I'll pay you $1000 to shove the airhorn up Coach's arse.

If there's a sports story that's more simultaneously surprising and no surprise at all than the current "bounty" scandal that's enveloping the New Orleans Saints, I haven't seen it. Apparently former defensive coordinator Gregg Williams offered players financial incentives to hit guys hard enough to knock them out of games. The NFL has been investigating this for two years, and Williams has pretty much openly admitted it.

I'll make no secret that I never liked Williams. He was head coach of the Buffalo Bills from 2001 to 2003, and putting it plainly...he was an ass. He showed up at that first training camp, barking how he was going to change things around here and walking around camp with an air horn that he liked to blast in players' faces. Change the culture? Now, the Bills had just undergone a salary-cap driven roster purge that was going to send them to a 3-13 record, but this was still a team just two years removed from its most recent playoff spot (which is still, to this day, the team's most recent playoff spot). Nothing about Gregg Williams's public persona in Buffalo ever indicated anything other than "douche", so on that score, I'm not surprised that he's involved.

Likewise, this does shed a bit of light on just why Williams has never received another shot at a head coaching job. Most guys who fail at their first coaching jobs eventually get another shot, especially if their failed shot is with a team like the Bills, who have come to be seen as a mismanaged organization from the top. And Williams has still been highly touted as a defensive coordinator, winning a Super Bowl with the Saints. And yet, he's never yet received his second shot at a head job. Why? I'm willing to say that part of it is because he's done this kind of stuff for years, and that most of the NFL is aware of his dirty laundry and the nasty habit dirty laundry has of eventually coming out.

I've heard some disturbing rhetoric about all this, to the point that it's not that big a deal. This bothers me a great deal. No one disputes that football is a violent game, and if players get together before games and on the 'down low' offer each other cash to hit opposing players hard, well, all you can do is make that illegal and deal with it if you catch them doing it. But for coaches to be involved puts an official stamp on it. Something that's under-the-table becomes organizational policy, whether it's on the books or not. And that, I think, crosses a line. There's a very real difference between "I hit other guys because I play hard and that's my way of playing" and "I hit other guys because there's money in it for me".

Football is a game where players get hit, and where players get hurt. So are a lot of games. But the object should never be to hurt the other guy, and that's what bounties do. That's why they're bad. Put it this way: if you think that this is no big deal, and that it's normal in football and that the Saints just got caught (one commenter on Facebook the other day referred to it as a 'manufactured controversy', an odd sentiment given that it hasn't been fueled by the media but is rather the result of a two year NFL investigation), then you can't think that this guy is a dirty bastard:



ADDENDUM: I'm seeing a lot of comparison of this business to SpyGate. There's no question in my mind that this is far, far worse than SpyGate. But if there's one meme about SpyGate that I'd like to see put to bed, it's the notion that Roger Goodell came down super-hard on the Patriots for that. There was a big fine, but still an amount that for an NFL organization is the equivalent of a parking ticket. And yes, he stripped them of a 1st round draft pick -- in a year when the Patriots already had two. So even after going 18-1 and being found guilty of breaking NFL rules, the Pats still got to pick in the top ten of the Draft. No, they did not get hit hard in that punishment. Goodell handed down a punishment that was designed to look tough, but really wasn't. I suspect he'll have to come down harder on the Saints, but he can't strip them of a 1st rounder this year, because the Saints traded it away last year to move up. And here's a conspiracy thought: this has been a two year investigation, which means that it was ongoing a year ago, so the Saints knew that the chickens were going to come home to roost sooner or later. Maybe that played a role in their wishing to trade this year's pick away last year; they knew that if they wanted to use it, that might be the only way. Hmmmmm.

I'm not a big fan of advertising, but...

...I've got to give credit where it's due. This ad, which is a short film in the best sense of the word, is utterly captivating. If your connection to the Intertubes allows a fullscreen HD viewing, please do.

Thank you, Ralph McQuarrie

Ralph McQuarrie, conceptual artist for many films, died the other day. Every article and blog post out there cites his art that heavily influenced the eventual look of, among other films, Star Wars, and the frank truth is that without McQuarrie's concept paintings, Lucas might well have never convinced any studio to bankroll the film in the first place.

Here's a sampling of his work, via AICN:

Enjoy the stars, Mr. McQuarrie!

Yes, yes. To Mr. Jones you listen!

Mr. Jones on The Phantom Menace, after he saw the 3D version:

My wife kept suggesting a trip to see the Star Wars: The Phantom Menace during its 3D run over the past few weeks. At first, I thought she was just suggesting it because she knows my love of Star Wars, but it has begun to dawn on me that she is a genuine fan. (This may seem unusual to not know about your spouse, but my opinions and dedication to the universe are pronounced. When combined with our tendency to do things for the other out of desire to make that person happy, it is sometimes difficult to know what is a genuine preference or just a willing deferral for the sake of the spouse's happiness. It's wonderfully complicated.) So, we finally made it to a showing Sunday afternoon on a blissfully relaxing three-day weekend.

What I found was a film that surprised me. I found it to be well-paced, moving, interesting, visually stunning, and above all, fun. I don't mean this in an analytical Lucas-apologist sense -- I think I actually surprised myself with how much I appreciated and enjoyed the film when it was just me and my wife and no one around to have to defend it against.

I'd love to see the movie on the big screen again, but I've never liked the way 3D makes my entire frontal lobe physically feel like it's about to explode out my eye sockets. But still: TPM is great! Really! Truly!

Sentential Links

Time for linkage...but first, a song by Pink Floyd!



:: So again, because I can’t say this strongly enough: asteroid 2012 DA14 is not an impact threat for February 2013. (Now I can stop worrying and write that symphony!)

:: A lot of board games come out every year. Some of them are really great. Many of them are okay rehashes of what has come before. Some are crappy. And some are just sort of there. This post is dedicated to the last category. (Man, I really need to do more table-top gaming.)

:: This is what passes for a punchline, presumably because it's a line of dialogue actually makes you want to punch a fictional character.

:: It is good to be reminded that I have the ability to be grounded and full, that the world is not slipping away quite as fast as I think. (I am so doing this one of these days. Although we have an electric stove, so I'll have to allow that one.)

:: My vote for the scummiest people on the planet are the lowlifes who own and operate towing companies. Not the good folks from service stations or AAA providing roadside service; I’m talking about the dirt bags who tow your car from parking spaces, hold your car hostage, and then essentially rob you to get it back.

:: The people wanted those services that were provided by the government, and they were willing to pay more than the actual $200 that the tax increase would have cost them in order to get them. The thing is, they would rather pay more than pay the government for those same services. (But...gummint is always bad! Taxes bad! Market good!)

:: Just because everyone has been telling you for years that The Empire Strikes Back was the best of the original trilogy doesn't mean you have to keep quiet and knuckle under to the mob. That's what Goebbels counted on, right? So say it proudly: Return of the Jedi is the best of the six Star Wars movies! Come out of the closet! (When asked to name a Best Star Wars movie, I almost always name A New Hope, just because it came first and nothing else would have come after had it not been, well, frakking awesome. But in all honesty, I adore each and every one of these damn movies. Kevin Drum writes a nicely argued post in defense of RotJ, and I'll go one better to say that I like the Ewoks just fine!)

More next week!

I have heard the people sing

I suspect that a great many of us nurse various dreams, some big and some little, that go unfulfilled for many years. Those dreams are always there, percolating in the background of our minds, sometimes surging to the fore but most times just staying in the background, only surfacing as part of a general reverie of things we wish might be. One of my such dreams has for years been to see Les Miserables onstage.

It's no longer a dream of mine. Two nights ago, it became something I've done. What an odd feeling. Dreams don't have to be big to feel strange upon their fulfillment.

Les Miserables first hit me back in August of 1987 or 1988, one of those two years – probably the latter – when I attended Bristol Hills Music Camp for two weeks. This was exactly what the name implies: a summer camp for young musicians. There were vocalists and string players there as well, but as a trumpet player I was in the wind ensemble. One guy led the wind ensemble the first week, another guy the second. The first guy, Mr. Sprague, was more into 'showy' pieces, while the second, Mr. Rudgers, had a more 'cerebral' approach (in coming years Mr. Rudgers would use us as guinea pigs in his own compositions, which I always enjoyed – he wrote some good stuff). It was really a wonderful contrast; both men were fantastic at what they did, and I'm a big fan of variety. Anyway, it was during the first week of one of those two years when Mr. Sprague put on our program an arrangement of tunes from Les Miz.

