Mank (a movie review post)

I don't know that I've ever mentioned on here before that I almost went to film school. After The Empire Strikes Back came out, I was intensely interested in special effects and, for many years, that's what I wanted to do. When I say "almost," I mean it. I was accepted to USC but, even after a very sizeable scholorship, it was going to be more expensive than I could afford, especially considering that my parents took on a "no help" stance if I chose to move to California to attend. All of that to say that what was left to me at the college I did go to was one intro to cinema class.

But we did cover Citizen Kane in that class.

Orson Welles was a fucking genius. I wish I had half of the marketing savvy he had. A tenth, even. His genius was not the movie Citizen Kane but that he was able to invent a mythology that said he was soley responsible for that movie, which was a work of genius. And it's true that he had some very important roles in creating the movie, both directing and starring in it. But he would have us believe that the story came from him as well and so devoted himself to creating that mythology that people are still arguing about it today. In fact, when I studied Citizen Kane in college, Herman Mankiewicz wasn't even mentioned.

The fact is, though, that Mankiewicz was the preeminnet screen writer/doctor of the time. He shaped the way the movies of that time period were written and was responsible for creating the dialogue heavy, witty movies of his day, movies that became the stereotype of the "American movie." He was also responsible for the Kansas sequences in The Wizard of Oz being filmed in black and white.

And, most importantly, he was chums with William Randolph Hearst.

I'm not going to explain the importance of the connection. If you don't understand from me saying that, you actually need to know more about the time period than I can tell you in a movie review.

So... the movie.

The movie is excellent. By what I am sure is not an accident, it is remarkably timely, the main conflict dealing with a conservative push, led by Hearst, to keep a progressive candidate (Upton Sinclair) from becoming governor of California. Yes, you will get to see back into the days when California was unenlightened and the "coastal elites" where all Republicans. Republicans bent on protecting their wealth just as they are today. The movie suggests that it was this political race that caused the falling out between Hearst and Mank (easy to believe considering that Hearst caroused with Nazi sympatthizers and Mank was personally responsible for funding the escape from Germany of hundreds of Jews) and became the catalyst for Mank's writing of Kane.

In short, Citizen Kane was a revenge piece.

Gary Oldman is... well, what can you say about Oldman? He was perfect in the role. I have no idea whether or not he was accurately depicting Mank or not, but his performance was amazing.

Having now seen Tom Burke as Orson Welles, I can no longer picture anyone else as Welles. He may be a better Welles than Welles was. So, yeah, I have a Burke bias because of The Musketeers, a series which ended much too soon.

And Amanda Seyfried was endearing as Marion Davies.

It might even be the kind of movie that I would watch again, not that I think I will, because I don't often re-watch, just as I don't often re-read, but I certainly wouldn't plead "I've already seen that" as a reason to get out of a second viewing.

Also, just to say it, this movie has "best picture" written all over it. Not necessarily because it is the best picture of 2020 (how is that even a thing for this year? do "movies" even still exist? what even is a "movie theater"?), but it's about Hollywood, and we all know that the Oscars loves movies about Hollywood.

Ready Player One (a movie review post)

First, I have not read Ready Player One.
I've thought about reading it for a while, now, because, evidently, it made a big splash in certain circles. It's one of those books that I would read for the sake of seeing what the big deal is as opposed to having any real interest in the genre or the subject matter. HOWEVER...
After seeing the movie, I have lost all desire to read the book.
And that is a failing on the part of the movie. If an adaptation is good, it will give you a desire to seek out the source material, and this movie killed the desire I already had in reading the book.

Well, Ernest Cline probably played a part in that, too. I heard an interview with him where he goes on and on, basically, about how great he is and how original his novel is and how no one had ever done anything like that before...
Wait a minute! Original? Does he actually think his idea about a virtual world is original? Because that's what he said.
But, maybe, he comes from an alternate Earth where Snow Crash and the Otherland series and a plethora of other novels were never written so he thought he was first. Except I'm sure that's not the case. He's just one of those guys who is full of himself. Maybe it was because his book was a smash hit, but, honestly, he's probably been like that his whole life.

