frost-jacking noun [U] UK /ˈfrɒstdʒæk.ɪŋ/ US /ˈfrɑːstdʒæk.ɪŋ/ the act of stealing a car that has been left unattended with the engine running to defrost it in very cold weather Drivers have been issued a warning after three cars were stolen during a “frost-jacking” spree in Fife on Friday. The thefts occurred between 8am and 8.50am …
“Introducing characters like Gorilla Grodd on DC Crime would help familiarize audiences with these figures before they potentially receive an expanded role in another project. Perhaps each season could focus on a different villain, highlighting their nefarious actions.” — Chris Agar, comicbook.com, 16 Nov. 2025
Did you know?
If you need a fancy word to describe someone who’s up to no good, nefarious has got you (and them) covered. It’s also handy for characterizing the “no good” such a dastardly devil gets up to, as in “a nefarious business/plot/deed.” Nefarious is most often used for someone or something that is flagrantly wicked or corrupt—it’s more applicable to the mustache-twirling supervillain than the morally gray antihero. In other words, there’s no question that a nefarious scheme, or schemer, is not right. Etymologically, this makes perfect sense: nefarious can be traced back to the Latin noun nefas, meaning “crime,” which in turn combines ne- (“not”) and fas, meaning “right” or “divine law.” It is one of very few English words with this root, accompanied only by the likes of nefariousness and the thoroughly obscure nefast (“wicked”).
Seared baby bok choi with potatoes and pre-cooked tofu made a nice lunch. (I've learned that pressing and then air frying slabs of tofu really creates a nice chewy texture).
Used hatch chili skins that i'd shoved in the freezer, ground up two very old dried-out okra, and coriander stems and seeds to make a broth. That plus left-over black beans from the freezer and some left over tomato paste made a very satisfying soup. House smelled lovely.
Realized we still had frozen Wellington from Thanksgiving, so not making that today. Caramelized onions and made quasi-duxelles from the fresh mushrooms and shoved in freezer for some other time.
Shallots and beet greens, first cooking the stems and shallots down, then adding the greens. Served over toast that i used to wipe up the caramelized onion pan with slivers of a nice sharp cheese (Sartori Merlot BellaVitano). Bliss.
Happy that that is net-less stuff in freezer, plus got fresh green things eaten or fixed before they went too sad.
I need to eat down the freezer so that when Christine has surgery on Jan 13, we can have comfort food for her in the fridge.
I carefully watched for a low stress time to give Christine more stress: i shared with her some observations about the things listed for her surgery appointment that point to some recovery aspects i knew she would find.... hard. She's coping OK. I am pretty sure the surgeon's description of recovered state was interpreted by Christine to apply to immediately post surgery, so it was a surprise. What is stressing me is the need to go to Ohio and the uncertainty about the recovery needs. I have a hard time believing that we could be scheduling the week of MLK day.
Today both Marlowe and Bruno did inappropriate urination. That stressed Christine lots. I got a laundry line set up in the back porch, under the ceiling fan, so hopefully this will ease some of the appliance demands.
It’s the liminal days. I’m catching up on holiday correspondence and visits, restarting non-holiday things that got dropped (e.g. going to the gym), and eating a lot of delicious leftovers and improvised meals.
Sang and I watched Carol, and keep meaning to rewatch The Lion in Winter but also keep diverting or downgrading, twice to sample the gay Hallmark Christmas movies (The HolidaySitter and Friends and Family Christmas so far), which are better than anticipated.
I’m working on a fic and a risograph print (they are not related to each other). There are many other things– piano, getting more flexible, drawing– that I’d like to practice steadily, but haven’t yet found where to work them in. I also browse rescue dogs on the internet.
I’m reading Philip Pullman’s The Rose Field and deeply happy that it’s 650 pages long so I get to read it for a long time. Conversely, all my favorite books of 2025 are picture books.
2025 has been a lot. My father died in February and was buried in a military cemetery; we also held a public memorial service for him in June. I retired from the university in September. Sang and I traveled to Japan for several weeks after that. My youngest aunt, energetic and vivacious as always in June, was taken down by pancreatic cancer and died on Thanksgiving. A less eventful 2026 would be just fine. I could find a lot of joys in homebody life with outdoor walks.
The one problem I have with Roxanne is, alas, its central premise: that its protagonist, Charlie “C.D.” Bales (Steve Martin) is tragically undesirable because of his unusually long nose. C.D. is a pillar of the community with a steady and useful job, is well-read and cultured, empathetic and funny, kind to all, loved by his many friends and neighbors, and he owns a house. A nice one! In a town where the property values are clearly outrageous! That he is undatable because of his nose stretches credulity, not only back in 1987, when this film was made, but especially here in 2025, where a single, available, gainfully-employed and psychologically-undamaged middle-aged man would be snatched right off the sidewalk in front of his absolutely ridiculously cozy and well-appointed home. You can’t tell me otherwise. He’s the whole package. With a little extra!
Be that as it may, we are asked to accept that this updating of Cyrano de Bergerac is not lying to us, and that C.D., despite all this other advantages, is admired but lonely. This being the 1980s, not the 1640s when the original tale was set, we are told that C.D. has a serious, possibly deadly, allergic reaction to anesthesia, a fact which has put him into a coma before. This is great for patching up an obvious plot hole, but does mean it must suck for him to have regular dental care. C.D. is trapped with his nose, and seems resigned to it and tries to live with it with some amount of acceptance… unless someone tries to use it to make fun of him.
Then! Roxanne! For every Cyrano must have a Roxanne, even if the number of “n”s in her name is variable. This Roxane is Roxanne Kowalski, an astronomer who has come to C.D.’s ski town of Nelson (and actually shot in a ski town called Nelson, but in Canada, not the USA, where this film takes place). She’s in town for the clear skies to help her locate a comet. C.D. takes a shine to her, not only because she looks like Daryl Hannah, but because she’s smart, and is the only person in town besides him to traffic in sarcasm. The townsfolk of Nelson are lovely, but wit and wordplay are not exactly their thing.