I don't recall much of that arrangement at all, except that it was a pretty good arrangement. There was a cool solo for most of the instrument groups, and it ended with – what else – "Do You Hear the People Sing". I had zero idea what Les Miz was about, none whatsoever, but man, those tunes just sank into my heart and never left. And I suppose I wasn't the only one: I was friends (platonically, I swear!) with a really nice girl named Aimee, who spent much of camp that year trying to fend off the advances of a sax player who was nursing an enormous crush upon her. One day I walked by and he had kinda-sorta cornered her and was flirting with her by playing "On My Own" on his sax to her. Ahhh, the days of hanging out with people who were more comfortable communicating through a tune than any other way! There are times when, if I could turn back time, I'd go back there, and stay.

Like a lot of musical kids, I was in the habit of buying recordings of pieces we played, as a way of keeping an auditory scrapbook. When you play a work and fall for it, you want to be able to hear it forevermore, even if it's an arrangement for high-school level band and the best you can do is get an abridged version of the Original Broadway Cast recording. This is not abnormal...one of the most popular such arrangements back then was the one from The Phantom of the Opera, which is why nearly every fellow music student of mine owned that recording, too. For various reasons, though, Phantom wasn't the show that captured me for life. We never played its band arrangement at camp, and we never played any such arrangements in high school. (I suspect that Mr. Roosa would have chewed his own arm off rather than stoop to the level of playing an arrangement of tunes from what he would have seen as Broadway's current Flavor-of-the-Month, which was odd considering that when I played under him in the Pit Band for our school's production of The Music Man, he showed quite an understanding and flare for show music.) So Phantom slid right past me, but Les Miz charged right in.

I listened to that disc a lot – I still own it, actually, although I haven't played it once in a very long time, since it was supplanted by the astonishing live recording made at the Tenth Anniversary concert productions from the Albert Hall in London. That's the recording that is billed as the "dream cast", and so far as I can tell, it is. I've listened to that recording tons of times over the years. With Les Miz, I tend to go through phases where I listen to nothing but Les Miz for two weeks or so. And yet, in all that time, I never saw the show live, onstage. The touring production would come to Buffalo every two or three years, but somehow its arrival always coincided with an inability on my part to acquire tickets (lack of money) or something else (presence of a baby, which also took care of the money-for-tickets issue). It's only been in the last few years that I've been in a position to actually be able to afford tickets – and that was right on time for the touring production to wind up shop and for the original show to close on Broadway. I pretty much figured that Les Miz had passed me by.

But then, a year or so ago, we were in Shea's Buffalo to see Wicked, and I saw then that there was a new, 25th Anniversary Production of Les Miz set to come to Buffalo in 2012. I resolved, then and there, to get tickets, no matter what. The tickets ended up going on sale at a pretty inconvenient time – a couple weeks before Christmas, which kind of screwed up my Christmas budget – but I chose my seats and placed the order. This show was not passing me by again.

It may seem strange, forming so strong an association with a show that I have never seen, but it's all about the music to me, and there is nary a melody in Les Miz that doesn't hit me right in the emotional sweet spot. The emotions in this show are so open, so raw, and so perfectly captured by the melodies that express them. This is surely by design, as the tunes come and go and come again, with new lyrics each time, but some expressing similar things each time we hear them. But one of the show's signature tunes – that of Fantine's heartbreaking "I Dreamed a Dream" – is heard, and then is never heard again. This is the kind of thing that fascinates me. Of course it has to be this way, because Fantine's life is doomed, and she will never really have any close connection with anyone in the show other than Jean Valjean; even her daughter, Cosette, grows up knowing virtually nothing at all about her mother.

Les Miz blurs the line throughout between hero and villain, policeman and criminal, lover and hater. Jean Valjean is twice a thief and a parole-breaker and a rebel. Inspector Javert is single-minded nearly to the point of insanity, and his inability to process the fact that he owes his life to both Jean Valjean and his obsession with bringing Valjean to justice leads him to what might be the show's most dramatic moment, when he flings himself from the bridge into the waters of the Seine (in a pretty astonishing effect in the stage production, I might add).

A lot of time goes by in Les Miz -- seventeen years of it, and the story makes clear that we're only joining in the middle; Valjean's story began nineteen years earlier than that, with his theft of a loaf of bread, a single, simple act of larceny that will resonate through his life and those of others for so many years to come. We see Cosette grow to a woman, and we see Valjean age to infirmity. Along the way we encounter student rebels and see the tragedy that ensues when they give their revolution and no one comes; we meet the people who profit by picking over the corpses; we see redeeming love and hopeless love and hatred for hatred's sake. That's quite an evening.

I noticed for the first time, also, a theme of faith running throughout the show. Valjean is a bitter ex-con at the beginning, going so far as to steal from a priest, but when the priest intercedes on his behalf, Valjean is moved to live a life of faithfulness, going so far as to become a new person (even though it means breaking parole). And all throughout the rest of the show, Valjean's faith is well-nigh unshakeable, even on the eve of the final battle at the barricade, when he sings the amazing "Bring Him Home", a prayer for God to allow Marius to survive what is sure to be a failed rebellion. Contrasting Valjean is Fantine, who, in "I Dreamed a Dream", seems to have given up on faith entirely ("I dreamed that God would be forgiving"), now that she's been left by a man she loved and cast out of her job. But just as Valjean's faith was rekindled when someone interceded, so is Fantine's when Valjean intercedes, even on her deathbed. Thus it is that when it comes time for Valjean to die, it is Fantine who first comes to his side to show him the way to the next world.

It's also telling that, when Valjean joins the dead at show's end, the most overtly religious individual in the show – Inspector Javert – isn't there. Does this mean that he is in Hell? Have the words of his Act One song "Stars" come true?

And if I fall as Lucifer fell,
the flame, the sword!

But Javert does fall as Lucifer fell – at least, I'm sure he would see it that way – so has he been cast to the flame? I suppose that's so...but I can't help thinking how poetic it would be if it was Javert who came to Valjean at the end, thus fulfilling his long pursuit simply by bringing Valjean into death.

Having merely listened to the music all these years, I was a bit fuzzy in some of the particulars of the story (especially why exactly Valjean suddenly feels the need to flee Paris at the end of Act One); now, at last, it all makes sense to me. Emotionally, I was pulled in from the very first few bars, and I remained pulled in until most of the way through the first act. Some of the steam did come out of the show a bit, I thought, as various conflicts for the second act were set up and pieces were moved into place. But by the time that first act ended with "One Day More", I was back in; and through just about all of Act II, I was a complete wreck, all the way to that shattering last scene, when Valjean says his final farewells and is led into the afterlife by Fantine and Eponine. Though I was somewhat anxious before the show that it couldn't live up to my expectations, I felt almost no disappointment whatsoever by the time the final curtain came down.

Stage productions really have to rely on big gestures and great music to pull me in. There are no cinematic tricks available; you can't have lingering closeups of characters exchanging subtle glances, and you can't have super-convincing fight sequences using stunt performers. Scene changes have to be concealed somehow, and light has to be used to distract the audience. Misdirection is employed all over the place; two characters go to stage right and interact for a minute, hopefully keeping the audience looking over there while the scenery is changed on stage left. In the case of Les Miz, it was all very convincingly and nicely done; the sets were designed to convey the idea of what they represented and were left somewhat hazy out at the edges, so that our imaginations might fill in the details. I've read that the original production featured a giant turntable on stage that would rotate one entire set out of view; this one is more traditional, with props being brought in and out. Interesting use of the backdrops – which are based on paintings by Victor Hugo himself – are able, at times, to convey illusions of motion, and the costuming is what you expect: bodices and lacey collars and tricorn hats and the like.

As far as the cast for this particular production, everyone was excellent to outstanding. J. Mark McVey's Valjean was wonderful, and the show clearly doesn't work without a good Valjean. (No, he's no Colm Wilkinson, but that's like a Pirates fan judging every right fielder who comes along by the standard of Roberto Clemente.) While McVey earned the night's biggest applause with "Bring Him Home", the best vocals of the night overall came, in my opinion, from Andrew Varela as Javert, although Richard Vida's Thenardier and Betsy Morgan's Fantine were both memorable. I'm hard pressed to name a weak link in the cast I saw...and even if I could, I don't think I'd want to.