The lacklusterness of the movie didn't do anything to convince me otherwise.

Yes, I just called the movie "lackluster," which is not to say that it wasn't full of luster. It's shiny and sparkly and full of sheen. It is, after all, Spielberg, and the man knows how to make a movie. So, if you just want to wallow in the visual extravagance of it all, this movie will do it for you. It's like a reflecting pool.

Which is to say that it's shallow.
Shallow as heck.
It has one message: People spend too much time online.
It has one message, and the movie isn't really subtle about its presentation of it: People spend too much time online.
It has one message that they are so worried you won't get that they slap you in the face with it at the end of the movie: Get the fuck off your computer a couple of days a week!
Okay, so they're not quite that aggressive with it, but it's close. It is a PG-13 movie, after all.

Part of the draw for me for seeing the movie was the supposed 80s pop culture theme. I mean, I grew up in the 80s so, of course, that was a draw. The problem, then, is that this is just not true. Which is not to say that the movie doesn't have 80s pop culture references; the protagonist does, after all, drive a DeLorean. But it's misleading to say that the movie is a tribute to the 80s. Actually, that's an outright lie. It's not the 80s that the movie is a tribute to but pop culture itself. Sure, the 80s gets plenty of screen time, but the movie opens with a nod to Minecraft and soon follows with a twister reminiscent of The Wizard of Oz, neither of which have anything to do with the 80s. The Atari and D&D references are more appropriately attributed to the 70s.

There's nothing wrong with all of the other pop culture references -- I think it's better, in fact -- I just find the misrepresentation, mostly on the part of viewers from what I can tell, to be interesting. Maybe people seeing the movie are missing the non-80s references? Or, maybe, because there are a lot of video game references, they have no context at all for getting those? Or maybe they're placing other references they're familiar with into the 80s because that's when they became familiar with said reference. Like Willy Wonka, also from the 70s. I don't know.

People are weird.

To be clear, it's not a bad movie. The movie is thoroughly enjoyable in a cotton candy kind of way. It's visually exciting and won't tax your brain by giving you any thoughts or asking you to figure anything out. It's also totally forgettable, which I find unfortunate. Like cotton candy, it's going to melt in your mouth before you ever get a chance to swallow; I just find myself preferring things with more substance these days. Or all of my days, actually, I suppose.

No stand out performances, either. They're all adequate, but no one worth mentioning, not even Simon Pegg, though he's as enjoyable as ever.

Clone Wars -- "Nomad Droids" (Ep. 4.6)

-- Who's the more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him?

[Remember, you can sign up to join the Clone Wars Project at any time by clicking this link.]

I never watched the Droids cartoon from the mid-80s, but I feel like I am now. Which may be the point with this and the previous episode. Maybe these are meant as an homage to that series. At least it's just the two episodes.

Which is not to say that this was a bad episode. For an episode centered on the droids, it was quite good, actually. It's just that with the weak start of season four, it's at the trailing end of a series of episodes that don't live up to the quality of the previous three seasons. If this episode had been used as a one-shot between more serious arcs, it could have been a welcome addition of humor.

Still, this episode did manage to make me LOL a number of times. When I say LOL, I mean that literally. Not only does this episode feel like an homage to Droids but also to The Wizard of Oz. And, maybe, Willow. The tiny fairy-like aliens on the first planet R2 and 3PO end up on reminded me a lot of the two brownies from that movie.

Speaking of which, their introduction is handled pretty well. It's very A New Hope with the jawa introduction. Oh, with some Gulliver's Travels thrown in. You know, this episode seems to be an homage to a lot of things as I think about it, and, as I think abut it, I'm appreciating what they did here. I really do wish this episode had had better placement within the series as a whole.

Anyway... What I was trying to say is that the moment when 3PO accidentally knocks R2 over onto the leader (the Wicked Witch character) of the little fairy people and squashes him like a bug made me laugh. Even though I've seen  the episode before, I had evidently forgotten that happened, because I was not expecting that happen. Then the fairies start singing the wicked witch is dead song except with slightly altered words. It was a good moment.

And that's just in the first 10 minutes or so of the episode.

