Photo via Anton Diaz CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

 

It happened by accident to me. I came across one YouTube of him — I don’t remember which one — and then fell into another, and then into another. Now if I don’t stop myself, I’ll find myself falling into one Jacob-shaped hole after another, and then two hours later I remember what I was going to be doing. I even went to his Boston concert a couple of months ago, the first live concert I’d been to since Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue in 1975 in Toronto. (JC’s bond with his audience in the exact opposite of Dylan’s.)

 

Anyway, here’s the Intro Playlist:

 

This is an excellent one hour BBC documentary that I think gives a good overall view of why and how he’s special. It also will give you a sense of his genius-level multi-instrumentality, which the two songs below don’t highlight … although his guitar work in the next one is quietly astounding. (Hint: Always pay attention to his chord-work/harmonizing.)

 

Little Blue is a beautiful song from his new album. There’s an official video with him on multiple instruments (and Brandi Carlile!), but this version of him singing it with only his guitar and a small chorus I think is more affecting. By the way, the singers are simply fans who responded to his open invitation, not professionals. Also, in this version he turns them into a chorus by using hand gestures; that part is unrehearsed. (Leading his audiences in this way has become a signature part of his live concerts.)

 

Then there’s what I think is his magnum opus (so far): A version of a Bridge over Troubled Water. I’m not crazy about the original, but JC’s version of it I find exhilarating and moving. It’s purely vocal, with JC singing all the background parts. His 2-hour walkthrough of how he created it on his Mac makes you aware of the hundreds of  tiny decisions that went into it. And here’s a live version of it, with John Legend and Tori Kelly, that’s also astounding. JC is on a keyboard, called the harmonizer, he invented with Ben Bloomberg, an MIT Media Lab grad student, that turns what he’s singing into whatever keys he’s pressing. Also Tori’s runs were all written by JC, even though they sound like improvisations.

 

I hope you will long fall into your own Jacob shaped holes. And this is coming from someone who generally isn’t moved by music. (Some exceptions apply.)

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As some of you know, I have been a tireless advocate for the Oxford Apostrophe that adds an extra apostrophe after the final apostrophed word in a series. Failing that, the OA calls for the totally needless insertion of apostrophes.

I know you mocked me for it; I could hear you all snickering during my every quiet moment. But once again I was merely ahead of my time: 

Last night I watched a very bad John Wick wannabe movie, “24 Hours to Live“, mainly because it stars Ethan Hawke at his least poetic. Although the dialogue mainly consists of gunshots and last gasps, I had closed captioning on. Here are some screencaps:

I watched the entire thing again, and then sent it to Arizona for a recount, and this movie is 100% consistent in its embrace of the Oxford Apostrophe.

It’s happening, people. It’s happening.

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There are no spoilers in what follows because I couldn’t spoil Tenet if I tried.

I am a huge fan of Christopher Nolan. Several of his movies rank among my favorites, including Memento, Inception, and Interstellar. But I like and admire all of his movies for their ideas, technical virtuosity, music, and sometimes unnecessary cleverness.

But I’ve just watched Tenet for the second time and it’s a bad movie. Oh, sure, it’s got some good points, but it doesn’t make sense to anyone except Nolan, and it is not fun to watch. It’s as if he decided to really outdo himself this time, so he goes over the top via a path that leads up his own ass.

Remember The Prestige? It’s structured like a magic trick (sorry, illusion) with the “prestige” — the big payoff — at the end. Tenet has a couple of moments at the end that made me say “Oh, cool!” to myself. But that was followed by a “Wait. What?” I don’t see how they make any stinking sense.

I am sure they do to Nolan. Buthis is a prestige that only works for the magician. Which means it’s not a good trick. (Sorry, illusion.) In fact, there’s exposition at the end to explain the movie’s prestige, which is like a magician saying , “So, here’s why you should have been amazed at what I just did. “

Despite the staggering amount of exposition in the movie — so very much exposition — the initial premise introduced after the opening set piece has consequences that I cannot make sense of. The movie seems at times to operate under arbitrary but convenient rules.

What’s worse, the movie fails — In my opinion, d’uh — as a movie. While John David Washington is good in the lead role, there really isn’t much at stake for him. I mean, the entire world is under threat, but we’re given little reason to care about him personally. The only person we actually care about is one of the very few women in the movie, a damsel in distress. (Really.) She’s paired with a Russian oligarch (really) that Kenneth Branagh struggles to give even one dimension; it could not be more cartoony. I did develop an affection for Robert Pattinson’s role, even though his character is also terribly underdeveloped; he’s there to get things done so the movie can move ahead even though they’d be impossible in real life. Because of my No Spoilers policy, here’s a made-up example: If Washington’s character — called only “The Protagonist” for reasons that make me think I’m missing the entire point — needed an armed tank to show up in Times Square, Pattinson would say “Want any decals on that?”

