Don't Sleep On Lovecraft Country

I originally thought this blog would be a hell of a lot more book, movie and tv reviews than it ended up being, but when something is just amazing, I will still let you know--and HBO's Lovecraft Country series, produced by Jordan Peele (which let me know this was going to be astounding quality) is actually better than I even hoped it would be and at episode three is hitting its pace.

I liked the book (it was one of those finds I have talked about when you go into a brick and mortar bookstore with a real bookstore smell and maybe even a bookstore cat in it--like Farley's in New Hope, PA, which was where I picked up Matt Ruff's inspired novel, where the kind of book you want to read finds you) but converted to television, in the hands of a great storyteller like Misha Green and with talent like Jurnee Smollett I have been blown away.

As with the remarkable HBO serial Watchmen, Lovecraft Country incorporates seldom-reviewed episodes of American history (like the Greenwood Massacre or the Turnbull Park Homes Race Riots) into outstanding genre entertainment. It is beautifully layered. In the most recent episode, which inspired this post, the ghosts of a tortured past are made whole by their names being spoken, and their supernatural horror is pitched against the very physical danger of white supremacy. The Black protagonists are terrorized by the local constabulary (in a wagon ride reminiscent of Freddie Gray's last "rough ride", Leticia Lewis is told about how her complaints to the law are lost, while they know very well about complaints made by her neighbors) and in a "are you for real?" kids being kids in an very obvious to 1950s kids Addams Family/Munsters haunted house-ass-looking haunted house, one of the kids playing with a Ouija board seems to be Emmett Till.

One part of the ouija board scene in this week’s @LovecraftHBO briefly chilled my bones. The little boy who asked if he’d have a good time on his upcoming trip. The board said no, and if you look closely we know why: pic.twitter.com/JWdKXcys6i

— Lee Bey (@LEEBEY) August 31, 2020

And here I was wondering if the tenant named Baldwin meant anything since the show quoted James Baldwin at length in episode 1 (and here we are at only episode 3, and it's already felt like a journey!)

This is good damn tv, and I recommend it highly. But maybe don't sleep on it--put a little something lighter between your viewing it and bedtime. Because here there be ghosts and magicians and bad things that burn crosses in the night. It can be a lot.

But it's really good.

The Ghost of Hillary Clinton

I think a review of What Happened for me is kind of personal, because I feel like Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote this one for me (me being someone who has loved her since I even knew what a Hillary Rodham Clinton even was). Maybe other people don't want to hear her voice right now, or ever again, or about this election, or about anything. Maybe they think that after you lose a presidential election, you should just go away, and never be heard from again--become a ghost.

Jimmy Carter didn't become a ghost after the 1980 election. Al Gore didn't become a ghost after the 2000 election. They went on to do the things that mattered to them, and spoke about the things they cared about--you can't expect anything less from Hillary Clinton. She has spent her entire life in service to other people in many ways. Here's something I have gathered about everything I have seen regarding her--she doesn't ghost. She isn't going away--and I would never want her to. She has experienced life as an activist, a student, a politician, and a diplomat. Her experience is deep and real. And I love her voice in this memoir.

It's probably true that she had help with this book, because public figures have busy lives and often do have people who smooth out the rough edges of what can be a personal narrative. But I heard this book as I read in her voice--a voice very familiar to me, and not a voice I ever considered shrill or unpleasant. This book isn't about distributing blame--she owns her failures. But she has insights about a broken system that has been exploited by extreme partisan voices as well as cynical fake-news distributors. She is open in her estimation of her opponent, Donald Trump's, shortcomings, and her fears about what he stirs up as a divisive and rancorous demagogue.

She lays out a great timeline regarding her understanding of the Russian interference in this election, that tracks with my own observations and things that have later come to light. She is not deflecting the blame from herself--but acknowledging a political reality we do not yet have a system in place to adequately confront. But as I reviewed her marshalling of the facts, I saw what a legal mind was at work--she was laying a case.

She discusses misogyny and racism. I am glad she did. She speaks about drawing inspiration from the Mothers of the Movement, and acknowledges the reality of women experiencing harassment for daring to speak up. She speaks with great affection of her staff during this and the 2008 election, and about food! and about her family--Bill and Chelsea and her grandbabies. She complains (who doesn't?) about clothes and makeup and appearances. Through it all, this was the reflection of a person who isn't maybe the greatest politician ever, but a person so qualified for a job who cared so greatly about how things happened, who lost to a person so greatly not qualified and who so genuinely could not begin to admit how things happened.

Netflix Finds: Cloud Atlas (2012)

Because I am trying to avoid being constantly mired in political mockery, I'm trying to be appreciative of artistic things (or, if I can't get appreciative, I can enjoy eviscerating them as a large dog enjoys destroying a toy made for a much smaller dog).  Today, I was in need of entertainment--Netflix, random-setting (i.e. spouse's choice) came up Cloud Atlas.