Okay, I think this one is worth watching on its merit as a singular episode. I actually kind of want to go back and watch it again right now just to see if I missed any of the allusions. I'm not going to because I have other things to do, but I want to.


"Please note, whoever you are, my counterpart here is programmed in 47 schools of self defense."

Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever's Search for the Truth About Everything (a book review post)

So a bit of preamble about this one:
1. This is not a religious book, not in the traditional sense. The "God" Ehrenreich is talking about is not the Christian god nor any kind of monotheistic god. It is not god in any sense that we generally think about "God."
2. I've previously read a couple other of Ehrenreich's books (Nickel and Dimed and Bright-sided) and really enjoyed them. She approaches her topics with dogged determination and doesn't let go till she gets to the truth of the matter. I've never, however, taken the time to learn anything about her other than that she was a journalist who eased into books. As it turns out, her background is in science and she, in fact, has a PhD in... well, I forget in what, because she shifted what she was studying numerous times, and I forget what the doctorate finally ended up being in (and I don't feel like trying to find it, now). Something to do with immunology, though, I think. The science background explains why her investigative work has always been so thorough, though.

Speaking of science, this book contains a lot of hard science, descriptions and explanations, things I found fascinating (especially her experience with the silicon oscillations), but I can understand this being a barrier to many (maybe most?) readers. In fact, I scanned through some of the negative reviews of the book and many of them had to do with "too much science" or "I couldn't understand all the science." This book is definitely not written to be easily accessible to a large audience as her other books are. This book is personal, so all of the science, which is intensely personal to her, is left in. I'm not sure the book can even get to where it's trying to go without the science.

The other thing that can be an issue with the book is that it takes Ehrenreich a long time to get where she's going. She mentions in the foreword that there was an "event," a mystical experience, that happened to her when she was a teenager and that figuring out exactly what that was was part of the impetus for Living with a Wild God, so you start reading and expect to find out about this event and her quest, but... what you get is her childhood. And it was a horrible childhood, not that it seems she saw it that way at the time. When you grow up in that, though, you think it's normal.

It takes a long time to get to the event and, the whole time I was reading, I kept wondering what the point was of all the stuff she was telling me. Why did I want or need to know about her childhood and, well, everything else? But I trusted her, based on my prior reading experience with her (and the story she was telling really was interesting even though it seemed as if it had nothing to do with what the book was supposed to be about), to be going somewhere, so I kept reading. Then, eventually, we do get to the event, and it all made sense. I mean, without all of the background (and I do mean all of the background), I don't think you can really understand the significance of what happened and what happened after.

So I'm going to go back and say that this is not a religious book. This is not a book about how some atheist went out searching for the Truth and had a conversion experience (as in The Case for Christ). This is a book about an atheist who went out searching for the Truth and found... something. Something unexplainable. Something that isn't the "good and loving" god that Christians so often hold up as a happiness dispenser. What she found was something... primal. Chaotic. Only "good" in the sense that a storm can be good or a forest fire can be good.

This is not a book for people who already think they know it all and who think they have all the answers, especially about who and what god is. This is a book for those, like in Wizard of Oz, who are willing to look behind the curtain. Don't plan on an easy read.

An Exploration in Fantasy -- Part Four: The Darkest Hour (an IWM post)

Along our fantastic fantasy journey, so far, we've learned that we're special and could be the prophesied one, among other things. We've met a mentor and found some friends. We've also gone on a journey, probably in search of something. Hopefully, it's a been a learning experience, and we're fully prepared to meet the final challenge. It's a dark time for the rebellion, after all.

From the initial list I made (which you can see here), we need to cover three more points:

* * *

And, like always, to find out what those three more points are, you will need to hop over to Indie Writers Monthly. This one is all about technology and dark lords. Go read!

An Exploration in Fantasy -- Part Three: Who's Gonna Learn Ya? (an IWM post)

There's no teaser, today, for part three of my exploration into the origins of the modern fantasy arc. If you want to read it, you'll just have to go right over to Indie Writers Monthly and do that. And you totally should.
Today, we really get into what's Tolkien and what's not.

Go, now, and read THE POST!

