19/2589. Vice Squad (1953)
Another day-in-the-life police procedural with hints of Dirty Harry. Edward G. Robinson plays a police captain willing to play a little dirty if it gets a cop killer off the streets. I liked it very much.

20/2590. The Enchanted Cottage (1945)
You know those movies where the girl who is supposed to be "ugly" just has a bad hair cut? Literally this. To be fair, it's supposed to be a fantasy for romantics, which I am not. But c'mon, try a little harder, Hollywood.

21/2591. Please Don't Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain (2023)
This does not get great critical reviews, and I get it. Plenty of people claim to love The Enchanted Cottage, and comedy is extra subjective. But this is funny. It's not after an Oscar. The silliness is the point. And I enjoyed it.

22/2592. The More the Merrier (1943)
I'm usually lukewarm on screwball comedies and romantic farces, and I'm especially tepid on Joel McCrea, but Jean Arthur and Charles Coburn are once again as delightful as they were in The Devil and Miss Jones. It's a winner.

23/2593. Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. (2023)
I repeat once again that I am a sucker for coming-of-age stories, especially ones that feel so relatable to my own era, when I read this book. I'd've liked it even without Rachel McAdams. (But I also did like Rachel McAdams.)

More to come.

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Look, I love Benson Boone's "Mystical Magical" as much as the next guy, but after hearing it in every commercial break since ESPN's coverage of the U.S. Open used it for intro and outro bumpers in August through this week's NFL coverage, maybe there is such a thing as overexposure.

I'm not alone in thinking that. There is, Google assure me, a pretty sizable backlash to the rapid, overt commercialization of Mr. Boone's music. Selling out is fine in America; greed, not so much. The singer and his team are aware of this, and his music video for "Mr. Electric Blue" makes a good-natured joke of it by removing any hint of the hypocrisy that pollutes the modern zeitgeist. (Yes, despite being an old fogey who doesn't really care for music, I do watch music videos on YouTube as the Internet Gods intended. The old-school media's widely reported recent death of Music Television has been greatly exaggerated; music videos are not dead, linear television is.)

It's kind of a funny thing to say that you could hear any piece of music "too much." Despite the tendency of human beings (at least American human being) to resent the familiar, there are a bunch of songs I just never get tired of hearing. Back in the day when I was a waiter at Chili's, the chain played tapes of licensed music over and over until the entire wait staff would gather around the back office cassette player and argue over which tapes management was NOT allowed to play again that day. (No tapes were ever destroyed, but some were occasionally hidden. I hope they still haven't been found.) Despite the repetition, there was one song on those tapes that I could never get sick of. I bet you'd never guess that it was "Silly Love Songs" by Wings. Live and let die, indeed.

Several Paul McCartney songs, both with and without co-writer John Lennon, are high on my list of endless listening, which probably demonstrates that I have a high tolerance for what McCartney is interested in writing: the poppiest of pop music. Fizzy, friendly, sugary pop music. Overproduced sounds that have a good beat and you can dance to, lyrics that really shouldn't be thought about too hard. That's my jam. Music crafted to please the widest possible music-illiterate crowd, "Moonbeam ice cream" sort of stuff, like Dua Lipa, Katie Perry, Madonna, Michael Jackson, or, say, Olivia Newton John.

And please crowds they do. Why else would Madison Avenue adapt catchy tunes for advertising in Apple product ads or the memorable '90s Philips campaign that used the Beatles "Getting Better" (somehow always fading out just before the "it can't get no worse" refrain) or this year's sanitized-for-Christmas "Greased Lightnin'" (with zero creaming girls) or Target's 2025 commercials of their animated Get-Ready Yeti dancing to "Mystical Magical."

Okay, fine. I'm not sick of moonbeam ice cream just yet. 'Cause once you know, once you know...

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Netflix month continues!

116/2548. The Electric State (2025)
The amazing CGI visuals might actually be the film's core weakness because the shallow plot and cliched characters (and disinterested actors) just aren't strong enough to support the emotional weight inspired by the shattered remnants of a world destroyed by consumer culture. It very much feels that the creators never fully bought into the End Times Capitalism their film visualized. I must mention that the robot's Alamo, an abandoned shopping mall in the middle of what is supposed to be the Sonoran Desert, was fittingly filmed in the now-demolished North Dekalb Mall where I shopped and worked throughout the 1990s.

117/2549. The Happytime Murders (2018)
Contemporary reviews for this film weren't kind, but as a fan of buddy-cop crime movies, SNL-style humor, and Muppets, I was fully on board. Comedy is always very subjectively received, but I think it works.

