Movie Review: Silent Night (2002)

Silent Night (2002) directed by Rodney Gibbons

On Christmas Eve in 1944, a trio of Americans is lost in a snow storm on the French/German front of the Battle of the Bulge. They stumble upon a cabin in the woods where a German mother (Linda Hamilton) and her 8-10 year old son Fritz (Matthew Harbour) are living. One of the soldiers has a badly-injured leg, so the Americans barge in and commandeer a bedroom. The mother insists that they leave their weapons outside which the Americans are naturally reluctant to do. The private leaves his rifle unattended and Fritz hides the weapon, following his mother's instructions. She manages to convince the other soldier to surrender his weapon. As they are tending to the wound and getting firewood from an outside shed, three German soldiers show up. The Americans bluff their way into getting the Germans to surrender their weapons. The mother gets those put away too, forcing an uneasy truce. What follows is some predictable but entertaining drama as the eight people wind up sharing a Christmas Eve dinner together.

The plot is based on a true story and the movie was produced by Hallmark, so I was a little trepidatious going into it. The actors do a good job and the story beats have enough suspense to make it interesting. I wound up liking it a lot more than I thought I would. The Germans start off a little bit one-dimensional but as everyone reveals more about themselves and their backgrounds, a very human story unfolds. This was a fun Christmas watch.

Mildly recommended--this didn't earn any awards but it did earn my respect!

TV Review: All The Light We Cannot See (2023)

All the Light We Cannot See (2023) adapted for television by Steven Knight from the novel by Anthony Doerr

1944 Saint Malo, France, is undergoing Allied bombardment. A blind girl named Marie (Aria Mia Loberti) is broadcasting from her home's attic. She reads out passages from Jules Verne and messages to her father and uncle, both of whom are absent. She desperately hopes to reconnect with them. The Nazis are desperate to find her illegal broadcast and use a young, brilliant intelligence officer named Werner (Louis Hoffman) to hunt down the signal. They assume the girl is reading out coded information to the Allies. A new Nazi shows up, Von Rumple (Lars Eidinger). He is a treasurer hunter for the Fuhrer and has his own agenda. He's come to Saint Malo in search of The Sea of Flames, a jewel of fantastic value that is claimed to be cursed. He chased it down as far as Paris, where it was in possession of a museum and considered a national treasure. The museum had a worker, Daniel LeBlanc (Mark Ruffalo), who hid many treasures and fled with The Sea of Flames. He also fled with his blind daughter, whom he loves very much and has raised mostly on his own. Her name is Marie.

The story is a combination of mystery, thriller, and family drama. The plot unwinds slowly but deliberately, giving viewers a better understanding of the characters involved. It's touching if a bit soapy. The performances are mostly good, though for some reason all the French characters have English accents and the Germans have German accents. All the Germans except Werner are a bit too cartoonishly evil, the sort you expect to see in Indiana Jones movies, not in serious dramas. Von Rumple is the only other German with more than one dimension to his character, though not much more. The French characters have enough personal problems and conflicts to fill out the drama in a satisfying way. The production values are very high and World War II makes a good backdrop. I enjoyed the story but wasn't wowed by it.

Mildly recommended--the book won the Pulitzer for fiction, so I bet it is better as a novel.

Currently (December 2023) this is only available streaming on Netflix.

Game Review: EXIT Advent Calendar: Silent Storm

EXIT Advent Calendar: Silent Storm designed by Inka and Marcus Brand and published by KOSMOS

See my review of EXIT Advent Calendar: The Golden Book.

This is another adaptation of the EXIT: The Game system as an Advent calendar, with one puzzle to solve each day of December before the 25th. In this game, players are elves in Santa's workshop but a calamity has happened, an earthquake and a storm. Santa hit the emergency button which has the whole place on lock-down. Things are so jumbled that someone needs to get back to the control center and get the situation back to normal. Each puzzle deals with a different room, e.g. the stuffed-animal-making room, the candy-making room, etc. A tear-off booklet has one page of story for each day along with some hints on how to solve that day's puzzle. The "rooms" in the calendar typically have one or more puzzle cards and maybe some strange items, like these, behind the doors.

What sort of magic makes a button larger than a tray of cookies!

The items help make a good variety of puzzles. Scissors and writing implements are needed to complete some of the puzzles, along with the ability to spot clues all over the rooms, the box, the manuals, and everything else. The diversity in puzzles is fun. Even if we fell behind a day or two and had to catch up, each puzzle is only five or ten minutes long to solve at the most and is different enough that we did not feel like we were doing the same thing over and over.

This set is rated as an easier one, with puzzle that are not too hard to solve. We only went to the hint book two or three times to find out solutions we couldn't achieve on our own (which is typical for us playing EXIT games). The last couple of days have a fun twist to the story and, like any Christmas story, it ends very happily for all concerned. 