At a bit under three hours and with a promise of intersecting storylines crossing centuries, I was a little alarmed. This could be barking gibberish to a late-Friday brain ready for something a little less deep, and since I don't pay attention to popular culture except a little bit, wasn't there supposed to be something not right abou..aw fuggit, I finally decided, with true acceptance. I was going to just enjoy the ride.

Which paid off. Look, you should understand that you have a brilliant cast of people playing multiple roles across time--the advertising for the movie clues you in on the premise, and if you don't accept the premise--don't see the movie. I'm sure there's a Steven Seagal movie for you to see. He even does accents. He's like, the Meryl Streep of direct-to-video action movies.  He's even done some sf. Go see those. This isn't a put-down of Steven Seagal movies, since I'm apparently watching them--this is a judgment about you. You get in the right space to see Cloud Atlas, and you will see it the way I did--PMS-y and a little teary and loving all the touches. 

Now, there are some weak spots--Tom Hanks is a brilliant actor, but can not actually keep what I think was supposed to be an Irish accent to save his life. He plays one character in a way that veers from London to Dublin accent-wise in a way I'm not sure how to entirely accept-- but luckily, that particular character is not pervasive. And his performance in several other roles is amazing. 

Halle Berry--I love her in this. I love her as Luisa Rey and Meronym. I love Hugo Weaving for once again being the Agent Smith-style heavy in most of his roles in the flick, as he was in the Wachowskis' Matrix Trilogy. He does great menace. I am astounded by Hugh Grant just being in there in character roles in a not-Notting Hill way, but in a ballsy "have fun being characters" way.  OMG--Jim Sturgess and Doona Bae--there was fine work here. Ben Whishaw? Keith David? I just want to shout the whole cast out as stupidly good in a storyline that veers from scene to scene in a disjointed timeline to try and demonstrate how good deeds and bad follow people beyond their own lifetime. 

But it is beautiful. It's about deciding people matter. It's about looking beyond yourself, and seeing the other, and knowing this is also you. 

I just found it beautiful..

Netflix Finds: Salt and Fire

This evening, I watched a movie I did not personally pick out. It was the choice of my spouse, who sometimes sees something he thinks he might like and clicks on it even though I am in the same room and he could ask if I have any interest at all. Sometimes, he picks something really good. I recently enjoyed Lo Chiamavamo Jeeg Robot, which, while definitely reminding me of the problematic relationship so-called "(super)heroic" themes have with respect to female characters (vide The Refrigerator Monologues by Catherynne M. Valente which explores the "women in refrigerators" trope and The Geek Feminist Revolution by Kameron Hurley) also was a send-up of the application of fantasy to the "real world". And then there was this film I saw just now: Salt and Fire.  

I did not enjoy this movie. About 20 minutes in, I did a thing I often do after watching a movie, where I consult with online reviews to see if other people felt the way I did. (I seldom consult reviews before--for one thing, there is a risk of spoilers and setting expectations, which I just hate. I like to see a movie with little more than the trailers to get me going.) I was happy to know many felt the way I was feeling about this thing.

There's an irony to the theme of the movie (a hostage scenario) and my getting "trapped" into watching it. Me--I'm no sentimentalist when it comes to films. I will walk the hell out or quit viewing if I'm on my own watching a film. Not sposo mio. He commits. And I, as a part of our unspoken joint adventure together as media co-consumers, have decided it is better to just be part of the ride. I have watched, for fun, really wretched B-movie schlocky-ass stuff I would never subject him to--I understand my tolerances for crap. So I tolerate. I forbear. I bitch strongly afterwards. I know if something was truly unacceptable, violent, exploitative, he'd shut it off and not watch with me if I gave the word. But this time, because I'm trying to get away from just doing politics all the time, I'm submitting my multiple grouses with this nonsense in a review.

The actors did well with what they had. Michael Shannon and Veronica Ferres are not to be faulted for the dialogue that could not help but be leaden. I genuinely think they did as convincing a job as could be done with a story which is kind of The Worst. Veronica Ferres plays Dr. Laura Sommerfeld, a scientist who is part of a UN delegation to an ecological disaster in South America. Her delegation is taken hostage when they arrive at the airport, and the male members of the delegation have been segregated and afflicted with food poisoning to disable them. She comes to be aware that she is singled out by the kidnappers because of their mission, and she is told by Matt Riley (the head kidnapper played by Michael Shannon), after some weird nonsense about perspective in an Italian Renaissance mural and a little inquisition about her not being the custodian of her little girl, who lives in Morocco with her birth father (thanks, patriarchy!) , that the area is under threat because of a potential supervolcano threat which is more drastic really, than the ecological disaster in the long run, isn't it?. And then she is abandoned in a salt flat miles from anywhere with two blind little boys who basically just speak Spanish and the local dialect. 

