After Tropical Storm Andrea, Reading, Writing and Raspberries

Andrea dumped the greatest amount of rain on us and many other Atlantic Coastal destinations for a 7th of June since records of such things were kept.

Nevertheless the air today did not feel sharp, clear and clean.  It's humid, even though not that warm.

Still, 'tis the season for raspberries and I'm stuffing myself with them, as I've been doing all week.  Vanilla non-fat yogurt, raw sunflower seeds and raspberries -- such a splendid breakfast.  As for dessert -- any combo of raspberries and chocolate will do.

Of course it's pasta-wine-jazz night tonight, tonight being Saturday night.

I continue reading Volume II of Savannah's An Epic IV Volume Civil War History: Vol. II: Brokers, Bankers, And Bay Line: Inside the Slave Trade.

Longmire in the West, Jesse Stone in the East, Sired by The Virginian

Longmire (2012) A&E, Season 1, streaming, netflix.

Based on Craig Johnson's novels that feature Walt Longmire, this is another locale-oriented murder mystery series. Set in Wyoming, it's shot in New Mexico.(Does New Mexico, like Louisiana, provide incentives to Hollywood that Wyoming doesn’t?) The cast is long on an interesting selection of actors from whom, as the series progresses, interesting characters and deepening relationships, emerge.

Walt Longmire is the Country Sheriff of fictitious Absaroka County. Absaroka is home to the small city of Durant. Absaroka contains a Cheyenne reservation, mountains, prairies and national forest, i.e. this is a western, the geography of the ur-Western, Owen Wister’s The Virginian (1902), which declared Wyoming “white man’s country,” the place of national healing and reconciliation, for white men, where, after the Civil War lovely eastern white women learn to submit to manly gentlemen warriors.

Standing in here for the Virginian's Vermont school marm, Molly, is  Katee Sackhoff, Starbuck from BS-Galactica. Vic is Longmire’s young homicide detective, a new hire out of Philadelphia, Vic(toria) Moretti.

Lou Diamond Phillips is owner of the Red Pony bar-restaurant, Henry Standing Bear, Longmire’s Cheyenne friend, his door and his eyes into into the res.

Like Walt and Henry, Branch Connally is locally born and bred. The younger deputy is played by Bailey Chase, who was Graham Miller, Riley’s Initiative buddy on Buffy. Branch’s character is the same irritating mix of upright, confused and dick-headedness that Graham’s was in Buffy. In Longmire, we meet Branch’s family, which makes sense of his character – it’s not a set-up of mean antagonist that you usually get to the older, good and decent man.

Example of guest cast and supporting characters: in the third episode a local drug snitch-informer for Longmire is played by James C. Leary,who was Clem, Buffy’s friendly, floppy-eared, saggy-skinned, poker-playing-with-kittens-as-stakes, Dawn-sitting demon.

Then there was ep. 7, “8 Seconds,” which forefronts a married art gallery dealer and her wealthy beer distributor spouse, named – Sublette! Ha! It turned out that the husband is in the closet, which provoked an attack by a confused boy who discovers Sublette is having an affair with his father ….

The deeper into the series we get, the more involving and deeper it becomes. The smaller supporting roles get breadth, which works in the same way in Robert Parker's Jesse Stone, another successful locale-oriented television adaptation The nine made-for-television movies were produced by, and star Tom Selleck.  Neither of these are quite your usual tv.

As has Jesse Stone,  Longmire has lost his wife before the action begins. Stone’s wife kicked him out; Longmire’s is mysteriously dead, about which he feels guilty for reasons undisclosed. This convenient singlehood allows Longmire, like Stone, to  be broody as well as available for romantic/sexual opportunities. Perhaps because Longmire has a grown-up attorney daughter, Cady, in town, helps. Or, you could say, Longmire has a trio of women who take care of him: Cady, Vic, Ruby, the department's administrator, an older, though not motherly woman, thank goodness.

 Unlike Jesse, Longmire isn’t a drunk. Though Walt drinks, he does not drink to excess – or on the infrequent occasion that he does, he has good reason and handles it responsibly, calling Vic out of hot sex with her husband to drive him home.

I am applauding the writers of Longmire – so far they haven't writen in a hot sex encounter for Walt with a much younger woman in any episode, thank goodness, which we do have in every Jesse Stone episode, many of which come through unintentionally as ridiculous. Jesse even has a young nun yearning for him, despite having a good thirty-five years on her, who gets a bit jealous of him sexing up non-nuns. The threat of hot sex is always there for Walt, however, if only because Vic and his daughter keep telling Walt there are women attracted to him.