Now arrives Chris (Rick Rossovich), the deeply hunky and handsome professional firefighter that Fire Chief C.D. brings into town to help train his hapless volunteer crew. Chris and Roxanne spy each other from across a crowded bar, she smiles and he… goes to hurl in the bathroom, because the idea of talking to women gives him a panic attack. Roxanne confesses her liking of Chris to C.D., who is crushed but wants her to be happy, intercedes on her behalf with Chris and, as the strictures of this tale require, starts feeding Chris the words that will woo Roxanne. Complications ensue, as they would.
I take it back, I have another problem with Roxanne, although this is with the tale of Cyrano in general, and a persistent feature across its many tellings. Which is that Roxanne, especially in this telling, where she is both a scientist and someone with social aptitude, would not be able to parse out the fact that Chris, who is a nice guy but mostly has well-marbled beef between his ears, is not the author of the letters and speeches that capture her sapiosexual heart. I mean, okay, I get it, horniness is a hell of a drug, but even so. The disconnect between Chris and “his” letters is a lot.
I’m willing to go with it because it means we get Steve Martin’s performance, which offers up a masterclass in having one’s heart break with a smile, and showing grace (up to a point) with people who offer none themselves. One of the highlights of the film, early-ish on, is when a boor in a bar calls C.D. “Big Nose.” Rather than take the bait, C.D. shows him up by offering a stack of much wittier insults the man could have offered. It takes skill, and guts, to humiliate someone by offering him all the better ways he could have humiliated you, and to do it in a whole bar full of people. It also takes skill to write the scene in a way that works. Martin, as the screenwriter, pulls it off.
This was the part of Martin’s career where he was doing smarter-than-average guys who held back heartbreak with melancholy humor. As a writer he’d follow up Roxanne a couple of years later with LA Story, another favorite of mine, where he played a similar character, albeit with a smaller nose, in a film with a somewhat more farcical tone. This is actually my favorite part of his career, when he became a somewhat improbably romantic leading man, and while it wouldn’t last, I enjoyed it while it did. I wasn’t the only one, as Martin found himself with a WGA award for Roxanne, in the category of adapted screenplay (I could have sworn he was also nominated for an Oscar for this script, and even wrote that down before doublechecking. He was robbed!).
The film centers on the character of C.D., and secondarily on the love triangle between him, Roxanne and Chris, but this film is also an ensemble film, and this ensemble nature is the one thing that I think elevates it, and gives the film lots of opportunities for grace notes and filling in of character. I’m telling you here that C.D. is well-loved by friends and neighbors, but the film simply shows it, unspooling fun little scenes that give you those details. This is another important point about C.D.’s character: He may be the only practitioner of sarcasm in Nelson, but he’s not cruel to, or bitter at, the rest of the town, which does not share his enthusiasm or facility for it. He is a good person, and worthy of love.
(And as the two other legs of the romantic triangle, Hannah and Rossovich are… fine! Hannah gets good lines and delivers them well. You can believe C.D. appreciates Roxanne’s whole package of person, not just the parts that look like a supermodel. Rossovich is also convincing as a lunk who is very good at his job and very bad at peopling. It’s important to note that Chris isn’t stupid — he knows what he knows and knows it well. One of the things he knows is that he’s not weapons-grade intelligent, like C.D. and Roxanne are. It’s also pretty clear he wouldn’t want to be.)
The original Cyrano de Bergerac (spoiler) does not exactly end on a happy note. Martin knows, as a writer and an actor, that his version is meant to be a romantic comedy, and so (spoiler) his version deviates from the original in significant ways. Martin is neither the first nor last filmmaker to have his adaptation swerve for the dictates of the market. He does it in a way that makes sense for the story he tells, and, importantly, gives agency for the resolution of the story to the right person. It ends well, even if Edmond Rostand, who wrote the original, might have notes.
For those who don’t know, Cyrano de Bergerac was an actual person, a noted soldier, raconteur and writer, who wrote some of the earliest work that could be identified as science fictional, including L’Autre Monde: ou les États et Empires de la Lune, published after his death. He did have a cousin Roxane, who married a Baron Christian of Neuvillette. There was no actual romantic triangle between the three of them. He did by all reports have a large nose, although probably not so large as the one attributed to him by both Rostand and Martin. It was unlikely that Cyrano’s nose kept him unavailable for amorous encounters; he was associated with noted libertines of his time.
Getting slightly more done today. Did exercises - minimal. Made up the bed (well do that every day). Made breakfast and lunch. Cleaned the air fryer - it has a self-cleaning mechanism. Refilled the humidifier. And finished my water color - finally, knitted a lop-sided scarf, and edited a bit more of my work in progress, which may never see the light of day.
Also binged a bunch of Angel S3 and Buffy S6 episodes. I'm remembering why I gave up on Angel S3 now - oh dear god, it has some really bad episodes. Worse than S1, and that's saying something. Buffy S6 is the better of the two seasons, and I really love the beginning of this seasons - I'd forgotten how much. I find it highly relatable. It's also oddly realistic, the most realistic of all the seasons actually - in how it is shot and written.
That said, Angel S3 does have some good episodes in the mix - most of the good ones center on Angel, Cordelia or Wes. Carpe Diam - Angel S3 Episode 3 or 4, about Marcus, the old guy in the retirement home who is using a spell to jump into young male bodies, until he burns through them. It reminded me a little of Lonely Hearts, S1. ( Read more... )
They handle Buffy/Angel reunion oddly? ( Read more... )
Also they appear to be paralleling or comparing Cordy holding onto to her visions, to Angel holding onto being a vampire with a soul. Both are given at different points in the series - the opportunity to lose this gift. Both refuse, and see it as the only way they can be champions or chosen. It's not really a selfless act. Or the writers are questioning it.