And she perseveres. She takes the kids under her supervision, and works out how to speak with them, feed them, rationing water and trying to spare them the ugly truth of their situation, not understanding at all why they were abandoned this way. She plays with them, becomes affectionate with them. And then, as things look desperate, the head kidnapper and his guys show up and apparently he was the boys' adoptive father, and the ecological disaster he created (I don't care if I'm spoiling you regarding this movie--watch it at your own risk because it is dumb!) is what killed their natural mother and made them blind. (Also he abandons them with a female scientist he just thinks might be a hell of a mothering type because she has a child she is removed from--not father of the year material, him.)  He wants a cookie from her because he's going to "turn himself in" (I guess to the "ecological disaster police"?) and doesn't think she deserves an apology for being kidnapped or abandoned with these kids in a completely inhospitable situation because he's feeling sort of noble about owning up to his fuckery, and he's only done it to get her to be the very best witness possible to the full extent of his stupid fuckery so she could tell his story the way he perceives it.

There's More to Life than Politics, I Guess

For just a moment, I want to touch on what a really great time it is for sf/fantasy in my book. I mean, I think Wonder Woman was one of the best blockbuster movies this year, and am completely happy about the potential of the coming sequel and pretty jazzed about the Justice League trailer. I'm going to preface this with a brief disquisition that will probably make your eyes glaze over if you come here strictly for the politics stuff and maybe even if, like me, you are a geek. 

I liked Batman Vs. Superman. There, I said it. Furthermore, I think Affleck as Batman is actually, among other things, what an Affleck might even be good for. He physically is Bruce Wayne/Batman-sized. He somehow inhabits Bats' obsessions and trauma vs. privileged intersections. I think the Christ-symbolism with Cavill's Superman was kind of heavy, but the addition of Wonder Woman, and the later good, solid, origin-story Wonder Woman tale, and the way both establish that meta-humans are now part of reality, were not bad--just possibly waiting for something like JL to break out the way Marvel's Avengers did. (I like Justice League just because--they were my playground pantheon.)

Speaking of Avengers--I've got a lot of love for Thor: Ragnarok. So, how would we make a Thor movie good for me--okay, be a Thor Movie, have Loki and maybe another character like the Hulk. Greeeeeaaaat. How would I make that better ? Okay, Cate Blanchet is the baddie and there's Jeff Goldblum.  And now I'm so...take my money!

Also excited for Black Panther! (Okay, what the Marvel films are doing is basically creating a thing where I just need to give them my money. How they have not realized that a Black Widow movie is the best way to make feminists give up the ducats is not a thing I totally understand, but I get that they are having a major creative arc--this is how they made me buy all the comic books in the 90's. I both still feel like the biggest mark and enjoy the sheer world-building escapism. But going with Black Panther's world is also a challenge they want to live up to. )

Wonder Woman Hit the Right Spot

(Disclaimer--does contain spoilers.)

I'm going to put my hand up and admit to the ugly theater-cry phenomenon of just having a superhero movie that does origin without forgetting to also be about something, that shows a woman as hero where her gender isn't treated like an oddity, where bravery can be about protecting and caring and wanting to do the right thing, and strength is shown as being just as much about what is going on inside of a person, as what they can physically do.

Diana of Themyscira comes from a place and time outside of the 20th century larger world in which she will have her adventure. She is from a world where female excellence is actually the only kind she knows of. And all Amazons strive for it. Her world is disrupted by the outside world at first, when American spy Steve Trevor crashes into the beautiful water of her island home, and she rescues him, seeing for the first time an actual male bodied person. She then is introduced to the world from which he came in the form of the enemy army that followed him through the rift and, despite not even knowing where they are, respond to the Amazons with violence, killing several, including Diana's aunt, Antiope, who also trained her in martial skills.

There is something compelling about the idea of a feminist paradise where the world crashes in and needs to be dealt with. We are treated to the image of feminine strength and grace, a system that seems to be monarchic but at least somewhat democratic (there is an Amazon referred to as being a senator) and a justice system backed up with a truth-compelling lasso (which seems a little like a torture device, but it's magic, so I'm gonna buy-in that truth-compelling, even if my little US Constitutional heart says "But you can't even plead the Fifth!" is somehow working for them--maybe their society has the sense to ask contextual questions to determine if laws are broken for the right reason? )

Paolo Bacigalupi and the Coywolv

I had to read The Drowned Cities because I loved The Windup Girl. The future that Bacigalupi creates makes utter sense within the context of global climate change. I've never felt, when reading science fiction, such a sense that I was reading something very akin to what our future would be like. I loved The Windup Girl in part for the same reason I love The Drowned Cities: the made girl, and the half-man, are human-created artifacts that might actually survive our deep human foolishness. We are shortsighted and emotional and do stupid shit, but humans adapt, and we also create tech that adapts--a dubious gift, but a gift nonetheless.