No, the stage production lived up to my 'expectations', such as they were. What I'm more nervous about is the filmed version that's to come this December. I remember reading in some comments thread someplace – maybe on AICN – back when The Phantom Menace came out, one person was trying to process disappointment by pointing out, "I've made Episode One in my head a thousand times since 1983." Well, I've made the movie of Les Miz in my head a thousand times too, over the years, right down to a recurring visual motif of a bridge over the Seine where a number of key events would all take place. The movie will have none of the limitations of a stage show, so how will it look? Will it exchange dark and evocative peripheries of the image for brightness and boldness and lots of swooping CGI effects? How will "One Day More", the Act I finale (and a showstopper that I find nearly overwhelming), be put together, given that it features a bunch of characters singing at the same time but who are not all in the same places? I suppose we'll see. I don't think it's too hard to get this kind of thing right...but then, I thought the movie version of The Phantom of the Opera was the bee's knees, and it's not too highly regarded.

And so I go on, having at last seen Les Miz. This may have been my final personal "Holy Grail" of live or filmed entertainment. I've held it, and I've found...illumination. The question now is, if the show comes to Buffalo again, do I see it a second time?

Actually, come to that...it's not really a question at all, is it?

Sunday Burst of Weird and Awesome!

Oddities and Awesome abound!

:: Ramen Rater is a blog that reviews ramen noodles. This is awesome. Trust me. (If all you know of ramen is the super-ultra cheap stuff that sustained you in college because those fifty cents you found in the cushions of your couch represented five ramen meals, believe me, you don't know your ramen!)

:: Least Helpful is a blog that gathers examples of Amazon and other online reviewing gone seriously awry. How awry? Well, on reviewer actually thought "Go the F**k to Sleep" was a real children's book.

:: This is really cool: it's a timelapse movie of a period of time on the waterfront of Vancouver, BC.

Woodwards 3303, 10th Sep 2011 from abonstu on Vimeo.

I love the ferry boats that come and go, always following the same route; one zips away, and another zips in. Great stuff!

More next week!

Whooooosh!

Wow, is it ever windy today! In fact, this whole friggin' winter has been really windy. We've had spectacularly little snow so far this year, and now that it's March, except for the odd late-season storm that we're known to get, we're very likely pretty much done with snowfall for this year. According to last week's Buffalo News, we've had slightly more than 34 inches so far this year. Usually we've received more than twice that. A lot of people are happy about this, but I'm not...I like snow, and I like going sledding and walking in the snow at Chestnut Ridge park and other such places.

What I do not like is wind. I find wind incredibly irritating, because wind can pretty much render any set of weather circumstances unpleasant. High wind in winter is awful, because it makes the cold colder and more painful...but high wind in summer is just as unpleasant, because it makes it hard to do anything fun outside then, too. I've been to picnics when I've spent more time holding stuff down than eating; riding a bike in wind is just not fun at all; walking is drudgery, and I'm sure that jogging (which I'm planning on taking up when it warms up a little) isn't fun in the wind, either. Back when I used to go kayaking, paddling a boat into wind was a lot of shite. And just sitting in the grass and reading is tough to enjoy when the wind is having its way.

This winter has been very windy...it's felt like excessive levels of wind at least twice a week for three months, and I think we've had more Wind Advisories than Winter Weather Advisories. We've had a lot of days where we've sustained wind gusts of over 50 mph. And today we're having another one. I would gladly take twice the snow we've had this winter in exchange for half the wind.

Although, I must admit that overalls can be fun to wear outside when it's really windy. If you angle yourself correctly, the bib will fill with wind, like a little sail, and it's like you're being tugged around by the overalls. But aside from that...wind sucks.

For want of a cell phone battery....

I've seen it happen to lots of people over the years...but it had never happened to me, until last night. I dropped my cell phone on the floor, and the battery popped right off.

Problem is, this happened at Shea's Buffalo...in our seats, in the balcony. The phone dropped to the painted concrete floor. I didn't even see the battery go off, but it did; I picked up the phone, and lo! no battery. This was before the show, and before the people with tickets in our area started really filling in, so I had an opportunity to look for it. The battery had fallen behind a seat in the row ahead of us...but since the seats up there are stair-stepped, it was hard to reach it. Worse, it was sitting halfway into a strange metal box underneath the seat.

This, we would figure out, was a heat register.

I figured I would just get down and try to fish the thing out after the show ended, so I ignored my missing battery while Les Mieserables went on. (Post on that forthcoming...suffice it, for now, to say that I gave my cell phone battery exactly zero thought for the next three hours.) But when the show ended, I let the people around us move out, and then I was down on hands and knees, trying to reach the thing. Trouble was, I couldn't get my hands down in there -- the squeeze was too tight. And my hands are by no means massive.

Meanwhile, a couple of nice people stopped by to ask if they could help me retrieve whatever it was that I dropped. I told them it was my cell phone battery, and one of these fellows -- a young man in a very nice suit and who, I must say, has the tiniest hands I've ever seen on a grown man -- gamely reached in to try and grab the wayward battery, which was balanced precariously on the brink of the heat register. I had high hopes...until I heard the telltale ker-chunk sound, and saw the expression on his face when he looked up at me. It was the look of someone whose next words are going to be bad news, such as, "Sorry, but your company is moving to Bangladesh", or "Sorry, but we've just had a recall on the steak you just ate", or "Sorry, but your battery just fell into the heating ductwork of Buffalo's biggest theater."

Oh well. I couldn't be mad at the guy; it was a tough thing, he gave it his best shot, and he got down on his knees in a nice suit. Those are all things he didn't have to do, and the damned thing was precariously balanced there in the first place. But now, my cell phone is a brick. We'll be looking into either a replacement battery at some point in the next couple of days, or just upgrading our phones, as our current ones are about two years old. Normally I like to keep these things going for longer than this. I'm not one of those folks who gets a newer, nicer phone every year; my approach on electronics is to buy the best thing I can afford when I need one, and then use it until it dies (or until performance becomes unacceptable). But sometimes necessity forces its hand more quickly than at other times, and this is one of those times.

I wouldn't mind just replacing the battery, but we'll see. I wouldn't mind a new phone, either!

(PS: not that any readers do, but don't call or text me for now. Because I will answer neither!)

Can we have ACORN back now?

Politics below the fold....

Something for Thursday

An old musical hero of mine, trumpet virtuoso Maurice Andre, passed away this past weekend. I always preferred his tone to that of, say, Wynton Marsalis; Andre's silken tone is perfectly suited to the Baroque and Classical repertoire which he tended to dominate. Though I'm no longer a trumpet player, I'll always admire his skill and musicality.

Here is Maurice Andre, performing Haydn's Concerto for Trumpet and Orchestra in E-flat major.



Farewell, Maurice Andre!

Beating This Book Into Submission

Yup, the manuscript for Princesses In SPACE!!! (not the actual title) now stands at just over 140,000 words. I'm aiming for a total length for the first draft of not more than 180,000 words, which means that if I can stick to my 500-words-a-day quota until I'm done, I should have a manuscript by Memorial Day. Then I'll set it aside for several months before editing it, during which I'll be at work on a project that involves neither Princesses nor SPACE!!!. It will, however, involve the son of a lighthouse keeper, a band of gypsy-thieves, and a man in black with an eye-patch and an enormous black feather in his hat. That one's another idea that's been knocking around my head for years, so it's time to do some excavation. And after that, it'll be back to my Princesses, for their sequel adventures in SPACE!!!

I love writing. I hope I can publish some of this stuff!

A Random Wednesday Conversation Starter

What's that one dish your mother or father used to make? You know, the one that no matter how good a cook you are, no matter how skilled in the kitchen you may be, that even though you have the actual recipe in your cookbook or recipe box, you simply cannot make to taste as good as when your mom or dad used to make it for you?

When cats suck

I was dreaming about...something. It was a nice dream. I think I was a Viking, or a space cowboy. Something cool like that. But a sudden, insistent electronic beeping pushed itself into my dream. I wondered what it was...and then, even though it was the wrong time period for my dream, someone said, "Is that a car alarm?" This incongruity pushed me awake. It was 3:00 am.

And the beeping was still there.

"Who the hell isn't resetting their car alarm?" I thought, thinking the beeping was coming from outside. But it wasn't.

Now The Wife stirred. "What's that?" she asked.

"I don't know," I replied. But by now I was awake enough to realize that it was coming from inside the apartment.

I staggered out toward the living room, and the beeping grew louder. The Wife stumbled behind me. When I got to the living room, I homed in the sound...just in time to see one of the cats go running away...from our cordless phone's base. Which cat? I couldn't tell; it was dark. But there was no doubt: The beeping was the phone's ringtone.