An Exploration in Fantasy -- Part Two: Orphans and the Gum Under the Seat (an IWM post)

It may seem that the easiest way to find the origins of fantasy literature would be to simply follow the trail of fantasy literature back in history until we get to the earliest examples of it, but that would cause some problems. For instance, when does fantasy cease to be fantasy and become legend or myth? Are we going to call Beowulf a fantasy story? Or the tales of the Greek and Egyptian gods? Or Gilgamesh? It gets kinda messy if we do that. And that's not really what we're looking for, anyway. No, we're trying to establish where our current model for fantasy writing comes from. Look back at the last post to see the list.

So, although we're not going to go looking for historical beginnings, we are going to start at the beginning. Or, at least, where all fantasy stories start: the orphan boy. Sure, sure, it's not always a boy; Disney has given us plenty of girls, after all; but, when we start talking about the genre of fantasy literature, it's nearly always a boy. Or, even, outside the strict confines of fantasy. Let's take a look at some of the most popular examples (and some that I just like):

Oh! Wait! That list is over on Indie Writers Monthly, but it's a good list, so you should go on over and read it. Go see if your favorite fantasy character made the cut!

The Wizard of Oz

The Wizard of Oz was never that big a deal to me when I was a kid. Not that I didn't watch the movie every year when it came on TV, but it was never my "thing." No, that was Star Wars. Still, I probably would have read it if I had known it was a book, but no one ever bothered to tell me that. I suppose that's what comes of having non-reading parents. By the time I found out it was a book (probably during high school, certainly not before), I just wasn't interested in it.

This was all sort of like my experience with Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, which was a movie that I loved as a child and still do to this day. But I didn't know it was a book and had never really even heard of Roald Dahl until I was in college, and I had no interest in reading it at that point. That came later after the second movie was made, which I didn't like but the Dahl family did, so I decided that I should probably read the book. And I didn't like it. It just wasn't magical like the movie had been. And I didn't like Charlie and the Glass Elevator, either, despite the high hopes I'd had for it since there was no movie to hold it up against.

Despite all of that, I decided I should give L. Frank Baum a try. If nothing else, I wanted to see what it was like before passing it on to my daughter, especially since she loved the Charlie books despite my dislike for them (which is great; maybe, I would have liked them when I was a kid).

In a certain sense, both Baum and Dahl borrow their style of story-telling from Carroll. As in the Alice stories, crazy things happen to the main character, and that character just goes along with those things as if they are normal. There's no plot as such. For Carroll, this is certainly true. Both Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass just end. It's as if Carroll decided, "I'm though with this now," or, maybe, he just couldn't figure out how to end the story, so Alice wakes up and everything is over. I had that same sense from Glass Elevator. Dahl just got tired of writing or didn't know what to have happen next, so he just had it end. Chocolate Factory did have a bit more plot, but it was still kind of all over the place.

The stuff coming up about The Wizard of Oz will have spoilers. Now, you know. Also, it's kind of impossible to talk about the book and not talk about the movie. Okay, it's not, but I'm going to compare some things in the two mediums.

First:
The book starts out describing how gray Dorothy's life is. Everything is Kansas is gray. The land, the sky, her aunt and uncle. Everything but her little, black dog, and, by extension, Dorothy herself (because there is a heavy implication that Toto is the only reason Dorothy has not become a gray person herself). On the other hand, Oz is full of color and life that Dorothy has never experienced and is amazed by (I'll come back to this).

The movie starts off in black and white, mirroring the tone of the book, and bursts into full technicolor after Dorothy arrives in Oz. I think this is the most amazing thing about the movie and possibly the one thing that has made the movie so beloved for so long. I can't imagine the effect on an audience who had almost exclusively only seen black and white movies.

Second:
The Ruby Slippers. The issue of the shoes is one of  the things I've most heard complained about from people that love the book, wherein the shoes are silver. But, well, I get the desire to make them red for the movie since they were doing the big color shift in Oz, and I think going with the red was the better choice. Visually, it just stands out more. So, no, there was "no good reason" to change the color of the shoes... except that there was, and there is no significance to the shoes being silver in the book except that that was the arbitrary color that Baum chose. Or not really color, because I think he was just going with "silver shoes" to contrast against the "golden cap."