The coywolv, a species existing in the spec-fic future of The Drowned Cities, is potentially happening just now. Just as a similar landscape is taking place.

I'm basically saying read all his stuff because he gets what the future looks like because I really think he is looking at the world we live in right now. And his vision of the future should give you all the pause you ever wanted.

Review of Eltahawy's "Headscarves and Hymens"

One of the tropes, I think, that ought to be played-out by now, is the idea that the Islamic world needs a "Reformation".  The paradigm of Islam post al-Wahhab and Qutb is the Reformation. This was the pull toward traditionalism and a new reverence for The Book. Mona Eltahawy's book, Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution points to a kind of Enlightenment--maybe the more apt and realist take on Islam. (I would compare her to Wollstonecraft.)  She discusses the need for a sexual revolution. I think her feminist take on the culture is necessary and timely. Her thesis is direct and her examples are not "exceptional" but only too familiar when looking at the depredation of women in various cultures.

In her book, Eltahawy takes on "purity culture" and the myth of the importance or value of virginity, as well as the cultural forgiveness for crimes against women's autonomy as seen in clemency for rapists who consent to marry the "damaged goods" of their victims (regardless of the ability or willingness of the victims to consent to the same). She discusses the pedophilia implicit in child marriage. She highlights the absurdity of a culture like that of Saudi Arabia, that forbids women the right to drive or go anywhere without a male chaperone, and how this strands women into regular choices between greater and lesser apostatic ways of simply existing.

This Changes Everything: Capitalism Vs. The Climate (A Review)

I greatly looked forward to reading Naomi Klein's latest, This Changes Everything: Capitalism Vs. The Climate, and having read it, I'm pretty happy to recommend it. Klein's book approaches our fossil-fuel dependency as a cultural crisis and an economic fixation on the profit motive--an "extractivist" ethos that insists on exploitation of our natural resources for monetary gain. Her book is, in many ways, a wake-up call, viewing the echo chambers of the denialists and the pie-in-the-sky carbon-fixing schemers as needing to just face reality.

And the reality is grim. We are poisoning our planet with fuels that are not clean to burn in the first place and are increasingly more difficult to extract. We're dumping toxic chemicals into our air and our water, and the possibility that life as we know it right now is in any way sustainable is pretty much foolish.

Which might imply that this is an altogether grim book, but no. Along the way, we are introduced to pockets of resistance across the globe against the extractivist forces. Who, after all, may have the money, the propaganda, the hired security, the ability to purchase government officials by the job-lot and armies of lawyers at the ready--but might not actually be a match for a dedicated local resistance, which comes from, in some cases, even historically disadvantaged people--who are, let's be clear, often disproportionately screwed over by the forces of "progress".

What she shows is an alternative--maybe there's a sustainable future where companies don't make hand-over-fist profits, but people, working together, can discover old and tried methods for  insulating homes against heat and cold, irrigating and fertilizing crops, and mix those things with new technologies like solar panels to live just a bit lighter on the earth. Maybe there's something to the idea that the "quality of life" doesn't have a monetary value, but is precious and should be preserved just because.  Because it's the only way we--humans--even can go on. Maybe we need to see the connections between ourselves and the dying fish and dolphins and coral reefs and caribou and realize we, too, are a part of a chain of being on this planet, and what hurts any creature, weakens us all.

I found this book a wise and engaging read, by no means alarmist, but very clear-eyed and realistic. So if you were wondering whether you'd like this--I'd say if you care about the environment and are skeptical of our Cash Rules Everything Around Me culture, you'd like it rather a lot. I did.

Summer Reading: A Pair of Books on Paradox

You may have noticed light posting of late around here, but this is just a thing I do--it seems like there's usually some handful of weeks in the summer when I just want to lay about and read. A lot of it just pure fantasy fun reading (I finally got around to reading some of Hamilton's Anita Blake series--so, that's a thing I did) and some of it is better than others (yay--there was another Laundry novel! and I think I have become a new Tim Powers fan).

But sometimes I try to chew over something with a little more weight, and this summer, I picked up two books that had pretty intriguing titles to me and which also seemed to fit my current state of mind: Brad Warner's There is No God and He is Always With You and Frank Schaeffer's Why I am an Atheist Who Believes in God. Both titles have an internal paradox about the nature of the divine and the relation of the individual to it: How is a non-existent being always with one? Isn't believing in God kind of not the point of atheism?

Well, in keeping with the spirit of my reading--yes and no, to both.

