Tag: American

Review: Three Week Professionals

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Three Week Professionals

Though not the deepest sports book, Ted Kluck’s Three Week Professionals tells the story of the 1987 NFL replacement players with humor and the right tone. On one hand, the players had more of a justification for striking than was often the case given the lack of free agency and the sport being incredibly harsh. On the other, it was poorly handled and working-class people even at the time thought little of it.

As both a time capsule and a short breezy history, this book is good. Not deep, but it’s not supposed to be. It is fun and that’s what matters.

Weird Wargaming: The Realistic Space Warship

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In the late 1970s, the BDM Corporation did a study for what a plausible space warship could look like (thanks to the invaluable Atomic Rockets for its analysis).

It has a spin-gravity crew quarters, is powered by nuclear reactors, and its armament consists of a laser in a de facto turret, a forward facing railgun, and a rear-facing particle beam (because the radioactive particles can’t risk hitting the ship).

The Space Shuttle in the picture is for scale-the whole thing is about two hundred meters long!

Review: Tiger Chair

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Tiger Chair

The recent Tiger Chair is the Max Brooks short story of the Chinese invasion of the American West Coast. Told in the form of a letter back home from a Chinese, it mentions how all the high-tech contraptions that were supposed to win were countered by know-how.

I’ll be blunt, this is not a good story. It’s told entirely through less-than-ideal exposition, and is loaded with both references that are bound to age like antimatter (mentioning some minor celebrity controversy from four years before this post that a normal person like the narrator would almost certainly not even know about) and older ones (there’s a ton of Iraq War lingo that makes me think at least part of this was originally written back in the 2000s).

But the real problem (at least for a military nerd like myself) is that Brooks’ Pentagon Reformerism is on every page. Obvious from as early as the Zombie Survival Guide (where he praised the AK and scorned the M16), this goes from “there are counters to high-tech contraptions” to “they make high-tech contraptions useless”. This is hammered home in a hamfisted manner continually.

Don’t get this.

A Thousand Words: Some Kind of Monster

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Some Kind of Monster

One of the best musical documentaries of all time, Some Kind of Monster covers Metallica in the early 2000s during the making of the St. Anger album. Given a surprising amount of access, including their arguments and therapy sessions (seriously), the filmmakers put together a tour de force. At times it’s like a ‘real’ Spinal Tap in its ridiculousness, but at other times it’s earnest.

Besides being a well made film, there’s a couple factors that help this along. The first is that it ultimately has a ‘happy’ ending: The band managed to overcome their difference, reunite, finish the album, and get a replacement bass player who has remained with them since. The second is that with hindsight it’s at just the right time. The band members are clearly past their absolute height and have grown with families and responsibilities. Yet at the same time, they aren’t in the pathetic, irrelevant “Fat Elvis” phase that every aging rocker inevitably falls into.

I think the best and most poignant part of the film comes when the album is finally done and the band members talk about the strange mixed feelings they have. As I’d just finished A Period of Cheating when I saw the movie, I understood completely that feeling.

Anyway, even if you don’t like Metallica (I’m not exactly a fan), this is a great film to watch.

A Thousand Words: Jodorowsky’s Dune

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Jodorowsky’s Dune

In the early-mid 1970s, arthouse filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky ended up helming an “adaptation” of Dune. The quotes are deliberate as the movie and its tone would have been Starship Troopers/The Natural levels of intentionally different from the book. In 2013, the story of the most extravagant and absurd movie that never was was finally told in the titular documentary.

This is a great production. Everyone is clearly enjoying themselves as they talk about how the production got more and more crazy. Jodorowsky had his own son play a major role, and of course the son talks about it decades later. The art and effects brought together such figures as Jean “Moebius” Giraud, Dan O’Bannon, and H. R. Giger, the latter two of whom would make a monster movie that was a little successful. Yet the all-star cast was the craziest, featuring Orson Welles (paid in free food) as Baron Harkonnen, Salvador Dali, and Mick Jagger.

What makes the documentary shine is its soundtrack, with Kurt Stenzel’s minimalist electronic score being both a perfect accent and a great piece of music in its own right. (Although I’m biased because I like minimal electronic music, fair warning). The cinematography is also effective.