Recommended, highly for EXIT fans.

Book Review: Messenger: The Legend of Muhammad Ali by M. Bernardin et al.

Messenger: The Legend of Muhammad Ali written by Marc Bernardin and art by Ron Salas

This graphic novel biography goes through the highlights and important events of the life of Muhammad Ali, the American boxer who became world famous for many reasons. The most significant is his success in the boxing ring. He also had a lot of character, exhibiting a sense of humor and brashness. He liked himself a lot and often took a poetic view of things. His famous "float like a butterfly, sting like a bee" was one of the many boasts he would make about his abilities. The book also covers his conversion to Islam, his refusal to be drafted during the Vietnam War, his successful intervention in an Iraq hostage situation. The story is bookended by his lighting the Olympic torch at the Los Angeles games in 1996, showing a child watching on TV and asking why Ali is famous and what's wrong with him. Ali had Parkinson's disease.

The biography is told in vignettes, with each incident in Ali's life showing some of his character and how he dealt with others and thought of himself. It provides a fascinating portrait of the man and his greatness.

Recommended.

Movie Review: Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)

Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) written and directed by Werner Herzog

A group of 16th-century Spaniards travel through South America looking for the city of El Dorado, a place Native Americans claim has more gold than anyone could possibly want. The large group bogs down after coming down a mountain. Supplies are dwindling, so the leader picks forty men to go on rafts down a river to look for a Christian settlement or El Dorado. The rafters should come back in a week if they are successful or not. The raft group is led by Ursua (Ruy Guerra) who has to bring his wife along. The second in command is Aguirre (Klaus Kinski) who has to bring his daughter along. Brother Caravajal (Del Negro) also goes with the group because they are ostensibly there to spread Christianity to the locals. The river journey is fraught with peril as the elements and the natives slowly take the lives of the Spaniards. If that were not problem enough, Aguirre has his own ambitions and attitudes (and takes some lives himself).

Since this is a Herzog film, the theme of man versus nature is the primary interest, with nature being brutal and nearly overwhelming. The natives are lumped in on the "nature" side of the conflict--they are unseen killers from the jungle shadows or enslaved coolies for the Spaniards. Their characters do not quite achieve the level of personhood. Aguirre is a laconic anti-hero. He seems only interested in getting to El Dorado. He works to keep the group going in that direction. When people want to return to the main group, they are killed outright. Ursua is wounded at one point and Aguirre has another nobleman put in charge rather than himself. The new nobleman is even easier to manipulate. Aguirre looks on himself as a force of nature (he calls himself "the Wrath of God") but he isn't an equal with Nature herself. The expedition falls apart by the end of the film (not a spoiler, since the movie opens with excerpts from the priest's journal, the only surviving element from the expedition). Aguirre is both practical and insane, recommending expeditious actions that aren't always morally worthy choices.

Visually, Herzog has a brutal realism in his depiction of the jungles and the river. The passage downriver is either chaotically dangerous or languidly drifting, threatening to take lives instantly under the water or slowly without enough food. The Spaniards look miserable and weary. Hope fades and fades as the story goes on. The film is a bit mesmerizing even as things get worse and worse.

Recommended--there's a lot of interesting stuff here but it is a bit of a slog to get through, even for the viewers.

TV Review: Blackadder II (1986)

Blackadder II (1986) created by Richard Curtis

See my review of the first Blackadder here. 

Jumping ahead to Elizabethan England, Sir Edmund Blackadder (Rowan Atkinson) is great-grandson of the original Lord Blackadder. Edmund follows in his ancestor's footsteps, trying to get ahead in his society without annoying the royalty, in his case, Queen Elizabeth (Miranda Richardson). The queen is a bit of a loose cannon, often playing jests or inexplicably switching from affectionate to execution-minded. She has a nurse (Patsy Byrne) and a sycophantic minister (Stephen Fry) who play along with her. They provide comedic jeopardy for Blackadder.

Blackadder has his own entourage of sycophants--a servant named Baldrick (Tony Robinson) and Lord Percy (Tim McInnerny) who is a bit of an idiot but willing to go along with Blackadder's schemes. The scheming is fun if a bit ridiculous. For example, Blackadder tries to upstage Sir Walter Raleigh by sailing around the Cape of Good Hope, a seemingly fatal trip. Blackadder hires a salty captain (played delightfully by Fourth Doctor Tom Baker) whose ship doesn't really make it anywhere since he has no crew and no real sailing skills. The predicament leads to a lot comedy, some of it gross or bawdy. 

The show is both very mature and entirely childish. A surprising amount of humor is based around body parts and sex, something the British are more comfortable with (see Monty Python's stuff). The humor is often rude, with cutting remarks bandied about, mostly from Blackadder. There's more slapstick than I was expecting too, with characters thrown through walls or tossed about. Most of the characters are vain, selfish, and shallow. I did laugh a lot, so I guess it worked as a comedy.

