable like that.

Jarom was old. His skin was tight rather than wrinkled and the sunbeams from the window caught his long white beard as he entered the room. His robe was a simple brown, but embroidered with enough detail to make it expensive. He cleared his throat and leaned against a stool as he looked over them. His voice was strong but scratched, as if he had let a cat play with it before joining the boys as they sat on short stools intended for much younger students.

Latter-day Saint subscribers to Gonzo Life had a special treat last month as June’s adventure slowly revealed itself to be a modern retelling of something…familiar.

Hello. And welcome to Great Ironies of History. This episode, Ice Orgy, takes place on July 17, 2094 at the residence of Shad Mellstone Oguaga. The markets had, the month earlier, made him Earth’s eighteenth trillionaire and, to celebrate, he had spent $600 million―briefly negating his trillionaire status―on the longest core of Antarctic ice in private hands―for a definition of Antarctica, say, “Define Antarctica”―outside the collection nonpareil of Hydrogen Port cofounder Weichang Buarque, over 2,000 meters in length and ten centimeters wide. Its previous owner was Zsófia Szabó, who you may see attacking Oguega and being forcibly removed from the party at the two-hour mark, in the northeast corner of the ballroom, should you wish to experience that moment. As an added irony, her moment of violence may well have saved her life.