I haven't heard that phone ring in so long that I couldn't even remember its ringtone. We turned off the ringer on our phone and let the machine do all the answering three phones and eleven years ago, so I had no hope of recognizing the phone's ringtone on first hearing. But I picked the phone up and silenced it.

Whichever cat that was, had managed to press the "Handset Locator" button. The one that, you know, makes the phone ring, so you can find it. How did that cat do this? No idea. Which cat was it? No idea.

Took me another ninety minutes to get back to sleep, though. And I had to be up at 6:00.

Stupid cats.

Answers, the third!

Continuing the replies to queries posed in Ask Me Anything! February 2012.

Charlie asks: Imagine you were called upon to recast the Star Wars movies, for some reason. Who would your picks be?

Hmmm, that's tough. Very tough. Really, really tough.

If we were to reboot Star Wars right now, would it even have the same characters? Or would it go another direction? Interesting questions...but assuming that we just live in an alt-universe where Star Wars is made for the first time, right now, here's how it might be cast. Maybe.

Luke Skywalker: Geez, I don't know. I think you'd need a relative unknown for this role. I really do.
Han Solo: Well, if I can't have any more adventures of Captain Malcolm Reynolds...Nathan Fillion!
Princess Leia Organa: Why not? Natalie Portman.
Ben "Obi Wan" Kenobi: We need a somewhat older Brit here, don't we? You know, I'd be intrigued to see what Alan Rickman could do here.
Governor Tarkin: Christopher Walken.

Now, Darth Vader, C-3PO, R2-D2, Yoda, and others don't even need casting, because they'll be played by people in suits or CGI. When you really think about it, there really aren't too many major human characters in Star Wars. To really get some interesting casting going, we'd have to re-do the story somehow to get some more people in there, I think. I'd love to get Clancy Brown in there at some point, but where? Meryl Streep as Mon Mothma? Michael Clark Duncan as Lando Calrissian? And Summer Glau could play a female Jedi who is so bad-ass that she doesn't even need to use a lightsaber!

A reader who prefers to remain anonymous e-mails: What Guy Gavriel Kay novels do you think would make good movies? (Are there any films of his novels?)

What about other books? Anything you read recently that would make a good film?

So far, there are no films of GGK's novels. I don't think that all of them would make good movies -- The Fionavar Tapestry would, by necessity, strike people onscreen as a big-time rip-off of The Lord of the Rings, because film audiences wouldn't give him too much slack for 'playing with tropes' and that sort of thing. Tigana, by its structure, would be a difficult film adaptation as well. It might work as a miniseries, though.

I know that The Lions of Al-Rassan has been in development for several years.. I think it would make an interesting movie, but then, I'm biased in that it's my favorite of his books. It would also be easy to screw up, though.

The Sarantine Mosaic is too big to fit into a single movie. The Last Light of the Sun would work, I think, and work very well. Ditto Ysabel, which would work very well as a 'modern day' fantasy -- although the bits involving Dave and Kim from Fionavar would lack most of their impact without the earlier books as context. Given the quality of fantasy and adventure films from the far east of late, Under Heaven could be a magnificent film.

Ultimately, though, I tend to think that the GGK novel that would work best as a movie, by way of its fairly tight narrative, might well be A Song for Arbonne.

In terms of other books making good movies: I don't normally think in these terms, but there have been some books that strike me as cinematic in their writing. I have yet to blog about it, but Jim Butcher's Storm Front (the first of his 'Harry Dresden' novels) would film well, I think. There was a book I read a few years ago, called The Caliph's House, that I think would film really well -- it's about a man who decides, almost on a whim, to move his family from London to Casablanca, into a house that's a fixer-upper. A whole lot of 'fish out of water' stuff ensues.

The bit of reading I've done lately that would make the best movie, though, is this post of Sheila's, about one of the firefighters she met in the course of some recent harrowing (but well-ending) stuff that went on in her life. A man and a woman, brought together by their shared love of Elvis...and one cat! (Well, not really, but a really terrific romantic comedy-drama could be made from this stuff.)

More answers to come! (And new questions are still welcome!)

"Valar morghulis."

Tyrion, yay!, originally uploaded by Jaquandor.

So, I have now knocked off two books in George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series. I remember A Clash of Kings as being nearly the equal of A Game of Thrones; this time out, the book impressed me ever more than I remember it doing the first time out. This could be because I know what's coming; middle acts tend to look better once the acts that follow are in place, so that more of the structure can be seen. I don't think that The Empire Strikes Back's lofty reputation began to set until after Return of the Jedi arrived, and not because the former is clearly superior to the latter, but because once the third act is out, one can see just where the second act was going. So it might well be with Clash.

In this book, the smoldering tinderbox that was Westeros in the first book explodes outright into two separate wars. Or three. Or four, come to that, depending on how one counts them. Now, instead of great Houses jockeying for position under a single King, we have four different Kings, each looking to lay claim to the realm (or a big chunk of it). In addition to them, there's a fifth King on a crappy, rocky island looking to strike while everyone else is looking the other way, and there's the Queen Across the Sea, Daenerys Targaryen, who is still looking to put together an army that she can bring back across the sea and claim the Iron Throne herself. It's a heady mix.

Clash pretty much picks up right where Game left off, so we are brought up to speed on what happens to our favorite and not-so-favorite characters along the way. Arya Stark has fallen in with an officer of the Night's Watch who has come to King's Landing on a recruiting mission. ('Recruiting' for the Night's Watch is a pretty generous word, given the dregs of society that tends to go up there.) Sansa Stark is still a virtual prisoner of the Lannisters and is still betrothed to King Joffrey, who is still Exhibit A in Why We Don't Let Teenagers Be Heads Of State Anymore. Robb Stark is still trying to act the King in the North, with his mother's help. Jon Snow is still on the Wall, getting ready to journey with his fellow Brothers in Black on a mission to see just what strange doings are afoot in the far frozen north. And of course, there's Tyrion Lannister, who is sent by Lord Tywin Lannister to serve as Acting Hand of the King, which means that most of the statecraft and strategic planning in the book falls to him.

The ongoing theme continues to be the way that the people best suited for various jobs are not allowed to hold those jobs, simply because of bloodlines or sex. Tyrion has a clear gift for governing a Kingdom, but he can only do so as the Acting Hand of the King, because no one trusts a dwarf to run much of anything at all.

The 'soap opera' structure of the books continues to be in full effect, right down to either being excited or disappointed by the name at the head of each chapter, indicating who our viewpoint is to be for a while. This structure also helps keep the pages turning, as it's not hard to finish one Arya chapter and then say, "Well, I'll just keep going until the next Arya chapter." This also means suffering through some chapters that aren't terribly compelling, because I don't like the characters on whom they focus. Through the next two books, I have zero recollection of what, if anything, happens to Theon Greyjoy...but damn, I hope he dies. Hate that guy.

Some random thoughts:

:: Martin is not tipping his hand at all as to whether Benjen Stark is still alive or not. And very little mention of the Others, although we saw them in the very first pages of the first book. This is taking a lllooonnnggg time to develop.

:: Martin's writing of sex scenes is a bit too graphic for my tastes. I honestly did not need to read about Tyrion's probing of Shae's "secret sweetness" to the point where his beard was drenched.

:: Tyrion seems awfully prescient about how the river battle is going to go, as he starts getting things ready for it hundreds of pages before it happens. This is incredibly effective, though, as the actual battle unfolds; we follow Davos Seaworth into battle and we know that he is troubled by a gnawing certainty that he is sailing into a whole lot of shit, but he can't put a finger on it.

:: I tended, while reading, to wonder just what it was about the Baratheons that inspires such loyalty, because frankly, they're all jerk-offs. Robert was a drunken sot who ripped a kingdom apart because of a girl; Stannis is so busy being offended by the speck in his brother's eye that he never notices the plank up his own ass; and Renly is just a lightweight who has no real justification for his claim to the throne outside of "Because I wanna!". Why do so many people follow these guys? I wouldn't follow them into 7-11 if I really had to use the bathroom.

:: Bran Stark seems to have some kind of lycanthropy thing going on, and Arya is entranced by one guy's ability to change his face. I assume these threads will come to interesting ends at some point.

:: I'd forgotten about Brienne of Tarth, and what a tragic figure she is. It's clear that Martin has gone out of his way with her to create a character who has zero place, anywhere, in his universe.

Next up is A Storm of Swords, which I recall as being where, for me, some of the luster on this series started to diminish. We'll see.

"This mortal form grows weak. I require sustenance!"

