TV Review: Avatar: The Last Airbender Season Three (2007)

Avatar: The Last Airbender Season Three (2007) created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko

For my review of season one, go here, and season two, go here.

Avatar Aang is recovering from a near-mortal wound. He and his friends are hiding out in the Fire Nation, getting ready to attack on the day of an upcoming eclipse, hoping to knock out Fire Lord Ozai. Firebenders gain strength from the sun, so the eclipse will weaken them substantially. If successful, Team Avatar won't have to worry about the return of Sozin's Comet, which promises to give the Firebenders a huge advantage. Ozai plans to finish his world-wide conquest when the comet returns, creating a hard deadline for Team Avatar if the eclipse plan does not work. 

Meanwhile, Zuko has returned to the Fire Nation and the favor of his father since he "killed the Avatar" at the end of last season. His victory feels hollow to him even before he finds out the Avatar is still alive. His betrayal of Team Avatar and especially of his uncle Iroh weighs heavily on his mind. Is his destiny really to become the next Fire Lord? Will his crazy sister Azula let it happen?

As in other seasons, the story moves at a good pace. It's not too fast, allowing the characters to develop and more of the world to be explored. It's not too slow, keeping up the sense of excitement and peril. The story weaves in a lot of the old, familiar characters for the big fights during the eclipse and during the return of the comet. The narrative comes to a climax in the last episodes that is very satisfying.

The show also maintains the quality of writing. The characters are rich and conflicted. Zuko has a crisis of vocation, realizing that maybe he is not meant to be on his father's side. He has to swallow a lot of pride and overcome a lot of mistrust from Aang and Katara. His character arc is my favorite part of the show. Aang also deals with a huge conflict. Everyone tells him he must kill Fire Lord Ozai but his Air Temple training teaches him that all life is sacred. As a twelve-year old (if you don't count the hundred years of suspended animation in the ice berg), he has a burden that even adults would struggle with. The show doesn't give quick, easy answers to these problems. Though set in a fictional world, the show has a lot of moral truth. The writing is great.

Highly recommended--this is easily the best kids' show I have seen, and in my top ten shows of all time.

Game Review: The Goonies: Escape with One-Eyed Willy's Rich Stuff by The OP

The Goonies: Escape with One-Eyed Willy's Rich Stuff--A Coded Chronicles Game designed by Jay Cormier and Sen Foong Lim and published by The OP

The Goonies is a kids' adventure film from the 1980s where a group of misfits go in search of treasure to save their homes from foreclosure by evil bankers who want to make a golf course/country club of their small town. This game puts the players in the roles of the kids as they follow an old map and various clues to find a pirate's hidden plunder. The narrative of the game mirrors the film's narrative, giving to players who have seen the movie only a small advantage but a larger portion of satisfaction as little callbacks and other bits from the movie show up. There's even the villains of the film, the Fratellis, chasing after the players. The game does a good job embodying the film's spirit of adventure.

The game plays like a narrative-driven escape room, with a lot of puzzles to solve as the players move forward. In the Coded Chronicles system, each character has an ability (like Explore, Pick Up, Use) that allows them to interact with items and locations on the slowly built-up map. A journal with various numbered entries describes what happens or what changes when the character do things. The character's number is added to the item or location, giving the right number to look up in the journals. More map tiles are revealed and more adventures happen, all the way to finding the treasure (it's a kids movie from the 1980s, so obviously it turns out all right in the end). The table I chose to play on was not quite big enough.

The game in progress

In the picture above, Data's gadgets (which get used periodically) are on the left with the main map in the center. Below the map are a bunch of items picked up during the game. At the top is the "treasure map" which is used in solving some of the puzzles. It's laminated so the dry-erase marker can both write on it and clear it off for the next puzzle that uses it. 

The game system works smoothly, though with eight characters, that means eight journals and some overlapping abilities. I played it solo and had to switch often between journals to look up stuff. Many wrong combinations lead to flavor text, which gets a little tedious for just one person. Occasionally the narrative ricochets around from journal to journal without any choices being made, which would be okay if I'd been playing with a group. The characters with Use and Explore did most of the action during the game. Mouth, whose ability was to Translate, has a noticeably slimmer journal, though he was given a side mission to decrypt images on the walls, so a player could be working on something on the side while the rest of game was progressing.

Like most escape games, the puzzle are a variety of deciphering visual clues and combining the right items to get the job done. Also like most escape games, some were obvious, some were fun challenges, and some were incomprehensible. Again, if I'd had a group that might have been easier with more eyes and more perspectives. I used the hint system and was able to reverse-engineer a couple of puzzles to see what they wanted me to do. That was sort-of satisfying. I've played enough escape-room games to be used to the occasional dip into the hints. The hint numbers are listed in the rule book and refer to paragraphs in the journals. I did accidentally read hints for problems I wasn't even working on while reading one of the journals!