Third:
And speaking of the "golden cap," it's completely missing from the movie, so why not change the slippers to red since there is no golden cap to go with the silver shoes. I get dropping the whole "golden cap" thing from the movie, because that was a plot thread that the movie didn't need. That's just what frequently has to happen when you adapt a book to a movie: you have uncomplicate the book, so leaving the golden cap out of the story makes sense.

Beyond all of that, I liked the book. It has a more careful attention to plot than either Dahl or Carroll put into their stories while keeping the whimsical "you have no idea what might pop up next" quality. Bad things happen to the characters, and, if I hadn't seen the movie, I might have wondered what was going to become of the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman during Dorothy's captivity. I also like that Dorothy is actually gone from Kansas in the book rather than seemingly just waking up like in the movie.

The book does, however, have one great flaw which keeps me from liking it more: Dorothy has no real motivation to go home to Kansas other than that she ought to want to go home to Kansas. It's clear at the beginning of the book that she doesn't like Kansas. She has no joy there other than her dog, and the dog goes to Oz with her, so, really, there's nothing that ought to make her want to go back, especially since she loves Oz. But she does want to go back, and it is her unwavering desire to go "home," for going home's sake, that drives the story. I found that, along with the lack of growth on Dorothy's part that accompanied that, to be rather inexplicable. Other than to make the story happen, why did Dorothy want to go back to a place she didn't like to people that, as far as we can tell, she had no true emotion for.

And, speaking of the lack of growth on Dorothy's part: Dorothy doesn't grow as a character during the story. She's the same girl going back to Kansas as she was when she got to Oz. However, she does serve as the catalyst for all the other character growth in the novel, which was interesting to watch and not often done, so, whereas I would normally dislike a story where the protagonist is static (see my review of Brave), I found that I didn't mind that so much in Wizard. Well, except that I really did wish she would have realized, "Hey, I don't have to go back to Kansas."

Mostly, though, I found the book most interesting in how it and the movie deviate from one another. I'm not sure I would have enjoyed it so much just all on its own. At least not, now, as an adult. I wish I'd read it when I was a kid, though. However, I found it enjoyable enough (and Baum himself interesting enough) that I want to read more of the Oz books, so, I guess, you can't really ask more from it than that. Making me want to read the next one is its job, right? And it accomplished that. I'll have to wait and see how the rest of the books are.

How To Be... a Writer (an IWSG post)

"Write what you know."
How long has that phrase been going around? Forever? Close enough, right?

Some people say that's bad advice, but writing about things you know nothing about is a sure way to end up with bad writing. For instance, it's clear that George R. R. Martin writes about a lot of stuff he has no clue about, which is fine for other people that have no clue about it, but, when you get to someone who does have a clue, the writing comes off as, well, stupid. Like the whole ravens as couriers thing. That's just dumb. Clearly, his thought process was, "That would be cool," but ravens aren't that kind of bird. They don't work like homing pigeons. And, sure, you can say, "Well,  in his world they are that kind of bird," which is fine, but, then, why call them "ravens"? [And, yeah, I'm picking on Martin because he can take it (he's mega-rich), but I strongly object to doing something in your writing just because it's cool if it's also stupid and/or wrong (like the Emperor going down into the arena at the end of Gladiator: That was stupid and historically inaccurate).]

My advice is to always write what you know, if for nothing else, so that you don't come off looking stupid.

Here's the good news, though, it's easier, right now, to be a writer than ever before in history. Even just 20 years ago, doing the research you would need to do to write anything could be a laborious and time consuming prospect, not to mention that, in some cases, travel might be required. I mean, if you want the setting of your story to be Paris or Egypt, it might be a good thing to know about those places, right? That's part of why authors so desperately needed advances. Sometimes, delivering the product required money to do the research. But not anymore...

Today... well, today, you can know anything. Seriously. But, wait! There's more! Today, you can know anything without ever leaving your home! How amazing is that? And that... That was the whole point of my "a-to-z" theme this year.