Mildly recommended--this show isn't for kids but it is funny, and you have to excuse the mid-1980s BBC production values.

Book Review: Keep the Memories, Loose the Stuff by M. Paxton et al.

Keep the Memories, Loose the Stuff by Matt Paxton with Jordan Michael Smith

Matt Paxton fell into his career as a decluttering specialist when he had to deal with family homes that were full of a lot of stuff. Just sorting out who wanted what and what was valuable (and should be sold) and what was salvageable (and should be donated) and what was just plain junk (and should be thrown away) was an overwhelming task, especially when grieving the loss of a loved one. He got very good at the work and went professional, starting with clients in Richmond, Virginia, and working his way up to hosting a PBS series called Legacy List with Matt Paxton. Over time, he developed the concept of a "Legacy List," a set of items that have stories interwoven with them and are what the owner wants to pass on to family and friends. These are the things to keep from one's home (or someone else's home).

The book is a combination of how-to and self-help. He walks readers through the various stages of sorting, dealing with, and cleaning out all the stuff that accumulates over the years. He gives practical advice on where to take things after figuring out what the personal and economic values of various items are. He has a lot of good, actionable advice to pass on, along with a resource guide at the end of the book detailing what to do with most any item found in a home, from antiques to collections (jewelry, stamps, magazines, comic books, etc.) to paperwork. It's comprehensive and useful.

Paxton also focuses on the emotional side of downsizing or moving. He uses a lot of examples from his work and starts with his own difficult decisions when he was going to move from Virginia to Georgia. People have a sense of loss, especially if the home to be sorted was owned by a deceased relative. Paxton got people to tell the stories of various items or rooms in the house as a way to build trust and to help the person let go (or realize what is really important). He goes back often to the difference between sentimental value and market value. Often something important to a person, something that has a lot of memories attached, is valued more highly than a stranger would value it. Telling the stories helps to clarify the real value and whether something is worth keeping. It also helps with the grieving process.

The book is interesting and helpful. The stories are entertaining and provide drama and practical examples of Paxton's advice. 

Recommended for anyone wanting to downsize for a move or a decluttering project. We could all use less stuff in our lives.

Sample Quote:

Ultimately, that's what my work is about--leaving the past behind in an emotionally satisfying way to step boldly into the future. People tend to tell me the items they want to bring with them in a move--or talk about agonizing over what to bring--instead of telling me the life they want to live where they are going. But you live your best life when you understand that what really matters is not possessions but memories. [p. 121]

War of the Christmas Novelty Ales 2023

See previous wars here.

This year brings another batch of brews made just for yuletide consumption. Here's my sampling....

Fireside Chat by 21st Amendment Brewery, San Leandro, California (7.9 per cent alcohol by volume)--The can's description is simply the following: "Winter Ale with spices and cocoa nibs." The web page is more verbose: "It’s the most wonderful time of the year again, time to gather with family and friends beside a warm fireplace and share some holiday cheer. Our Fireside Chat Winter Ale is warming and delicious, and as the reindeer say, 'like a hug and a kick in the rear at the same time!' We begin with a rich, deep, toffee-colored winter warmer ale and then we hand-select spices and cocoa nibs until we know we have a beer worth sharing. So, no matter how you celebrate, or where you are, grab a spot by the fire and a friend and share the season." This does have the classic winter ale flavor--a dark beverage with a bit higher alcohol content and a bit of a piney, woodsy flavor. The cocoa flavor is subtle but detectable. The spices are stronger but not overpowering or unbalanced with the other flavors in the ale. I can imagine drinking this at a bonfire or on a sleigh ride and adding to the good time. This ale is not outstanding but is a fine winter warmer.

Merry Monkey by Victory Brewing Company, Downington, Pennsylvania (10 per cent alcohol by volume)--The label says, "This Belgian-style Holiday Ale combines the beloved flavor profile of Golden Monkey with notes of cranberry, orange peel, cinnamon and nutmeg to deliver a delightfully smooth finish, perfect for merry gatherings with family and friends." I've never had Golden Monkey, so I don't know how this compares with its predecessor. This does have a light, coppery color that is close to gold. I drinks smoothly with a little bitter aftertaste. The spices are light but detectable, not having any distinct flavor standing out. It leaves a dry feeling, more like a lighter beer, even with the intense percentage of alcohol. This beer is just okay to me and does not have a distinctly holiday taste.

