This was the first game I shot on Friday afternoon. It was another solid performance against an overmatched team. Similar to the Varsity team, it will be interesting to see how they respond when actually challenged. Good news for the team though is that they have a number of players returning from “injury” in the coming week which should bolster the bench and starters.
Windham Varsity vs. Timberlane 01/22/21
Another win for the Varsity team. Off to a 2-0 start to the year which is great….but I already fear for next year. How they will seek to replace Joey DaSilva’s scoring after he graduates I have no idea. That said, this was a more consistent performance than Game 1 as they did not have to climb out of a near 20 point hole as they did in the season opener leading wire to wire. Timberlane I don’t believe is one of the better teams they will play against so it will be interesting to see how Windham performs when facing significantly better competition.
Windham JV Basketball vs. Timberlane 01/19/21
So we’ll begin the JV Basketball season with a win by Windham. Down three players due to Covid protocols the team drew down a couple members of the Varsity team to help out. The game was a bit of a blowout but Timberlane started to cut into the large Windham lead in the second half when the pressure relaxed and Windham felt they had the game in hand—something they need to cease doing as in today’s game it is far too easy to squander even a 20 point lead. It was a good to start the season though and showed the potential this group of players has both this year and next. I’ll be putting more of the photos up in the next day or two, hopefully completing this before the Timberlane rematch on Thursday.
Classic Nissans at the 2021 Dakar--Results!
So with no “real” Nissans in the 2021 Dakar, all we were left with was those entered in the Classic category which did not face the full brunt of the Dakar and while not easy by any means was a bit disappointing. When Chinese manufacturers field more than a dozen entrants and Nissan not a one? There is trouble abrewing…
Still, seeing these old gals out and playing was good and represents a time when Nissan was putting forth its best efforts. Now? The flag is left to be flown by privateer efforts like Redlined Motorsport out of South Africa who did not enter vehicles this year largely due to Covid…Hopefully they will be back in ‘22.
So what did we end up with in the Classic category?
Well, the first and only Classic category vehicle to drop out was the Mercedes G320 (Gwagon) of Carlos Sanchez on Stage 10…so at least all the Nissans made it to the end, right?
Finishing positions?
Well, there were 24 starters overall, 23 finished the Classic Dakar course.
Francisco Benavente of Spain in his Nissan Terrano (Pathfinder) finished in 18th overall with a high of a third place finish on Stage 5.
Luciano Carcheri of Italy and his Nissan Patrol were extraordinarily consistent in their finishing—never higher than 7th in their stage finishes but also never lower than 16th. They finished an excellent 7th overall.
Annnnd…that’s it. The whole kit and kaboodle of Nissans in this year’s Dakar. A few nice shots came out of it of the Nissans racing but…kinda few and far between. Here’s to a great 2021 in hopes that Redlined continues to build their customer base and we get some more Nissan racing efforts that aren’t watered down, spec, Sentra racing on tarmac…please Nissan…give me a break…
Till then? Some of us will soldier on…
Book Review: River Master by Cecil Kuhne
I wish I could say I thought this book was worth everyone’s time. The topic is certainly worth it. John Wesley Powell’s running of the Colorado river from Wyoming through the Grand Canyon was the first of its kind—at the least showing that such a trip could be done and adding to America’s knowledge of itself if nothing else. Not up for debate is the trip’s status as the first to ever explore these realms (yes, not even the indigenous peoples had run and recorded the length of the Colorado) and return news of them. No one knew if the river was navigable or what features, geology, flora or fauna could be confirmed held within its canyons. Powell sought to uncover these and return news of them to the American public.
The trip’s faults—poor planning, inexperience, internal conflicts, lack of resources, etc. are worth examining as are the personalities of Powell and the others involved.
Unfortunately this book doesn’t cut it for quality or depth of work. Cecil Kuhne is reportedly a writer for the Washington Post, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, and many others. I would hope his other works are better compiled but in reality given his other works are largely “anthologies” and collections of other peoples stories…I suspect not. I’d instead guess that he is largely a human version of a “adventure literature food processor” consuming lots of other people’s information and material, chewing it up and spitting it out in some sort of reconstituted form, putting his name on it and making a buck off claiming the content as his own. Good work if you can get it.
This work in itself needs to be MASSIVELY edited. There are literally pages and pages of repeated events and descriptions. Beyond shear repetition of content, Kuhne’s vocabulary appears to be a tad limited as well given. Descriptions of waves and stone color are heard over and over and over.
Kuhne saves the only real analysis for the final pages of the book—and I agree with his viewpoint that Powell has been not nearly criticized enough for he and his trip’s failings. Powell’s elevation to near American sainthood alongside Lewis and Clark, Robert Peary, and Hiram Bingham, should definitely be under scrutiny (as should Peary…but that’s a different story) given the exploration’s as well as Powell’s personal failings.
The rest of the book seems to be merely a reprint of other sources and works, little original material is to be found here. A mere wikipedia reading would give you as much information. In short? This is a weak effort at a worthy topic. Powell’s exploration of the Colorado and the unknowns that surrounded were a huge and dangerous undertaking, one worthy of admiration and examination. Unfortunately this book doesn’t cover it to the extant it deserves.