Overall, I thought the game was just okay. The puzzles are engaging but a bit difficult and the story, which is broken into three acts, moves a little unevenly. The second act moved much faster than the first and third. The Fratellis are supposed to move forward if the players make an error which I ignored after a while since I wasn't so concerned about getting a score (and I already had plenty of characters to play). I am the type of escape room player where I ignore the timer (in this case, the Fratellis) and just enjoy solving the puzzles. The art is good and fits the theme and the components are high quality.

Mildly recommended.

Food on the St. Marys City Trip

On the way down to St. Marys City, we stopped at Sandy Pony Donuts, a small chain (three stores!) of custom-donut makers. We each got a donut, five different one. I had the Blueberry Pie (blueberry glaze with powdered sugar and graham crackers). One son got the Blue Moon (blueberry glaze and cinnamon sugar), the other ordered Salted Caramel (caramel glaze and pretzel bits). My wife ordered Sand Dune (cinnamon sugar) while my daughter had the Ms. Sandy (honey glaze and cinnamon sugar). They were delicious.

Smoothies too!

Five fine fried foods

Just before arriving at the historic park, we stopped at a MOD Pizza where my son got a pizza with strawberries on top! It was too horrifying to take a picture of.

That night, we went to Pax River Ale House. As usual, we ordered the pretzel appetizer, which was more like bread sticks but still delightful. I had a nice hefeweizen with the fish and chips.

Sign over the door

One stick was already eaten!

Fish and chips and beer and water

Afterward, we went to Bruster's Real Ice Cream. They make their own ice creams and have a walk-up window. We enjoyed a good variety of flavors from cake batter to butterscotch ripple.

The shop

A cool customer

Happiness

Not sure which face to make

My butterscotch ripple

Book Review: Abe Sapien Dark and Terrible Volume 1 by M. Mignola et al.

Abe Sapien Dark and Terrible Volume 1 story by Mike Mignola, Scott Allie, and John Arcudi, art by Sebastian Fiumara and Max Fiumara, colors by Dave Stewart, and letters by Clem Robins

Abe Sapien has woken from his coma in the middle of the B.P. R.D. Hell on Earth storyline. He's less human-looking than before and has left the Bureau. The United States (and indeed, the rest of the world) has turned into an apocalyptic landscape. Abe wanders around trying to understand more about himself and his role in what's going on, if any. He goes to the Salton Sea where a water-themed elder god arose and to Rosario, Texas, where he took the bullet that put him in the coma. Meanwhile, Gustav Strobl is also wandering the United States looking for answers about Abe's role, though he clear has sinister motives and is upset that he does not have the mystical control that he once had before. He only takes up a quarter of the narrative, most of the focus is on Abe.

The story is very bleak. Abe has given up on the Bureau and the bigger mission of saving the world. He does help people along the way. But the aid is fairly minimal and some people are beyond help. Abe is not very successful in finding information though he is starting to remember his life as Langdon Caul. Caul lived during the American Civil War and transformed into Abe when he found some underwater relic. I found the stories hard to read (this volume is about 400 pages) with the ongoing dismal tone and the lack of progress on any front.

Not recommended.

Movie Review: The Gray Man (2022)

The Gray Man (2022) co-written and directed by Joe and Anthony Russo

The CIA has extra-special operatives for whom there are no records, just numeric designations. Ryan Gosling plays Six, an operative who at the beginning of the movie is sent to Asia to stop a sale of secret information. He's about to make the hit at a night club when he realizes that a child is in the line of fire. His superiors want him to take the shot but he improvises some chaos. Six winds up chasing down the target who admits he's Four (another secret operative!) and gives Six the information on a microchip. Six can't quite decrypt it but does see that it has information about CIA higher-ups who have run illegal operations for their own profit. He has a hard time bringing the information in since the CIA is out to get him, going so far as to hire Lloyd Hansen (Chris Evans). Lloyd is a psychotic CIA dropout who will do anything to get a job done. The back-and-forth fight spans the globe and causes a lot of mayhem and action.

The plot is a standard premise and works to string together a lot of action set-pieces. The fights and chases are exciting. Evans enjoys himself as the scenery-chewing bad guy who loves what he does. Gosling can do the action but has no emotional range or expression, even though he has mentor figures (Billy Bob Thornton and Alfre Woodard) and a little girl (Julia Butters) to take care of as he's trying to get the information in the right hands. Since he's the main character, his lack of performance makes the film drag in the quiet scenes. The rest of the cast carries the film. The action sequences are fun and over the top, making this more like a summer popcorn movie than a great action thriller.

Slightly recommended.