Thor was never my favorite Marvel superhero, not by a longshot. I never really got the whole thing...he was a Norse god, that much I knew, but the whole "Norse god banished to twentieth century America" never made a whole lot of sense to me. I just didn't get it. And it didn't help that, from my perspective, the Thor comics weren't in the midst of a great run or anything when I was really into comics, from 1983 or so to 1989. Thor was just kind of there.

Thus, I wasn't all that keen on a Thor movie, either...I had no major objection to one, but I wasn't terribly interested in it, either. And frankly, the only reason I bothered to see it at all was because it's part of the background for the upcoming Avengers movie. So I decided to check Thor out.

And you know what? I'm glad I did. Thor is a comic book movie that really succeeds in nailing what a lot of comic book movies fail to do: combine elements of Big Mjaestic Heroes With Great Powers Who Are Fighting Cosmic Horrors, along with elements of goofy fun.

I won't bother giving a plot summary, since Thor's plot is fairly convoluted in that comic-book way of making sense while you're watching it, but not being easy to remember once you're done. There is an ancient struggle between Thor's people, the people of Asgard, and the evil Frost Giants of Jotunheim. These places look more like other planets than mythical realms – especially Asgard, which is a fantastic cityscape and yet looks oddly unpopulated at certain points along the way. Thor is an impulsive youth who is destined to be King, as long he doesn't keep screwing up...but screw up he does, and his father Odin (played with proper pomposity by Anthony Hopkins) banishes him. To where? Why, Earth, of course!

Of course, Thor is found on Earth by a trio of scientists, because you can't have a Marvel comic book story without some scientists roaming around. This time, our lead scientist is played by Natalie Portman; she's accompanied by Stellan Skarsgard (an actor who never bugs me, but also never really impresses me much, either), and a third scientist played by Kat Dennings. (Now, I had zero idea that Dennings was even in this movie, so that was a happy surprise. And I loved her character – she doesn't have much to do, but there's a weird 'happy medium' thing going on with her: she's a scientist, but from a different discipline, so she's usually one or two steps behind, without seeming stupid about it. Playing smart is one thing; playing smart-but-not-entirely-invested is something else.)

The production design of Thor is pretty nifty. This movie really looks like it's inspired by a comic book. Everything is big and bold and bright and colorful (except for the Frost Giant kingdom, but what can you do there, they live on a giant ice cube), and the film's main Earth location is not a big city but some small town in the middle of the New Mexico desert, the kind of small towns that comic books are always sticking out in the middle of nowhere so that Big Important Cosmic Things can happen there. Our scientists have a lab set up in what looks like an abandoned 1950s breakfast restaurant. And when Thor's Hammer shows up in the middle of an impact crater, something not unlike a redneck version of the knights coming to take a whack at pulling Excalibur out of the stone transpires. (Keep an eye out for the cameo appearance by a guy playing a doofus with a pickup truck.)

Thor is a movie where the heroes can all stand around talking about kings and wars for the ages and their destinies and their duties, while also having the hero meet the heroine when she hits him with her truck...and then, the next day, hits him with her truck again. There were times, watching Thor, when I thought, "This movie shouldn't work"...and yet, oddly, it does. Director Kenneth Branagh keeps things whisking right along; he doesn't spend much time lingering over anything, and the script is full of tiny touches that really ring true – such as Dennings's inability to pronounce 'Mjolnir' correctly, or Thor's attempt to secure a second cup of coffee in a diner. The film's only weak spots, for me, were in making Asgard look a bit too antiseptic, and in the guy who played Loki – he just seemed slightly bloodless. (Although, if they ever reboot Star Trek: The Next Generation, I know where they can find their Lt. Cdr. Data.)

At this point in the whole superhero thing, I don't think a movie is ever going to come along that will supplant Superman in my heart as the definitive superhero movie. But Thor comes quite a bit closer than most have. What a fun movie!

Sentential Links

Time for linkage...but first, check out this execution of a round of Pac Man, in which Our Hero passes straight through a ghost, unharmed, four times! The ghost? It's...Blinky!



(I'm wondering now how long I can keep this increasingly tenuous series of words that kinda-sorta rhyme with 'link' going....)

:: On Thursday night at 6 p.m. I got an email from my landlord telling me there had been a fire in my apartment building but my “cat was okay” and no one was hurt. (If you read only one of the posts I link this week, read this one. I watched all of this unfold over several days, in realtime, via Sheila's updates on Facebook. It's harrowing and scary and deeply emotional...and it has a wonderful coda.)

:: March 9th. What a great day. Not only will I be celebrating the life of the greatest rapper of all time who died way to soon (R.I.P. Biggie!), but I will finally get to see Edgar Rice Burrough's classic Barsoom series on the big screen!!! Given that this is the characters 100 year anniversary and that these stories featuring John Carter are the building blocks for movies like Star Wars, Alien, and Avatar... Well, quite frankly ITS ABOUT TIME!!! (I still find myself wishing they'd have titled this movie anything other than John Carter, which says absolutely nothing about the story. I mean, I hear that title, and I'm like to think it's a feature movie about the Noah Wyle character from ER. Oh well...I'll be seeing the movie, though! Probably not opening night, but sometime...soon....)

:: Everyone worked, everyone helped, and in the end we had brewed give gallons of sweet black beer, bottled another five of a coffee stout porter, and made a plate full of giant brats for folks to ziplock and take home to cook up for dinner. All around me was the human side of industry. People who used their kitchen, hands, stoves, cranks, and cappers to create a viking feast of meat and ale. It felt hardy. It felt primal. It felt good.

:: A 25-years-later sequel would be a bad idea for similar reasons. Part of me would love to catch up with Bender, Claire, Allison, Andy, and Brian in middle-age; maybe at a high school reunion. But most of me realizes that I still don't want to see that. I have my own ideas about where these characters ended up that are uniquely mine. Seeing anything else on the screen is doomed to disappoint.

:: I still can’t believe the events that led to Nola’s promotion! (I love that sentence. Love, love, love it. I'm going to incorporate phrasings like that into my daily lexicon: "I still can't believe the events that led to this equipment's malfunction!")

:: And think of this: unlike other issues, this one has a deadline. Having an actual date on this (imaginary) event makes it seem more solid, more real. I hate to write this, but I expect we’ll be hearing more about people going through with suicide over the next few months because of these doomsday claims. How many of them might have had a chance to seek help, to live longer, if the idea of a 2012 doomsday weren’t so prevalent?

More next week!

Saturday Centus (Sunday edition)

I sat on this week's prompt for over twenty-four hours after reading it, in hopes that something else would pop into my brain to do with it. Alas, nothing did, so I'm going with my first -- and fairly grim -- impulse.

The date had been set for months, but still, he wasn’t ready. He’d had his last meal, he heard (but not understood) the words of the priest and he’d talked with his lawyer and his sister. But still, before the last chair he’d ever sit it, Leonard Luther Allen’s knees gave out.

The chair dominated the small room, it was so big. But he barely saw the chair. There, in the air around it, were faces. Their faces. Staring. Judging. One laughing.

“No,” he said.

“Yes,” they replied.

Leonard’s victims watched as the guards pushed him into the chair...and minutes later, judgment came.

This ties into an idea I've had knocking around my head for a supernatural thriller for quite a few years now. I haven't written it, because I'm not sure if it should be a novel or a screenplay.

Sunday Burst of Weird and Awesome!

Oddities and Awesome abound!!!

:: Twenty beautiful personal and private libraries.

I've seen most of these before online, but it's always fun to revisit them. Some of them look way too impersonal and antiseptic for me; the only ones that really look like places I'd like to hole up and work in for long stretches of time are the very first one, the one belonging to Neil Gaiman, and, of course, the one at the Skywalker Ranch. I really don't think I'd like the staircase one, where the books are actually stored in the spaces betwixt the stairs. I just know that dirt from my feet would end up co-mingling with the books, and that's not a good thing.

Still, if ever we have a Place Of Our Own, I will be constructing a better storage facility for my books than my current 'stacks everywhere one looks' thing that I've got going on.

:: It's Oscar night (no, I'm not watching), so check out this animated-GIF montage of the reactions of people who lost the awards for which they were nominated. As much as I like graciousness in defeat, there's still something oddly refreshing about the occasional "Oh, f*** that guy!" reaction.

:: Guy meets girl. Guy dates girl for a week or so. Girl gets guy's face tattooed on her arm. Facebooked hilarity ensues!

More next week!

