Book Review: iZombie Vol. 4 by C. Roberson et al.

iZombie Volume 4: Repossession written by Chris Roberson, art by Michael Allred, J. Bone, and Jim Rugg, colors by Laura Allred, and letters by Todd Klein

After the massive zombie outbreak in Eugene, Oregon, an even worse apocalypse is about to befall our heroes. Galatea, the evil scientist, is trying to speed up the arrival of an inter-dimensional being that will eat the entire world. Various forces are trying to stop that, including the government-backed Dead Presidents (a group of vampires, ghosts, and other monsters), the ancient society known as the Gravediggers (including Gwen's boyfriend), and Amon the Mummy who has personally fought Galatea before. Gwen is caught in the middle when Amon explains that she has the power to send the being back to its own dimension by sacrificing everyone in Eugene. Too bad her brother and parents just showed up in town, huh? The story races to a dramatic finale with Gwen finding another way to defeat the bad guy.

The apocalyptic story is imaginative and pulls a lot of different elements in the story together. Unfortunately, the book gets saturated with romantic intrigues between various characters, creating a lot of soap-opera style subplots that are a lot less interesting. To me, they read like filler. The art style switches in a couple of issues that were drawn by guest artists. I found the change distracting. The story ends well, or as well as a horror-comedy comic could.

Mildly recommended.

Woodbadge Finale (Or Is It?)

After taking the Course for the Woodbadge in 2020, I have finally completed my ticket and was awarded my beads. My son's pack hosted the special ceremony in May 2022. We put on our usual Scouting outfits (Scoutfits?) and headed off to the meeting.

My son and I, ready to go

The church that sponsors the pack has a large meeting room. The ceremony started there with the blowing of a horn like the one used by Lord Baden-Powell, the founder of the Scouting Movement.

The ceremony begins

The little table has a lot of symbolic stuff, including a small spade (representing service to others), a birch log with an axe (symbolic of Gilwell Field where Baden-Powell conducted the first adult training for Scout leaders), and a necklace of wooden beads (like the beads I was soon to receive). 

A table full of symbolism

In addition to the beads, I received a new neckerchief. The one I had been wearing since the course has the tartan and the log/axe image. The new one is dove pink on top (for compassion) and red underneath (for warmth (the feeling, not actual heat!)). It has a bit of the tartan on it as well. My wife took a great picture...

A nicely-framed picture

The course leader had my son help out with the change. My son took off my woggle (the knotted cord that holds the ends of the neckerchief together) and held on to my old neckerchief as I received the new neckerchief.

First stage: taking off the old

Now wearing the new

Like many other training courses, a certificate came with completion.

The left-handed shake of Scouting

My den posed for a picture with me!

A happy group!

That completed the coursework and formal part of the program. The point of Woodbadge is to have an on-going effect on me and on those who I work with (adults and children). I've done a bunch of new things and have a lot more enthusiasm and ideas for the program. And I've learned a bunch of other games to play with the kids, games that also teach skills like cooperating or planning ahead. I'll be using the skills I've learned in my future with scouting!

Movie Review: Sunset Blvd. (1950)

Sunset Blvd. (1950) co-written and directed by Billy Wilder

Joe Gillis (William Holden) is a down-and-out screenwriter who is about to have his car repossessed. He wanders over Hollywood looking for someone to loan him a couple hundred dollars. His agent could but won't and nicely threatens to drop him as a client. His producer friend at Paramount could but won't and a script reader (Nancy Olson) comes in with some negative feedback on one of Gillis's earlier submissions. He gets a flat tire on Sunset Boulevard and pulls into one of the old movie star palaces. It looks rundown but has a big garage for hiding his jalopy. As he walks around, Joe is called into the house by a guy (Erich von Stroheim) who looks like he's the butler. Joe is taken up to the master bedroom where a distraught woman (Gloria Swanson) is ready to have her beloved put in a coffin and buried. That beloved is a dead chimpanzee. He's about ready to escape this looney bin when he recognizes the woman--Norma Desmond, the famous silent film star who hasn't worked since talkies came in. She's very full of herself but when she finds out he's a scriptwriter, she pitches him the script she has been working on for twenty years, "Salome." Who will play the young Biblical temptress? Norma of course. Joe is desperate enough to stay and work on the script, slowly turning into a kept man. Can he keep his own self as he enters Norma's cocooned life?