Book Review: Tarawa by Robert Sherrod
A great work of art this is not. A great account of one of the US’s bloodiest battles in WWII, it is.
Robert Sherrod was a journalist, a war correspondent primarily working for Time and Life through much of his career. Tarawa (sometimes labeled “Tarawa: The Story of a Battle” is a very narrow view of one man’s observances of one of the amphibious landings at Tarawa, one of many of the Kiribati islands in the South Pacific that had to be retaken from the Japanese.
Exclusive to perhaps a time forgotten, Sherrod makes almost no comments, observances, or recaps of things he did not see first hand. This is a true “newspaperman’s” accounting in the most traditional sense. Sherrod takes you from his time in the transport ships to wading ashore to the first initial encounters with the Japanese defenders through his wanderings around the island after the battle was resolved. All of this from purely his own eyes.
One doesn’t get a sense of the larger battle, the wider strategy, the importance of the operation, the behind the scenes machinations, its longer term implications…Sherrod takes you there with him, reports what he saw and cuts you loose the moment the battle is over.
None of this is to say the work isn’t valuable…it is. It gives you a first hand view of what the American Marines faced taking the island. You get the unvarnished violence of such acts—from both sides. Here are the bodies cut in half, the missing limbs, the torched bodies. Here are the random things that make war sometimes a surrealist event—the tiny cat who survives and is cared for by a man who likely just finished killing scores of his fellows…the incongruous survival of a pane of glass when all else surrounding is blasted away. Its that “truth” that Sherrod saw that I think he sought to convey to the public.
If there is one tangent that Sherrod allows himself to indulge in from time to time it is his disdain for the stateside public. Referencing coal mining and other labor strikes in a time of war, the public’s belief that all battles could be one simply by bombing from 30,000 feet, that all Americans had to do was to show up to win the battle, and so on, Sherrod allows this feeling to shine through—That America is soft in its stateside population, that it has no real concept of war or what it takes to fight a war, that the media is not honest with the public about the difficulties of war and I think he hopes to change that or at least not be part of it.
Sherrod was good acquaintances with Roosevelt in these years and would press the President to allow the airing of a film about Tarawa which showed the battle in gruesome reality. The film was originally going to be hidden from view as it was felt the American public would lose their will to support the war if it was shown just how brutal and difficult the war actually was and the film was too violent to meet the then current Hollywood standards with only the President allowed to approve its release. Sherrod would be quoted as saying “I tell the President the truth. Our soldiers on the front want people back home to know that they don't knock the hell out of them every day of every battle. They want people to understand that war is a horrible, nasty business, and to say otherwise is to do a disservice to those who died.”
A quick read and more than a little dry, don’t expect Tarawa to “entertain” you, it simply seeks to inform you. And by those standards it succeeds in covering this bloody battle where some 4700 Japanese were killed in less than three days on a piece of land only two miles long and 800 yards wide with the Americans suffering 1000 deaths of their own. To give you an idea of just how amazing it is that the Marines suffered only 1000 deaths (another 2000 injured) understand that in the time the Japanese held the island they had constructed at least 500 machinegun equipped, concrete enforced, pillboxes to solidify their defense along with 40 separate artillery emplacements. This was the largest Pacific invasion to date at this point in the War and drove home just how difficult the Japanese would be to roll back. With the 4700 Japanese dead there were only 17 that surrendered…most deciding to fight to the death or commit suicide rather than surrender.
Sherrod reveals all the ugliness of war while still honestly representing the heroism of the Marines he accompanied. One could do far worse is learning what our forces faced in the Pacific than starting here.
Chuck Yeager--One of the Last Hard Men
Yeager is essentially a German word for “hunter”
And it is hard to find an individual with a better familial name than Chuck Yeager who embodied all that being a true “hunter” entails. Honorable, courageous, taciturn, results driven and so on.
I won’t regurgitate the many items that will be stated in his common obits being promulgated across the web…those are superficial and don’t truly portray the heart of the man…nor does his Wikipedia page which laundry lists his accomplishments and highlights.
He was a member of the Rogers Commission…the Reagan designated group of luminaries and experts tasked with “investigating” the Challenger disaster. As was Neil Armstrong, Sally Ride and Richard Feynman among others…Yeager in contrast to the others took the nomination and did…almost nothing. He attended only two meetings of the commission and was almost stricken from the signatures signing off on the results (may or may not have been true). And he could have cared less. Yeager saw it largely for what it was…a political farce designed to give cover for the program which had been focused more on PR than results for a bit of time. Led by Rogers from a governance side and Armstrong from a PR side you likely couldn’t have put enough space between the commission and Yeager for his feelings. At the end of it when asked if it bothered him that his name might be stricken he had a one word response “Nope”.
