Future Mrs. Vasicek and I saw this movie over the weekend, and it was fantastic. Ten out of ten. It really hit home for me, not only as a Tolkien fan, but as a writer too.
A few of the critics are panning this movie, but pay no attention to them. They’re probably just upset that they didn’t receive any bribes to give it a positive review. That seems to be the pattern these days: glowing reviews from the critics, but a terrible audience score. With this one, it’s the exact reverse.
I’m not sure which part I liked the most, since there was so much to enjoy, but I really liked how the movie went in and out of Tolkien’s experiences in World War I, and used that to tie everything together. It was a really different world before that war, and the generation that fought it also accomplished a lot of remarkable stuff. You can also really see how it influenced his stories.
I also really liked how for most of his life—indeed, perhaps for all of it—Tolkien was a really unassuming guy. He didn’t know that he was going to write the seminal fantasy epic of the modern era. For years, he just made stuff up for himself, and only shared it with his closest friends.
The friendship he developed with his prep school buddies was one of the best parts, definitely. And the romance between him and Edith was also really well done. I also liked how his benefactor, the Catholic priest, wasn’t portrayed as a straight up bad guy, as Hollywood so often portrays religious people these days. They had their clashes, but you did get the sense that he genuinely wanted the best for Tolkien all throughout it.
So yeah, fantastic movie! Screw the critics and go see it for yourself!
I picked this one up from Glenn Beck’s recommended reading list, and found it to be pretty good. The most disappointing part is that it was never finished, so what starts as a history of the Third Reich up to 1939 actually ends in 1933. It would be really fascinating to get Haffner’s account of events like the Night of the Long Knives or Kristallnacht, but unfortunately we never will.
That said, what we do have is a truly remarkable account of the fall of the German Empire, the chaos and collapse of the post-war order, and the transformation of German society as the Nazis rose to power. Most histories try to be objective, or at least try to limit their subjectivity. Not so with this book. As Haffner puts it:
Clearly, historical events have varying degrees of intensity. Some may almost fail to impinge on true reality, that is, on the central, most personal part of a person’s life. Others can wreak such havoc that there is nothing left standing… I believe history is misunderstood if this aspect is forgotten.
This book is not quite a history, and not quite a memoir. Rather, it falls somewhere between the two, combining the best of both forms to paint an extraordinarily vivid picture of one of the most terrifying times and places in modern history.
By far, the best part of this book is the depth and precision with which Haffner describes historical events and their effects on the German people. The only other author I know who is more precise with his language is Jordan Peterson. Because of this, it is very easy to imagine yourself in Haffner’s position, and to see the struggles of our time reflected in his story.
The parallels in Haffner’s account between Germany of the 1920s and 30s, and the United States today, are truly striking. It’s not a one-for-one comparison, of course, and the people today shouting “Nazi!” the loudest are obviously dead wrong. But the trends are headed in the same direction, and some of the more disturbing nuances are starting to rhyme.
My biggest takeaway from the book was this: when we reach a point where our neighbors are getting disappeared, it’s time to either take up arms or bug the hell out. In Germany, that happened well before the Nazis rose to power, which surprised me. But that wasn’t the only takeaway, by far. The book is full of them.
For anyone with an interest in the rise of Fascism and 20th century history, or anyone with an interest in politics and current events, I highly recommend this book.
I’ve fallen behind on my blogging, so to keep things up here’s a picture of the most badass American ever to live, in all of his glory. Have a great day!
So they’re making a Sonic the Hedgehog movie, and the character design for Sonic is so bad that it’s spawned a bajillion memes. Within days of the trailer’s release, it got so bad that the director said they’d redesign the animation, and suddenly thousands of nine-year-olds became drunk with power.
I have a few thoughts on the whole Sonic fiasco. The first game came out when I was seven, and even though I only ever played it at friends’ houses, stuff like the Green Hill Zone theme definitely scratches the nostalgia itch. That said, never got into it as much as some people.
The new movie actually doesn’t look all that bad. I mean, it doesn’t look great, but it’s got potential. I really like seeing Jim Carrey as Robotnik, that could be really fun. Also… well, okay, that’s pretty much all that looks good so far, but just because it’s a horrible trailer doesn’t mean the movie has to be crap. Right?
The fact that Paramount Pictures made this movie reminds me of the early 00s, when superhero movies started to get big again, and the major studios really screwed up some of the big franchises. Fantastic four, I’m looking at you. Basically, the big studios were treating these intellectual properties as cash cows instead of treating them with the passion and love of the original creators. It was also very disrespectful to the fans.