The most frustrating thing in Buffy S6, actually is what makes it work the best - which is her friends inability or unwillingness to help her. I think she asked Angel for help - and he turned her down. ( Read more... )
Ah, it's 5:16pm and dark. So off to make dinner. I think.
At some point after I met scrottie, he showed me his potato ricer and the special rolling pin he has for making lefse, that Norwegian specialty food. I'd heard a bit about lefse from another friend of mine with Norwegian heritage, but really didn't know much more than all that. Fast forward, and just about every year there's a period of eager anticipation for the arrival of a special package from his mother and sister, containing lefse.
Minneapolis seems to be in the lull before a storm. Our weather prediction includes, "WINTER STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM NOON TODAY TO 9 AM CST MONDAY" (emphasis in the original, scroll down to bottom). I see snow falling outside my bedroom window right now. That's good. The forecast was rain first, followed by snow, which would cause terrible ice conditions on sidewalks and roads for everyone. Only-snow is much better for everyone. It's still 2.5 hours until that noon arrival time.
I'm currently in between shifts of work today. Most people at the university have 1.5 weeks away from work. I, however, work on an "essential" team, so we have a skeleton crew during that time. We were actually and truly closed only on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year's Day. I volunteered for shifts on Friday, Saturday, and today. If nobody volunteers, then somebody gets told to work, which is unpleasant stuff for the holidays, so... I volunteered on several shifts that were still empty.
I'm supposed to do an annual review of my Bingo 2025 card. I planned on it. I'm not sure that's going to happen. The thing about this job, where I'm constantly asked questions for which I don't know answers but have to find them on short notice, is that I don't have mental bandwidth to spare for other stuff after the work day has ended. I haven't done my annual tax review in a few years, for instance. It requires more thinking that my tired brain wants to avoid in favor of not-thinking to recover stamina.
I'll still do a Bingo 2026 card, though. I find it very useful to avoid stressful topics for a year. I'll continue that practice. Maybe I'll write more on that idea tomorrow.
Shoresy is a Canadian comedy show about an ice hockey team, currently available to stream on ITVX. It is very crude (swearing, sex & toilet humour) and very funny, and it loves hockey. The episodes are short, around 20 minutes, and the seasons only have six of them, so it's relatively fast watching.
(ITVX insists on checking in with me at the start of each episode that I really want to watch "very strong language and adult humour". This made it great for watching in bed because if I fell asleep, it wouldn't keep playing past the end of the current episode.)
Anyway, despite the aforementioned crudity, it is often weirdly wholesome. There's a lot of little repeated catchphrases, I think maybe the show's own meta-commentary on how much of hockey discussion is cliché-ridden, but like Terry Pratchett wrote, sometimes things become clichés because they are true. Hockey brings people together. Hockey players give back. By the community, for the community. Go till you can't go no more. Episode 3.6 in particular manages to capture how a high-stakes hockey game feels, and is probably my favourite of the entire four seasons.
So anyway, this weird crude funny show got past my usual reluctance to watch TV on my own, and even to rewatch some of my favourite parts. I gather season 5 started showing in Canada on 25 December, but no idea if it too will come to ITVX.
(Trivia point: the executive producer of Heated Rivalry is Jacob Tierney, who also produced Shoresy. I didn't realise this until I'd started watching, but ok, this guy loves ice hockey, just like Rachel Reid does, no wonder he chose to adapt her books.)
“If you’ve got a yen for succulent, right-off-the-boat Maine sea scallops, now is the time to get them.” — Stephen Rappaport, The Bangor Daily News, 26 Mar. 2025
Did you know?
Although yen suggests no more than a strong desire these days (as in “a yen for a beach vacation”), at one time someone with a yen was in deep trouble: the first meaning of yen, used in the late 19th century, was an intense craving for opium. The word comes from yīn-yáhn, a combination of yīn, meaning “opium,” and yáhn, “craving,” in the Chinese language used in the province of Guangdong. In English, the Chinese syllables were translated as yen-yen, and eventually shortened to yen.
1. Post office, to mail myself a ream of paper and a big stack of outdated calendars (Priority box so I don't have to lug everything all over Portland), and to buy a big stack of stamps for a big pile of overdue holiday cards
2. University Bookstore for more red correcting pens (Pilot V-Ball Extra Fine, they work so well for me as a left-handed person).
3. Artist and Craftsman Supply, to replace two pens that are out of ink and hopefully find a good small notebook for sketch journaling.
4. REI, for replacement lightweight gloves and a replacement foam accordion seatpad (Z-rest, if you know what those are).
5. Uwajimaya to hunt for a specific type of Thai Tea.
6. Pacific Fabrics to hunt for some dress and trouser fabric, and to just generally nose around.
- How it went:
1. Got things shipped off fine! But then, the Postmaster said they have a grand total of 6 stamps left for sale, 5 of which are menorahs for Hanukkah. I've never been to the post office after they've completely run out of stamps before, I was amazed and said okay, never mind for now, save those stamps for someone else who might really need them. So the Stamp Quest must continue.
2. U Bookstore only had 4 red pens left, so I had to supplement with some purple ones, I'm sure my students will prefer the purple anyway. Also, I think they re-re-arranged, weren't the art and office supplies upstairs for a while? And now they're back downstairs? That whole section is still pretty depauperate compared to what it was historically, but at least it still exists.
3. Artist and Craftsman Supply delivered on all accounts, hooray! Love that place. I would like to give it all my money, every time.
4. The glove display at REI was a little overwhelming because it's winter and everyone wants all the giant long mittens for all the skiing. But I eventually figured out where they had the same Smartwool gloves as I'd gotten before, and I was able to compare them against something closely related with more wind-blocking capability, which let me conclude that out of the entire massive mitten and glove array, the ones I had were the ones I wanted still. So now the clock will start ticking again on an update to the palms and fingers.
No z-rest seat pads, anywhere. I did find some mostly nylon men's MTB shorts on sale, though, and I somehow managed to resist the urge to buy myself a Micro HydroFlask, even though I keep wanting something of that size to transport booze half and half for coffee. I didn't think it, YOU thought it.