Cookie Exchange Milk Stout by Great Lakes Brewing Company, Cleveland, Ohio (5.5 per cent alcohol by volume)--The can recommends, "Treat yourself to our seasonal Milk Stout brewed with a special rotating cookie-inspired flavor." According to the web site, this year's flavor is inspired by Caramel Vanilla Shortbread (even if the can looks like sugar cookies).  The beer is very dark looking but not dark tasting. The caramel flavor comes through quite well, which I like very much. The shortbread is more subtle, just hints of vanilla nestled in among the other flavors. It drinks smooth with no bitterness or aftertaste. I find it delightful, though it is more of a dessert beer--it definitely would not go with pizza or burgers! A fine beer all around that makes me curious about previous offerings. What other cookies have they done?

The Mad Elf Grand Cru by Troegs Independent Brewing, Hershey, Pennsylvania (11 per cent alcohol by volume)--The bottle says, "If you know Troegs, you know The Mad Elf - the legendary holiday ale that helped put our little brewery on the map. In your hands is the Director's Cut. Tart Balston cherries make all the difference. Flush with supporting notes of brown sugar, cinnamon and clove, this beer begs to be shared. Take a 4-pack home, gather your friends, and cherish the cherries." I did not share this, in spite of the robust alcohol content. This dark red ale has the smell and the look of the cherries, one of my favorite fruits. The cherry flavor is very tart and has a little hint of the cloying flavor of Sucrets. The beer is warming but not as wonderful as I would wish. I had Mad Elf, the original, in two previous wars (here and here). I think the original is better than this director's cut.

Everything Nice by Brewery Ommegang, Cooperstown, New York (9 per cent alcohol by volume)--The bottle only claims, "Strong Blonde Ale With Seasonal Spices and Natural & Artificial Flavor." The web site is more verbose: "Lightly dusted with spices of the season, Everything Nice is a warming, wintry Belgian-style blonde ale. This supremely cozy confection pairs perfectly with any traditional holiday treat. Note the flavors of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, and white pepper as you sip next to the fireplace. We hope this fresh-baked offering brings warmth and light to you and yours." The color is blonde with a bit of red, so a goldish orange or orangey gold. It has the winter outdoorsy flavor that reminds me of pine. The beer has just a hint of bitterness. This is another beer I picture more at a winter bonfire than with a Christmas dessert. It is nice but not superlative.

Everything Naughty by Brewery Ommegang, Cooperstown, New York (9.5 per cent alcohol by volume)--This can has more to say for itself than its nice sibling: "The Naughty Elves were spotted in Cooperstown not long ago full of mischief and mayhem which left us, much to our delight, with an imperial blonde stout; Everything Naughty. A stout that tantalizes the taste buds. Anticipate notes of roasted coffee and white chocolate complete with a brilliant golden hue. This rich stout is smooth and velvety with classic stout flavors. WELCOME TO THE NAUGHTY LIST." Imperial blonde stout is not a combination I have ever run across before, a seemingly contradictory set of flavor expectations. It definitely has the color of a blonde. It has only a touch of IPA bitterness (only the "I" in "IPA"?), the flavor is more tart or sour. It does have a smooth mouth-feel and doesn't taste like it's a 9.5 on the alcohol scale. Someone could be fooled by this beer in many different ways. I like it but don't love it. Being naughty is not all it's cracked up to be.

The Cookie Exchange is the winner this year, and something I will try to find next year, too!

p.s. I am truly, deeply sorry there wasn't a War of the Christmas Novelty Ales last year. Life was too busy to drink!!

Book Review: Justice League Dark Vol. 1 by P. Milligan et al.

Justice League Dark Volume 1: In the Dark written by Paul Milligan and art by Mikel Janin

Magical villain The Enchantress has gone berserk and her powers are causing chaos all over the world, including the slaying of a woman named June Moone. Well, a lot of copies of her are being killed and attacked. Justice League members Superman, Wonder Woman, and Cyborg track Enchantress to her isolated cabin but are unable to defeat her. Tarot-card-reading Madame Xanadu narrates the story as she tries to pull together a bunch of C-list heroes (John Constantine, Zatanna, Deadman, Shade the Changing Man, and Mindwarp) to fix the situation. Xanadu can see the future, though of course it is hazy and fluctuates. She sees disaster unless these individualistic, broken heroes can come together to end The Enchantress's madness.

The story gives time to each character as the overall problem unfolds. All of them are broken people with difficulties in their past and their present lives. They are in especially bad shape, with maybe too much detail shown, and have a hard time working together. The chaos is also a bit darker and more unpleasant than standard comic-book fare. The idea of bringing the magic-wielding heroes together is interesting but the execution here is quite grim and they don't gel as a team. The next issue promises vampires, so I may give it a try with my expectations lowered.

Mildly recommended--this is not for the pre-teen crowd.

