A Little Love for the Left

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Something I’ve noticed lately is that the Left is feeling blue.  I think they have a sense that the vast majority of people in the country have come to the realization that the Left has single-handedly ruined a whole slew of very important parts of American life.  All kinds of people; poor, rich; black, white, brown; educated and uneducated; men and women.  They’ve looked around and they see things like closed up stores in cities, failing school systems, homeless encampments everywhere, violence even in the rich neighborhoods and the cost of living becoming unmanageable.  And they all know exactly how and who did it.  The Left did it on purpose and unapologetically.  And now the fingers are being pointed directly at them.  And they want a hug.

I’ll read an article in the Atlantic or the New York Times and they’ll bemoan the loss of safety in the cities and they’ll wring their hands over the paradox of how making the criminal justice system easier on criminals has inexplicably made the streets mysteriously more dangerous.  And they’ll finally say, “Well maybe we went too far.”  And then they look for some kind of solidarity with the “good people in the middle.”  They want to join hands with people who didn’t vote for Joe Biden.  They’re looking for the kumbaya moment where we all share the blame for defunding the police and voting in soft on crime prosecutors and mayors.  They want absolution; a do-over.  Maybe they even want to leave the same bad actors in place and just let them learn from this “teachable moment.”

Of course, there are plenty of Republicans just stupid enough to rise to the bait and “reach across the aisle.”  But hopefully the people themselves have become disgusted enough that we can build up a slow boil in society at large.  We need enough areas to finally get wise to the futility of cooperating with the Left.  States with large cities have to become sophisticated enough to make laws that can allow the state to step in when local officials create dangerous or dysfunctional conditions.  They can legislate against unconstitutional gun laws, sanctuaries for illegal aliens or unhealthy treatment of children.  And these states can counteract the federal laws that damage life for them.  Improve the schools and eliminate propaganda from the Left, welfare reform, defunding of illegal aliens.

So, I take it as a very healthy sign that the Left is worried about the exposure they’ve received for driving the country into a ditch.  And anyone who reacts to these kinds of appeals to solidarity and fellow citizenship should have his head examined and then given a good solid butt kicking for good measure.

And as far as these kinds of things happening in deep blue states like California and Oregon, I’m absolutely thrilled.  I hope that nothing whatsoever is done to change the policies or alleviate the outcomes of the policies they’ve instituted.  I want places like San Francisco and Portland to become just one big homeless encampment.  I want every single store in places like Oakland to close up.  I want the price of gasoline in Los Angeles to reach twenty dollars a gallon and brownouts to last for most of the workday.  What I’d really love to see is all of Silicon Valley move to Texas and California officially go broke and go out of business.  Then I’ll give them a hug.

Thoughts on Current SF&F in Cinema – Part 1

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When I was much younger, I remember wondering if there would ever be a time when the state of the art in “film” would allow a decent version of the Lord of the Rings to be made.  When Ralph Bakshi’s cartoon over live action was made in 1978, I was quite surprised at how good it was.  And I hoped that he would continue the project to finish the complete story.  But he never did.  Maybe he didn’t make enough money or maybe he got bored.  And so, it would be another twenty years before anyone tried again.

Peter Jackson did a remarkable job both visually and artistically of capturing Tolkien’s story.  And I think he proved that we have reached a point where regardless of the unreal or fantastic nature of the story CGI can produce a convincing visual representation of that story on the screen.  And that was an important moment.  For a fan of science fiction and fantasy this is the promised land.

And yet, what have we got now?  For every film like Dune where the story faithfully reproduces a worthwhile piece of fiction, we get ten movies like “The Marvels” or “The Last Jedi” or “Madame Web” where the visuals are successful but the story and the acting are unwatchable.

Well, that’s reality.  The cultural and societal standards are pretty awful so even if some interesting topic like the Second Age of Middle Earth (Rings of Power) or Harry Seldon’s Psychohistory (Foundation) are being filmed chances are that the result will be terrible.

But the only good thing I can say is that the potential exists for a rogue force like Elon Musk to come along and fund an independent studio to produce some exciting projects.  So, eventually we will get good movies.  Eventually the profit motive will succeed.  Who knows we may be forced to watch Chinese or Hungarian movies in subtitles but it will come.  So, patience, patience.