This is the first book I've read from Warner--I will probably pick up a couple of his other titles based on this one. He tackles the question of God from the point of view of a Zen practitioner, in a tradition that really isn't concerned with God, as such. It's a book in part about the looking for transcendence (he describes books that describe transcendent experiences as "enlightenment porn", which I think is kind of spot-on) but also admitting the limitations of our ability to grasp or articulate what that exactly is. He explains that from an eastern perspective, the Hindu or Yogic tradition describes Brahman or the ultimate reality as "neti neti" or "not that, not that"--in other words, to drop one's preconceptions about what reality or the divine is.

Reading this Seems Like a Duty to Me

I'm a little conflicted on it, but I probably will get a hold of Robert Gates' latest, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War, so I can see it for myself. Memoirs, distinct from straight journalism, are necessarily colored by personal opinion, and even reviews of a memoir can be, in turn, somewhat biased. That said, I look forward to reading it for a little insight.

But just a little--and here's where I feel conflicted about this kind of memoir: although Robert Gates has left the Administration, the work is still on-going. In certain cases, I do wonder if revealing some of the inner workings and thought-processes of the players involved in our military, intelligence, and diplomatic agencies, isn't a bit like revealing our "tells" to a bunch of poker players. Things like pointing out that President Obama isn't optimistic about Afghanistan, and doesn't trust Afghan President Karzai, doesn't seem necessarily helpful when the US is still trying to work out a security pact with that government (although I would be astonished if Karzai did not already suspect as much)--isn't it unhelpful?

It just gives me a weird feeling, is all.

The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin (A review)

It might say more about me than the subject of Joe McGuinness' book if I mentioned that it was the first thing I treated myself to with my birthday Amazon gift certificate. I looked forward to this book as if I expected that I would learn something new about Sarah Palin, political phenomenon, hockey mom, American woman, once (and future?) candidate. She fascinates me, not just because I am a political blogger, and because all things politics fascinate me of necessity to some degree. She fascinates me as a personality whose appeal I simply don't and maybe can't understand. It seems as if for every, let's say--dozen people like myself who just doesn't get her, there is at least one fan. Someone who gets her, or at least thinks he or she does. And what they feel is like love, or loyalty, and it makes them support her and even want to....do things.

I don't get it. This book still doesn't help me get it, and it really didn't tell me so much more about Sarah Palin and her story than I've already read on blogs, in magazines, and from newspapers (Katie Couric could never stump me with her unfair gotcha-elitism regarding the subject of reading material--let me tell you!) But the story of the story--McGinness's own story about his experience as the Palin family's temporary neighbor and the reaction of Team Sarah to his journalistic endeavor--was as much a part of the Palin story as anything else, and maybe was the part that I did begin to understand.

Joe McGinniss' career seriously kicked off in a big way with The Selling of the President when he was absurdly young. It's something of a political classic. He's written a lot of nonfiction/crime/etc. since then. And yet, Palin represented his efforts as if he were a tabloid panty-sniffer and worse. As if she weren't a worthy topic for his interest, having been a vice-presidential candidate and a possible future presidential candidate! As if her in her tank top and the possibility of witnessing--what, I don't know--with binoculars through the windows of the Palin compound were somehow the actual draw!

Any dirty old man might get more satisfaction travelling not quite so far, thankyewverrymuch. The reflexive pose of victimization and the response of her fans says it all. Every question is a "gotcha" and every line of inquiry is prying, when one would rather remain an enigma--

Or is it more like, the great and powerful Oz hoping the curtain doesn't get drawn back?

In any event, the story of "The Real Sarah Palin" probably doesn't tell us all that much more about the real Sarah Palin, or even the ersatz icon beloved by thousands, than her watchers already knew. Bits about possible racism, censorship, homophobic bigotry, and ethical lapses are recounted, but their shock value is muted--heard it all before, have I! Even her theocratic bent and Joel's Army connections, her palling around with secessionists and so on, are all old hat. The recounting of the brushes with the law of her children and the accusation that she might not be so much the righteous "Grizzly Momma" she holds herself out as almost seem like unfair slams--and anything about the "Trig-trutherism" of course, is below the belt, because of course she can produce a birth certificate for her youngest child (whoever that may be!)

The point actually seems to be whether these things can be said quite enough, or with quite enough authority. There is something unschooled and unschoolable about Sarah Palin, something that is ambitious but lazy, privileged but resentful, anointed but disappointed. She has a Nixonian quality, but is an Othogonian with none of the rectitude, real or imagined.

McGinniss' book wasn't sensationalistic, and was good, even if it delivered little more than I already knew or suspected. Consider me, however, a blogular lib-media freak, and appreciate what McGinniss' writing and insight might lend to some slightly gone-over material. Andrew Sullivan called it "unputdownable"--I say one might read it in a day, if one was so wired, making it's unputdownability immanently livable.

I can't however, suggest it would do a thing for deprogramming Palin-Heads.