Fixing the Prequels: Revenge of the Sith (part three)

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And...we're back! And in a lot less than ten months, too. Huzzah! In the 'Credit Where Due' department, for the purposes of this series I'm referring to the film's script here.

When we left off last time, our Jedi Heroes had been caught, with Chancellor Palpatine and R2-D2, whilst trying to escape the ship of General Grievous. The space battle is raging on, but our heroes are brought to the bridge of the ship, where they come face to face with Grievous, a fairly bizarre individual who seems to be mostly robot, but with some kind of biological parts, who is hunchbacked, and who is constantly afflicted by a hacking cough. (This cough is actually explained by the final installment of a series of animated shorts called, appropriately enough, The Clone Wars, which aired on one of the cable networks between AotC and RotS, but it's not really important here...unless one wants to know why a person who is something like ninety percent droid is coughing. I personally, did not.)

As Grievous confronts the Jedi, he refers to Obi Wan as 'the Negotiator', a touch that I like because it implies that Kenobi has a kind of reputation that he's picked up in the course of the Clone Wars, not unlike Erwin Rommel's 'nom de war', 'the Desert Fox'. When Grievous meets Anakin, he notes that he expected someone of his reputation to be a bit older; Anakin replies: "General Grievous. You're shorter than I expected." I've always liked this line.

The rest of this plays out pretty much by numbers: R2-D2 creates a diversion, long enough for Obi Wan and Anakin to recover their lightsabers and free themselves from their bonds, at which point they go on yet another Jedi rampage against battle droids. There's nothing particularly major here that we haven't seen before in the Prequels, and it flashes by pretty quickly (albeit with an entertaining bit that comes when Obi Wan realizes that a particular model of battle droid can keep right on fighting even after decapitation). Grievous manages to escape yet again, this time by smashing one of the windows open and letting himself get blown out into space; he then uses a grappling hook to get himself to an escape pod while Obi Wan and Anakin have to take the controls of the ship, which is starting a death plunge into the atmosphere.

This whole sequence is really well done:

OBI-WAN and ANAKIN go over to the navigator's chair.

ANAKIN: All the escape pods have been launched.

OBI-WAN: Grievous. Can you fly a cruiser like this?

ANAKIN: You mean, do I know how to land what's left of this thing?

ANAKIN sits in the pilot's chair and sees on a screen the back half of the ship break away. There is a great jolt, and the ship tilts forward.

OBI-WAN: Well?

ANAKIN: Under the circumstances, I'd say the ability to pilot this thing is irrelevant. Strap yourselves in.

OBI-WAN and PALPATINE strap themselves into chairs. ANAKIN struggles with the controls of the ship. The ship starts to glow, and pieces break off. ARTOO moves in on Palpatine 's controls and assists in flying the cruiser.

OBI-WAN: Steady . . . Attitude . . . eighteen degrees.

ARTOO beeps.

ANAKIN: Pressure rising. We've got to slow this wreck down. Open all hatches, extend all flaps, and drag fins.

OBI-WAN: Temp steady. Hatches open, flaps extended, drag fins . . .

A large part of the ship breaks away.

ANAKIN: We lost something.

OBI-WAN: Not to worry, we're still flying half the ship.

I love that last line of Obi Wan's. This whole sequence is fun, tense, and the effects are amazing. This brief shot is one of my favorite sights in all the Star Wars movies:

And all the other visual details are terrific here: the flames of reentry outside the bridge windows, the fireships that come alongside to smother the burning ship in fire retardant, the way the ship flies through a thick cluster of clouds to suddenly emerge above the capital city of the Republic. The ship's bridge is dominated by yellow and green lighting, which is a color scheme we haven't seen before. I also like how well-conceived this sequence is, in terms of details. Yeah, they may actually be scientifically implausible, but within the rules of his universe, George Lucas has thought out some stuff. The cruiser has 'drag fins', big metal flaps that extend out and provide increased air resistance to slow the ship down when it's in the atmosphere (and remember, we've already established that cruisers of this size can land planetside), and the afore-mentioned firefighting ships.

Of course, Anakin brings the ship in for an impressive crash landing (taking out a control tower in the process...I always wonder if that tower was full of space traffic controllers, maybe one declaring this to be the wrong week to be giving up Death Sticks). The dust is settling, everyone is breathing a sigh of relief, and Obi Wan sums it all up: "Another happy landing!"

At this point, we're finally done with an action sequence that has taken over twenty minutes of the film's opening. It's almost a short film in itself, complete with three acts, and it was an exhilarating way for George Lucas to start the film. Now comes quite a bit of talking and politics. Not that a lot of this bothers me, but the pace slows down quite a bit now.

A shuttle brings the Chancellor, along with his Jedi rescuers, back to the Capital, where Obi Wan and Anakin have another bit of repartee:

ANAKIN: (to Obi-Wan) Are you coming, Master?

OBI-WAN: Oh no. I'm not brave enough for politics. I have to report to the Council. Besides, someone needs to be the poster boy.

ANAKIN: Hold on, this whole operation was your idea. You planned it. You led the rescue operation. You have to be the one to take the bows this time.

OBI-WAN: Sorry, old friend. Let us not forget that you rescued me from the Buzz Droids. And you killed Count Dooku. And you rescued the Chancellor, carrying me unconscious on your back, and you managed to land that bucket of bolts safely . . .

ANAKIN: All because of your training, Master.

OBI-WAN: Anakin, let's be fair. Today, you are the hero and you deserve your glorious day with the politicians.

ANAKIN: All right. But you owe me . . . and not for saving your skin for the tenth time . . .

OBI-WAN: Ninth time . . . that business on Cato Nemoidia doesn't count. I'll see you at the briefing.

I like the bit about keeping score – it's reminscent of the Original Trilogy, and the friendly rivalry between Luke Skywalker and Han Solo. Next there's a brief bit as Palpatine assures Mace Windu that the Senate will insist on continuing the war as long as General Grievous is at large; with Count Dooku dead, Grievous is now the leader of the droid armies. Not much is made of the fact that Dooku wasn't just a military leader, but a political leader as well – who will rise to lead the Separatist movement?

Of note here is that Palpatine has managed to create an environment of perpetual war in the Republic, a war that has the support of the Senate and is being led by the Jedi. And yet we know there is tension between the Chancellor and the Jedi, so the question arises – never really addressed by the films – as to just what the relationship is between the Jedi and the Chancellor and the Senate. The Jedi seem to be a somewhat independent body, governing themselves, but taking input from the Senate. But they're starting to not like what they are being required to do; as Mace Windu basically stated in AotC, they are basically policemen, not soldiers or military leaders. And yet that is their new role. Interesting, then, that a key facet of all of Palpatine's machinations is to manipulate the Jedi into serving a role that they are not well-suited to serve.

Anyway, back to the movie. The Chancellor and the Jedi and the rest of a group of Senators walk off. (In this bunch is one Jar Jar Binks, who is almost unnoticed except that he has his one line of dialogue in the movie, "Excuse me". What was funny about this is that when I saw the film in the theater back in 2005, as soon as people noticed Jar Jar, there was no booing or hissing – just several people in the theater exclaiming, "Hey, it's Jar Jar!" and some murmurs of recognition, not all of which sounded angry. Make of that what you will...but sometimes I wonder if Jar Jar isn't quite as hated as most people think he's hated. Or maybe I'm just delusional....) Anakin exchanges words with Senator Bail Organa (Jimmy Smits, who had quite the political acting life in the mid-2000s, appearing as a Star Wars Senator and as the successor to President Josiah Bartlet in The West Wing), and then he notices someone in the shadows of one of the great pillars. It's Padme.

Now, why isn't Padme in the group of dignitaries meeting the Chancellor upon his return? She is one of the most influential political figures in the Senate. Clearly it's because she needs to meet Anakin in somewhat private. They embrace, and this exchange takes place (material not actually in the final film in red):

ANAKIN: I missed you, Padme.

PADME: There were whispers . . . that you'd been killed.

ANAKIN: I'm all right. It feels like we've been apart for a lifetime. And it might have been ... If the Chancellor hadn't been kidnapped. I don't think they would have ever brought us back from the Outer Rim sieges.

ANAKIN starts to give her another kiss. She steps back.

PADME: Wait, not here . . .

He grabs her again.

ANAKIN: Yes, here! I'm tired of all this deception. I don't care if they know we're married.

PADME: Anakin, don't say things like that. You're important to the Republic ... to ending this war. I love you more than anything, but I won't let you give up your life as a Jedi for me . . .

ANAKIN: I've given my life to the Jedi order, but I'd only give up my life, for you.