I'll probably order both items once I am back in New York. I at least managed to avoid SOME packaging via all of today's errands. Let's just point out that if I'd ordered a ream of paper, it would have come packaged inside of a box, and that box would have been padded with even more paper, which is ridiculous. At least thanks to the post office trip, I could pad the paper with a stack of calendars.
5. Uwajimaya has less interesting selection than our local Asian grocery store in Albany, NY. So no, no sign of the tea I'm after. I'll probably wind up ordering it online, too (ChaTraMue Brand Extra Gold Original). I did buy some sriracha and cholula, because I managed to forget that my mom doesn't believe in hot pepper sauces, for unknown reasons.
6. Pacific Fabrics was a great way to cap things off. It's in SoDo (that's South of Downtown Seattle to the rest of you), upstairs from Pacific Iron and Metal, naturally (LOL). I got off the light rail and discovered that lo, there's a 'bertos in SoDo, wow. Who doesn't love cheap Mexican food? From the exterior of the building you'd never expect the bright and bustling space full of fabric inside. It gave off Original REI vibes (that's the REI before they built the flagship store, the one that had the REI Smell). LOVE it.
I wound up buying some fabrics that I may come to regret, with ambitions to make a dress and also some trousers from them. The fabrics are a linen/rayon blend and the people working there warned me the fabric will want to fray so I will need to plan accordingly. But they are extremely pretty and it's really hard to feel the fabrics when shopping online, so I went for it.
While I was there I was also glad to have a chance to feel the ripstop they had in stock. I didn't buy any, because it was the wrong color, but now I'm more confident about some upcoming ripstop shopping (pack and pannier covers). And otherwise, it's just really nice to know that anytime I'm back in Seattle there's a good fabric store that's worth the trek and right near a light rail stop to boot.
I think I wound up walking around 5-6 miles altogether, along with various transiting, which is so much more than I regularly walk in New York, because most of the time in NY I'm on my bike if I'm trying to go somewhere. This would have been a terrible expedition to carry out by bike, however, most especially because it looks like they're ripping up Eastlake now to add more streetcar tracks. Oh, I'm wrong, they're just putting in more Fancy Bus, which is probably just as well. Based on our experiences with the 70 last fall, the Fancy Bus is very much needed to accommodate the throngs of people wanting to take that line.
I have some entertaining photos to share, too, but that will have to be a separate post.
Continuing with my comfort re-watch of Buffy and Angel, and for some reason or other, I don't feel compelled to watch anything else. Outside of a movie here and there. Nothing else is appealing to me at the moment, including Stranger Things, which recently dropped the first part of its' fifth and final season. I think I'm waiting for the second part to drop? Also trying to remember what happened previously.
Mother: Should I watch Stranger Things? Me: No, I'd not recommend it - think Steven King and Steven Spielberg, circa 1980s. Mother: What's it about? Me: It's about a bunch of folks in a small New England town who stumble upon a porthole to a hell dimension, which brings in various demonic monsters - one captures a small boy. It's sci-horror. Very similar to the stuff Steven King and Steven Spielberg did in the 1980s. Mother: Ugh. Really? Say no more, I'll pass. Me: Told you.
I don't recommend television shows, books, or films to folks that I know won't like them. For example? If someone likes hyper-realistic dramas, with top-notch diverse casts, and hates fantasy and horror, I'm not going to recommend Buffy the Vampire Slayer to them, the Wire yes, Buffy no.
Why torture myself and them unnecessarily? I'm not that masochistic. Much easier to say - no you won't like it - it's a fantasy, with this that, and the other thing, and leave it at that. People need to be more tolerant of others tastes, and realize we most likely do not share the same tastes and leave it at that? Also, I'm a moody television and film and book watcher/reader. I go with whatever is calling me to it at the moment. If it's not, my brain will refuse to pay attention to it.
Finished Angel S2 finally - and it's a mixed bag. Buffy S5 is actually better - and more fluid and tighter. Of course it didn't have the problems Angel did. Angel S2, had some of the same issues Buffy S4 had - in that half of the supporting cast suddenly and without warning became unavailable in the second half of the season. Julie Benze (Darla) and Christian Kane (Lindsey) were both unavailable at the end of S2, and they had to write another story instead. Also, they ended up writing out Kate - because her involvement was contrived, also the actress got a role on Law and Order, and was unavailable. They intended to bring her back in Angel S3 as part of the Holtz story arc (she was supposed to be in the Justine role), but the actress wasn't available.
As a result, we got the Pylea arc - which is....not great. I kind of played a video game through it, and watched as background noise? I'd stop every once and awhile - out of curiosity - because I wanted to know something. (Such as Joss Whedon plays Numfar, who is told to keep dancing, in the background at Lorne's family reunion. And how Cordy becomes Princess, and how they figure out the way home (Fred figures it out with Wes's help).)
As an aside? You really can't trust Google's AI summaries, can you? I googled why Christian Kane and Elizabeth Roem left Angel or were unavailable - and the summary told me that Roem came back in the episode Same Time, Same Place in the 4th Season. (Uhm no. Also that's an episode in Buffy S7). Also when I was googling the Nosh Oven and how to fix something in it - it told me to preheat (you aren't supposed to, it heats up fast), and gave me the wrong cooking time.
It also says, Lindsey comes and goes in the later seasons. He only came back in S5, and on a limited basis.
On the mundane side, I ran across FlossGrip a while ago via network, and it sounded like a good idea, but the website is very 90's and I was dubious about ordering internationally, even with PayPal's guarantees. I went ahead and ordered in late October, and received a confirmation email saying I should receive it in 10 days, 30 days at the most. 30 days later had received nothing, so I wrote and asked about next steps.
The proprietor and inventor Gui wrote back and said he could ship again, or I could have a refund. Since I didn't know what went wrong and if it would go any better the next time, I opted for a refund, and got it quickly. Yesterday, almost two months after ordering, it showed up in the mail!