Unless I’m mistaken, that’s actually how we got the Marvel Cinematic Universe. After the failures of Hulk, Fantastic Four, and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Marvel decided to do everything in house, because the major studios kept screwing things up so badly. With Blade and X-Men in the 90s, they’d proved that movies with B- and C-list superheroes could still be profitable, so they reacquired the rights to as many characters as they could and went all in on it. Thus was born the MCU, and there was much rejoicing.
It’s particularly interesting to me as an indie writer because the pattern is very similar to what’s happening in the book industry. It basically goes like this:
Technological disruption renders the legacy business models obsolete.
Independent creators start to steal market share from the old guard companies.
The old guard goes through a period of mergers, acquisitions, and layoffs.
They start to cut corners because too much is expected of the people who are left.
The old guard companies become dependent on blockbuster hits to stay afloat.
The bean counters take charge, further killing the old guard’s creative spirit.
Several intended blockbusters fail spectacularly, driving further downsizing.
The independent creators eat the old guard’s lunch.
And that’s why I’m still indie.
Is this what’s happening with Sonic the Hedgehog? Looks like it to me. We’ll have to see how this all plays out, but I’m not expecting much. On a more positive note, though, the best way to enjoy a crappy movie is to go in with low expectations. It worked for me with Indiana Jones 4, so maybe it’ll work with the new Sonic movie.
In the meantime, here’s Pewdiepie reviewing some of the hilarious memes that have come from all of this:
Here’s something interesting, just for fun. The shift in name popularity over the years reflects my own family tree surprisingly well. It’s also fascinating to keep in my cultural trends as you watch this video.
I wasn’t always a fan of Glenn Beck. When I was in college back in the 00s, I thought he was a pompous blowhard—and I was probably right. We’ve both changed a lot since then. I started listening to his radio show podcast in 2017 at the urging of a friend, and to my utter shock I found him to be both reasonable and insightful. I’ve been listening ever since.
If you’re a regular listener to Glenn’s show, most of what you’ll find in this book is stuff you’ve already heard. That said, on the show you pick it up in bits and pieces, whereas here it’s all laid out in one place, without any filler or extraneous back and forth. Having done both, I would rather read this book and listen to his show only occasionally than listen to his show religiously and skip this book.
The thing I like most about Glenn is that he’s one of the few political pundits who have checked their pride in recent years. In Addicted to Outrage, he gives his story: how he went from being one of the most prominent and virulent right-wing commentators to acknowledging that he’s been wrong about some things and completely changing his approach. He lost a few of his old-time fans who preferred the screaming, ranting Beck, but gained an ability to understand and speak the language of those on the other side of the political divide.
The main thesis of this book is that outrage, especially social media outrage, has become an addiction very much like alcoholism, and that the steps for recovering for alcoholism apply equally as well for healing our modern outrage culture. Glenn brings up a lot of interesting points about how the outrage in our culture is increasing, how social media is designed specifically to foster a chemical addiction through repeated dopamine hits, and how it feeds into all of our worst impulses and does serious damage to our health, our relationships, and our ability to live together.
The most interesting part for me was where he talked about how our outrage culture and the news cycle is distracting us from the truly important stuff that’s going on right now, such as the development of AI, the rise of big tech monopolies, technological disruption and the looming unemployment crisis, and geopolitical challenges that threaten to drive our world into war. Again, this is all stuff that Glenn covers regularly in his radio show, but it’s useful to have it all in one place.
My biggest criticism of Glenn is that his obsession with all of the ways that things can go catastrophically wrong turns him into something of a doom pornographer at times. He generally keeps it classy, but classy doom porn is still doom porn. I don’t think we’re anywhere near a hostile artificial general intelligence sweeping the world with nanobots and turning us all into grey goo, for example. That said, his prediction track record is surprisingly good, so even with the doom and gloom it’s still worth listening to him. At least he doesn’t (usually) cross the line into fear mongering.
Glenn’s love of the Constitution definitely shines through this book. He spends a great deal of it going through the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, which I found to be insightful. In one of the more interesting chapters he talks about how we should neither whitewash our history nor condemn it, but acknowledge both the bad and the good and strive to live up to the aspirational deals set forth in our founding documents.