If you want your protagonist in your shiny, new novel to be a brain surgeon, you can do that. You can find out everything you need to know about it without having to actually find a brain surgeon to tell you. If you want your main character to work for the CIA, you can do that, too. If your character discovers ancient ruins, you can have all the info at hand that you need to present that in a realistic way. Even if it's unidentified bones. If you're writing sci-fi, you have, at the touch of your fingers, all of the latest information from genetic engineering to warp technology. Or, if you're writing historical fiction and you want to have knights in shining armor, you'll know not to set it during the First Crusade or include King Arthur.

Just as a personal example, when I was writing The House on the Corner, I frequently used Google Earth to cruise around Shreveport to remind myself of details about locations that I needed for the story, even things that didn't necessarily get stated explicitly in the book (like the name of the diner they have breakfast at). You can make any place as real as being there that way. It's really rather amazing.

Being a writer has never (NEVER) been easier.

Not only is virtually any piece of information you might need to know a few key strokes away, but there is no longer the need to wait at the gates of the Giants anymore. Those giants aren't so big after all. In fact, the publishing industry is more akin to the wizard of Oz. No, not the book, the dude. That dude behind the curtain that's acting all scary and powerful, but, you know, he's just a dude, and the thing that's been between you and publishing your book is just a curtain.

It's just a curtain! There's no magic. No gate keeper. No special power or insight. All you have to do is pull back the curtain and step through. Wait, maybe, that is magic!

It's the magic of the Internet.

If you're writing fiction, there are no more excuses. You can do it all. Wait, let me say that again. You can do it all. Oh, wait, one more time. You can do it all. You can do it all! (yeah, so I lied; that was twice)

Really, the only thing standing between you and being a writer is, well, yourself. Which is not to say that you can just throw some crap onto some paper and be done with it (although there are certainly plenty of people that do that), but, if you work at it, if you practice, if you read, if you read a lot, and you practice some more, writing that is, if you practice writing, and you practice writing a lot, you can be a writer. All of the information you could ever need is at your disposal, be it about monsters or being the voice of god.

So... just... get out there and do it. Work on it. Be it.

[This post has been brought to you by Alex Cavanaugh's IWSG.]

Unexpected Applause: The Missing Link

In my last post, I interviewed the guys, Bryan and Brandon, from A Beer for the Shower about their new book, The Missing Link.

Okay, so the interview was less about the book and more about them, although we did talk about the book. Now, I'm going to talk about the book. First of all, the Kindle edition is only $0.99, and, at that price, it's an absolute steal. Don't let the cover fool you.

Oh, the cover... I love the cover! Back in the 80s, I used to play Rampage upon occasion, and this cover, which is reminiscent of that game, is totally appropriate for this book. It might look kind of goofy, but, considering the book is about technology and rampaging monsters, it totally works.

The Missing Link is probably not a book for everyone. Not that any book is a book for everyone (although there are two books I think everyone should read), but this book is even less a book for everyone than most books. Mostly, I just think a lot of people won't "get" it. A good test to see if it might be for you is to follow the above link over to their blog and read a few of their posts. If the humor doesn't grab or turns you off, the book is not for you. However, if you find yourself laughing despite yourself, even if you hate yourself afterwards, you should give the book a chance, because it's full of the same humor and crassness as their blog.

The technicals: The front half of the book is marvellously edited with hardly a misplaced comma. Well, except for that pet peeve of mine with commas following a sentence starting conjunction and an independent clause behind. This seems to be a fairly widespread error in comma usage, and I'll browbeat the boys about it later. Other than that, though, the front half of the book is almost squeaky clean. Definitely "A" work, and there were hardly any red marks on their paper when I got finished with that portion. However, the further through the book you go, the more errors crop up. Missing words or mistyped words, like "than" instead of "that." A few incorrect tenses here and there. Unstable formatting, mostly in that the indentations start wobbling back and forth. It's enough to drop the technical grade down into the high "B" range. Still, everything considered, it's a pretty good job and nothing that should give anyone any real problems. Especially the commas. There aren't a whole lot of other people out there that are likely to notice any problems with them.