I wrote back to Gui and asked how to pay him again, since I now had the item. I ended up placing another order and paying for it, with the understanding that he wouldn't send anything. He said, "Ps: you are really a lovely person; I can tell you it’s not all the clients who are reacting the way you do."
All I did was pay for goods received, but it's nice to be reminded that my efforts to be a good person do succeed and do make a difference, since it's the mistakes that usually echo in my head.
(I tried out the FlossGrip this morning and it indeed uses much less floss, but it was awkward to use. Maybe I'll get better at it.)
Alita: Battle Angel is a $170 million dollar production from 2019 that feels and plays like modern CGI effects were superimposed on a cheap, janky science fiction film from 1985, the sort of $6 million, B-movie-level schlock that was put out at the time by Cannon Films or New World Cinema, two of the most notable “make ’em cheap, make our money in home video” studios of that era.
This sounds like an insult, I’m aware, and I’m not sure there’s an easy way to assure anyone that it’s not. I am not saying this film is prettied-up crap. I am saying it has a vibe, and the vibe is: the other movie you rent from a video store on a Friday night, once you’ve gotten the actual movie you came for from the “New Releases” shelf. You know, the one starring that TV actor whose series ended three years ago, and the Playmate of the Year from a decade back. The one that you had to decide between it and a Chuck Norris flick. That film. This is that film. It’s that film, on a whole lot of steroids and Muscle Milk. You can thank Robert Rodriguez for that. More on that in a second.
To call Alita a rehabbed 80s video store second pick is slightly anachronistic. The manga upon which based, in which an android warrior left on a junk heap searches for clues about her identity, debuted in 1990 and would eventually encompass nine volumes. It caught the attention of James Cameron, who apparently heard of it from Guillermo Del Toro(!). For a while Cameron was committed to directing it, but eventually picked another project instead, which would eventually become Avatar, a little indie film that struggled at first to find an audience but would eventually become a cult favorite. Cameron’s attention as a director was thus diverted, but he was still on board as a producer, and after some time another director was found: Robert Rodriguez.
Robert Rodriguez fascinates me a little because he is either a true cinematic polymath, or he’s a weird little control freak, or maybe he’s a little bit of both at the same time. He directs movies. He also writes them, which is not that unusual for a director to do. But then also edits them, acts as director of photography, operates the cameras, composes the scores, does production design, sound design and produces visual effects. It’s possible he acts as crafts services on his sets, too, I just haven’t found the IMDb listing for it.
Rodriguez rather famously got his start in film with El Mariachi, the 1992 action movie he made for just $7,000, if you don’t count the hundreds of thousands of dollars Columbia Pictures put into its post-production and the millions it spent marketing it. But hey, they were the ones to spend that money! Rodriguez himself only spent $7k! When the legend is more interesting than the facts, go with the legend.
No matter what, however, the movie was made for next to nothing, and Rodriguez wrote, directed, shot and edited the film, setting the tone for future projects. He worked fast and tight and lean, and in this, he absolutely resembled the filmmakers from the New World Cinema and Cannon Films eras, who were given not a lot of time and not a lot of money to get their films into the can and into theaters. Prior to Alita, only one of Rodriguez’s films had a budget over $50 million (Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, for $65 million), and nearly all of them made their production budgets back at the box office.
Is there a drawback to Rodriguez’s “fuck it, I’ll do it all myself” sort of sensibility? From a financial point of view, not really. From a creative presentation point of view… well, let’s just say Rodriguez does not lack for style, but you can feel when a corner is being cut, and he’s not always 100% percent in control of his film’s tone or his scripts. He’s mostly good, mostly fast, and mostly cheap, and also sometimes you get the feeling that along the way he says “good enough, print it” and moves on. If you’re a movie exec at a studio, you probably love this, because you know what? He’s probably right! And for what he spends on a movie, even when he’s not, you’re not out much. But that’s how you get the “second pick at the video store” vibe out a movie.
Which brings us back to Alita: Battle Angel. Rodriguez here is rather uncharacteristically credited only once, as director, but he also apparently did an uncredited pass on the script, paring it down from James Cameron’s original 180-page behemoth to something that could be watched without your bladder exploding before the third act (the final script is credited to Cameron and Laeta Kalogridis). The resulting script, however it was completed, is, charitably, disjointed. The progression Alita (Rosa Salazar) has from discarded android foundling to bounty hunter to rollerball athlete to avenging angel is telegraphed more than explained, and the forces she finds herself arrayed against, from bloodthirsty cyborgs to evil billionaires, never really gel into compelling menace. This is very definitely a “things happen because now is the time in the plot where they should happen” kind of movie. Corners, they be cut here!
If this bothers Rodriguez as a director, he gives no sign of it. He just keeps doing his job, shoving the story along, plot point to plot point, action set piece to action set piece. And you know what? His shoving mostly works! You’re not really given all that much time to wonder about the plot holes and omissions, because here’s Alita fighting cyborgs! Then kicking the ass of a whole bar full of cowardly bounty hunters! Then she’s off playing rollerball! (It’s not called rollerball, it’s “motorball,” but come on, there are roller skates and blood.) Rodriguez isn’t here to make much of his own mark visually — this is Jim Cameron’s (and the WETA effect house’s) world. He’s just here to direct traffic, with the biggest budget he’s ever had. He directs traffic just fine. It’s good enough. Print it.
What’s printed is all very heightened and melodramatic and maybe a little bit silly. It has the pulse and feel of a live action anime, because it pretty much is. In the janky 80s version of this film, all of the fight scenes would have been fought in a small dark room with chain link in it for some unfathomable reason, and the rollerball scenes would take place in a disused warehouse in San Pedro. Because it’s the 21st century and this movie has money behind it, we get the the widescreen CGI version with lots of destruction and chrome. The sets very much still feel like sets, though, just bigger, or at least extended by computers. Realism is not what they’re going for here.