Movie Review: Dark City (1998)

Dark City (1998) co-written and directed by Alex Proyas

John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell) wakes up in a bathtub with no memories of who he is or how he got there. He is in a hotel in a rundown city full of squalor and mysteries. John is embroiled in a problematic mystery, the killing of a string of call girls. He discovers that he left his wife (Jennifer Connelly) over an affair and maybe he has been committing the murders in revenge? If that wasn't bad enough, something much more sinister is going on. Dr. Schreber (Kiefer Sutherland) has been his psychiatrist. The doctor has a much more important secret. He is in league with The Strangers, a race of beings who are studying humans to find out why they are unique. The Strangers can manipulate reality and have been rearranging the city and messing with people's lives as a scientific experiment to gain the knowledge they want.

The movie is initially a noir thriller, with the dark, squalid city and intriguing mysteries, including lurid murders. It quickly morphs into a science fiction nightmare with exploration of the nature of identity, individuality, and the nature of reality. The philosophical musings don't get too deep or too confusing. The slow reveal of The Strangers' plans and what is really going keeps viewers engaged and has some surprising moments. The visuals, often borrowed from movies like Metropolis and other dystopias, are striking. The dark style fits the theme well. The movie is intriguing and begs to be watched a second time.

Recommended.

Book Review: The Pope and the Holocaust by Michael Hesemann

The Pope and the Holocaust: Pius XII and the Vatican Secret Archives by Michael Hesemann

Gaining access to thousands of records released in the early 2000s in the Vatican Secret Archives (now renamed the Vatican Apostolic Archives), Michael Hesemann sets the record straight about Pope Pius XII and actions or seeming inactions during World War II. Just after the war, Pius was lionized by the Jewish community for his efforts to protect European Jews from the wrath of the Nazis. In 1963, the German play The Deputy accused Pius XII of indifference toward the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis. Even though the play was discredited, the myth grew up that the pope did nothing for Jews during the Holocaust.

This book is a meticulous reconstruction of what happened during World War II as the Vatican was under the lesser thumb of Mussolini, and then occupied by the Germans in the last year of the war. The records corroborate the initial post-war impression of what Pius did--he worked hard, but often behind the scenes, to keep Jews from being deported to Eastern Europe, even before the Final Solution became known outside of Nazi circles. Kristallnacht and other pogroms in various countries showed the Nazis were ready, willing, and able to oppress and remove Jews from society by any means they dared to use. While German troops were successful on the battlefield, Hitler had more or less carte blanche to do what he wanted in the homeland and the occupied territories. The Pope used delicate tactics to condemn their racist actions without increasing their furor and potentially making the situation worse. An outright denunciation could be depicted by the Nazis as wartime propaganda. The pope was in touch with several German military leaders who were interested in a coup if they could get support in ending the war. The pope was an ostensibly neutral figure who could communicate with both sides and help bring about peace. In the meantime, Pius asked various countries to provide asylum for Jews willing to leave. He also asked various religious houses (monasteries, convents, schools, etc.) to provide hiding places for Jews who could not escape. In addition to the 8000 Jews living in Rome, many refugees from other European countries had come to Italy where Mussolini did not enforce the "racial purity" laws that Hitler demanded. The overall situation was complicated, with many different facets that needed attention.

While scholarly, this book reads more like a narrative of what happened than an extended argument. The author provides photographs of many documents from the Archive along with translations and explanations of their impact on the situation. I learned a lot from the book and recommend it for a look at the Vatican's actions (and the Catholic Church in general) during World War II.

Highly recommended.

TV Review: Doctor Who 60th Anniversary Specials (2023)

Doctor Who 60th Anniversary Specials (2023) written by Russell T. Davis and directed by Rachel Talalay, Tom Kingsley, and Chanya Button

The Fourteenth incarnation of the Doctor has the same face as the Tenth Doctor (David Tennant)! A series of specials for the sixtieth anniversary of the show features Tennant and Catherine Tate returning as Donna Noble. Three fun episodes?

The Star Beast--The Doctor lands on present day Earth where he nearly runs into Donna. He does not want to do that because if she remembers him, she will die (because of entirely fabricated complications, the usual Doctor Who blather). He tries to avoid her as everyone except Donna sees an alien spaceship crash in London's outskirts. Donna has a daughter named Rose (Yasmin Finney) and a husband and a supposedly happy life. Rose winds up finding a cute alien creature, The Meep, which she tries to protect from the hostile aliens that have also landed on Earth and want to capture The Meep. The show has the usual dramatics and action of a Doctor Who episode with a very cinematic visual flare. There's a nice twist for the third act and a great deal of fun leading to the Doctor and Donna going for one last adventure in the TARDIS. There are some clumsy woke moments in the show, e.g. it is hard to tell whether they are mocking or affirming a character choosing a pronoun.

Wild Blue Yonder--Of course the TARDIS goes off course, landing the Doctor and Donna at the edge of the known universe in a seemingly empty, gigantic ship. The TARDIS suddenly transports out, leaving them stranded. Donna panics and the Doctor realizes the TARDIS only leaves when extreme danger is nearby. They investigate the ship, hoping to stop the danger and thereby let the TARDIS return. The adventure is fun, along with a little bit of character development and revelation. Not the best Doctor story, but good enough.