As for the book, well... I don't like to actually talk about what the books I'm reviewing are about, because you all are quite capable to read that stuff for yourselves. However, I feel compelled this time. Bryan and Brandon give us a look at the chaos that could result from a technological collapse in society. My feeling is that most people looking at the book will think that their take is a bit extreme, outrageous, and over-the-top. I'm not so sure...

Just within the last couple of weeks, I was reading about some problems at some hotel chain or other (I forget which one, and, honestly, it's not important). At two of their hotels (one of them was in Hawaii, the other somewhere on the main land), they had a computer issue which caused all of the guests to be locked out of their rooms for several hours (6-8 or something like that). The hotel uses key card locks, and the computer locked down all the rooms, and no one could open them (this should be a lesson to have manual back-ups available for the staff). Really, this should just be a minor annoyance. Yes, an annoyance, but nothing worthy of violence. Within the first hour (maybe half hour?), police had to be called in because of brawling in the hallways. Widespread brawling. Not, like, just one fist fight. People freaked out and started beating each other up because they couldn't get into their hotel rooms. What the crap? Seriously. What the crap?

So, when violence breaks out in The Missing Link over the loss of the Internet, I can hardly say that the boys have exaggerated.

The characters in the book are largely stereotypes, but they're not the kind of stereotypes that happened because the authors didn't know what they were doing. They're there to give the readers something easy to latch onto, "oh! I know what this character is like!" And, as they said in the interview, they are more caricature than cliche. They're magnified examples of people, but, also, they're there to show us that people are capable of going beyond our stereotypes for them. I'd be hard-pressed to choose a favorite. (Although, I have to admit, I have a lot of empathy for Brent and the blank looks he gets any time he tries to explain anything.) Okay, I'm lying, I love Sir McAffery. Not so much his character within the book, but just the concept of his character. It's genius. And I would say more, but I can't do that without ruining elements of the story.

Also, I love the Alice in Wonderland elements of the story. Admittedly, I was bit put off by it right at first. Molly's experience in going down her laundry chute follows Alice's trip beat for beat, but, as you get into the story and see the analogy at work, it does. Work. And it's a great analogy (as they said in the interview). The Internet is a Wonderland, but it's not a Wonderland that's a paradise. It's insane. Even more insane than Lewis Carroll ever could have imagined. The melding of Carroll's work with other familiar pop culture phenomenon like World of Warcraft and The Wizard of Oz is pretty clever, and I really enjoyed it.

So here's the thing: go over and check out their blog. Do that now. If you like it, buy the book. It's only a buck. It'll make you laugh. Yeah, there are some parts that seem a bit absurd, but, you know, like the deal with the hotel I was mentioning? I'm not so sure that they are. Bryan and Brandon have actually offered up a fairly powerful piece of social commentary, and I think people should really stop and take a look at it. How dependent are you on your iGadget? Is your dependency healthy? Maybe think about spending some time away from it. In fact, put it down right now and go download the book. Oh, wait, you need it to download the book? Curse you Internet!

My grade? I give it an "A-." It's clever. Well told. Interesting. The only thing that drags it down a bit is that they do sort of run a few of the gags a bit too hard. And there are a few redundancies toward the end, but it's just a few. Overall, it's a very enjoyable read with an actual message trapped in there. I'm sure they tried to hide to keep their reputations intact.

Twiddledum loves this!

Sorry, Charlie!

I didn't read correctly as a child. Wait, wait! I knew perfectly well how to read. I just didn't follow conventional developmental patterns in my reading. I've probably mentioned this. The main reason for this was that I had no one to suggest books to me. Neither of my parents were readers. In fact, I don't think my father has ever read a book, and I know my brother has never completed a book, not even for school. My mom reads occasionally, but she's not a "reader" nor did she grow up spending a lot of time reading. I'm somewhat of an aberration, since how much a child reads is almost always determined by how much the parents read and how much encouragement they give the child in reading. But I started reading early. Before kindergarten. I just didn't know what I was supposed to be reading.