The prospects are bleak, especially considering the film starts with Joe Gillis floating dead in the palace's pool. Gillis provides a film-noir voiceover (presumably from the afterlife?) promising to tell the true story of what happened to him, not the phony sensationalism of all the press that's hot on the heels of the coroner's men. Norma starts out as a crazy, seemingly unstable and unsympathetic character, though as Joe learns more about her, the viewers find her pathos. Joe becomes a little less sympathetic as he falls into the trap and finds himself without the strength to get out when he darn well could. Joe runs into the script reader again. She's found a nugget of a really good story in one of his scripts and wants to develop it with him. He's interested but trapped; it's hard to get away from Norma's suffocating lifestyle and the reader is dating one of Joe's best friends. 

The acting is superb. Swanson was a happily-retired silent era star who makes the character both understandable and genuinely horrible when she needs to. Holden is great as the film-noir sap who can't escape his fate. Von Stroheim's loyal servant makes a lot of surprising revelations but still is believable. The script has a lot of dark humor and an unsentimental look at how people behave, especially people in Hollywood.

Highly recommended--this is top-tier film noir.

It's also the subject of A Good Story is Hard to Find podcast #282, with more fabulous commentary on the movie. Thanks for inspiring my re-watch of this classic.

Book Review: Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey

Dragonflight: Volume 1 in the Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey

In this first novel of the Dragonriders of Pern series, the planet of Pern faces an old peril. Pern's solar system has a planet with a highly elliptical orbit that comes near Pern every two hundred years. This wayward traveler is known as the Red Star. When it comes close enough, spores (commonly referred to as "Threads") fill Pern's atmosphere and fall to the ground. If any hit the ground, they wipe out any organic life they come in contact with. The southern continent is a desolate wasteland thanks to the Threads. Pern's main defense is its dragons, who fly aloft and burn the Threads as they fall from the sky. The two-hundred year interval causes a problem, since the dragons and their riders are taskless for a long time. 

As the story opens, only one of the half-dozen weyrs has dragons in it and the dragonlords have a hard time getting tribute from the kingdoms. The last functioning weyr has dwindled down to one queen and a few hundred dragons, hardly enough to stop a world-wide catastrophe. In the years leading up to the next conjunction with the Red Star, a new queen is laid. The dragonlords head out across the globe to find a woman to be the queen dragon's weyrmate. Who better than Lessa, from the noble family of the Ruatha Hold? She has been down and out since the usurper Lord Fax ruling her hold. She operates as a insignificant peasant who has messed up harvest and deliveries and other things to make Ruatha less attractive to Fax. Her schemes pull in dragonrider F'lar, who winds up in a duel with Fax. Fax dies. F'lar recognizes Lessa's potential. The dragonriders will need her creativity, energy, and drive if they will be ready to face the Threads.

The story is written with a bit of old-time flavor, like The Lord of the Rings, though this reads a little more like science fiction. The dragon-lore is detailed and interesting, with a bit of hierarchy among the dragons and some atypical powers, like their ability to travel through the "between," which lets them go from place to place almost instantly, as long as they have a fixed image of where they are going. The dragons and their riders have a telepathic link that lets them communicate privately and over distances. Lessa has the ability to communicate with all the dragons in the weyr, an unheard of power that she takes advantage of. The riders are a bit like medieval knights, which makes a fun change from the knight-versus-dragon expectation in so many fantasy stories. The book has plenty of twists on the old-time tales.

Lessa is a very likable heroine. She's a bit mischievous, willful, and smart. She isn't just along for the adventure, she drives a lot of the action. Her romantic involvement with F'lar is fun, though he might shake her a few times too many when he disagrees with her. They make a good pairing, as does their dragons (part of why they are a pair, another little oddity of this story's dragon-lore).

Highly recommended--I'll probably read more of the series, maybe even buy the books!

This novel was discussed on A Good Story is Hard to Find podcast #281. Thanks for recommending the book!

Book Review: Falconspeare by W. Johnson-Cadwell et al.

Falconspeare story, art, and color by Warwick Johnson-Cadwell, letters by Clem Robinson, and based on characters created by Mike Mignola and Warwick Johnson-Cadwell

A set of four Victorian-era monster hunters have had a lot of success over the years dispatching vampires and other supernatural threats. Eventually, they went their own ways. This story brings three back together when they get mysterious notes from their fourth member, James Falconspeare. They follow the clues to that grey region where Europe and Asia meet by the Black Sea. Once they find their lost member, Falconspeare tells a grim story and has an unorthodox request for them.

These are some of the same characters from Mr. Higgins Comes Home. The art is less engaging and does not play up the elements of horror very well. The big twist in the story I found very unsatisfying as a moral choice by Falconspeare. His choice was hard to agree with or find sympathetic and left me not caring about any of the characters. The story is also very short and feels padded out with pages of rough draft art at the beginning and end of the book that seem like they are there to make it have a higher page count. I'm glad I read this as a borrowed digital comic book, because I would have felt overcharged if I had bought it.