"The Backlash:Right-Wing Radicals, High-Def Hucksters--

And Paranoid Politics in the Age of Obama

Imagine (or maybe you don't have to) that you were curious about the tea-people. You've been wondering why they have beliefs that differ from yours to such a degree, why they hold opinions that seem out of step with reality, and are too easy to label as "uninformed" or "racist". Then, imagine that a journalist with whom you are familiar, Will Bunch, who wrote a well-researched book detailing the successes and the short-comings of the somewhat sainted president Ronald Reagan, had written a book about just that very subject. He managed to be fair in that other book, even-handed, and long on research, so you thought, "Maybe I'll order Backlash."

The book is written in second-person, which is occasionally awkward, but other than that, the book is a well-researched look at what is motivating the people who oppose President Obama, his policies, and the "liberals" in general, labeling the first, "a Muslim, Kenyan, communist" the second, "fascism" or "Communism", depending upon how the mood strikes, and as for liberals? Either "fascists", "useful idiots", or "elites", also depending upon how the mood strikes.

Bunch analyzes the relationship between what these people are hearing through talk radio and cable news to try and relate how some folks have been stirred, shaken, folded, spindled, and mutilated out of tune with objective reality. One main culprit in all this is, naturally Glenn Beck.

He doesn't make Beck out to be a villain, so much as recognizes that Beck is more of a self-seeking personality, a self-described "rodeo clown" who shills for Goldline.com just as easily as he he shills for his vision of God and country--

And then the real picture of "hucksterism" unfolds: who benefits from all this rhetoric that paints a nightmare where everything has changed (when, honestly, very little has--with the exception of the economy starting to gain jobs and the passing of legislation that has strengthened the social safety net) and that the president is not to be trusted? Well, it's the people who try to profit from disaster in general, in some cases, like the aforementioned Goldline and Solutions from Science and are perfectly willing to take a huge profit from their alarmed and misinformed customers while they're at it.

When these people are curling up with radical books like W.Cleon Skousen's The 5,000 Year Leap, or listening to the likes of David Barton's history revisionism (ably contradicted by people like Chris Rodda)--what else might they be soaking up from Glenn Beck University? A pitch! To buy gold, or seeds, or to buy into an idea that America is chaging into something dark and weird. Beck talks about faith, hope, and charity, but he's telling people to put their faith in the idea things will get worse, offers no hope, and, to be charitable, might tithe a little bit while he's raking in Huge Wads of Money but he's making more money for fellow grifters.

I think this is a smart, well-done book. Bunch talked with a number of the people who participate in these Tea Party rallies and affiliated groups, and tried to show how these are just regular folks that have acquired some irregular ideas that they are very, very vocal about. His treatment of them is fair, at times sympathetic but not condescending.

I think this book is pretty good; it's well-written and timely. I recommend it.

Review of Barbara G. Walker's "Man Made God"*

I was reading Barbara G. Walker's Man Made God in the car on a long drive (with my spouse at the wheel) to a family reunion out in the deep boonies of Central PA. I considered slipping it into my massive purse to whip out if I could tear myself away to sit on some swings or at a rock by the pond at the campground where the family was having our to-do, or if I was feeling exceptionally anti-social, I might even consider reading in front of people. (I have actually done such things in public, in what I hope wasn't seen as too demonstratively a rejection of further socializing. But damn, I have been known to get bored with small talk.)

But were I to get caught with this particular book, I'd have a little explaining to do if anyone were to inquire regarding the peculiar title: Man Made God. It could be taken a few ways. God is a construct of human beings--a fable, for example. Or, rather, "man", the gender, specifically, created the god most people are familiar with in our western culture. Or, if one were seeing with the eyes of a more apologetic cast, one might see it as a play on a "man-made" god--a fiction negotiated by cultures that naturally falls short of the real (Platonic?) God that could probably actually exist if we were able to properly conceptualize He, She or It.

If I were asked what I was reading by distant family members most probably in good standing in the Catholic Church, my answer that the book was about how the Christian church and its god was a spectacular fraud, derived from older mythology, yet perverted to be especially totalitarian, murderous, and especially misogynistic, would both fall a little short of a proper explanation, and also make me a good candidate for getting my invitation lost on the next go-round. (I kept my book in my bag and managed to deal in small-talk not to terribly badly, with the help of adult beverages and the useful gambit of talking to people about their children.)

But I would not have been too far from right in describing the book that way--and Walker does, in well-researched detail, pile up the sins of the Christian Church by demonstrating the many ways in which it "borrows" from other cultures. (It is a patchwork that openly borrows from Zoroastrianism, the Near Eastern Baal-worship, from the cults of Attis and so on. Persons familiar with her very excellent reference book, The Women's Encyclopedia of Myths And Secrets, which I also highly recommend, will feel themselves on familiar ground. Although, Judaism, from which it is most particularly derived, has derivations from Egyptian and Babylonian mythology, which also crop up in the Christian mythos. And since Islam is derived in part from the Tanakh and Christianity--and also Persian myth to some degree--it's one crazy derivative thing. Whoever said there's nothing new under the sun was spot-on when it comes to religion.)