118/2550. Unfrosted (2024)
Normally, I'm no fan of historical fiction, but hysterical fiction, sure. Recommended by friend Randy (who was always a Seinfeld fan), this fictional history of the creation of the Pop Tart is, I'm happy to report, a darn funny movie, especially if you are already familiar with the history of the era. And what a cast!

119/2551. Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (2024)
This one put me to sleep. Not that it's bad, but I felt it was a little slow to develop in obvious directions. I certainly enjoyed the original shorts, but none of the longer films has held my attention long. Maybe I've seen all the Wallace & Gromit I need to see.

120/2552. Fixed (2025)
Okay, full disclosure: I've never been as admiring of Genndy Tartakovsky's animation as many of my art school peers. I was encouraged by the cast, but this is like a dumber, less self-aware or artistically engaging Fritz the Cat. I did not finish it and would encourage no one else to start it.

More to come.

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It's not uncommon these days to hear someone say that they wish comics today were apolitical like the comics of their youth. Well, I was 8 when DC Comics Presents #62 came out in 1983 (Reagan's America!), and the plot of that comic was that a group of neo-Nazis planned to destroy the Constitution of the United States, demoralizing American society until it collapsed inward to "Racial Hatred... Mob Violence" which the Nazis would then graciously offer to save us from... for the bargain price of our souls. Obviously, that story has absolutely no political message. Silly me.

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Earlier this year, friend Keith suggested that instead of blogging, I should just post my text messages. So here you go, Keith. This was today's conversation with friend Ken.

For the record, according to StarWars.com, the Death Star's planet-destroying superlaser (more specifically identified as a Concave Dish Composite Beam Superlaser on Wookiepedia, [starwars.fandom.com]) "was powered by a hypermatter reactor, which would generate the destructive reaction that was then focused through eight giant kyber crystals." Which doesn't really answer the question of how large its capacitors were.

The Star Trek Technological Assessment (st-v-sw.net) analysis of the weapon's 8 tributary focusing beams concluded that they could not have been less than 25 meters in diameter. Which is big. Again, not an exact answer, but it's safe to say any bank of Death Star capacitors would have had to have been somewhat larger than the 70MFD capacitor you'd find in a Genie garage door opener.

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"Love is the most important thing on Earth. Especially to a man and a woman."

My Webster's New Twentieth Century Dictionary, Unabridged has eight different definitions for the noun form of love, chief among them "a strong affection or attachment or devotion to a person or persons." That pretty much matches the good captain's use of the word. (I'm sure Kirk also loves the fifth definition: "sexual passion or its gratification," which, you may note, does not require any "person or persons" on this earth or any other).

Maybe I'm devoid of strong passion, but my personal definition of love has always been a little more concrete. So far as I can tell, anything you love is something that you value more than yourself. For most people, that's not a lot of things, if any. (It's no wonder I'm still single after all these years.)

The word gets thrown around a lot (especially by starship captains on the make), but how often is it accurately employed? It's a common trope of art and literature that one lover would be willing to die for another, and I accept that most parents (usually) place their children's interests before their own. But how often do you meet anyone willing to lay down their lives for property? Or strangers? Or a whole society? Or chocolate? Maybe we don't encounter those people often because they don't have long lives.

Conversely, my definition of hate is disliking something enough that you're willing to destroy yourself to destroy it (also a common trope in literature, usually for villains and anti-heroes). I've used that word a lot in my life, but like my use of the word love, it has usually been an exaggeration when all I really want is a word stronger than dislike or disapprove. (Despise? Detest? Disdain?) Rationally I recognize that anything I might hate is rarely actually worth my being sacrificed for it.

Obviously, human beings are not governed by the Three Laws of Robotics, which place the priority of self-preservation dead last, meaning that by my definition, Asimovian robots have a greater capacity for love (and hate) than human beings. I don't know what Mr. Spock would have to say about that, but I'm reasonably certain that Kirk wouldn't hesitate to love a machine, assuming it had enough I/O interfaces.

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I swear, you turn your back for half a minute....

I thought I saw something on the camera, so that's why I wandered out of frame for a second. You'll note that I was savvy enough to ensure the door was safely closed before I did. I'm so smart. But my poodles are smarter.

For the record, the boxes contained new couch covers to replace the ones they had destroyed earlier in the week. In hindsight, that was obviously part of their cunning escape plan. Poodles play the long con!

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EPISODE FOUR: SURVIVAL, PART ONE

Sahara leaned back on the bench and allowed herself a moment of self-satisfaction. Haze was pleased with their successful raid against the Wolf Pack slavers, and despite herself, she was pleased he was pleased.

Haze's computer-modulated voice continued from the speaker. "The remaining members of the Wolf Pack assumed the attack came from the Garbools and destroyed their primary weapons factory in revenge. And just like that, the once unassailable Three Families have been brought to their knees. There is only one more thing to be done...."