The Giggle--Neil Patrick Harris guest stars as The Toymaker, a villain who wants to play games and win. He's used a puppet to drive human beings crazy, forcing the Doctor and Donna to team up with UNIT to stop him. The mechanics of the plot are very nonsensical which could have been okay if the cast was up for a bit of whimsy. For me, they played it a little too straight to make the fun outweigh the logical inconsistencies and incoherences. The new Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) has a nice introduction, though I hope he gets a pair of pants in the Christmas special. Tennant's Doctor gets a nice coda and a huge opening to come back at any time. Donna gets the ending that she deserves, which made me very happy.

Overall, these are okay. I didn't see anything really great here but I was entertained. I want to go back and watch the Donna Noble episodes. She is the best of the modern companions, maybe the best one from the whole sixty year history.

As I write (December 2023), the episodes are available streaming on Disney+ in America and other countries outside of the UK (where it is available from BBC).

Geocaching November 2023

November started off with the discovery of another set of Alphabet caches in Columbia, Maryland--see this link for more details!

On the alpha hunt!

By the premier go-kart race track near BWI airport, I found Speed is Irrelevant to Racing. The view from the cache does go into the raceway, but just barely.

Those are not go-karts!?!

On a very busy day, I wound up finding an Adventure Lab at dusk. It is part of a series involving the villages of Columbia, this one being on Lake Elkhorn. We convinced the kids to come by promising them ice cream afterward.

The answer was on the dock

A quick find on another busy day was Shine My Shoes...., yet another Konterra Drive cache.

The road that keeps on giving

I finally finished the Legend of Zelda set I was working on with Forest Temple Boss Gohma. On the way I saw a leftover Halloween direction.

Need a ride?

After the Monday Morning Coffee Event, the group went to Have You Missed Me? It was recently hidden but is way up a tree. One of the geocachers had a folding ladder though we didn't need it since his grabber did the job. We signed as a group. My first experience caching with people outside the family!

I had to pick up some specialty items at Trader Joes, so I found the nearby Kendall Ridge Letterbox which took me on a nice walk along one of the many Columbia trails. The container was off in the woods but not too far. I should have trusted my phone's compass to get me closer to Ground Zero, once I did the find was quick.

Pacifier in a tree...less creepy than the skeleton

Typical forrest

The next day I found Exercise #2 Parallel Bars after I couldn't find another cache. The spot was quiet on a weekday morning.

Workout?

Lamp Post Mania is a multicache in a parking lot that led from lamp post to lamp post. The fourth and final was the home of the log. It was fun to be stealthy among the cars.

The corners of the strip mall are well decorated

I needed another virtual to fill out the calendar. Greenskins is at the Washington Commanders stadium just outside Washington, D.C. Finders are supposed to take a picture with the 30-foot tall statue of a quarterback that is covered in material that converts sunshine into energy.

By Fed Ex Field, home of the Washington Commanders

The next day I did a cache and dash on a dead end that stops at I-95. The cache is called End Game because it's the end of the road. 

Road to nowhere

My Birthday Cache... is another easy find that kept the streak going. I didn't take a photo.

Running an errand near IKEA, I found a nano-cache hidden near the front door. Somehow I Kollect European Accessories, the Nano hasn't been muggled in the many years it has been around. It was first placed in 2008!

Somewhere in there

I went to back-to-back community events. On a Sunday, I attended the Geocaching International Film Festival at the Laurel Library. Geocachers from across the world made short films about the hobby. Most were comedies, with a few tearjerkers and informational presentations. The whole program (eighteen shorts) is a little over an hour, so there was time for door prizes and socializing. The next day, I went to the Monday morning meet-up that has been running for five years where we talked about the films among other geocaching topics. Check out the GIFF 2023 program:

We had enough rainy days in November that I was able to finish off the Adventure Lab called Columbia MD: Second Five Villages, but not the mystery cache that is the final reward. Adventure Labs typically involve going to a location and, once you are close enough to the coordinates, answering a question, usually based on where you are. It's handy to park by the coordinates and answer a question from the driver's seat. It doesn't always work, but often enough it keeps the streak going.

Mill ruins under roadway, near one of the labs

People Tree in Columbia, another lab coordinate

On the day before Thanksgiving, I found Son of A Ditch, which is about a swale that was made nearby. It was fun discovery with the kids in tow. We found another at a shopping center with a lighthouse, A Landmark of Annapolis. 

View from the ditch

Done caching

On Thanksgiving Day, my cache of choice was CAM 2020: "Calling All Cachers" (Virtual 2.0), a virtual cache with a bird theme. I tried to cram in some extra birds at the final stage.