And what might make a good project?  Well, based on what we know would sell, how about space opera that is a lot more interesting than the Star Wars universe?  How about a project to film the Lensman series?  A few updates to the technology might be needed and the chronology might need to be tweaked but then the story would be easily turned into a series of films.  It has likeable heroes, awful villains, interesting aliens and plenty of space battles.  And best of all, not a girl boss in sight.  Just classic square-jawed heroes saving the day and rescuing the damsel in distress.  I would guess that the Lensman saga would be easily as popular as Star Wars and in fact more so.

Now another popular film idea would be the Heinlein juveniles.  There are several good candidates.  As a first choice I’d go with, “Have Spacesuit Will Travel.”  It has all the requisite ingredients for a good young adult movie; human interest, suspense, adventure, pathos, humor and the resolution of a coming-of-age story.  As a second choice I’d recommend, “The Star Beast.”

It’s an interesting thing to reflect that a really satisfactory movie version of a Heinlein book has never been done.  The only one he ever had a hand in was Destination Moon.  And while technically there were interesting aspects to the production as a movie it was pretty cut and dry; more of a primer on rocket flight than work of fiction.  In terms of popularity, I guess Starship Troopers is the best of those produced, even though the director made it in the spirit of a mockery of the underlying philosophy of the book.  A faithful portrayal of Starship Troopers would be an amazing idea for a movie.

And rounding off my picks for Heinlein would be, “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.”  I think this story would make an excellent film too. I’d especially enjoy seeing the rail gun attack on Earth on the big screen.  And I think the friendship between Manny and the artificial intelligence Mike would work great on the screen.

I’ll have to think of some other classic sf&f books that would make good movies.  If you can think of any you’d like to see made, leave them in the comments.

Bridging the Gap

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The summer doldrums have officially begun.  Until Labor Day the only interesting news will consist of Donald Trump being prosecuted, persecuted or whatever the Left wants to call their absurd gestapo action in multiple jurisdictions.  So, we’ll have to interest ourselves in “other things” until then.

And that is what I’m scratching my head over.  Book reviews, movies, television, plays.  Science, music, religion.  I’ll have to widen my net to capture things that normal humans interest themselves in.  And that’s all to the good.

This weekend we will be hosting some of the Minions.  Their parents will pull up to the top of the driveway, toss them out of the vehicle in duffel bags, hit the horn and speed away into the night hoping for the best.  Camera Girl has cooked mass quantities of pasta sauce, meatballs and sausage and thereafter imperial tons of spaghetti will be cooked and consumed.

She has procured from various local libraries DVD’s featuring questionable cartoon characters from a selection of eras ranging all the way back to the 1970s.  I have begged for a boycott on any further screenings of Scooby Doo and his associates.  The answer I received was noncommittal.

The pool will be “opened” this weekend but I expect that for the first week or two the water will be suboptimal.  Specifically, it will be opaque and green.  I tried to sell Camera Girl on a trip to the regional zoo.  She shot this idea down claiming kids don’t like zoos.  Hmmm.  Maybe she’s right.  Maybe we’ll go the reptile zoo instead.  I know kids like reptiles.

We’ll probably have a baseball catch one of the days but I’m hoping we can get in some time at the pool table.  I think a good sense of geometry and dynamics is useful for any growing boy.  Plus, it’s been pretty warm for the last few days and the basement tends to be cooler.

It’s time to find out if the Minions are already slaves to their electronic devices.  As far as I know these younger descendants aren’t yet tethered to smartphone entertainment devices.  But I’d also like to cut back on the television time too.  I’ll make it the long weekend objective to try and bridge the multigenerational gap using non-electronic media.  I might even introduce them to the concept of human speech as a means of communication and entertainment.  I might even (shudder!) bring down a book from the shelf and read aloud.  Hopefully it won’t have the local constabulary at my doorstep demanding equal time for whatever woke PBS kid’s series is currently topical; Gender Fluid Jenny or Fern Affirmed or whoever.

I think I’ll start the weekend with a seminar on geographic and demographic topics in Middle Earth.  I’ll skip Beleriand at this time.  The Silmarillion is too depressing for the young ones. I’ll highlight various topics with video presentations from Peter Jackson’s motion pictures.  I’ll start with the Numenorean kingdoms of Arnor and Gondor and use this as a jumping off point on the branches of the royal family.  Of course, there could be extra points for anyone who can specifically identify how many generations separate Elrond and his multi-great nephew Aragorn.

Well, let’s see if I can freehand a map of Middle Earth.  As me old gaffer always said, “You’re nowt but a ninnyhammer, photog!”