This book is an excellent take-down of Christianity. There are parts of it I have an issue with--the Inquisition and its numbers, specifically. If we have ascertained that the Church had its share of pious liars, it should present no wonder to us that, depending upon the source one uses, one gets spectacularly different numbers regarding the body count of the Inquisition. As a person who really did look into pagan and magickal traditions on my way to unbelief, the figure of nine million heretics is sometimes used (which might have included the Cathars, the Jews destroyed by the blood-libel, and I don't know who-all else.) Walker gives some figures, but I neither believe nor disbelieve them. The point isn't made by exactly how many people were tortured, or how many were burned or killed via other means. That it was done at all, and that those methods were as good as a textbook for repressive regimes is what is especially repellent. With the disclaimer that people carried out unspeakable acts against their fellow human beings in the name of God and thought these things were good--that, too, is an horrific point that doesn't exactly need a quantitative point to be qualitatively despicable.

I would recommend this book for people who aren't sure how to close the door on organized religion. It will do a number on your ability to sympathize with a history that is mendacious at best, and at worst, is catastrophic in its capacity to do wrong. I think this book especially might hold meaning for feminists, but the essential message, that religion is designed by people to restrict knowledge, freedom, and to create "others" who need to be treated as subhuman (women) or destroyed (heretic and freethinkers) is accessible to anyone.

I pretty strongly recommend it.


(* Atheist and political reviews will still be posted under Strangely Blogged.)

Stross, Mieville, etc, you know the sort of reviews I used to do here?

Well, now I'm doing them over here. So if you want some ideas about some good summer reading, here's the link to it:

Answer to a Long, Hot Summer? Read Something Chilling!

Review: Phllip Pullman's "The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ"

This is a very simple story with parts that should be very familiar to people who were raised in the Christian tradition, but there is a very meaningful twist that highlights the duality of the story of the hero of The New Testament; Philip Pullman tackles that duality by envisioning the character we've come to know as Jesus Christ, as twins. We have the straight-forward but sometimes impulsive man, Jesus, and his weaker, but somewhat more complicated brother, Christ.

For those familiar with the story of the Son of God, or the Son of Man, we are prepared for the idea of duality. The man Jesus was born of Mary, and was the son of a carpenter. He lived among fishermen in Galilee. He preached a reform version of the Book of the Law, and was kind to even tax collectors, prostitutes, and foreigners. But there is also the other story, laid over the human life-story of our supposed hero--the myth that became "Jesus Christ". A Messiah? A deity in human form? A miracle worker? An improbable mythical "Logos" who preceded time and would rule in the hereafter?

What Pullman subtly does in this simply but persuasively written biblically-inspired fable, is suggest how such myths might come to be, inspired in part by both good intentions, and even bad ones. He presents a likable enough Jesus, who often does say very good things, but also shows how his words are used against him and how they could be used to create a church that is oppressive and corrupt.

I like Pullman's tale a good deal, and find especially touching what I think of as "the Atheist Sermon" Jesus delivers when he is quite alone near the end. I would not doubt that religious people might find this work a bit subversive, but that is all the more reason why it's a good read--it makes one think, and it aligns with the things that I found were actually useful in the faith of my fathers, even if I didn't keep that faith, myself. I recommend it.

Dan Brown's "The Lost Symbol" sells 1 million copies--I get two for my birthday.

This is one of the things that happens when one is a known bibliophile--one gets multiple copies of books as gifts. Although I was glad to get my "duplicate" copy today, because the one I had on mail-order hasn't come yet. And this one I'll probably find easier to review than Stenger. I was totally planning on sharing something about Quantum Gods, but just don't feel qualified to comment. It is a solid annihilation of "woo" in favor of science. But it's probably a bit "heavy" for people who like the sort of easy answers "woo" provides, anyway.

So out of the one million copies, a handful might be duplicate copies for hardcore bibliophiles with September birthdays. However, I totally have a couple people at work I could give my extra copy to.

It's a book much easier to find a home for than my extra copies of Penrose's Road to Reality, which does look smart next to the twin copies of Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach that were the result of my husband and my libraries co-mingling at our moving in together--lots of duplicate Sagan and Stephen King, too. Also three copies of Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet in two languages. (I really have to figure out a way of paring them down--a donation to a thrift store or library book drive? They are beginning to crowd me out of house and home. As it is I can't squeeze in another bookshelf.)

So I've started it--it's sitting on the bathroom vanity and will probably endure a long reading session in a hot bubble bath. That being how I roll. Which could mean a review by the end of next week.