3 birds in one shot!

The next day I got A Cup of Swag... not too far from home. After that, I had a day of three caches. The Woods Are Lovely, Dark, and Deep required a second parking spot since the first one did not have a trail head to to cache. Alas, the log was soaked and unsignable. Happy New Year Cache 2018 Cache... also had a log too wet to sign. I did find a signable log in The 24th of September, a letterbox cache set on the spot a tornado touched down in September of 2001 (just weeks after the 9-11 Attack). The log had an example of its stamp.

Tornado stamp

Maybe the pirate waterlogged this?

No excuse here

Happy after a cup of swag!

With the kids back in school (and another morning coffee group attended), I found a virtual in Baltimore, A Different Type of Key. The information needed is right by a church. Since it was so nearby, I also found the answers for the earthcache Cockeysville Marble, about a native Maryland stone used in making both the Peabody Library and the (Baltimore) Washington Monument.

Historic church

I am between the monument and the library (sort of)

The Ice Breakers... kept the streak going. So did a trio in College Park: Extra..., At the end of the rainbow, and The Engineer's Cache II. I picked up a mermaid from the rainbow cache, no joke!

Maryland in November is no place for a mermaid

Driving range by the Engineer's cache

I swapped out the mermaid for a skeleton at BWI/Rental Car Travel Bug Hotel, maybe not the best deal going. I hope she gets a flight to a tropical island!

Strangers passing in the cache

My last cache for the month, Beer Run #1, resulted in me bringing home a four-pack of Coffee Cake Stout. A delicious end to the month.

I had 42 finds this month with an overall total of 987. I will definitely hit 1000 in December. I am currently running a streak, hoping to make 100 consecutive days of caching. My plan is to find the 1000th cache on the 100th day of my streak!

And only four empty days on the overall calendar...

Good thing next year is leap year!

Book Review: Geiger by G. Johns et al.

Geiger created by Geoff Johns and Garry Frank with colors by Brad Anderson

In a post-nuclear war future, one man can still live outside without a radiation suit, Tariq Geiger. He'd had cancer before the war and his experimental treatments changed him enough to survive when the bombs dropped. He was altered by the bombs, gaining powers of heat and light that have made him a legend to the other survivors, most notably the residents of nearby Las Vegas. The city has turned into a decadent monarchy and the latest leader wants Geiger's head as a trophy.

Geiger's family made it into their underground bunker but he had to stay outside to fight off neighbors who wanted in. Decades after, he's still protecting the bunker waiting the radiation to drop to safe levels. The Vegas people show up to cause trouble. The story spins out from there, with some post-apocalyptic fighting and drama. 

Overall I found it interesting though it borrows a lot from other properties. The even-more-decadent Las Vegas has had plenty of iterations. Radiation enducing powers is a staple of Marvel Comics. There's a little bit of Mad Max/Road Warrior stuff thrown in too. Geiger is a reluctant hero who only uses his powers when he feels forced to. The plot ranges around, letting the creators establish the world. I wasn't wowed by this book but I would read more.

Mildly recommended.

Movie Review: Into Great Silence (2005)

Into Great Silence (2005) written and directed by Philip Groning

This documentary follows the lives of Carthusian monks in their Alpine monastery Grande Chartreuse. Filmmaker Philip Groning had asked for permission to film there in 1984 and the monks said they needed time to prepare, maybe in ten or twelve years. Sixteen years later, they invited him to come and film their lives. Groning spent two years filming and then two and a half years editing to make the film. 

The result is surprising. Most every film documentary features talking heads describing and often commenting on the subject. Maybe some info-graphics are thrown in, cute animations too. External information and broader context are shown to give a further understanding of the situation and to guide the viewers along the path the filmmakers desire. This documentary eschews all of that. The monks are focused on their work and their worship, laboring and praying with almost no words spoken and no attention paid to the camera. The film has one interview with a blind monk who talks about God and happiness (so there is one talking head) towards the end of the film.  The movie is a quintessential example of the "show, don't tell" style.

The greater part of the film follows the monks' lives. They eat simply, bread and some fruit and vegetables. They work at cooking, planting, chopping firewood, studying. Most of all, they pray. Individual prayers happen in their rooms; community prayer happens in the monastery's main chapel, with a bell ringing to draw the monks from their other activities to their main activity. The movie returns again and again to the chapel, sometimes with just one monk, sometimes with a handful of monks, sometimes during daylight, sometimes at night.

Visually, the movie uses a lot of close ups, some very close to the faces of the monks (or quite often, the backs of their heads), as they do their daily activities. This gives a sense of immediacy and intimacy, drawing the viewer into the inner part of the monks' lives. They live in simplicity and peace. The monastery and the men are unaffected by the outer world. Their peace has a joy to it, the sort that Paul writes about in Philippians 4:7, "that surpasses all understanding." Such peace can't be put into words as effectively as it is shown in this film. This intimacy is relieved by shots that are much further away, giving a sense of scale to the monastery and showing it tucked into its little valley in the French Alps. 