Longmire in the land-locked, mountain and prairie West, Jesse Stone’s on ocean coast Massachusetts, both are equally stunning landscapes. Involving landscape is always a big draw for me -- as long as the characters develop to at least some degee from their place. This can be used in many ways, even in opposition.  Justified has played successfully against that on occasion, bringing in Detroit mobsters who do not know or understand how things work in either Harlan County or Kentucky, which brings them down. Vic's an unwilling transplant to Absaroka County; this is just another in her her husband's constant re-locations as a nabob in the Natural Gas Bidness.. She's a big city girl, who misses a big city police department and regrets not having its resources, like SWAT teams.  Decent Los Angeles Jesse’s been forced to re-locate to a foreign place because he's a drunk and no one else would have him.

Significantly, Walt Longmire’s a believably decent man, who loves his land and community. Walt’s a bit old-fashioned – he won’t have a smart phone. He’s a guardian, aging out of his powers and out of his time, who makes up for this with intelligent and efficient use of what he does have – or what what his team has, such as smart phones. He can still fight like an aroused bear when necessary, but would always prefer not to.

It’s enjoyable to watch this decent, competent, non-flashy Sheriff of Absaroka County.  But then, I do love a good western.

Longmire’s second season began in May, 2013. The new season's episodes can be watched streaming on the A&E site.

Notae

The Moleskine flip cover reporter's notebook is the best out of which to transcribe to digital document.  It stays open without need of a weight or pinning bar; it's small enough to prop right at the side of one's machine - keyboard.

This is no small convenience considering how much I've got to do.  I used up two cartridges for my pen.

Working on Monticello today.

Love of Life Orchestra, Tonight

Via Ned Sublette:

I am playing this Wednesday, June 5, at 8 p.m. at Roulette in Brooklyn as an orchestral guitarslinger in Peter Gordon’s Love of Life Orchestra -- approximately the thirty-second anniversary of when I first played with this fine ensemble (during The Kitchen's Aluminum Nights extravaganza, at the extraordinary venue that was Bond International Casino.)

This concert will be the premiere of Gordon’s Symphony #5, and what a band we have this time around:
>Paul Shapiro, saxes / Katie Porter, clarinets / Peter Zummo, trombone / Max Gordon, trumpet / Elio Villafranca, piano / Ned Sublette, guitar / Randy Gun, guitar / Yunior Terry, bass / Robby Ameen, drums / Bill Ruyle, percussion / Peter Gordon, sax, organ, synth / Video by Kit Fitzgerald.

The auditorium at Roulette is a wonderful-sounding room, a joy to play music in. There's an interview with Peter Gordon about the piece on the Roulette blog, and a Facebook event page here. Tickets are reasonable. Y’all come.

Sexism Makes SF/F Women Writers Tired

This merely another in the series of frequent eruptions of How SF/F and SFWA can embarrass itself and look foolish, sexist and / or racist / and / or whatever other bad mannered and socialization behavior can be engaged in.  Most people on the face of the planet won't know much less care.  This is the sort of thing that made me give up the org and the culture so long ago -- yet, like so many things that are bad for us and our blood pressure, not to mention taking up space in our little brains that could be used so much more profitably -- I can't keep my eyes away from these eruptions.

How every single discussion about Sexism and woman-type stuff on the Internet (and real life) has ever happened and ever will happen, always, forever, until the Earth finally falls into the Sun (or until the Patriarchy is dismantled.)

It goes with this:

"Sexism and SFWA, as seen by a former SFWA president.

Is there any more reason to wonder why sf/f is so riddled with such yahoo-saurian types as consumers and writers? Even when so many -- men and women -- explain.

They cannot and will not and don't want to hear.  Sexism.  It exists.  Get over it. Besides, sexualized female bodies are still the greatest marketing tool of all time, and selling our stuff is the name of the game.

Now there is another thing, the unfortunate editor of the SFWA Bulletin (for which there has never seemed to be an earthly use (so many reasons I left the org), is / was female, and she's resigned.  Undoubtedly the two men who set off this typical sfwa firestorm this time won't resign from anything -- indeed one of them isn't even a member of the org -- but a woman must be punished for their sins.  Because these saurians of the community are untouchable.  There's no other reason their inane and silly maunderings ran for frackin' 15 years in the Bulletin, because this field is all about the Sacred Name and Ancestor Worship.  So the misogyny and sexism and the rest are embedded in the org from the beginning.  It's not going to stop, particularly since this is the field that is the crown of nerd culture, which currently dominates pop culture from top to bottom.

Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey  (2012)

This is Part one of of three installments of  movies based on Tolkien's slim book intended for children, which turned out to be the prequel to the adult Lord of the Rings trilogy. 

This first movie of the projected trilogy was better than I’d been led to believe by either professional or fan responses / reviews. Perhaps the reason that it is better than I expected is it appears that by this time around Tolkien Jackson has shed himself of all compunction about departing from the source material that  he may have had when adapting LOTR.*  Another reason is in this installment Jackson managed to, barely, present us with more expository, character and story telling times on screen, than the endless orc, troll and other chase and flee and pound scenes of his LOTR. However, the capture by the trolls goes on too long, as does the chase in -- where were they exactly?  The kingdom of the Goblin King?  This looked like those same endless scenes under the mountain in Moria from Jackson's LOTR, with endless M.C. Escher stairs and platforms suspended above bottomless abysses.  And fire, o yes, much fire.

