It was 100° the day we arrived in San Francisco, the tail end of a heat wave, but it moderated quickly after that. Most days the temperature was in the seventies and it was in the forties at night, which was especially brisk the two nights we stayed in the cabin. It’s hard to be back in the hundreds again after a week of such a nice climate. It was 105° yesterday. iPhone users were reporting 108° but apparently that’s an anomaly caused by the location of the temperature sensor at the Medical Center.
I read Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn while on vacation. One of the best books I’ve read in a long time. The eponymous wife vanishes on her fifth wedding anniversary. The book is told in first person by the husband, who is the natural suspect in her obviously suspicious disappearance, and by the wife via diary entries dating back to the day they met. It’s hard to say much about the book without giving away its best secrets. Suffice to say that neither narrator is very reliable, though for quite different reasons, and the second half of the book takes everything you thought you knew from the first half and dumps it upside down. Very cleverly plotted and conceived. I was only about 95% satisfied with the conclusion, but it’s definitely a book worth checking out.
I’m 4/5 of the way through Amped by Daniel H. Wilson, the author of Robopocalypse, who has a doctorate in robotics. The premise is interesting. Scientists develop brain implants that rectify a number of medical disorders (epilepsy, for example), but which can also be used to improve cognitive thought. They make people smarter by fine tuning their brains. About half a million people have these implants when the book starts, and it’s obvious who they are because they have service shunts sticking out of their heads. One of the first signs of discontent among the general populace takes place in schools, where “amped” kids have an unfair advantage against “reggies”—regular people. Then the Supreme Court decides that, since the modification was voluntary, amped people don’t deserve special protection as a class, which means its okay to be prejudiced against them. Finally, the rules of contract law break down because the assumption that both parties are equally capable doesn’t apply. Amped people can’t enter into contracts, which nullifies employment, rental agreements, everything. Basically they become non-persons, almost overnight. All of this is very interesting, but Wilson throws in a subset of amped up people, a baker’s dozen who have a special Zenith chip that makes them almost superhuman. Analogous to The Thing or The Hulk, in a way—they can tap into these chips on demand. They were designed for the military, but they were too dangerous, so the owners are being hunted down, including the thirteenth, the son of the chip designer, who didn’t know he had this implant. The social aspects of the story are fascinating, because they derive from known history: prejudice, internment camps, even the Occupy movement, but the more personal story of the protagonist is less interesting and more than a tad confusing at times.
We’re in the midst of the summer TV doldrums, with only a few shows of interest each week. I was away when the finale of The Killing aired, so I only saw that on Monday. No one spoiled it for me. In fact, I didn’t see much discussion of it at all, not that I went looking. It’s interesting how they came up with a different resolution to the murder than the one from the Danish version, but it paralleled it in some ways. The series was okay, but I’m not sure I’ll be there if it returns.
We saw a preview for the new A&E series Longmire at the cineplex a few weeks ago and thought it looked interesting, so I set the DVR to record it. We just got around to seeing the first two episodes last night. It’s not bad. It has Katee Sackhoff (Battlestar Galactica—pictured above on The Big Bang Theory) as one of its stars, so there’s that. The main character is the sheriff of a small Wyoming town. His wife died (we don’t know how) a year ago, and he’s been moping around in the interim. Sackhoff plays one of his deputies. She was Philly homicide for five years, but we don’t yet know why she’s been exiled to this rural backwater. Longmire’s daughter is a lawyer who is currently sleeping with another deputy, one who just announced his plan to run against Longmire in the next election. The second episode featured a group of Mennonite teens on rumspringa, where they go out to experience the real world before deciding whether to remain with the community for the rest of their lives. Most other shows featuring rumspringa have the kids going somewhere exotic, like NY or LA. Imagine the different experience of “going wild” in Wyoming. The kids must wonder what all the fuss is about. What a depressing place to experience the real world.
Eureka is rolling along toward the series finale. Just three more episodes. Many loose ends are getting wrapped up. Carter and Allyson finally tied the knot, Fargo has his semi-virtualized girlfriend back. I wonder how they’re going to leave things at the end. Good to be back with Burn Notice. This season it’s all about Fiona, who is in prison, and Michael’s efforts to 1) see her and 2) liberate her. It seems to me that Jeffrey Donovan’s acting skills are deteriorating somewhat, especially when he’s supposed to express rage. Bruce Campbell is still great, though, and the character of Jesse has been promoted to the opening credits.
We watched a few movies while we were on vacation. The first was sort of an accident. The controls on the TV remote controls in the hotel were a little weird and I bought The Grey while we were watching the preview. It wasn’t a bad accident—I was sort of interested in the film anyway. It’s about a guy working for an oil drilling company (he watches for and, if necessary, shoots wolves) who is part of a crew whose plane goes down in the Arctic en route to Anchorage for some off time. It’s a little like Agatha Christie in the frozen north, by which I mean the wolves and the weather pick off the survivors one by one. One of the most interesting aspects of the movie is how it treats death and dying, from the reaction of those who witness someone expiring before their eyes, to the situations where people decide to give up on life because it’s too difficult or painful. It’s pretty gritty and intense at times (those wolves), and it ends on an ambiguous note that is only accentuated by a very brief post-credits clip. Apparently a lot of people were expecting this to be an action film based on the previews, with Liam Neeson going mano-a-mano with the wolves, but there’s not much of that. If I were in grade school I would classify it as man vs. the elements and man vs. himself more than man vs. the wolves.
Then we watched the French film Delicacy staring Amelie’s Audrey Tautou. Her husband dies early in the film and she buries herself in her work (at a company where it is never made clear what they do or what she does). Her (married) boss is enamored of her and makes a few inappropriate overtures, but the big surprise is that she falls for a big schlub of a guy. Her character is a little frustrating at times, with her on-again/off-again attitude toward this guy, but it’s a charming film with some nice moments, and how can you not be charmed by Tautou?
Finally, we watched Peace, Love and Misunderstanding starring Catherine Keener as a Type A woman whose husband (Kyle McLaughlin) announces he wants a divorce. She runs off to momma, who happens to be Jane Fonda, who happens to live in Woodstock, who, as it happens, she hasn’t seen or spoken to in 20 years, not since she got busted selling pot at Keener’s wedding. She has two kids in tow, a near-adult daughter and a 15-year-old son, neither of whom have met grandma before. Fonda is still a hippie, has a grow-op in her basement, and loves to tell stories about her behavior at the Woodstock concert. This is a fun film if you don’t think about it too hard or too long. Everyone’s problems are rectified very easily. 20 years of acrimony are simply released like a helium balloon (literally). Mom and the two kids all meet someone new shortly after arriving in Woodstock, which looks like a place still firmly rooted in the sixties. A smorgasbord of quirky characters, including a cameo by Rosanna Arquette. Fonda is a hoot, and the actress who plays the daughter (Elizabeth Olsen of the Olsen twins clan) is a good foil for Keener, whom she also resembles. It might have been a more interesting film if they’d taken some of the issues more seriously, but it was a good one to watch after a day touring wineries.