All in all, it was a good and insightful read. If you’ve never listened to Glenn, this book is actually a really good place to start.
My short story “The Janus Anomaly” is now published online by Kasma Magazine! If you haven’t already read it, be sure to check it out—and if you have, check out the awesome art that they did for it! Really cool stuff.
My parents are in town and I’ve fallen a bit behind on my blogging schedule, so to keep up the daily blogging thing I thought I’d share this image from one of my favorite books, Momo by Michael Ende. Be sure to check out the artist’s page on Deviantart too.
A while ago, I wrote a blog post titled Why I don’t like George R.R. Martin, in which I laid out some of the issues I had with the Song of Ice and Fire series, and why I decided not to read past the first book. That post has been getting a lot of traffic lately, probably because the last season of Game of Thrones is coming out and there’s a lot of hype right now about it.
At FanX a couple of weeks ago, I attended an interesting panel with Steve Grad from Pawn Stars on the do’s and don’ts of collecting. On that panel, he expressed some skepticism that Game of Thrones signatures and collectibles would hold their value over time. This made me wonder: will the books this TV series is based on stand the test of time?
Full disclosure: I have only read the first book, A Game of Thrones, and have not watched any episodes of the miniseries. I’ve watched a few of the more important scenes on YouTube and occasionally follow discussions about it on online forums. After reading the first book, I decided that this series was not the sort of thing I wanted to watch or read. See the blog post linked above.
People have been calling George R.R. Martin the American Tolkien for years now, but I’ve always been skeptical of that claim. Tolkien’s books are timeless because they are so archetypal, with the classic struggle of good vs. evil permeating every page. In contrast, Martin rejects the archtypes of good and evil for a nihilistic black-and-gray morality, where there are no heroes, only victimizers and victims.
Why, then, is A Song of Ice and Fire so popular? First of all, because the writing and storytelling really are top notch. For all my criticism of George R.R. Martin, I fully recognize that he is a master. But there are a lot of excellent, masterful books that never capture the public imagination quite like Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire. What, then, makes Martin’s work so different?
I believe it’s because George R.R. Martin has struck a nerve with the current zeitgeist, and scratches a uniquely contemporary itch in a way that none of the great works by the old masters can. What is that zeitgeist? It is spirit of a culture in the late stages of decadence, where wealth disparity, big government, endless wars, easy credit, runaway debt, moral decline, and corruption are the defining aspects of the age.
In a world where, in so many ways, we are shielded from the consequences of our own actions, morality becomes irrelevant and entertainment shifts to serve our basest, most carnal lusts. In such a world, we turn to nihilistic stories like Game of Thrones, which are saturated with sex and violence. They reinforce the view that good and evil don’t exist, that honor and integrity are for fools, and that wealth, power, and sexual indulgence are all ends in themselves. “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die, and it shall be well with us.”
At the same time, these stories satisfy a deep sense of self-loathing that arises out of the very nihilism that they celebrate. In those few moments when we are honest with ourselves, the decadence of our age profoundly disgusts us. As Haruki Murakami put it, “secretly everyone is waiting for the end of the world.” That is exactly what stories like Game of Thrones give us: gleeful destruction and total collapse, with blood, fire, ice, and steel. No one is safe. Anyone can die, even our most beloved characters. Winter is coming.
Every empire collapses, however, and every age of dedadence comes to an end. The very nihilistic elements that make stories like A Game of Thrones so appealing ultimately cause them to fall away and vanish, along with the culture itself. To stand the test of time, stories must be built upon archetypes that transcend the spirit of the age, rather than indulge it. Does George R.R. Martin do this? I don’t believe that he does.
A Song of Ice and Fire has an added disadvantage in that the TV series has overtaken the books. How many people will simply give up on the books after watching the season 8 finale? A Dance with Dragons averaged a 2.9-star rating on Amazon the year it came out, with thousands of reviews. It takes George R.R. Martin so long to write these books that it’s already become a meme, and his health isn’t all that great.
Personally, I think we’ve already reached peak George R.R. Martin. The season 8 finale will be an enormous affair, but after that the show’s popularity will steadily decline, and the books will not renew the public interest. I still think the books will do well compared to other books in the fantasy genre, but compared to previous installments, I think the Song of Ice and Fire series will go out with a loud and plaintive whimper.
A generation from now, when the current age of decadence is over and our children and grandchildren are rebuilding the world, I believe they will look at these books and scratch their heads—if they even bother to read them at all.
