“The raven is a wicked bird.”
Been a fan of Wall’s for four or five years. This is a good murder ballad.
Category: Reviews
Reviews of books, movies, tv shows and other items
22JAN2023 – A Country Song for the Morning
These guys did a good job on this song.
Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones by James Clear – A Book Review
This won’t be a normal book review. First of all, I haven’t finished reading it yet. And it’s way too soon to say exactly what results I’ve achieved by using its advice because I really haven’t used any yet.
But what I can tell you is that the author, James Clear’s explanation of his strategies to allow people to break bad habits and make good habits, jibes remarkably well with my long, very checkered career of developing better habits for just about every aspect of my life. It’s as if this book was written specifically for people like me. And by people like me what I mean is extremely lazy people with an awful work ethic.
There are chapters on the psychological and neurological origins of habit formation and there are rules for optimizing good habits and rules for minimizing the temptations of bad habits (which tend to be mirror images of each other). And there are checklists for scheduling all the good activities you will want to piggyback on each other in the course of your new, improved, productive but quite crowded day.
The book doesn’t have a large component of feel-good cheerleading. It’s more of a how-to manual for maximizing success and minimize relapses. And it isn’t one of those systems that depend on heroic willpower and any external products. He’s not selling anything that I’ve read about so far. It’s logical strategies to manipulate human nature to direct effort and provide support for the natural power of repetition and the application of small incremental change over time.
I think the reason I’ve been enthusiastic about this book is because it formulates things, I’ve already recognized about behavioral modification, but underpins it with explanations about what additional steps can be taken to protect against the everyday problems that so often derail people from making changes to their habits.
I don’t want to sound too enthusiastic about the usefulness of this book for everyone. Possibly I am the poster child for this book. Maybe most people don’t need to know about dopamine in order to institute a permanent habit for exercise or rework their schedules. But for whatever reason this book clicks for me. If you’re in a self-improvement mode and need a textbook to set it up this might be just what you need. It’s probably in a library near you so you can check it out and see if it works for you.
21JAN2023 – A Little Country Music for This Afternoon
I’m a fan of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s music. I really don’t know anything about the musicians; their politics, ethics or personal stories. I discovered them quite late in life. But I like some of their music.
Of Femme Fatales and Food
Brigid O’Shaughnessy is the love interest and principal suspect in Dashiell Hammett’s, “The Maltese Falcon.” Whenever Sam Spade attempts to extract any sliver of truth from Brigid she fills the air with pheromones, lies and histrionics. But perhaps the only slice of normal human interaction between them occurs the night of and the morning after O’Shaughnessy ends up in Spade’s bed. Before and after this offstage sexual encounter we see the two of them sharing meals.
“Post Street was empty when Spade issued into it. He walked east a block, crossed the street, walked west two blocks on the other side, recrossed it, and returned to his building without having seen anyone except two mechanics working on a car in a garage.
When he opened his apartment-door Brigid O’Shaughnessy was standing at the bend in the passageway, holding Cairo’s pistol straight down at her side.
“He’s still there,” Spade said.
She bit the inside of her lip and turned slowly, going back into the living-room. Spade followed her in, put his hat and overcoat on a chair, said, “So we’ll have time to talk,” and went into the kitchen.
He had put the coffee-pot on the stove when she came to the door, and was slicing a slender loaf of French bread. She stood in the doorway and watched him with preoccupied eyes. The fingers of her left hand idly caressed the body and barrel of the pistol her right hand still held.
“The table-cloth’s in there,” he said, pointing the bread-knife at a cupboard that was one breakfast-nook partition.
She set the table while he spread liverwurst on, or put cold corned beef between, the small ovals of bread he had sliced. Then he poured the coffee, added brandy to it from a squat bottle, and they sat at the table. They sat side by side on one of the benches. She put the pistol down on the end of the bench nearer her.
“You can start now, between bites,” he said.
She made a face at him, complained, “You’re the most insistent person,” and bit a sandwich.
“Yes, and wild and unpredictable. What’s this bird, this falcon, that everybody’s all steamed up about?”
She chewed the beef and bread in her mouth, swallowed it, looked attentively at the small crescent its removal had made in the sandwich’s rim, and asked: “Suppose I wouldn’t tell you? Suppose I wouldn’t tell you anything at all about it? What would you do?””