I started out reading science books. Non-fiction. Yes, I'm serious. I was into dinosaurs, so that's where I started. In fact, in 1st grade I got accused (by my teacher!) of making up the word paleontologist when asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. She made me go to the board and spell it for her. Because, you know, if I could spell it, somehow, that meant I hadn't made it up. No, I don't really follow the logic, either, but there you have it. I spent the first few years of my schooling reading texts about dinosaurs and astronomy, mostly. I branched into history next. I was in 4th grade before I really discovered fiction. The Hardy Boys. By that time, some school counselor or something had told my mom that I had some kind developmental delay in reading, because I wasn't reading what other kids my age read.

And I still haven't read a lot of those books. I just didn't know about them. Make a list of books you read and loved as a child, and I would bet I haven't read most of them. Some of them, I may not have even heard of. My wife, after more than a dozen years of marriage, still reacts with shock and dismay when she mentions books she read and loved as a kid that I've never read. Like The Wizard of Oz. The Edward Eager books. The Phantom Tollbooth. Of course, I've been trying to correct some of these oversights, and I have to say, if you haven't read it, go, right now, and get Tollbooth. It's awesome!

To make this even more clear, I loved, loved, loved Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (this being the movie, not the book) when I was a kid. I still adore that movie. Gene Wilder is amazing. As much as I love Johnny Depp, he will never come close to Gene Wilder as Wonka for me. In fact, I really don't much like Burton's movie version of the book. Here's the thing, I grew up thinking that that was just a movie. I had no idea that there was a book, and I was, probably, in my 20s before I even heard of Roald Dahl. After all, he's not exactly high school reading.

Last year, my younger son had to read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for school. That was 3rd grade. I just want to point out, that I didn't have to any read any books for school until I was in, oh, 5th or 6th grade, when we started having to do book reports, and we got to choose the books. My kids started getting books assigned in 2nd grade. I don't know if this a difference caused by evolution in the wider school system or if it's because I live in California, now, and not Louisiana (not exactly known for its stellar educational system). At any rate, I remembered, at that point, that I'd never read a Dahl book and decided that I should fix that. I ordered both of the Charlie books.

I finally got around to reading them, recently. I was disappointed. And I was disappointed that I was disappointed. I went into it fully expecting the like the heck out of the books. I mean, I loved the movie! I'm not sure there's been any other movie from a book where I've liked the movie and not the book. It's unprecedented. The cliche response is always, "The book was better." But not this time. I should have whizzed through the 150 pages of chocolate factory, but I disenjoyed it so much that it actually took me two weeks to read it. I felt bad about it, too. And my son... well, my son is still in disbelief that I didn't like the book. Maybe, I shouldn't have told him? However, I did know enough to know that my daughter, our not-reader, would like it and passed it on to her, and she did like it, so that was good.

I've tried to reconcile this whole issue of not liking the book. Maybe, it's just because I'm an adult, now, that it didn't click for me. That's totally possible, although I haven't had that issue with other books. I still love Narnia, after all. So, I thought, maybe the movie just got in the way for me. Because I love the movie. Have I mentioned that? I still do. But, really, the movie is not exactly the book, and, maybe, I just wasn't liking it because it didn't mesh for me. I thought, I'll read Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, and that will be better, because I won't have any false expectations for that one.

I didn't like it either. I felt really bad. Part of that one, though, is that it takes place, mostly, in space. What? That's not where Charlie belongs. I couldn't come to grips with that. We've gone from a book about a magical chocolate factory to an adventure in space? I'll say it again: What!?!? But it goes beyond that. I really just don't enjoy Dahl's style. It's too... sporadic, for lack of a better term, for me. He seems to have the attention span of a teenager in the way he writes. I couldn't deal. Glass Elevator also dragged for me and took much longer to read than it should have.

My wife, also, can't believe that I don't like the books. But I can't help it. I'm fairly certain I won't try any more Dahl.

Now, I'm not saying that there weren't clever bits of writing in there or even that I may not have chuckled once or twice, but the books just didn't take hold in me. I'm glad my kids like them, though. Maybe, if I'd followed a more conventional reading path as a child, things would be different, but I can't say I'm sorry for the path I took. Although, I do wish I'd had someone along with me that could have said to me, "Hey, why don't you try this? I think you'll like it." I could have augmented the path I took if I'd had someone there to do that. More than anything else, I try to be that person for my kids.