Not recommended.

TV Review: Pacific Rim: The Black Season Two (2022)

Pacific Rim: The Black Season Two (2022) created by Greg Johnson and Craig Kyle based on the movie by Guillermo del Toro

Check out my review of Season One here!

The action picks up right where it left off as young teens Hayley and Taylor search for their missing parents in the Australian interior filled with dangerous Kaiju (monsters bent on destroying humanity, though they aren't all gigantic monsters like in the movies). They've picked up two other wandering children. A mute boy is able to transform into a Kaiju and is wanted by a mysterious and weird cult, the Sisters of the Kaiju, that worships the Kaiju and think he will be some messiah. Mei is a sulky teenager who wants to survive and is willing to offer up stuff (mostly other people and their stuff) to save their butts. The young teens are drawn into conflict with the Sisters and make a difficult discovery.

The show has the typical action and drama of a kid-centered fantasy story. I never really believed they were not going to pull through. The world-building gets a bit bigger, explaining some of the elements introduced in the previous season. It's one of those shows where I am glad I watched it but don't need to watch it again.

Mildly recommended.

Currently (May 2022), the show is only streaming on Netflix.

Patapsco Valley State Park May 2022

On a random day off from school, I took the kids to visit Patapsco Valley State Park since the weather was so nice. I wanted to see the Thomas Viaduct, which is near the Avalon entrance of the park. Unfortunately, there's no parking by the entrance. We followed the road under the Viaduct and then under the highway and finally found a parking lot. It was a bit of a trek back to the Viaduct, so we decided to explore where we were first. 

We found a geocache near the parking which led us over to a curious building.

Made a find, then played "high five"

This 185-year-old house is all the remains of the town of Avalon. With the Patapsco River nearby, the location was good for a mill. The Dorsey Forge was the first mill, dating back to colonial times. The Ellicott Family (of Ellicott City fame) bought the forge and turned it into the Avalon Iron and Nail Works. The town and the forge were wiped out by a flood in 1868. The building has been turned into a Visitors Center but has not been open since 2013 according to the web site. We visited on a Monday morning during the school year, so we had little chance of getting inside anyway.

1800s building

3/4 view

My son really liked this painting of the Patapsco Valley on the parking lot's information sign.

Two thumbs up!

The Old Gun Road Stone Arch Bridge also dates back to colonial times and spanned the mill run for the forge. The road was used to ship the iron products to Elkridge Landing on a navigable part of the Patapsco River. From there, the metal was shipped to the Chesapeake Bay and Annapolis for final assembly.

Old Gun Road Stone Arch Bridge

We crossed the bridge and followed a trail that led us to the river. We were surprised to see a fallen tree in the river.

Not safe to cross!

A small rocky beach was the perfect place to throw stones into the river.

Looking for the best projectiles

Ready for fun

Evidence of previous visitors (but probably post-Colonial)

The trail led us back across the old mill race and to a more developed part of the park.

Another bridge!

Ok, so not over-developed for sure

We made it back to the car and decided to park by the entrance station to see the Thomas Viaduct. It's named after Philip Thomas, the first president of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. It was finished in 1835 and is the largest multi-arch stone railroad bridge. And it's still in use! We were lucky enough to see a train go by.

Train crossing the Thomas Viaduct

I forced them to pose

The visit was fun.

Movie Review: Enola Holmes (2020)

Enola Holmes (2020) directed by Harry Bradbeer

Enola Holmes (Millie Bobby Brown) is the teenage sister of Sherlock Holmes (Henry Cavill). She's been growing up with their mom (Helena Bonham Carter) at an isolated estate in the countryside. Mom has been training Enola in archery, tennis, chemistry, biology, self-defense and attack, and a host of other skills, except for living as a lady in polite Victorian society. Mom has little interest in such things and encourages no interest in her daughter. Sherlock and Mycroft (Sam Claflin) have kept the two a secret to keep their private lives private. Things change when Mom vanishes without warning. The brothers return to the estate which is in poor shape. Mycroft has been sending lots of money to maintain things but Mom has been using the cash for other, unexplained purposes. Mom also left clues about where she went, but only Enola and Sherlock recognize them. Mycroft, now that Enola is his ward, wants to send her off to finishing school, a poor fit for Enola. She decides to run away and uses her Holmesian intellect to escape mostly undetected.