I notice the gun that Brigid is still carrying. Spade notices it too. I think she’s trying to make up her mind whether to hook Spade or kill him. But I also notice the meal. Rich meaty tastes and rich stimulating drink. This is comfort food for the damned. Sensual pleasure for killers. It’s late at night and Spade is still trying to figure out whether O’Shaughnessy killed his partner Miles and whether he wants the Falcon for himself. And he’s most certainly trying to figure out whether Brigid will be in his bed that night. He’s playing a very dangerous game with the most dangerous of the players in it. He can deal with Gutman, Cairo and even Wilmer’s trigger-happy temper. But Brigid is very dangerous because she distracts Spade while she plays her various parts.
“He did not find the black bird. He found nothing that seemed to have any connection with a black bird. The only piece of writing he found was a week-old receipt for the month’s apartment-rent Brigid O’Shaughnessy had paid. The only thing he found that interested him enough to delay his search while he looked at it was a double-handful of rather fine jewelry in a polychrome box in a locked dressing-table-drawer.
When he had finished he made and drank a cup of coffee. Then he unlocked the kitchen-window, scarred the edge of its lock a little with his pocket-knife, opened the window–over a fire-escape–got his hat and overcoat from the settee in the living-room, and left the apartment as he had come.
On his way home he stopped at a store that was being opened by a puffy-eyed shivering plump grocer and bought oranges, eggs, rolls, butter, and cream.
Spade went quietly into his apartment, but before he had shut the corridor-door behind him Brigid O’Shaughnessy cried: “Who is that?”
“Young Spade bearing breakfast.”
“Oh, you frightened me!”
The bedroom-door he had shut was open. The girl sat on the side of the bed, trembling, with her right hand out of sight under a pillow.
Spade put his packages on the kitchen-table and went into the bedroom. He sat on the bed beside the girl, kissed her smooth shoulder, and said: “I wanted to see if that kid was still on the job, and to get stuff for breakfast.”
“Is he?”
“No.”
She sighed and leaned against him. “I awakened and you weren’t here and then I heard someone coming in. I was terrified.”
Spade combed her red hair back from her face with his fingers and said: “I’m sorry, angel. I thought you’d sleep through it. Did you have that gun under your pillow all night?”
“No. You know I didn’t. I jumped up and got it when I was frightened.”
He cooked breakfast–and slipped the flat brass key into her coat-pocket again–while she bathed and dressed.
She came out of the bathroom whistling En Cuba. “Shall I make the bed?” she asked.
“That’d be swell. The eggs need a couple of minutes more.”
Their breakfast was on the table when she returned to the kitchen. They sat where they had sat the night before and ate heartily.
“Now about the bird?” Spade suggested presently as they ate.
She put her fork down and looked at him. She drew her eyebrows together and made her mouth small and tight. “You can’t ask me to talk about that this morning of all mornings,” she protested. “I don’t want to and I won’t.”
“It’s a stubborn damned hussy,” he said sadly and put a piece of roll into his mouth.”
So, after climbing out of bed with Brigid he leaves and breaks into her apartment searching for the Falcon and any clues he can find. Then he heads back to his apartment and cooks breakfast for his lady love. Oranges, eggs, rolls, butter, and cream. It’s domestic bliss. A man and woman in love waking up to a bright morning with a hearty breakfast. But there’s that gun again. Always right at the edge of their love affair is Brigid clutching a pistol and seeming to endlessly oscillate between reflexes for homicide and passion. And as he once said to her out loud, “Now you are dangerous.”
And Spade is a creature of passion and his appetites are for food, drink, smoke, action and women. And Hammett does an admirable job portraying these things within the constraints of his time. But to me I think he succeeded best with food. There’s a zest in the type of food his character likes and I respond to the food and it seems to chime in with the moods he draws in those scenes. I think they add to the story admirably. A nice master class for any writer to consider when his characters have to eat.
Blood on the Moon (1948) – An OCF Classic Movie Review
“Blood on the Moon” is a western that manages to transcend some of the cliches of the genre.
(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)
When we first meet Robert Mitchum as Jim Garry, he’s riding through an Indian reservation to reach an old partner of his, Tate Riling (played by Robert Preston). He’s intercepted by a cattle outfit run by John Lufton. He tells Garry that Riling is trying to prevent Lufton from getting his cattle off the reservation in time to avoid their confiscation by the government over a voided contract.