Then there’s Rosa Salazar, who plays the title character. As with the Na’vi characters in James Cameron’s Avatar, Salazar’s Alita isn’t Salazar herself, it’s a performance capture. Salazar was on-set, acting the role, and then she was entirely painted out and replaced with a CG version of her character, one that has big anime eyes that skate her right up to the uncanny valley — which is the point for Alita, as she is not actually a human being but a cyborg. With that as a given, Salazar handles the progression from shy confused girl to badass warrior pretty well; what the script sort of slides over in terms of progression is given to her to perform. She provides the most nuanced performance in a film that does not exactly prize nuance.
(The other acting in this film ranges from perfunctory (Christoph Walz as the deceptively kindly doctor who finds Alita) to scene-chewing (Jackie Earle Haley as an improbably buff cyborg) to fluffy (Keean Johnson, as Alita’s love interest, whose hair in this film appears to have been stolen from a lesser Stamos brother). It is also weirdly packed with slumming Oscar winners, with Jennifer Connelly and Mahershala Ali joining Walz in the “too much gold hardware for this film” category. Everybody’s gotta eat, I suppose.)
None of this is brilliant filmmaking, even if it is efficient, and much of it isn’t even necessarily good, but damned if I can’t stop watching it. This is a movie I put on when I want my eyes to see something that I don’t necessarily need to reach my brain — which again sounds like an insult but is not. Sometimes you have a day when you are just plain done, and you want something with pretty lights and cool action scenes and easy-to-follow emotional cues. If doesn’t entirely track on the level of plot or storytelling, well, you’re not in a state to complain about it anyway.
When you’re having one of those days, a little Alita will cure what ails you. Sometimes that second-pick video is the one that hits the spot.
1. It's the first real snowfall of the season, and the world looks soft and clean with snow outside my window. As opposed to drab and in need of a thorough washing or at least a toss or two in the washer. Soft puffs of snow decorate each and every brank outside, and leaves now,, finally, fallen, no longer present a hindrance to the decoration.
Melting won't happen any time soon, with temperatures in the teens and low twenties (Fahrenheit). (When I type my posts in this journal, it's easy to forget that I'm corresponding with the world and not just my own locality or myself. Long gone are the days in which that was the case, and for the most part I'm happy about that.) Putting thoughts and words out there for whomever happens by - can be discomforting, when I stop long enough to ponder it.)
Done little this holiday season, except rest and ice my knee (or attempt to) and do knee exercises. I'm paying for ignoring the knee during the summer and fall months. Although in my defense, I thought it was just a sciatic nerve - and the best way of handling that is often to muddle through. Also did random chores (which didn't involve utilizing the knee - ie, no getting down on my knees or squatting), and watched television.
2. I've made it through Buffy S5 rewatch, which upon rewatch - I now understand why people are split over it. ( Read more... )
3. Last night, watched One Battle After Another - Paul Thomas Anderson's new film, starring Leo DiCaprio and Scean Penn, along with Teyana Taylor and Chase Infiniti. It's about a washed up revolutionary, who has to come to terms with his revolutionary past to save his daughter and himself from those pursuing them. Half satire, half suspenseful thrill ride, it's a mixed bag? I found it slow in spots, particularly to start, and difficult to get into, but once it got rolling, it became more suspenseful, and hilarious in places. There are some very funny sequences in it - mainly involving DiCaprio. It is definitely topical and highlights the abuses of power not to mention deep-rooted racism by Homeland Security and ICE. (Although uses different names for them.)
4. For the most part, I'm on a news diet - so only have a passing awareness of what is happening outside my window. I did however hear in passing that numerous folks have resigned their positions from the ultra-Conservative Think Tank, also known as the Heritage Foundation. What caused this latest fracture and exodus? Apparently the anti-semitism got to them finally - and they jumped ship to join Mike Pence.
Hisako Ichiki is a perfectly normal Japanese school girl with perfectly normal social anxiety and depression and perfectly dreadful marks. Hisako also has a stalker.
We had a pleasant holiday. I am very thankful for my relationship with my sister. We had a long phone call before our households woke, and a walk together later in the day. I am well aware how special our relationship is. Christine and i also joined her family and my Dad for gift exchanges, Swedish pancakes and (Norwegian -- from her husband's side) Sandbakkels (lovely sugar cookies baked into domes). I'll just note Mom didn't go all Swedish heritage until after i was in college, so only a few things i remember from my born-to-Swedish-parents great aunts and grandmother hint to their Swedish heritage. They were encouraged to assimilate.
Yesterday we took Bruno to the vet to find out whether there's an infection or similar causing his urination. It's probably psychological, and we have gone all in on Feliway, which seems to be the general advice. We'll try a little kitty prozac. I occasionally try to sedate Marlowe with gabapentin (days i won't spend working in the same room with Bruno). Sometimes it works but most of the time it doesn't. Wish i knew what would make that reliable, so we could expose them to each other without Marlowe going all special forces on Bruno. Carrie Dog had a panic attack Friday morning. Poor pups. I did feel a bit like this is the household of misfit beings, yesterday morning, but we can be a refuge for these beings and ourselves.
For Yule Christine has given me a maslin pan, which is the answer to the question: what type pot is wide enough to get all the jam and jelly to the right temperature while also not boiling over? Deep stock pots are not the answer. After reading rhapsodic accounts of jelly made in 100% copper pans, then reading why it's safe -- high sugar content buffers the acids in fruits -- i chose the more practical stainless steel. That should make jelly, jam, and fig leather prep next year more pleasurable.
I managed to pass on some Frankoma Plainsman green dishes to my sister, who missed out on the 70s overdose of avocado green. I knocked the handle off one of my Pfaltzcraft Heritage Christmas mugs as i got them out for the first time since, i dunno, pre pandemic? Pre Mom's stroke? I think it will glue back OK. I am trying to decided if i should just ditch it. I also broke a ramekin (and thinking back a broke a 4 oz jelly jar).