St. Francis Xavier Church, Newtowne, Maryland

St. Francis Xavier Church in Newtowne, Maryland, has the distinction of being the oldest continuously used Catholic church in the original thirteen colonies of America. The chapel was built by Jesuits in 1662 during a period when religious toleration was restored in the colony of Maryland. The acre and a half property was donated by William Bretton, who owned the 850 acres. The Society of Jesus bought his estate in 1668 to use as a farm and a base for evangelizing in other parts of the colony. Religious tolerance vanished again in the early 1700s, forcing the Jesuits to build a less obvious religious structure. As the War of Independence approached, religious intolerance waned. The Jesuits added a vestibule and choir loft on the entrance in 1767. Many exterior buildings came and went in the coming decades. In 1967, the Jesuits left and gave the land around the church to the Archdiocese of Washington. The Jesuits sold the rest of the property to the state and it became a park. The archdiocese recognized the importance of the church and the extant manor house and invested in restoration work. The church still has Mass regularly and has a Knights of Columbus Council.

Shaded exterior of St. Francis Xavier

The "new" vestibule has a statue of Saint Francis along with the baptismal font and the pascal candle.

St. Francis Xavier

Baptismal font and pascal candle

The nave is simple and has the old-style pews boxed off with doors.

Nave

The back pew

The main altar is also simple yet elegant with Saint Francis in the same pose as the statue above.

Main altar

Confessional/sacristy on the side

The statues are quite nice.

Sacred Heart of Jesus

Saint Joseph

Saint Teresa of Avila

Blessed Virgin Mary

Outside, a stone commemorates the Jesuit pastors of the church.

History written in stone

Outdoor area dedicated to Mary

Saint Joseph

The manor house is still standing though not open for visitors. We saw one resident fly away, too fast to get a picture.

Needs stairs!

The back of the manor

Side view shows additions

The upstairs neighbor's place

One of the barns is still here!

Barn

Book Review: The Prestige by Christopher Priest

The Prestige by Christopher Priest

Two magicians get drawn into a dangerous, hurtful rivalry in late 1800s and early 1900s Britain. Alfred Borden is an old-school illusionist who is very philosophical and technical about his craft. As an illusionist, he keeps lots of secrets, especially about his tricks, the most amazing of which is THE NEW TRANSPORTED MAN. In this trick, he steps into a cabinet on one side of the stage and instantly comes out of another cabinet on the other side of the stage. He might toss a hat or bounce a ball to himself to make it more theatrical. Rupert Angier is the second son of a Lord and has dreamed his whole life of being a magician. He has the theatricality naturally and the technique through practice. He also keeps lots of secrets, especially about his family life. He foreswears his nobility and lives in poverty, scraping by on odd jobs. He develops a spiritualist act (very trendy in late 1800s England) as a side hustle with a woman he marries. Borden hears about this and seeks to debunk Angier. When he finally confronts Angier, an accident causes Angier's wife to miscarry (though Borden does not know she is pregnant). Angier starts to take revenge by exposing Borden's illusions during performances, and Borden does the same for Angier. Their lives intertwine through the decades as their competition escalates to tragic ends.

The story has a framing device with two descendants of the Borden and Angier families trying to reconcile the feud in the early 1990s. The main narrative is told through the diaries of Alfred Borden and Rupert Angier. The reader has to grapple with the different perspectives on events and with the magicians' deliberate obfuscations in their writing. Having seen the movie version, I knew the key secrets which made it easier to comprehend passages that were obviously meant to be intriguingly vague, to force the reader to pay attention to details. The mystery is still interesting because both magicians are flawed but engaging characters. The book clearly sympathizes more with Angier, though both are sympathetic if one looks only at their individual diary (I found the characters in the movie to be universally unsympathetic). Both characters (and thereby I assume the author) realize the professional conflict is a waste and they would have been better off working together. The rivalry drives them to use horrible means and ends that cause problems for both families down to the present day.

The book is very interesting in several ways. If the reader hasn't experienced the story before, immediate re-reading is tempting to fill in narrative holes left in the various diaries. Usually I do not like dramas where information is left out deliberately to enhance the drama but using the ego-written diaries is a plausible way to present partial (and misleading) information. Thematically, there's a lot of duality. As the two magicians proceed in their careers, they have similar experiences, especially with women. They try to outdo each other with the same magic tricks and try the same tactics to expose each other or to find out secrets. Even though they are rivals, they are not so different from each other. The "authors" discuss a lot of the theatrical technique that goes into a good stage performance which gives the reader interesting information. Angier's ultimate method of improving THE NEW TRANSPORTED MAN leaves a lot of moral and philosophical questions for the reader to mull over. The book is a rich source for re-reading and reflection.