When Garry finally reaches Riling, he finds out what kind of job he’s been summoned to perform. Riling is in cahoots with a federal agent named Pindalest that procures the cattle for the reservation. They’re trying to force Lufton to sell his cattle for pennies on the dollar and then sell them to Pindalest at the full price with a goodly bribe to Pindalest. Out of the huge profit Riling will cut Garry in for ten thousand dollars for being the gun hand to make sure nothing interferes with Riling’s plan.
When Riling and his men and the homesteaders that he’s fooled into helping him attack Lufton’s herd they manage to scatter it thoroughly which should be enough to guarantee that Riling’s plan will succeed. But one of the homesteaders, Kris Bardon (played by Walter Brennan) loses his son in the stampede and Garry decides the whole plan is too dirty for him to go on with. He quits Riling’s crew and manages to save Lufton’s life when two of Riling’s men were preparing to gun him down.
To further confuse the situation Lufton has two daughters. Carol Lufton is in love with Riling and has been providing him with information about her father’s plans and actions. Amy Lufton starts out hating Garry but over the course of the movie as she sees his actions are well-intentioned, she changes her mind and comes to trust him.
When Garry quits the crew Riling goes looking for him and they have a huge brawl in a cantina. Garry finally knocks Riling out. When one of Riling’s henchmen gets ready to execute a defenseless Garry, Kris Bardon shoots the gun hand. Now Garry goes to Lufton and reveals the whole plan about Riling conspiring with Pindalest to steal the herd. They come up with a plan to defeat it.
Garry goes to Pindalest as if he’s still working with Riling and tells him to suspend the government’s seizure order on Lufton’s herd and creates a ruse that has Pindalest go with him out into the mountains to give Lufton enough time to gather the herd and bring it off the reservation. The ruse succeeds up to a point but then an Indian whose friends with Riling tips him off that Pindalist is being stalled by Garry. Riling and his men come after Garry and in an altercation, Garry is stabbed and Pindalist is rescued.
A badly wounded Garry escapes to Kris Bardon’s cabin where Amy Lufton joins them to nurse Garry’s wound. Soon Riling, Pindalist and one other gunman show up and surround the cabin while Bardon and Amy hold them off with rifles. That night Garry, sensing that eventually the outlaws would manage to overcome the defense, tells Bardon and Amy to provide a diversion while he slips out the door and sneaks behind the gunmen and takes them on.
He manages to pistol whip Pindalist into unconsciousness and shoot the other gunman. And in the final confrontation he shoots it out with his former friend Riling. Garry is victorious and he reappears at the cabin. Later John Lufton and his men appear at the cabin. They take Pindalist into custody for delivery to the marshal. And as the drama ends Amy tells her father of her plans to marry Jim Garry.
Although this western was made during the heyday of that genre, this production differed substantially from the typical black hat, white hat conflict. Mitchum’s character is more reminiscent of the characters he usually portrayed in film noirs where he would be a small time criminal or a gun for hire. He straddles the line between good and evil pretty thoroughly until almost the end of the movie. And that’s what keeps the movie from devolving into a typical good guy, bad guy shootout. Mitchum and Preston manage to keep the battle between light and darkness alive and interesting throughout the movie. The rest of the cast isn’t afforded much opportunity to rise above the normal western tropes. The two actresses in love with Garry and Riling are given fairly stereotypical plot and dialog for those roles and the other parts fairly equally follow the conventions of the genre. But Mitchum and Preston provide the fireworks and it boosts the movie well above the average. Highly recommended for fans of westerns and fans of Robert Mitchum.
What Must a Good Science Fiction Story Have?
I’ve returned to the land of the living. My eyes track. I can walk through a doorway without colliding with a doorjamb. I can even keep up a conversation without sliding sideways off my chair onto the floor. Next week I climb the Matterhorn. Bravissimo!
I looked through the news feeds. And, so help me, I even considered watching the Georgia run-off. But there just wasn’t anything the least bit interesting. I even considered pulling a Jussie Smollett. I was going to claim that a Canon camera enthusiast sent me a derogatory e-mail making fun of my many bison photos of the day. But my hard-bitten honesty just wouldn’t let me do it. I love those bison!