PADME: (playfully) I wouldn't like that. I wouldn't like that one bit. Patience, my handsome Jedi . . . Come to me later.

ANAKIN embraces her, then looks at her.

ANAKIN: Are you all right? You're trembling. What's going on?

PADME: I'm just excited to see you.

ANAKIN: That's not it. I sense more . . . what is it?

PADME: Nothing . . . nothing . . .

ANAKIN: You're frightened. (a little angry) Tell me what's going on!

PADME begins to cry.

PADME: You've been gone five months . . . it's been very hard for me. I've never felt so alone. There's . . .

ANAKIN: . . . Is there someone else?

PADME: (peeved, angry) No! Why do you think that? Your jealousy upsets me so much, Anakin. I do nothing to betray you, yet you still don't trust me. Nothing has changed.

ANAKIN: (sheepish) I'm afraid of losing you, Padme . . . that's all.

PADME: I will never stop loving you, Anakin. My only fear is losing you.

ANAKIN: It's just that I've never seen you like this . . .

PADME: Something wonderful has happened.

They look at each other for a long moment.

PADME: (continuing) I'm . . . Annie, I'm pregnant.

ANAKIN is stunned. He thinks through all of the ramifications of this. He takes her in his arms.

ANAKIN: That's . . . that's wonderful.

PADME: What are we going to do?

ANAKIN: We're not going to worry about anything right now, all right? This is a happy moment. The happiest moment of my life.

So: Padme's pregnant, and judging by her clothes, she's somewhat far along. That's probably why she's staying the shadows, then; this is not a condition she wants to become common knowledge, for obvious reasons. Someone will ask who the father is, and someone else will figure it out, to the doom of Anakin's career as a Jedi, even though he says that he wants to just come out with it and let the chips fall where they may. I like Anakin's reaction to the news of her pregnancy: he's shocked at first, a bit overwhelmed, and then he manages to return to happiness. So, is he really happy that he's about to be a father? Or is this something he neither expected nor wanted? I think that the evidence in the film supports both possibilities, and I like the ambiguity of his response to being told and the way he covers it up almost immediately. At the point of the revelation, John Williams's music does not become lovely or plaintive; instead it churns in the basses, underscoring nicely Anakin's conflicted emotions about becoming a father.

I do think that Lucas made a wise choice in eliminating the bit about Anakin suspecting Padme of having another suitor. While his loss of trust in Padme will be the final straw in his march toward the Dark Side, it's much too early to plant that seed. Nevertheless, here is where I would make my first actual change in the film: as they embrace on final time, I'd have someone from the Jedi council see them embracing. The obvious choice here is Mace Windu. Why? Because I think a few seeds need to be planted here for later in the film, and because I think that the film needed to get a reminder in earlier on that Mace Windu has never really been in Anakin's fan club. He wouldn't say anything to Anakin and Padme; not now, anyway. But he'd look back and see their embrace and start to recognize it for what it is: a Jedi indulging forbidden love.

Now we cut to General Grievous and his arrival on the planet Utapau. For longtime Star Wars fans, the name of the planet Utapau is exciting (although we don't hear it for a while yet), as it is one of the very earliest planet names George Lucas tossed around way back in the early 1970s when he was originally cobbling together his notions for a big space adventure epic movie. After Grievous lands, he makes contact with Darth Sidious, who is behind everything; Sidious orders him to move the Separatist leaders to Mustafar and then answers Grievous's concern about Count Dooku's death with the revelation that he's already got his eye on a new apprentice, "one who is far more powerful". Uh oh....

And then we are whisked back to Coruscant, for a nice quiet scene between Anakin and Padme at night on the balcony of their 800th-floor apartment. Or what's supposed to be a nice quiet scene, because...well, this is what happens.

PADME: Annie, I want to have our baby back home on Naboo. We could go to the lake country where no one would know . . . where we would be safe. I could go early-and fix up the baby's room. I know the perfect spot, right by the gardens.

ANAKIN: You are so beautiful!

PADME: It's only because I'm so in love . . .

ANAKIN: No, it's because I'm so in love with you.

PADME: So love has blinded you?

ANAKIN: Well, that's not exactly what I meant . . .

PADME: But it's probably true!

Yeah...I know. There's just no way for me to sugarcoat this one, folks: this scene is a stinker. In a movie that so far has been hitting all the right notes, this scene comes along and reminds everyone of their biggest complaints about the last two movies, what with lines about how Padme's not like sand and how Anakin is tortured by his love for her and so on. I tend to roll my eyes whenever I hear someone trot out the "George Lucas needs someone to tell him when his ideas suck" meme (otherwise known as the "Gary Kurtz Conjecture", under the notion that it was Gary Kurtz's steady hand that kept Lucas from doing stupid things that ruined the only two Star Wars movies that anybody likes, or so the story goes), but this scene unfortunately provides some ammunition for that camp. It's not quite as bad as the Single Worst Scene In Star Wars History, but...well, it's right up there. I hate hate hate the way this scene ended up.

So, let's fix it. Here's what should have happened here:

PADME: Annie, I want to have our baby back home on Naboo. We could go to the lake country where no one would know . . . where we would be safe. I could go early-and fix up the baby's room. I know the perfect spot, right by the gardens.

ANAKIN: You are so beautiful....

PADME: It's only because I'm so in love . . .

ANAKIN: No, it's because I'm so in love with you.

PADME: So love has blinded you?

ANAKIN: No! I mean...uh....

He sees that she is grinning at him.

ANAKIN: You got me again.

PADME: Only because you make it so easy.

ANAKIN: You know that I'm not good at talking about my feelings.

PADME: You're not so bad at it, when you stop trying to talk like a poet. There aren't many famous Jedi poets, are there?

ANAKIN: (laughs) No. I tried reading some Jedi poetry, once...hundreds of lines about the Force. An entire book that sounded like Master Yoda...I didn't understand any of it.

He comes to her side.

PADME: What are we going to do? When the war is over and the baby is born? You can't be a Jedi and a father.

ANAKIN: I know. So I'll be a father.

PADME looks at him.

PADME: You'll give up being a Jedi?

ANAKIN: (smiling) For what I'd be getting in return? Yes.

They embrace.

Something like that...something which would show that Anakin is thinking ahead a bit, and that he has a happy ending right there for the taking, if he just doesn't screw it up...which we know he's going to. It would heighten the tragedy of his fall, and like I did in fixing AotC, I'd fix some bad dialogue by actually calling attention to it.

This scene is followed by a brief dream sequence, in which Anakin sees Padme giving birth, but it's a horrible, painful experience in which she is shrieking in agony. That's about all we see, before Anakin snaps awake and walks out to the living room. We don't really see it in his dream, but he interprets it as meaning that Padme is doing to die in childbirth, and the script bears this out by indicating that in the dream, Padme actually dies. Cut to the living room, then:

ANAKIN walks down a flight of stairs onto a large veranda. The vast city planet of Coruscant, smoldering from the battle, is spread out before him. He is distraught. PADME descends the stairs and joins ANAKIN on the veranda. She takes his hand. He doesn't look at her.

PADME: What's bothering you?

ANAKIN: Nothing . . .

ANAKIN touches the japor snippet around PADME'S neck, that Anakin gave her when he was a small boy.

ANAKIN: (continuing) I remember when I gave this to you.

PADME: How long is it going to take for us to be honest with each other?

ANAKIN: It was a dream.

PADME: Bad?

ANAKIN: Like the ones I used to have about my mother just before she died.

PADME: And?

ANAKIN: It was about you.

They look at each other. A moment of concern passes between them.

PADME: Tell me.

ANAKIN: It was only a dream.

PADME gives him a long, worried look. ANAKIN takes a deep breath.

ANAKIN: (continuing) You die in childbirth . . .

PADME: And the baby?

ANAKIN: I don't know.

PADME: It was only a dream.

ANAKIN takes PADME in his arms.

ANAKIN: . . . I won't let this one become real, Padme.

They embrace, then part.

PADME: Anakin, this baby will change our lives. I doubt the Queen will continue to allow me to serve in the Senate, and if the Council discovers you are the father, you will be expelled from the Jedi Order.

ANAKIN: I know ….

PADME: Anakin, do you think Obi-Wan might be able to help us?

ANAKIN: I don't need his help . . . Our baby is a blessing.

Obviously, I would have eliminated the bit about Padme worrying about Anakin's future once the baby is born; I've relocated that to the earlier scene. It doesn't seem to fit naturally in the scene where Anakin is dealing with a new dream about his wife's death.