If I had to have one quibble, it’s that the documentary didn’t have the necessary devil’s advocate/reactor scram button to bring things down to earth. The movie is mentioned as being impossible, but in the sense it was too ambitious for Hollywood. In actuality, it would have been unreleasably bizzare, bound to burn money in its production, and simply strange. (There are scenes in at least some versions of Jodorowsky’s Dune that the documentary doesn’t mention, likely because they’re too weird and/or gross). If it actually got out the door, Jodorowsky’s Dune would probably just have been a bloated mess like Marlon Brando’s The Island of Dr. Moreau.

Still, this is a great documentary about a great story, even if it wouldn’t have been a great movie.

Review: Raven

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Raven

William Kinsolving’s 1983 novel Raven is an aviation pop epic about one Buck Faulkner and his family. Faulkner starts his aviation company in the 1930s, which starts with a 21 seat airliner and moves up. Like many other traditional pop epics of the time, we get a mixture of semi-spicy personal drama and big picture discussion about airline orders.

This is no technothriller and Kinsolving is clearly just modeling the planes on famous existing ones. However, (and this sounds like faint praise), he at least knows the basics. This is no Ian Slater. Some of the names may be a little goofy, but that’s it.

As for the novel itself, it’s a good 51% book. It’s not the absolute greatest, but as a brief time passer, it works. Plus it manages to avoid at least some of the pitfalls of authors writing about technology, so it has that in its favor.

Review: High Disaster

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The Penetrator 22: High Disaster

The name High Disaster is fitting for the 22nd (!) Penetrator novel. By now co-author Chet Cunningham had clearly gotten sick of the series. That was the first problem, though someone as prolific as him could have just powered through a contract potboiler. The second and worse problem is that the ‘kill the mobster’ plot had played out and the ‘kill the terrorist’ plot had not yet become big.

So most men’s adventure novels in that period simply ended, with the oil crises not exactly helping things either. Yet the Penetrator kept going like a large caliber tank shell penetrating through a BMD-1. You ended up with things like High Disaster, where the threat/villain is (without spoiling anything) not exactly overwhelming, and the big gimmick is…. wildfires. In the American West. Which is kind of like rain and floods in Southeast Asia.

To appreciate the highs of a genre, you need to see the lows. And that is the only reason I’d recommend this book.

Review: Death by Pitbull

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Death by Pitbull

Lawyer Richard Morris’ recent Death by Pitbull takes a look into something involved with dogfighting-and not the kind that involves airplanes. Namely, it looks at the Pit Bull Terrier, the monstrous beasts that have terrorized human and other animal alike since the 1800s. The tone is rather sensationalist and its politics are frequently right wing, but it still cites its sources and makes a good argument.

Morris repeatedly hammers the ‘it’s how you raised them’ claim, one as faulty as it is a part of the dangerous Harley Quinn/serial killer lover “Tame the Beast” fantasy. To his credit he also includes a model law and regulation for banning dangerous dogs (since pit bull fans are notorious for mysteriously switching claimed breeds to dodge bans).

I think the book could have used a bit more context with the dogfighting culture to explain why pit bulls ended up, as well as dispelling the misunderstandings people used to tamer dogs have to explain their psychology (you can’t compare two “normal” dogs fighting emotionally over a concrete thing with a breed designed to fight naturally, and instead of lashing them along, pit bull kennels have to work hard to have their dogs not fight until the time comes). But this is a small quibble.

Pit bulls do not belong as pets.

Review: Aircrew Confidential

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Aircrew Confidential

Pilot Chris Manno’s Aircrew Confidential is a set of short stories about airliner crews. He does a convenient disclaimer saying “Oh some is true some might not be, that’s how gossip goes”. I obviously have no way of verifying that but it’s important to note its not being claimed as totally 100% factual. The only real solid historical benchmark is one story that takes place during 9/11.

For all the “look behind the cockpit door”, it’s really nothing one with even the slightest bit of knowledge or experience hasn’t seen or heard a million times before already. None are particularly shocking or funny or even engaging. I just can’t recommend this book.

A Thousand Words: Wreck It Ralph

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Wreck It Ralph

The Disney animated film Wreck It Ralph was one of the most pleasant surprises I’ve ever had. I’ll start by describing the movie itself, which while not an absolute is still a perfectly good animated family fun adventure film. The video game gimmick is actually somewhat mild, because the bulk of the film takes place in only one game, the racing game Sugar Rush.

And this is what sets the movie apart from what I was bracing for. From the trailers I was expecting some kind of post-Shrek “lolwacky” snarky mess of nothing but references to increasingly obscure games. The actual film is not that, with the references there but not overwhelming. And they often pass the “would someone who doesn’t know the referenced material still get the idea?” test.

So sometimes you get surprised for the better.