I thought, “I’ll just write about something I like.” After all that post about nuclear war had some great comments and that stuff really interests me. Why not do something like that? So that’s why this is coming out of left field. I just didn’t feel like beating a political drum that’s already been beaten to a bloody pulp.
So, for a theme I’ll select the question, “What’s the most important component of a good science fiction story?”
Is it the tech? Is it a good plot? Is it well written characters? Or does it absolutely require some balance between the three?
Let’s explore this a little bit. Start with tech. I suppose that space opera has lost a lot of support among the modern readers of science fiction. Stuff like the Skylark of Space, The Legion of Space or the Lensman books are probably disqualified as too naïve and hopelessly early 20th century for anyone under sixty to consider reading. But is the inexplicable faster than light (ftl) drives of these stories any less plausible than whatever also implausible ftl drives are currently being used by modern science fiction writers? I’ve got to say I don’t think they’re disqualifications. I’d say the rule is it just has to be self-consistent with whatever “rules” you’ve made up for the tech. So, it doesn’t have to be somehow scientifically accurate. It just can’t be bone-headedly stupid. What it does have to be is convenient. The technology has to allow the plot to evolve the way you want. If space travel takes centuries, then don’t kill off too many good characters by leaving them back on Earth. Or if time travel can only go backwards then don’t leave your spare batteries for your ray gun in your other pair of pants when you head back to the neolithic.
And the tech should be a fun toy for the reader if you can manage it. I always loved how Heinlein lovingly designed his “torchships” and made the passenger and service areas of his ships seem well thought out. But I also know of authors whose tech is basically a black box and for all we hear we could be sitting inside the fuselage of a jet plane.
While tech is necessary (after all it is sf) it’s not the deciding factor whether a story works.
Well, how about characters? Yes, they are important, in the sense that they must at least exist. But I’ve read some supposedly classic science fiction where the characters are as flat as pancakes (Asimov and Clarke come to mind). Now this may no longer be the case. I’m not sure. I enjoy a good amount of character development in my fiction and I’ve been able to find it. But I could easily believe there could be a very good story where character was in short supply.
What about plot? Well, I could imagine a story that had a strong tech component and interesting characters but the plot was almost minimal. Maybe like some of Bradbury’s short stories like the one where the Ladies’ Sewing Circle is trying to ignore the impending nuclear holocaust by concentrating on their work. It’s all character. But I guess you still have to say there’s a plot or more like a scenario.
I feel like, for the most part, and except for very odd stories, the sine qua non of a good science fiction story is a good plot. If your tech is passable and your characters are at least bearable but you have a plot that rolls along and interesting stuff happening then you have a chance. But you can have great tech and witty, erudite, droll fellows populating your world and if not much of anything is happening except talk, then your readers will throw the book against the wall (or the digital equivalent) and go look for something better. And that’s that!
Now I know there are many sf fans in the audience. I’d love to hear your comments, especially if you disagree. I’m always interested in the opinions of sf readers. The floor is now yours.
Nuclear Armageddon as a Plot Device
Recently Joe Biden made the news when he reversed a campaign vow and stated that under his administration the United States would maintain the right to nuclear first strike as a military option. Now the idea of Dementia Joe mistaking the nuclear football for his tv remote and ordering up an all-out nuclear blitz on Russia and China while trying to access some kind of hair fetish programming is obviously concerning.
But really this article is more about fiction writing. In a story that I have been working on (forever) I reached a point in the story where I considered that the best way to escape from the corner I’d painted myself into was by having thermonuclear war break out between Russia and the United States.
Admittedly, that seems like a sad statement on my writing abilities but in point of fact it provided a definitive solution to multiple plot problems I was faced with. After all, there aren’t many scenarios that can put the US federal government on its heels. But three 20-megaton thermonuclear ICBMs detonating over Washington is a leading contender. So, I will confess that I considered the scenario very carefully.
One thing I noticed though is that the impact of a nuked United States is extremely disruptive to a storyline. Even the most tyrannical US administration looks quite different after the mushroom cloud sprouts over it. Because now all of a sudden millions of Americans are dead and the ones still living are stunned, scared and desperate for a path forward. At that point they’d follow Satan himself if he knows where to get food and fuel.