The shooting script has a bit of dialogue in there in which Anakin angrily asks if Padme has told Obi Wan anything; I'm glad this is left out, as I still think it's too early for the jealousy angle to show up. I've always liked this, though – that Anakin isn't just afraid of losing Padme, but that he's having dreams and visions about it, and he's already had a similar experience with his dreams of the future dolorous fate of someone he loved – his mother – coming true. He desperately wants to prevent this future, but even though he vows that he won't let it happen, he is already suspecting that he doesn't have the power he will need to do so.

And since Palpatine knows about Anakin's actions against the Sandpeople in AotC, it's reasonable to assume he knows about the dreams then, too. The wedge is already there, waiting to be driven in.

Oh, and that bit with Padme wearing the Japor snippet around her neck, the one Anakin gave her as a boy way back in TPM? That's fantastic. It's a great touch by Lucas, one which will pay off with a gorgeously sad visual late in the film.

Anakin doesn't want to go to Obi Wan for help, but he does go to someone: he goes to Yoda. In the next scene, Anakin is talking to Yoda and gets some helpful advice:

INT. CORUSCANT-JEDI TEMPLE-YODAS QUARTERS-DAY

YODA and ANAKIN sit in Yoda 's room, deep in thought.

YODA: Premonitions . . . premonitions . . . Hmmmm . . . these visions you have . . .

ANAKIN: They are of pain, suffering, death . . .

YODA: Yourself you speak of, or someone you know?

ANAKIN: Someone . . .

YODA: . . . close to you?

ANAKIN: Yes.

YODA: Careful you must be when sensing the future, Anakin. The fear of loss is a path to the dark side.

ANAKIN: I won't let these visions come true, Master Yoda.

YODA: Death is a natural part of life. Rejoice for those around you who transform into the Force. Mourn them, do not. Miss them, do not. Attachment leads to jealousy. The shadow of greed, that is.

ANAKIN: What must I do, Master Yoda?

YODA: Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.

And by the look on Anakin's face, we see that boy, is that ever not what he's looking to hear.

This leads to one of the more interesting things about Jedi philosophy, as we hear it from Yoda throughout the Star Wars saga. Anakin is worried about his loved one, but Yoda tells him that the way to deal with his fears for her fate is to let her fate unfold and, basically, ignore it. This is virtually the same advice Yoda will give Luke Skywalker twenty years later, in TESB, when Luke has visions about Han and Leia suffering greatly:

LUKE: And sacrifice Han and Leia?

YODA: If you honor what they fight for...yes!

The advice goes about as well then as it does for Anakin, although Luke's doesn't end nearly as badly. The question is: why is this?

I think it's because Luke is able to do something that Anakin tends to find extremely difficult: he is able to trust his friends, where Anakin only looks inward, to himself, to his own powers and his own abilities. And why is this? Well, I suspect it's partly because Luke doesn't grow up – even partially, as Anakin does – inside the sequestered and sheltered bubble that the Jedi put themselves in. The Prequel Trilogy depicts the Jedi as an almost ascetic group who are supposed to be denying their emotional lives in favor of devotion to the Force. Luke later demonstrates that fealty to the Force is not at all incompatible with having love and friendship in one's life. I wonder if this isn't part of why the Jedi fall – because they've turned so far inward that they genuinely believe that attachment is bad, friendship is bad, love is bad...because under certain circumstances, they can lead to the Dark Side.

From Yoda's perspective, though, it's Anakin's love for Padme that leads him straight to the Dark Side, straight to joining the Sith, and straight to playing a role in the final fall of the Jedi. So when Luke comes along and wants to be trained and then has his own visions of horrible things happening to his loved ones and rushes off to save them, Yoda must clearly be seeing that as "And here we go again." He thinks everything is about to be undone by the passions of the Skywalkers, again. Once again, I end up admiring the way Lucas has events from the Original Trilogy having echoes and parallels in the Prequel Trilogy.

And there we will stop. Next time, Anakin is drawn into the political world, and his desires for power start to get stroked as well as his fears for Padme. Tune in!

Answers, the second!

Time to knock off a couple more answers to questions posed in Ask Me Anything! February 2012. As before, note that I'm still open to questions!

In this edition I'm going to tackle all of the political questions at once, so if you don't want to read ranty liberalism, just keep scrolling. I'll put the rest of this after the cut.

Something for Thursday

At one point during my piano studies -- mentioned the other day -- I was working on this piece. I was never able to really get it 'under my fingers', so to speak, but that's more a testament to some less-than-impressive work habits on my part than anything else. Oh well. Here is Chopin's "Polonaise in A, Op 40 No 1".

A Random Wednesday Conversation Starter

Who is your favorite villain? Choose from anywhere!

Whatever that guy said? Do the other thing!

It's easy to Captain the Enterprise!



I think that at some point, Worf should have just said, "Captain! I recommend we hold position and do nothing whatsoever." This would likely have been met with Picard replying, "No, Mr. Worf, issue a Red Alert, lock all phasers on target, all crew to battle stations, raise all shields, and FIRE!"

Just because it made me laugh....

...I'm stealing this from Cal.

Answers, the First!

OK, I think I've waited long enough -- it's time to start answering the questions from Ask Me Anything! February 2012. And feel free to still ask, if you like...it's the 10th anniversary month here, so let's make this one special! If there's something you've always wondered about Yours Truly, or something you've always wondered what Yours Truly thought about it, or something you've never wondered about Yours Truly but it just occurred to you to ask, go for it!

My good old college friend (and husband of another good old college friend) Aaron asks: As a very slow reader (I started reading Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy in October and am just nearing the end. And, that is a pretty good pace for me), with a decent sized list of books on the "need to get to" list, should I add the Song of Ice and Fire series?

Krista and I are just finishing up the first season of the HBO adaptation, and have loved it, but it feels like so much is missing.

I just finished A Clash of Kings the other day (blog post forthcoming), and I do recommend it, thus far. My admiration of the series's first two books remains untouched; I'm most nervous now about the next two (as well as the fifth one, which I've never read yet), because I didn't like those ones as much the first time through. For a slow reader, these books do represent quite an investment -- I mean, look at these things! Since paginations differ, the best way to gauge lengths of books is word count, and check out the numbers on this site. Assuming these are accurate, and I don't see reason to doubt it offhand, the entirety of The Lord of the Rings checks in at approximately 473,000 words, while just the first two of GRRM's Ice and Fire books top 610,000 words. A Storm of Swords, GRRM's Book Three, is 404,000 words...meaning, that one book is a short novel shy of the entire Lord of the Rings. Wow.

Of course, word count isn't everything. Martin's prose, when he's on his game, can really propel the reader forward, in my experience; his dialogue can absolutely crackle, and the device of each chapter being told from the point of view of a different character is extremely effective when one gets used to it -- one effect I'm rediscovering is that I'll finish a chapter for a character I really like, Jon Snow for example, and then decide to keep reading until I get back to Jon Snow. What GRRM does, language-wise, is rarely as dense and descriptive-heavy as JRRT. So this is definitely a "Your mileage may vary" kind of thing.

As for the differences between the books and the teevee adaptations, I honestly don't know, as I haven't yet watched the teevee show beyond the first episode. I do plan to, though.

(BTW, on the subject of word counts -- I'm really hoping to bring the first draft of Princesses In SPACE!!! (not the actual title) in at no more than 180,000 words, with a further eye to cutting at least ten percent of the words upon the edit. We'll see!

Bill asks: Have you kept up your chops? Do you play anything besides trumpet?

Sadly, no. I haven't touched the trumpet since I played in a friend's wedding -- Aaron of Question Number One's wedding, actually! -- and that was in 1995 or thereabouts. Time and opportunities available tend to make it hard to do such things...not that there are no opportunities, but life has that odd way of moving on, and other interests surge forward, arise anew (when we have space to do so, one day, I plan to take up woodworking and carpentry), or resurface in a big way (I loved writing as a kid several years before I knew what music even was). My musical life now is pretty much as a listener, only. But that's fine for me; at least my musical training earlier in life has equipped me to appreciate music on a level that would be harder to attain had I never touched an instrument.

As for other instruments, I played the piano in high school and college. I do wish I had devoted more effort to the piano, because in all honesty, I was actually fairly decent at it. But I never took the piano as seriously as I took the trumpet, so I never got good enough at it to do more than scratch a surface. I consider that one of the missed opportunities of my life. I suppose I should write a post about my piano teachers one of these years....

More answers to come, and feel free to ask more, if you like!