Sahara frowned at the sudden silence. "Did we lose the connection?"

"Not on our end," Quig answered from his seat beside the communicator. "The line is still open. Haze just stopped talking."

"Mid-sentence? That's not like him at all," said Striker. "His communiques always sound almost as though he is reading from a script."

"I've got a bad feeling about this," said Cobryn.

So did Sahara.

Haze returned. "I'm detecting ships tracking to your location. They appear to be.... Yes. It's the Families: Wolf Pack and Garbool ships. They must have tracked you somehow. They'll be at your headquarters within minutes. You must get out of there. Now!"

"This is very, very bad!" said Cobryn. "The Chutoi is no match for Three Families fighters."

In his irritatingly calm manner, Striker asked. "Should we stay here? The bunker is protected from direct bombardment."

Sahara started gathering her gear. "The bunker might be, but the Chutoi isn't. Haze is right. If we don't get out of here quickly, we're sitting ducks waiting for the Families to overrun us."

"Where are we going to go?" asked Quig, as he packed his drone.

"We'll worry about that when we're airborne."

The truth of the matter was that Cobryn was right: the Chutoi was a transport, not a fighter. It was slow and weak. If they were forced into a direct confrontation, they might as well be flying a coffin.

But as Sahara and the others hustled to the landing pad, she couldn't shake the feeling that Haze knew more than he had said. If everything had gone so well and the Families were really on their heels, why were the Wolf Pack and Garbools working together again? How had they found the bunker safehouse? And what was Haze's last task?

If by some miracle she survived this, she'd be sure to ask him face to face.

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After years of lackluster commentating on Monday Night Football, ESPN has giddily hired an all new 2022 crew, Joe Buck and Troy Aikman (stolen from Fox Sports for something in the neighborhood of $100 million), thereby ensuring another year of lackluster commentating.

The labor of calling a football broadcast is divided into two roles: the play-by-play announcer who tells the fans who weren't looking what just happened on the field, and the color commentator who explains why what just happened was a good/bad thing. Good crews inform you about what you might not have noticed and teach you about football. Really good crews get you excited to see more. Then there's the Buck-Aikman combo.

Competent play-by-play announcing is an art, and each sport is a different discipline. I'll give Joe Buck credit for being far above average at calling baseball games, but after years and years of trying, he comes across as disinterested and generally ignorant of the football games he calls. If the announcer doesn't care about the game, why should anyone listen?

As for the other side of the booth, I might have been the only person in the world who didn't enjoy John Madden's broadcasts because he reduced his commentary to idiot-level "BAM"s and "YAK"s to reach the average television-watching moron, but Aikman appears to have the actual vocabulary of the average television-watching moron. As a teacher, he's more a substitute than tenured professor; he's proven completely unable to elevate the game. At least he's really grumpy.

So did ESPN buy themselves a good crew or a great crew? The Buck-Aikman combo certainly has me excited... to see what's on a different channel.

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It's finally October, so let's get to some movies.

151. (1805.) Promise Her Anything (1966)
Softcore pornographer Warren Beatty does some very questionable things with a child in order to bone the kid's mom. It's a very 1960s take on 1950's idea of a sex comedy.

Planning to get a widow so drunk she'll let you in her pants? Don't forget the Coke!

152. (1806.) Illegal (1955)
Imagine what a John Grisham book might have looked like in the 1940s and you'll have something near this pretty good legal thriller. Edward G. Robinson plays a crackerjack attorney who makes a mistake that destroys his world. (The innocent who is put to death for a crime he didn't commit is a young DeForest Kelley!) The road to redemption is very rocky indeed.

153. (1807.) Dream Wife (1953)
Cary Grant unintentionally discovers that when you educate a young, subservient middle-eastern Islamic woman in the ways of America, she'll make your life miserable! As close as the 1950s was capable to getting to women's lib.

154. (1808.) Sitting Pretty (1948)
This is the movie that introduced the character of the perfect butler Mr. Belvedere to the screen. There's some dated sexual politics misadventures in this, too, but they're handled with a more empathy for women's point of view. Very enjoyable.

155. (1809.) McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
Robert Altman's idea of a Western is an iconic representation of his style, but it's not an entirely satisfying cinematic experience thanks in no small part to a very weak narrative. (We're all just prostitutes doomed to live in shit and die. Fun!)

156. (1810.) The Senator Was Indiscreet (1947)
The always delightful William Powell plays a corrupt and stupid old Senator who tries to blackmail his way into the White House. With a little plot tightening, this would be the perfect digestif to the unrealistic optimism of Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. I liked it plenty even before discovering the film closed with an uncredited appearance by Ms. Nora Charles herself, Myrna Loy! Hooray! (This is their last movie together. Boo!)

More to come!

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