Meanwhile, time passes. Myself and all around me slowly giving over to entropy.
"Once, at the height of COVID, I dropped off a book at the home of Werner Herzog. I was an editor at the time and was trying to assign him a review, so I drove up to his gate in Laurel Canyon, and we had the briefest of masked conversations. Within 30 seconds, it turned strange. 'Do you have a dog? A little dog?' he asked me, staring out at the hills of Los Angeles, apropos of nothing. He didn't wait for an answer. 'Then be careful of the coyotes,' Herzog said." — Gal Beckerman, The Atlantic, 8 Jan. 2025
Did you know?
Apropos wears its ancestry like a badge—or perhaps more fittingly a beret. From the French phrase à propos, meaning "to the purpose," the word's emphasis lands on its last syllable, which ends in a silent "s": \ap-ruh-POH\. Apropos typically functions as an adjective describing what is suitable or appropriate ("an apropos comment"), or as a preposition (with or without of) meaning "with regard to," as in "apropos (of) the decision, implementation will take some time." The phrase "apropos of nothing" is used to signal that what follows does not relate to any previous topic.
I've been getting together with a friend to sing for a couple of years now. We met in the Balkan choir and both have aspirations to sing in a trio again someday. She generally sings low and I generally sing high, although it's fun to swap sometimes. We haven't been successful at finding a third person to sing middle with us, but we've enjoyed practicing choir songs and learning other songs together.
I tend to like song with strong rhythms and melodies, and she tends to like the slow wandering songs with lots of ornamentation, so it's been broadening both of our repertoires. Here are a couple of songs I've been working on at her suggestion.
Zora Zazorila "Dawn is breaking". Here is Eva Quartet sounding fantastic. I listen to them and despair, because I will never ever sound like that, but I can sing my own version, with my own slower and simpler ornaments. Zora Zazorila sheet music
Bozha Zvezda "Lord's star". Here is Kitka singing it on their Wintersongs album, Leslie Bonnett gorgeously singing melody with Janet Kutulas. Bozha Zvezda sheet music
They learned it from Daniel Spassov, and here's his recording. Bozha Zvezda
Those songs are both Bulgarian, but in case anyone is interested in learning more about Balkan singing, Dragi Spasovski is a kind and knowledgeable teacher of Macedonian songs, and he's teaching online for EEFC four Wednesdays in January, 5-6:15pm PT. I just signed up! More info and registration.
F. Scott Fitzgerald once famously said that there are no second acts in American lives. This is an aphorism that is pithy and sounds smart, but isn’t true, not even for F. Scott Fitzgerald, even if his second act (the late blooming popularity of The Great Gatsby) happened after he was dead. Second acts happen all the time, primed by luck and/or talent and/or nostalgia and/or opportunity. The interesting question for me is, what do you do with that second act when the curtain comes back up.
Get Shorty is about two second acts in American lives, one that’s just starting up, and one that’s in full swing. The one that is just beginning belongs to Chili Palmer, the movie-loving loan shark who is the film’s protagonist. The one that’s in mid-swing belongs to John Travolta, who, as this film was released in 1995, was in the middle of a career renaissance that, honestly, had seemed improbable even two years before.
Chili first. He’s a mid-level guy in Miami who as the movie opens is in a bit of a spot; his boss has suddenly died, and the new guy in charge of his book hands him off to Ray “Bones” Barboni (Dennis Farina), whom Chili has recently punched in the face over a coat. Ray Bones wants him to track down money owed by a dry cleaner, who recently died in a plane crash… or did he? One thing leads to another and then Chili finds himself in Los Angeles and making the acquaintance of Harry Zimm (Gene Hackman) a producer who makes C-list horror films, but has one great script in his pocket, if he can just get the funds to get it made.
Well, Chili is a film nut, and he knows a little about getting hold of money, so he decides to stick around and see what he can do. Is this easy? Not at all, since others are circling the script, there’s problems with the Mexican cartels, Ray Bones re-enters the picture, and most of all, Chili has to convince two-time Academy Award nominee Martin Weir (Danny DeVito) to come on board a project, and Weir is, how to put this, every single cliche of an entitled movie actor in one compact package. Oh, and there’s Karen Flores (Rene Russo), who was a “scream queen” for Zimm, and who Chili, quite reasonably, takes a shine to.
This is Chili’s story of remaking himself in Hollywood, but it’s also a travelogue of, if not the underside of the film industry, then at least some of its shabbier quarters. Everyone in this film (excepting Ray Bones and the cartel guys) is on the make in one way or another, looking for more money, more status, more presence and more cool. While this is all obviously exaggerated for the story, anyone who has ever spent any time lurking about the movie industry, either as an observer or as a participant, knows about these guys. Tjey’re all just one script or one movie star attachment away from getting their own big break into the “A”-list, dreaming of clutching that golden statuette and thanking the Academy.
There’s no crime in any of that! (Well, there is crime, and lots of it, in this film, but you know what I mean.) The striving must be exhausting, though. All that smooshing your face against the glass of the hottest restaurants, waiting to get the table, in prime seating time, that’s not by the bathroom or the kitchen door. Only Chili, in this movie, seems entirely immune to all of this. It’s because he’s new and entranced by all of it, but also, it’s because, as a loan shark, he understands the psychology of people who always feel like they’re just one roll of the dice away from their big score. They’re the people who keep him in business, after all. Chili loves the movies, but he’s too cool to lose his cool about them. At least, the money part of it. The big difference between the people he collects vig from and the people making movies, is the people making movies are having a lobster cobb salad for lunch, not the Moons Over My Hammy.
It takes an extremely cool actor to play an extremely cool character, and this is where we come to John Travolta. For a relatively brief moment in the 1970s, John Travolta was the coolest actor in the world — he had landed the one-two punch of Saturday Night Fever and Grease. The first of these exploded the disco craze, was a social phenomenon and a top ten movie at the domestic box office, and garnered Travolta his first Oscar nomination. The second of these was the top grossing film of its year, was also a social phenomenon, and gave Travolta a number one Billboard hit, one of his four top ten musical hits overall. It was literally not possible to be a cooler star than John Travolta was at the end of 1978.