Postscript--the book mentions that Washington laid the cornerstone of the Capitol building on September 18th 1793, which, being my birthday less nearly two hundred years kind of stood out. I don't know if that means I have an auspicious horoscope, but since I don't believe in horscopes, that's a weird thing to wonder about. But I did momentarily, and so, I'll share that thought.

Inglourious Basterds--WWII through a lens darkly.

Now, of course, I have posted that I really don't approve of torture and so on, but what the hell--this movie has the odd person tortured or disfigured. But then again--

These are Nazis. And this movie? Well, this movie kills fascists. And in this movie, there is also another movie that kills fascists. This is a movie about WWII movies which are about killing fascists. And it is also about revenge, and how stories, such as in cinema, act as a catharsis to explore and safely experience what we historically, and in real life--don't, really.

Got it?

Meh. Inglourious Basterds is, I think, still enjoyable even if you don't try to peel back all the layers of real vs. fictional, from the beginning when the movie opens with "once upon a time..." to the kind of marquis-logo that introduces "The Bear Jew" or the recurring images where scenes seem to be recapitulating scenes from old movies--there's a scene in a cafe where the rather awesome Melanie Laurent is sitting at a table and her face is juxtaposed with the face of Garbo on a cinema poster just outside the cafe window. There is another scene where she is posed just gazing out of a circular window, which recalls another movie--even if you can't recall the scene or the name.

This movie is, in a way, a palimpsest of WWII references in cinema. The character, Aldo Raine--why, that name is similar to war-picture actor Aldo Ray. Brad Pitt, in acting out this character of "Aldo the Apache", plays his "Yank" southern accent broadly. There are the slap-dash recruits for a dangerous mission--the Basterds. There is a German "Sgt York" in the form of Fred Zoller (Daniel Bruhl) who is not merely a war hero in the sense of a good soldier, but also a celebrity in that Josef Goebbels has made him the star of a propaganda film of his own exploits--

And his not-exactly love interest is Laurent's Shoshanna Dreyfus--a Jewish woman who escaped the Nazis once, in the form of the wonderfully evil Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz--who waltzed away with the movie, he was so good) who plans her revenge via celluloid against the Nazis--

This movie has layers of motivations, and some violence, and there are lots of subtitles because I think better than half of it is in French or German. But it is damn entertaining, because let's face it--we hate Nazis. We're supposed to. And serious though the scenes may be, humor is injected and appreciated.

It's hard to describe, ultimately, but good. I recommend it.

G.I.Joe: The Rise Of Cobra

I was pleasantly surprised. Although the preview kind of represented this movie as being about G.I.Joes in some kind of souped-up suit and emphasized the technology and explosions--the truth is this movie actually did owe a lot to the comic books and the cartoom series I grew up with.

Not that I had G.I.Joe action figures myself. My brother did, though.

Anyway, it had a kind of plot, and some character development. I thought it might be a bit two-dimensional, but it really wasn't. For the kind of action movie that I go to see largely for the explosions and chase-scenes--well, yes, it delivered big-time on things getting obliterated in surround-sound, and for what it's worth, the "things getting busted up" scenes were every bit as good as, say, a Terminator flick, but there was a quality--let's call it story?

The story starts with the original McCullen arms dealer, who in a story-setting moment, explains that his family of arms dealers will run the wars of the future, right before being sealed into an iron mask. His descendant, played by Christopher Eccleston (a Doctor Who! being very villiany!) is an arms dealer with a really great nano-weapon, that is being transported by Duke (Tatum Channing) and Ripcord (Marlon Wayans, who is actually really funny and good in this. As in, I think another G.I. Joe movie with more Ripcord would be nice. His scenes with Scarlett--Rachel Nichols were pretty enjoyable.)

Anyway, as Duke and Ripcord and their military contingent are transporting the nanoweapon, they are set upon by a bunch of very bad guys,apparently led by the Baroness (Sienna Miller), who was one of my fovorite characters of the old cartoon (but had a kind of Eastern European accent back then) and is just another super hot and dangerous, black-clad, assassin-skillz chick with cool glasses, who happens to be Duke's ex-fiance. The transport team, but especially Duke and Ripcord, try to fight the baddies off, but it's the G.I.Joes team's intercession that really saves the day.

I'm going to stop right there--see the movie. Yes, the plot quirks do seem to be not merely foreshadowed, as telegraphed. See it!

Yes, it is about the toys, comics, cartoons you recall--and how cool is that? See it!

There is an underwater evil lair. There are backstories. It explains how "Cobra" came to be--and you'll also see gazillions of automobiles destroyed and even the Eiffel Tower gets smushed.

In other words, it really prepares you for G.I.Joe II: The Inevitable Sequel.

But I thought it was really fun. So see it.

It was a timely summer-style blockbuster action movie. My favorite kind.