So, everything in my story is turned upside down. Instead of the plucky rebels fighting the evil feds in a series of hit and run attacks, suddenly they find themselves wondering how they’ll survive without the now non-existent FEMA agency to save them from starvation and hypothermia. Now what happens to my rebellion story? All of a sudden enemies need each other just to survive. Freedom and independence suddenly don’t mean much when staying alive requires all hands-on deck.
So that’s the change in the atmosphere, the feel of the story. Does it still make sense? Can the story survive the change? Not as originally conceived. I was looking at a series of stories with the rebels taking on the Deep State one step at a time with the rest of the country sizing up the battle and the balance of power gradually tilting toward the rebels. But now the battle is over but without the dramatic tension and the action. Instead, we have a tale of catastrophe and dissolution.
And to make that story work will require a change in emphasis. Now instead of a slowly building wave of battle we have a nuclear wipe out and a tide going out. Instead of a war with winners and losers we have the flotsam and jetsam from a deluge struggling to survive and trying to rebuild some kind of patchwork of settlements. That’s a totally different thing. It becomes a bunch of smaller stories at the village level. Instead of armies we have farmers and mechanics, men and women and their children trying to survive without supermarkets and gas stations, even without electricity. It’s nothing like the story I was envisioning but somehow it makes sense. Because even though we may have forgotten about the atom bomb it hasn’t gone away. It’s still there and it has its own internal logic that makes it the executioner of last resort. If we decide that the arc of history bends in our direction and we can do as we please no matter what, we may find that the arc is just the ballistic track of an ICBM.
So inexorably I think the story is telling me to make a turn. Even as a fictional plot device it does make one pause. Imagine the largest fifty American cities reduced to rubble and charred bodies. Imagine fallout killing off a quarter of the survivors. And food and fuel gone for the rest of the survivors. The grimness of such a tale is hard to overstate. How do you tell such a story so that people will want to read it?
Well, that’s a subject for another day. But this one has helped me get my thoughts in some kind of order. Okay, hit all those buttons!
The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel (1951) – A Movie Review
This movie is not strictly speaking a WW II movie. It is a chronicle of the events leading up to the death of German Field Marshall Erwin Rommel.
(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)
James Mason plays Rommel. It opens up with a British submarine off the coast of German occupied North Arica. A platoon of commandoes is landed by rafts to assault the headquarters of the German Afrika Corps. The commandoes storm the building and pour machine gun fire and grenades into the living space. As German reinforcements arrive the British soldiers retreat. One man is too badly wounded to escape. As he is captured, he asks the German soldier, “Did we get him?” And the German soldier scornfully answers in the negative.
The “him” that the Briton meant is Rommel and the suicide mission proclaims the enormous respect that Rommel’s enemies have for his skills in war. But unfortunately for their mission Rommel was at that time being treated in Germany for a case of nasal diphtheria. But before he can recover, the British attack his forces in the second Battle of El Alamein and Rommel is summoned by Hitler back to the desert to ward off this attack. Unfortunately, Berlin only sends Rommel, not tanks, ammunition, men or even fuel to run the tanks they still had. Orders are given to stand and fight to the last man. Rommel disobeys the orders and arranges a tactical retreat to save his men. But exhausted and still sick he is forced to return to hospital in Germany. And his army is defeated and captured by the British and Americans.
Recovering from his illness he is visited by Dr. Karl Strölin (played by Cedric Hardwicke), the mayor of Stuttgart and an old friend of Rommel’s. We learn that many senior officials in Germany have lost faith in Hitler and are looking for a way to remove him from power. Rommel rejects the idea and warns his friend not to discuss this idea with him. He declares himself to be a soldier and not a politician. His friend warns him that a time will come when he will have to face the consequences of being a soldier in Hitler’s army.
Now Rommel is directed to help lead the defense of the French coastline against the expected invasion. The supreme commander of the German forces, Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt (played by Leo G. Carroll) explains to Rommel that Hitler has taken complete control of the strategy of the invasion defense. He explains that the strategy is being decided based on astrology and that instead of reinforcing the beaches they are concentrating on the coastal cities. When D-Day arrives Berlin refuses to allow troops to redeploy to reinforce Normandy and so the Allies break loose from Normandy and begin their march to the Rhine.