That level of fame is hardly sustainable, and Travolta was not the person to sustain it. After a string of less successful films, some of which were outright flops (Moment to Moment, anyone? Two of a Kind?), Travolta’s career was in a doldrum by the middle 80s. Now, let’s be clear that when I say it was in a doldrum, this is a matter of perception, not necessarily box office: in 1989, Travolta was one of the stars of Look Who’s Talking, which was the number six box office winner of its year, and which is, counting global box office, still the second highest-grossing film of his career after Grease. We should all have such profitable doldrums. But let’s not pretend that as a matter of perception, as a matter of star power, as a matter of coolness, there wasn’t a precipitate drop. When you’re playing second banana to a talking baby, you might be rich, but you’re sure as hell not cool.
Then along came Quentin Tarantino and Pulp Fiction. There are many things to say about Quentin Tarantino, not all of them great, but one thing that cannot be denied is that he does a fantastic job of resurrecting the cool factors of formerly washed-up and washed-out actors. He’s like a financial analyst seeking out value stocks, except the stocks are actors looking to get their mojo back. Tarantino saw that Travolta and his cool factor were severely undervalued, so he dropped the actor into Pulp Fiction as the likeably strung out Vincent Vega. One role, one hit and one Academy Award nomination later, it was like Travolta, and his ability to embody extreme coolness, had never gone away.
Get Shorty was Travolta’s first film after Pulp Fiction, and while Vincent Vega and Chili Palmer are superficially similar (both mid-level cogs in a much bigger crime machine), there’s no question that Chili is the cooler character. He’s smarter, he’s more ambitious and he’s more in control of himself and his fate. Vega is (probably) who a lot of mid-level criminals are; Chili is who they all wish they could be. Travolta needed Vincent Vega to get him back to the level where a character like Chili Palmer was available to him, but once he was there, Travolta showed why the character needed him to work onscreen. It’s said that Warren Beatty, Dustin Hoffman and Michael Keaton were all offered the role before it was given to Travolta. No offense to any of those excellent actors, but not a one of them could have pulled off this role with the same panache.
Travolta’s second act, like his first, wouldn’t last forever. Travolta pretty much put a capper on it in 1999 with a little passion project named Battlefield Earth, which is rightly considered one of the worst films ever made, a genuine turd that no amount of personal cool could ever have saved. But before that moment we got this film, Broken Arrow, Face/Off, Phenomenon and Primary Colors, among others. That’s a pretty decent stretch (after Battlefield, we got Travolta in some Look Who’s Talking-tier comedies like Wild Hogs and Old Dogs, some standard-issue thrillers and also the animated film Bolt, which is a personal favorite of mine. That’s fine! He’s doing fine). Very few people get to be cool forever. I would argue that even fewer get to be the coolest actor alive twice in their career.
This is why I really like rewatching Get Shorty; it’s a study in a movie star being such a goddamned movie star, being so very much the movie star, that everything about the movie is just that much better because he’s in it. This is not role that made Travolta a star, and it’s not the role that resurrected him. It’s not the second act in the making. It’s the role where Travolta is saying, that’s right, I’m back, now watch me own this town. And then he does just that. It’s a blast to watch.
I have been in knots about my upcoming book because it’s different from anything I’ve done before and I have been terrified that people will be like, “YOU ARE NOT QUALIFIED TO GIVE ADVICE AND EVERYONE KNOWS IT, YOU WEIRDO” but it’s actually getting really lovely pre-reviews from booksellers, librarians and readers, and Publisher’s WeeklyContinue reading "Is this real life?"
Abstract: Coleoid cephalopods have the most elaborate camouflage system in the animal kingdom. This enables them to hide from or deceive both predators and prey. Most studies have focused on benthic species of octopus and cuttlefish, while studies on squid focused mainly on the chromatophore system for communication. Camouflage adaptations to the substrate while moving has been recently described in the semi-pelagic oval squid (Sepioteuthis lessoniana). Our current study focuses on the same squid’s complex camouflage to substrate in a stationary, motionless position. We observed disruptive, uniform, and mottled chromatic body patterns, and we identified a threshold of contrast between dark and light chromatic components that simplifies the identification of disruptive chromatic body pattern. We found that arm postural components are related to the squid position in the environment, either sitting directly on the substrate or hovering just few centimeters above the substrate. Several of these context-dependent body patterns have not yet been observed in S. lessoniana species complex or other loliginid squids. The remarkable ability of this squid to display camouflage elements similar to those of benthic octopus and cuttlefish species might have convergently evolved in relation to their native coastal habitat.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.
It’s the final collection of new books and ARCs for 2025, and this one is a double decker! What here is something you would want to take with you into the new year? Share in the comments!
The scene depicting the Antichrist's big speech at the United Nations shows that "Left Behind" does not understand anything about oratory, writing, the UN, Christ, or Anti-Christ. But it is (unintentionally) funny.
We had our usual quiet Christmas Day: stockings, family zoom, salmon-elevenses, roast bird dinner with my brother Jonny, a silly film (Shaun the Sheep: Farmageddon). I even managed to drag the children out to the park for an hour or so before dinner, including some table tennis and frisbee.
One of my personal Christmas traditions is watching the Nutcracker, usually in a cinema broadcast, and I just couldn't make that work this winter. So I was really charmed to find a broadcast of the Royal Ballet's production on iPlayer; the advantage of watching it at home is that I can have a quiet chat with my brother alongside without bothering anyone else.
This morning I woke up nice and early and headed out for another of my booked hot yoga sessions, followed by dropping in on my old friend Shaun for a long-overdue catchup. This afternoon has mostly been reading and TV, and the evening will probably continue the same way.
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