Nolan had a cool idea for a movie with a science fiction premise: “Suppose X”. X is promising. But then he had to make up a plot in which to deploy his idea. The plot is cliched and results in completely arbitrary set pieces that could have been replaced with an infinite number of set pieces from other movies without having any effect on anything else in the movie. The bad guy could be smuggling a McGuffin through Mardi Gras, a climbing expedition in the Alps, or a White House briefing. And that plot and those set pieces are the bulk of the movie.

There are scenes and moments to like about Tenet because it is, after all, a Christopher Nolan movie. But I am not tempted to see it a third time, and am a little pissed off that I thought a second watching would help.

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SPOILER ALERT: I obviously don’t know how the season will end, but I am writing this knowing (or, more exactly, “knowing”) what happened in the first seven episodes. So there are spoilers below.

I have never ever even been close to predicting a season finale correctly. But does that stop me? Nah. Someday the script writers will learn to pay attention to how I say show will end the day before it ends and will use that to re-shoot the entire thing because they recognize the superiority of my sense of narrative, theme, and character. For example, did they listen to me when I said the only satisfying way to wrap up Leave it to Beaver would be for June to hire Eddie Haskel to take a hatchet to her husband Ward. Eddie was clearly a sociopath with father issues, and, come on, the family name was “Cleaver.” Talk about your heavy-handed foreshadowing! But would the writers listen? They never do.

Anyway, here’s definitely how Season 3 wraps up tomorrow night. I am certain that I’m getting this one right. 100%. Here goes:

We’ve been watching two simulations, one by Rehoboam the other by Solomon. Rehoboam’s is schizophrenic, because Serac is actually the crazy one, not his brother.

Rehoboam is based around the idea that with enough data, you can predict everything humans will do. Solomon was built on Serac’s brother’s belief that humans ultimately are more unpredictable than that. That’s why you need to gather as many of the “outliers” as you can and use them as a living AI farm. Each of the outliers entombed in the building with Solomon is processing a different world simulation, based not just on the data that Delos has provided from WestWorld but also on the outlier’s own character, personal experience, models, etc. Unless you do this, you end up with a simulation (Rehoboam’s) that is too regular and orderly.

Part of the Big Reveal: Caleb finds his own body in one of the pods in Solomon’s warehouse. His simulation (i.e., the simulation his body is having in conjunction with Solomon) is the most successful one.

Ok, that’s as far as I’ve gotten, except that I find myself hoping that Dolores wins, much as I love Thandie Newton. I’m not at all sure I’m supposed to be that sympathetic to Dolores given that she’s a manipulative, cold-blooded mass murderer. I may be influenced by how fantastically Rachel Evan Wood acts an amazingly complex and difficult role.

The one thing I’m certain of throughout all of this is, that Monday morning I’m going to be reading a bunch of recaps to find out what actually happened.

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I spend a lot of time listening to podcasts – maybe a little less than back in Normal Times when I was commuting 1.5-2.0 hours a day, but if I’m putterin’, I’m pod-listenin’.

I find it wearying to envelope myself in coronavirus or political podcasts these days. I’m not sure why. Maybe you have some ideas. In any case, I’ve been turning to comedy more and more.

Here’s a list, in alphabetical order. I am not necessarily proud of any of these.