While she is on the run hunting down her mother's whereabouts, she runs into the teenaged Viscount of Tewkesbury (Louis Partridge) who is on the run from his own family. Someone is trying to kill him. She very reluctantly helps him out, insisting that they part ways once they reach London. Enola is going there to find her mom; Tewkesbury plans to hide in safety. Their paths cross again and again as a political conspiracy is uncovered and she starts falling for the viscount's charms. She doesn't fall enough for romance but they do have some meaningful looks and touches.

The show is very entertaining. Enola does a lot of talking to the camera (thereby the audience), explaining her life and what her memories and plans are. That can be a tough burden for an actor but Brown does a great job of it. The movie has a whimsical tone and often uses cute graphics (though of a Victorian appearance) to enhance the narrative, like Stranger Than Fiction. The plot moves on at a good pace. The mysteries and puzzles are interesting though not really solvable by viewers for various reasons, much like the Sherlock Holmes stories. The other actors are okay, nothing outstanding and nothing horrible. Mycroft is a little one-dimensional but that's the script making him into a bad guy. Overall, it's an enjoyable movie to watch and respects the Sherlock Holmes world fairly well.

Recommended.

Currently (May 2022) only available streaming on Netflix.

Book Review: Tamamo the Fox Maiden and Other Asian Stories by G. L. Yang et al.

Tamamo the Fox Maiden and Other Asian Stories: A Cautionary Fables and Fairytales Book written and illustrated by Gene Luen Yang and many others

In a delightful collection, tales from all over Asia (Turkey to Japan) are gathered and retold in graphic format. The stories deal with ancient times and medieval times and modern times. As with much folklore, animals, animal spirits, and people who transform into animals or animal spirits fill these tales with wonder and oddness. Tricksters pull off magical results with their cleverness, sometimes with actual magic. Occasionally bits of horror show up, often as a comeuppance for evil doers. Some characters do have tragic fates. The book has a bit of everything.

The collection has a wide variety of stories (twenty-one in all) and art styles. They are all delightful and well worth experiencing.

Highly recommended.

Book Review: Through a Night of Horrors ed. by C. E. Greene and S. H. Kelly

Through a Night of Horrors: Voices from the 1900 Galveston Storm edited by Casey Edward Greene and Shelly Henley Kelly

This compilation of eyewitness accounts shows the residents' reactions to the storm that struck Galveston Island in 1900. It's divided into letters, memoirs, and oral histories that have been transcribed. Interspersed with the letters are reports from National Weather Service meteorologist Isaac Cline who was stationed at Galveston through the storm. The texts give a very vivid portrait of what people went through. A common theme is the belief that they wouldn't make it through the night. Another striking reaction is in the aftermath when people were just numb to the horror of the situation--the thousands of dead, the wretched smell of mud and slime, the complete devastation in some areas. Survivors describe walls of debris, some two stories tall, caused by the storm surge that came in from both the north and south sides of the island. Most people had no sense of how bad it would get since they had lived through plenty of other "big blows." The book includes dozens of pictures of the devastation and maps to show where the various survivors waited out the storm. The end notes explain various details or discrepancies that arise from people misremembering what happened.

Recommended--this book is more for people interested in the history of the storm than for general readers.

TV Review: Another Life Season One (2019)

Another Life Season One (2019) created by Aaron Martin

A crystalline tower-like structure shows up on a future Earth. Its origin is extraterrestrial but scientists and the government can't figure out what it is and why it was sent. They determine the star system from which it originated and send a ship called The Salvare to make contact with the alien race. The narrative centers on a couple, Niko Breckinridge (Katee Sackoff) and Eric Wallace (Justin Chatwin). Eric is a scientist and stays on Earth, helping with the investigation. He also takes care of their cute child (Lina Renna) and has multiple conflicts with the government agency managing the investigation and with a media influencer (Selma Blair) who wants to find out what's going on to boost her online ratings. 

Niko has command of The Salvare, so she and Eric have a tearful goodbye in the first episode. The crew starts the trip in cryogenic sleep. A small group is revived when a crisis happens on board. Niko works with her handful of crew and William (Samuel Anderson), the artificial intelligence that runs the ship. They deal with various problems as they come up, occasionally reviving other crew members who have expertise they need or who will replace someone who died resolving the crisis. They finally make it to the planet and make a horrifying discovery about the aliens.