The officers who are planning to assassinate Hitler once again approach Rommel for his support. He tells them he must first attempt one last time to convince Hitler to redeploy his forces to avoid catastrophe. He meets with Hitler but is rebuffed and told to remain in place and fight to the last man. Rommel tells the coup leaders to go ahead with their plan. But before the assassination attempt Rommel is injured when his staff car is strafed by enemy aircraft and crashes. While he is recuperating in a hospital the attempt on Hitler is carried out but he is only injured.
After release from the hospital Rommel is sent home without any military orders and all mention of him disappears from the war effort. One day he is called from Berlin to sat that a deputation would arrive at his home to discuss his future assignment. But instead, when it arrives he is told that an investigation has convicted him of treason and he is given the choice of secretly committing suicide by painless sedative or being garroted. But Rommel says he would prefer to answer the charges in open court to at least make his statement in public. But then the officer adds that if he agrees to take the silent suicide his reputation will be preserved and wife and son will be taken care of. If he decides to go public no such guarantees apply. And so, he goes to his death. The movie ends with the recitation of a speech that Winston Churchill gave honoring Rommel for his courage in risking his life in attempting to eliminate Hitler and thereby save his country from catastrophe.
This is a very unusual movie in that the Second World War is only the backdrop for the dramatic action of the plot. We’re shown a great general, a consummate professional, learning that detaching his duty as a soldier from his responsibilities as a human being is sometimes impossible. He is brought to understand that obeying the orders of a madman cannot fit under his warrior’s code. Mason is usually interesting to watch in a movie and this one is no exception. If nothing else he has one of the most distinctive and commanding voices in the history of cinema. The movie is not highly dramatic. It’s almost understated considering the circumstances and the people involved. I would recommend this movie to students of history and those who enjoy a cerebral movie experience.
Per Un Barbiere di Qualità!
Princess Sack-of-Potatoes’ birthday party was a great success. My daughter’s in-laws were very congenial and we all good-naturedly performed all the kids’ party rituals. We dutifully sang off key to ‘Happy Birthday” and applauded the blowing out of the four candles. We watched as the cake was cut and the opening of the presents and even a spirited game of pin the tail on the donkey. Only for some unknown reason it was tape the nose on the clown. This particular clown looked like some kind of nightmarish psychopath which I found quite disturbing but the kids were unperturbed.
When we had all eaten enough burgers and potato salad and cake and ice cream and all the presents were opened the parents gathered up their kids and headed home. Camera Girl agreed that the event was a great success and we began some of the clean-up.
But I was in the mood for something interesting. Lately I have been watching YouTube videos of the operatic aria “Largo al factotum” from the Barber of Seville. It’s the song that everyone remembers from various classic cartoons of the 1940s that has the famous stanza, “Figaro, Figaro, Figaro, Figaro, Figaro, Figaro, Figaro, Figaro!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ipb9xbXSAY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJIpVj_YkNo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKDXr_fimQ8
I watched about a dozen different versions, some going back to the 1920s. And it occurred to me, “What an interesting character Figaro is!” Here is the swaggering braggart. He is a big fish in a little pond. In his own mind he is a hero, a Hercules of a thousand great labors. He is always in demand and always acclaimed by the crowd.
And of course, he is merely a legend in his own mind. His actual trades are barber, dentist, wig maker and a sort of go-between for couples in love. He passes love notes and such things. So, he really is a nothing.
But he has a quick wit, the gift of gab, a way with women and enormous self-confidence. And putting those things together creates a formidable character. Some people may recognize someone like this. I knew someone of exactly the type. They always have a treasure trove of amazing personal stories. And their personal lives tend to be an awful mess. They combine recklessness, selfishness and even a bit of cruelty along with their natural abilities as a clown, a skirt chaser and a leader of the riff-raff. In many ways they are fascinating personalities but they leave a trail of angry women in their wake and never seem to grow up.
And it occurred to me that is why I enjoy the aria. I recognize the type that Figaro is the symbol of. And the scene captures that reality splendidly. And the music is wonderful.
And what a great character he would be to put in a story! Somehow, I’ve got to have a swaggering braggart in one of my stories. It would just be too great a thing to ignore. And in fact, I need him to be a recurring character in a “world” that I make. It will be a sort of an homage to an old friend that I knew long, long ago in a place far, far away.
Ah, bravo Figaro! Bravo, bravissimo! Fortunatissimo per verità!