There are problems in The Hobbit of tone, as the treatment careens from the whimsy and perspective of a child's entertainment, to Jackson’s need for a heroic masculine warrior protagonist who will attract the female gaze and  fulfill her desire to yearn for imaginary romance.  The dwarves flop from bad-mannered, fierce Viking pillagers, to the comic Disney dwarf types: instead of being Sleepy, Sneezy, etc., they are Fat, Dim, Mischievous Twins (filling in for the Merry and Pip pairing of LOTR), Noble, etc.

Audience is the only role of females in this tale, whether in print or as a movie that departs from its print source.  There are no women in this story, unless one counts Bilbo's description to Frodo of Lobelia Sackville-Baggins's mean, covetous and thieving character, or the statuary poses of Galadriel at Rivendell. 

There are so many departures from the book it's a different story with characters who have the same names as from the source material. Niether Galadriel nor Saruman were in The Hobbit.. Instead of resting at the House Beorn (hopefully we will see Beorn in the next installment) after the Eagles rescue them from the wargs and orcs, the Company comes to Rivendell. We have an addled-and-bird shit-pated Radagast -- who is pulled in a sleigh-travois contraption by rabbits of breakneck, breathtaking speed -- an awkward misalliance of Santa Claus with the Easter Bunny.  The Eagles are as glorious as they should be, though we don't get to hear them speak. But we do get to see more Rivendell, which, like Bilbo, we all want to see more of.

One wonders too how much of the footage in The Unexpected Journey was edited out of the LOTR movies, or unused in them?  This is a good thing.  However, as the first installment of Jackson's LOTR was the best of the three, so this leads one to expect the same may happen with The Hobbit films.

In any case, never having been a fan of The Hobbit, I enjoyed An Unexpected Journey much more than I did the book.

-----------------------------

*  See also HBO's  GOT's departures from its print-source material.  Improvement or disgrace?  Are both versions disappointing in the same ways? Are both disappointing but in different ways? 

When it comes to rating the departures Jackson chose from Tolkien, with the exception of Arwen and her Ride in The Fellowship of the Ring, the departures were deeply disappointing. Frodo's repudiation of Sam in favor of Gollum, destroyed the foundation of why the Ring was destroyed and why Frodo and Sam survived: their unshaken devotion and loyalty to each other. It was wrong and the choice to do this was entirely Jackson's. All these wrong things in the film version are Jackson's responsibility entirely.  The source material was just fine.

The HBO-Got begins with deeply flawed print-source and then overlays its own chosen failures of taste, misogyny, torture-porn obsession, etc. on top of the print version.  Additionally, the source material isn't complete. Has there been another project that went on screen before the final source material was completed? (True Blood doesn't really apply to this as the author intends for the Sookie Stackhouse books to be stand alones as much as a series.)

Betting sorts who understand how to go about such things are probably making long book on the chances that the print version of GOT will never be finished. The author's provided the show runners / writers an outline as to how he projects the project to conclude, "in case," while the production team expects to carry their series through to that end on HBO with 6 or 7 seasons. HBO-Got's popular enough that there doesn't at this time seem any reason to not expect it to roll that way. As authors who write books to find out what happens know all too well, it's very hard to write a book when the story has already been finished. This is what creates the eternal conflict between outlining and not outlining, and makes writing proposals such a byatch.

1939 New York in HD Color - Looks Like Filmed Yesterday!

Woo.  NYC's streets and sidewalks look depopulated when compared to what these streets and sidewalks are like today.  Yet some of the landmarks are as recognizable from then as from now, fountains particularly, such as Washington Square's, Rockefeller Center's and so on.

NYers rebuild quickly! This is 1939 -- six years after King Kong ravaged the place, recall.  :)

At this point there are entire blocks of sidewalk without room to get through because so many bicycles are parked and locked on them, there's no room left for pedestrian traffic. (Don't get me started on bicyclists riding on the sidewalks ....)  As well, the handle bars and other parts poke out at your vulnerable places -- and you don't see them, due to color, position, one's own poor vision.  Some people set their bikes up perpendicular -- the dark handlebars and wheels jut out into the space you are walking in but you can't see them, particularly in shadows or at night.

There are more bikes everywhere everyday: for one thing the Young and Recently Graduated cannot afford cars in this economy, now the bike share program is in effect, releasing thousands more bicycles, ridden by people who aren't used to navigating this city in the first place, actually riding in this kind of traffic, as opposed to recreational biking, and, of course, have no clue at all as to where they are going.

But this is another of Mommy Dearest Mayor Mike's dearly beloved babies, just as is gun control.  Yet, get this: the Mommy Dearest Mayor has now declared his fiat that medical marijuana is the biggest hoax ever perpetrated upon a gullible public ....

More information about this 1939, French-filmed video here.