The show is roughly divided into one-third on Earth and two-thirds on The Salvare. That's too bad, because the Earth story was more interesting, even though it had a bunch of cliches pushing the narrative along. The space ship, with its disaster-of-the-episode problems, also travels over very familiar territory that sci fi fans have seen in other series. The narrative problem is multiplied when most of the crew members start having romantic relationships with each other, turning The Salvare into an interstellar soap opera. The show almost seems more interested in including every type of romantic entanglement (straight couple, gay couple, threesome, adulterous relationship, and romantic involvement with William the A.I.). If they had put that much effort into the space-opera plot, the show would be great. As it is, a lot of dumb stuff happens in the romantic plots and the space-opera plot, leaving a very uninteresting experience for the viewer.

Not recommended.

Geocaching April 2022

The first day of the month was a hole in the "days of the year" chart for us, so while running some errands we found Columbia Ultra Micro Cache #1. The actual container was not that small (it had its own writing implement!). The name is a bit of a misnomer. It was still fun to find.

An unassuming location

We borrowed a music book from a friend in Bowie, Maryland. After returning the book, we went to White Marsh Park to find some geocaches. Our first find was just outside the park at a shopping center. New Years C & D 2018 was an easy find in an obvious spot. This particular parking lot was behind the stores so muggles were not a problem.

The vegetation hadn't come in yet

In the park, The Girl Scout Way cache is near the parking but far enough off the path to make it a fun challenge. Also, the container was big enough that we were able to offload some of the geojunk that has been accumulating in our geocaching bag. We save tchotchkes to put in caches or maybe make our own cache one day.

In the park

Further down the trail we found Between a Log and a Heart Place, though we were not really sure what the "Heart Place" was based on searching ground zero. 

I swear this is not the same spot as the picture above

Whitemarsh Branch Main Stream runs through the park and Pooh Sticks is nestled somewhere besides the flowing waters and a small bridge. We found a spot that was not the right spot. We could tell by a laminated card saying so. We searched some more but did not make the find. Apparently the container is very well camouflaged. We didn't find all the caches in the park, so we may come back again and try harder.

Thanks for the message Pooh Bear!

Our final find was Amphibians which was another fairly easy find and large enough to leave more stuff than we picked up. And we saw a cool tree along the way. 

A tree just barely hanging on to the bank of the stream

I filled another day on the calendar with Youngin #3, part of a series that is now incomplete with the loss of some of the caches. The container had an Open Caching tag that I picked up to move on to a new location. Once home, it looks like the tags are more for trading than traveling. 

A good spot for a bigger cache

Someone's tag

I had a rainy-day success with Obviously No Outlet #3 (Golden Rod Path) which was an easy park-and-grab with a fun container. The container had enough room for me to drop the above tag.

I saw the sign and it opened up my mind...

The owner of Making My Appointment... emailed me through the geocaching website that the cache container was replaced after I marked it as not there. On a rainy day, that cache seemed like it would be an easy, quick find, which it was, boosting my streak of days cached and adding another day to the "days of the year" chart.

View from the cache into the woods

We went on a trip to the Carolinas and found some geocaches there.

Filling another day on the calendar while running an errand, I found IJKLM #1. There's no explanation for the cryptic name and the cache owner has not made a #2 yet. The location was just off some trails in the woods. Here's the view from the cache...

It's all downhill from here!

After dropping our son off to prepare for a concert, we had an hour to spend. Nearby was a park with three geocaches: EC geotrail #1, EC geotrail #2, and EC geotrail #3. The word "trail" is a bit of a joke, since going from geocache to geocache is more like bushwhacking than following a nice dirt path. The spring vines, thorns, and other undergrowth were already popping up, ready to make the caches even more difficult to find.

A helper by #1

A path free from undergrowth

View towards #2

View from #3

After dropping my son off to work on an Eagle Project, I found King of the Hill, which apparently was placed by another scout as part of a geocaching merit badge. The find was easy and the hill had plenty of room for other royalty to join in.

Top of the hill pathway to the cache

I finally found the mystery cache Alphabet-M (Move) after finding the other clues last month. The geocache is located near some power lines, making for a dramatic area. The access road is mostly overgrown. I had to bushwhack to it but was happy to make the find.

Power-lined path

The Hammond Branch nearby

To fill in another day, I searched for JJ Doesn't Shop Here, which is behind a Home Depot. Not sure what JJ's problem is, but finding the cache was quick for me.

Unusual forest junk--concrete curbs!

A pair of caches are hidden in a Columbia business park. I went on a quiet Friday and found CGD1 and Columbia Alpha which were in easy walking distance of each other. Inbetween finds, I saw a fabulous sculpture in the middle of the parking lot.

View toward CGD1

View from Columbia Alpha (no, that's not the fabulous sculpture)

"Dihedrals" by Rob Fisher (2002)

The month ended with our cumulative total at 582 after adding 23 finds from April. If I follow the same pace, May could break the 600 barier!