Highly recommended.

This book is discussed on A Good Story is Hard to Find Podcast #289. I am glad that they inspired me to read the book because I was not a big fan of the movie.

Book Review: The Way of the Househusband Vol. 7 by Kousuke Oono

The Way of the Househusband Volume 7 by Kousuke Oono

More adventures with Tatsu, the Immortal Dragon (that was his yakuza name) turned into a househusband. The book has the usual variety of cooking/mafia crossovers and appliances that work like a hitman's best friend. For new stuff, Tatsu goes camping with his wife, gets involved in a haiku showdown, and even does a little bit of cosplay for a good cause. It's more of the same light entertainment from previous volumes.

Mildly recommended--if you like the other stuff in this series, you'll like this.

St. Clement's Island, Maryland

St. Clement's Island has a long and varied history. The island was the first settlement for the British colonists coming to Maryland in 1634. Leonard Calvert came with a group of Catholics and Protestants from England. The group included Father Andrew White, S.J., who said the first Mass in the English colonies on March 25, 1634 on the island. Before the leaders found a good spot on the mainland for their settlement, the colonists stayed on the island.

St. Clement's Island seen from the shore

The island was included in St. Clement's Manor, a tract of land granted to Thomas Gerard in 1639. Later, it was owned by the Blackistone family and eventually became known as Blackistone Island. They owned it for two hundred years, so the change was natural.

In the mid-1800s, the U.S. Government built a lighthouse on the island that served to guide ships entering the Potomac River from the Chesapeake Bay. The U.S. Navy bought the island in 1919 and automated the lighthouse in 1932. It eventually fell into ruin and burned down in 1956. A historic recreation of the house was built in 2008.

Tourists can visit the island either through the St. Clement's Island Museum, which runs a motor boat between the shore and the island, or by taking their own boat or swimming (though swimming is not recommended due to the number of boats in the area). We took the museum's ferry.

Happy ferry riders

View of the shore from the ferry

The north end of the island

The ferry left us on a long pier. A lot of people come to fish off the island, so we shared the boat with many people who didn't go farther than the pier.

Walking the pier

View to Maryland from the island

We saw one trail that looked intriguing and seemed to be the only way south to the area with the lighthouse and the memorial for the first Mass.

Some vehicle must use this trail, right?

The trail turned out to be swampy and spooky. Some of the puddles were too large to avoid so we had to walk through them.

Spooky trees

We were surprised to see some informational signs that provided no insight whatsoever into the history of the island.

Your ad here?

A spacious field at the southern end of the island has a large tree planted by the Optimists Club of St. Marys County, the first of 500 trees added to honor Father Andrew White's description of the island having "great virgin forests."

Optimists' tree

The field also has a stage on which our children provided some entertainment.

Might as well take advantage of it

Three different performances at once!

The other end of the field has the memorial cross and the lighthouse.

Lots of space

Memorial to the first Mass

The other side of the memorial

The lighthouse is open on weekends, so we were able to visit the interior. I was amazed to see it was both the house for the keeper and the light. It must have been very convenient not to have to go to another building to keep the light running.

Recreated lighthouse

Two of three children?

Hiding behind the lady lightkeeper

The plans of the lighthouse

The view from the cupola was nice, even if the trek up was treacherous (though not too strenuous). 

View of the cross

View to Maryland

View to Virginia

Enjoying the view

Going down is always more nerve wracking 

Spiral staircase

For foggy days, the island had a small bell tower which the lightkeepers could ring. The original bell house was built in 1888 and had an automated system to ring the bell every sixteen seconds. The new tower was completed in 2010. The bell is still ringable by visitors.

Bell tower

Ring away!

A landing point for kayaks

Playing on the beach

As we headed back, we discovered a tree-line boulevard, courtesy of the Optimists' Club. It was dry to the foot and pleasant for the eye (but maybe not for the butterfly).

An easier path

A poor butterfly

Back at the pier, we did not have a long wait for our ride.

The ferry returns

Back on the mainland, we did a quick tour through the museum.

St. Clement's Island Museum

Lighthouse info

My son took a picture with Queen Henrietta Maria, wife of King Charles I. Maryland was ostensibly named after her, though with Catholic founders, it's hard not to imagine an intention to honor the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Posing with royalty

A small set of figures depicts Governor Leonard Calvert declaring the Act of Religious Tolerance that allowed religious freedom to all Christians who believed at least in the Trinity. The Maryland General Assembly codified the act in 1649 with An Act Concerning Religion. Once King Charles I was overthrown during the English Civil War, the Protestant government modified the act to exclude Roman Catholics! The situation shifted through the years. 

Laying down the law

The museum has a fun model of the lighthouse that opens up.

Blackistone Lighthouse

Action figures not included