• Alchemy This. Kevin Pollack – yes, that Kevin Pollack – has assembled a troupe of improvisers who do three scenes in each hour. At their best, they find an absurd narrative coherence that is mindblowing and reminiscent of Firesign Theatre’s scripted pieces. At their worst, I can’t make sense of the flow of the scene – too many of their voices sound the same to me – but still find the moments of it funny.
• Behind the Bastards. Each episode tells the story of some despicable person, often someone I have never heard of. It’s not flatout comedy, but the tone is comedic. Often excellent.
• The Dollop. Much like Behind the Bastards, but not focused purely on bastards. One of the two comedians who put it together reads an essay about some odd incident in history while the other reacts while hearing it for the first time. Ranges from hilarious to never quite getting up to comedic speed. And it’s entirely possible that the comic style is not exactly to your taste. It’s not exactly to mine.
• Good One. This is one of my favorites. Each episode interviews a comedian for an hour about one single joke of theirs. The interviewer is a total comedy nerd, and the interviews can be very revealing about the comic process.
• How did this get made? Usually recorded live at a theatre, three funny people riff about some terrible movie. Funny bad taste all around.
• Improv4Humans. Matt Besser’s improv troupe improvs scenes, much like Alchemy This. I personally find it less consistent, but it came be very good. For example, the archival show with Zach Woods, recently re-released, has some very funny stuff on it.
• Mike and Tom Eat Snacks. This ended a couple of years ago, but its hundred episodes of Michael Ian Black and Tom Cavanagh are still available. The two of them, unscripted, review snack foods, a timeless topic. (Spoiler: The snack reviews are just a pretense.)
• Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me. As a tote-bag carrying NPR supporter (and once time serial All Things Considered commentator), this one is obvious. It’s also consistently funny.
• WTF. Marc Maron’s podcast used to focus on comedians but has expanded wildly. Which is good, because he is an excellent interviewer. The recent interview with Dan Ackroyd, for example, is great. It turns out that the real Dan Ackroyd is like a Dan Ackroyd character.

I also listen to many other podcasts that don’t talk about current events but are not comedic. Some are fantastic. But it’s comedy tonight!

What would you add to this list?

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Someone on Twitter asked for movie titles with one letter removed that changes the movie altogether. Fun! And I’d link to the tweet but I’ve only been on Twitter since near its beginning so of course I don’t know how to go back from liked comments to the original. (If you know who came up with this movie challenge, please put in a comment to this post. Thanks.)

Anyway, here are mine:

• Gentlemen Refer Blondes
• Oceans Elven
• Inglorious Basters
• Lose Encounters of the Third Kind
• West Side Tory
• The Ride of Frankenstein
• The Plane of the Apes
• One with the Wind
• Ear Window
• The Evil Dad. Sequel: The Walking Dad.
• And, for the age of social distancing: The Apartmen

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SPOILER ALERT: I’m writing this hours before the final episode and will spoil prior episodes.

Based on the end of Episode 5 of Season 8 — the penultimate episode — it sure looks like Arya is on her way to kill Dany. But that’d be a cop out. I hope GoT goes all Red Weddingon us.

The GoT is a pacifist work intent on reminding us of the cost of war. War is unpredictable at both its micro level — even obvious heroes can be killed without warning — and macro level.

At the macro level, Dany certainly seems to have lost her claim to be a virtuous ruler. But so what? GoT should not end based on what will make its audience feel good.

Dany should become the ruler of Westeros. That will require killing Jon since he’s the legit heir to the throne. After that, the script writers will do the old Towering Infernothing of deciding who lives and who dies — for God’s sake, why did they have to kill Fred Astaire? — and who makes it. If I had to guess, I’d say Sansa dies, Tyrion survives in some humiliating role, and Arya lives on as an enemy. Because GoT should not fully resolve … which, given GRRM’s pace, it looks like it never will.

[Confidence level: 12%]

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Here’s a spoiler based on nothing. Please note that I’m never right.

The Man in Black (Ed Harris) wil be revealed to be a robot. He was created by the the dead co-founder for some reason, like to be the chaos principle that will drive the genetic algorithms, or some other such sciencey sounding thing. (This would invert the Jurassic Park idea in the assumption that we can control nature is disproven. In WestWorld, according to my made-up spoiler, the park would have built in a principle of chaos.)

So, that’s settled.

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I of course don’t know anything that you don’t about Game of Thrones. In fact, I know considerably less since I can’t keep any of the characters or backstory straight. Also, I have not read the books. And when there’s exposition explaining something like exactly why one of the guys with a scraggly beard is angry at the red-head who likes to take off her top, I check my email, see what’s up at DailyKos, and maybe get myself some Fritos.

Nevertheless, with all of the confidence of an ignorant man, I am quite certain of how it ends:

Blondie-with-Dragons mounts the Pointy Throne, frees the slaves and reforms Obamacare, and then dies, at which point the handsome dwarfy guy is given a boost and becomes the tiny perfect mayor of all of West Oreos.

Come back in a couple of years and be amaaaazed!

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In 1974, the prestigious scholarly journal TV Guide published my original research that suggested that the inspector in Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment was modeled on Socrates. I’m still pretty sure that’s right, and an actual scholarly article came out a few years later making the same case, by people who actually read Russian ‘n’ stuff.

Around the time that I came up with this hypothesis, the creators of the show Columbo had acknowledged that their main character was also modeled on Socrates. I put one and one together and …

Click on the image to go to a scan of that 1974 article.

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