Any sounds in the movie are natural, either of the monks at work or in prayer (only the communal prayer is audible). The peaceful environment has the sounds of rainfall, birds chattering, tools like saws or pages turning. Again, this simplicity draws the viewer into the world of the monastery.

The style of the film is challenging to modern viewers who expect a lot of narrative or explanation. The movie moves languidly through the monks lives with no musical cues or voice-over to guide the viewers. With a 162-minute run time, a lot of patience is required. I think a viewer will know in the first ten minutes or so if they are in sync with the film and won't lose patience.

Highly recommended. I wouldn't watch this every day, but the feeling of peace it gives is mesmerizing and satisfying.

TV Review: Voltron Legendary Defender Season 1

Voltron Legendary Defender Season 1 executive produced by Joaquim Dos Santos and Lauren Montgomery based on Beast King GoLion by Toei Animation and Voltron by World Events Productions

The classic after school series from my childhood returned in 2016 as a new animated series on Netflix. The show of my youth was enjoyable to the pre-teen me, though even then I recognized a lot of challenges with it--the recycled plot lines in many if not most episodes, the reused "forming Voltron" animated sequence that saved the animators thirty seconds of animation, etc. How does the new series hold up?

The new show follows the same basic plot. Five young heroes from Earth wind up deep in outer space where they become Paladins of Voltron, a giant robot that is formed out of five lion robots that each character pilots. They fight against Zarkon, an evil emperor from the Galra Empire who has been ruling with an iron fist for thousands of years. Zarkon has an aide, the witch Hagar who uses magic and technology to help Zarkon fight Voltron. 

Like a lot of modern television, the emphasis is on a larger, ongoing storyline that develops over several episodes, if not full seasons or multiple seasons (disclaimer, I've already watched most of the seasons with my kids two years ago). The episodes don't feel formulaic. They do expand the universe as Voltron acts to free the universe from Galra control. The characters are distinct and have their charms and foibles. Like many children's shows, the drama is not too heavy and lots of comedy is thrown in (some admittedly of the childish sort, like food fights and fart jokes). Enough mysteries are set up in the first season to leave viewers with motivation to keep watching, if the cliffhanger ending of the final episode is not enough.

This first season is 11 episodes long (though probably 12 since the pilot episode is twice as long). At less than half an hour each, it is easy to get through the season quickly. I am using this rewatch as something to go along with home workouts and it is enjoyable company.

Recommended.

Book Review: Fear Not! by Josh Larsen

Fear Not! A Christian Appreciation of Horror Movies by Josh Larsen

At first glance, it seems like Christianity and horror movies should have nothing to do with each other. Christianity is all about loving God and your neighbor as yourself. The typical horror movie icons are completely remote from such fundamentals. They are killers, predators, sadists. Their victims are usually people "who deserved it" for moral infractions or being part of some group (so those icons are bigots too?). The only seeming bright spot in horror films are the occasional opponents who defeat the evil ones by being pure or having special powers, almost as if they are supernaturally gifted. So there's a tiny window for some Christian understanding or appreciation to come in.

Josh Larsen, co-host of Filmspotting and senior producer at Think Christian, comes at the problem from a different angle. He looks at a key component of horror films, namely fear, and how that relates to Christianity. So there's the fear of losing individuality which is manifest in zombie films or the fear of guilt which is manifest in ghost stories. The format lends to a lot of commentaries, though sometimes films can fit in multiple categories. Larsen acknowledges this ambiguity. He has some insightful comments and writes well. There's no earth-shattering revelations here, other than how Christians can appreciate and learn from (or at least experience catharsis with) horror films.

Mildly recommended.

Cute Kid Pix November 2023

More pictures that didn't make their own posts...

I chaperoned my youngest's field trip to the Maryland Science Center in Baltimore. It was fun if a bit repetitive after the same trip last year. My group loved the build zone so much we went there twice.

Generating power

Building with blocks

Science experimenting

More generating power

More building with blocks

Our dance studio held its Renaissance Dance in November, which was fun to dress up for. Our niece came too!

A blast from the past

I donated blood and got a cool pair of socks!

Don't leave this elf on a shelf!

I had a crazy/awesome game of Draftosaurus on Board Game Arena, scoring big without even using any of the highly-valued T-Rexes!

I love it when a plan comes together!

The Scholastic Book Fair came to school, resulting in some cute reading time at home.

Reading is FUNdamental

The weather is getting colder. Even statues need scarves!

Roscoe from Takoma Park

The scouts made some decorations for a future visit to either an old-age home or a hospice. It was fun if not exciting work.

Getting the gingerman together

Working together