His end opinion focused more on the results than the cause, mirroring his “Damn the torpedoes” attitude expressing ″They got caught with temperature and with lack of communication″ that cold was a problem, Yeager said, and there would be no reason not to ″fly again tomorrow″ in warm weather. I don’t see the accident by the space shuttle any differently than the crash of a military or commercial flight. All are tragic but also bring problems to the surface that otherwise would remain hidden. Like with the shuttle accident, an accident brings people out of the woodwork and they say a lot of words, many of them meaningless,″ he said, but he added later, ″the system will be a lot better off after this investigation is over.″
A true iconoclast he turned down the opportunity to be an astronaut and potentially one of the first to land on the moon because he viewed astronauts as merely monkeys in a can, not true pilots. He would go far beyond simply breaking the sound barrier and by the end of his career was rightly considered the best pilot of all time. Having flown at least 360 different types of airplanes (that are able to be publicly acknowledged) he was also a double ace shooting down 13 Nazi planes including one of the first to shoot down a ME 262 jet fighter. But that wasn’t it…He was shot down himself, went on the run, hid in a barn and hiked over frozen mountains of the Pyrenees (assisting a wounded compatriot) to Spain and eventually back to England where he pestered his commanders into being put back in a plane against then current orders and back into the fight. Oh, and in his time on the run in France? He assisted the French Resistance in making bombs to blow up key bridges along the way…
Other more rarely mentioned accomplishments include his stint in Pakistan in 1971-1973 training the burgeoning Pakistan air force as the US attempted to move closer to China at the time and assist their common enemy against India (the old enemy of my enemy theory). He later claimed the Pakistan pilots were some of the best he ever served with, largely to the pace of operations demanded in that theater and is known in Pakistan to this day as a hero and one of the “fathers” of their air force (his quotes remain up on the Pakistan Air Force recruiting website at this moment).
You’ll note the above date—1973 is some 30 years after he was shooting down Nazis over France and 25 years after he broke the sound barrier. Lesser men would have long since retired…and he didn’t live an easy life. When in the California desert setting speed records he and his wife were living in a wooden cabin he had built by himself devoid of electricity and running water. He had grown up a hard scrabble Appalachian mountains life in West Virginia amongst the poorest of the poor with nothing given and nothing asked and retained his love of HUNTING all his life.
Whether it was piloting an F4 in Korea and flying it to Vietnam to visit his son, bombing runs on North Vietnam, palling around with the Oak Ridge Boys in his later years, sticking a finger in the eye of his beloved Air Force when they chose the F-16 over his beloved F-20 Tigershark he remained a piece of sand in the eye of traditional authority and political correctness until the day of his passing. Even more recent generations had discovered his wit and acerbic nature in the last few years as Yeager had taken to Twitter of all things to express his opinions and put the younger folk in their place.
Yeager broke the sound barrier, flew combat missions in WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and Pakistan…yet its a completely different flight that exemplifies his spirt better. In 1948 he had returned home to West Virginia and was flying a Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star at the time. After showing his dad the controls for a bit he took off from the Charleston, WV airport and was headed out to Dayton, Ohio. Along the way was a bridge on the Kanawha River. Now this is no giant skydiving bridge. Hell, I don’t think' you’d get much more than a bruise jumping into the river from it….But piloting the first operational jet fighter in the US Air Force, Yeager took the Shooting Start up to 500 knots and, buzzing the boat traffic on the river that day, flew UNDER the bridge using the hedge hopping flying prowess he had acquired over Europe….just because he was that…damn…good…
Vaya con dios Chuck.
If you want to read about the man in his own words, I can’t suggest a better book than his autobiography “Yeager” which you can find on Amazon…Order it and enjoy one of the best: AmazonSmile: Yeager: An Autobiography (9780553256741): Chuck Yeager: Books
New Gas Intake for Race Truck...
Well, we’re still working on making improvements. The Texas race revealed a number of areas where the design of the truck could be improved. One of the most grossly obvious was in the fuel intake. Having replaced the stock fuel tank with a fuel cell moved the location of the fuel supply higher in the vehicle but left the intake in the same spot (the stock fuel door). This caused a major leveling out of the line that takes the gas from the fuel door to the new cell location. The change was significant enough that if the truck was on even just slightly unlevel ground (tipping towards the driver’s side) or even level ground, that the fuel would not flow to the cell and would back up towards the filler neck, washing out and making it appear that the cell was full when in reality it might very well be empty…A major issue as it left us with an empty tank yet no way to get fuel into the cell at one point.
Solving this was relatively simple—we have removed the idea of using the stock filler location and moved it up to a secure spot off of the cage itself. This creates a significant angle down to the cell which will eliminate the prior issue. Problem now? Short people. They may need a stepstool to refuel the truck….but as Randy Newman says “Short people ain’t got no reason to live” right? ;)
Classic Nissans at Dakar 2021
Well…it looks like Dakar will happen…maybe…possibly….hopefully…kinda…
With no fans at any point—even more limited than last year’s first Saudi edition—and less coverage and everyone focused on other events, Dakar 2021, if it occurs, will be about as under the radar as the world’s biggest and most difficult motorsports event can get.
One item of note about this year’s version is the inclusion of the “Classic” class. Not fully racing the event but not just a media tour, the Classic Class is intended to bring out older vehicles that have participated in or are designed to mimic those vehicles that have previously participated in, the Dakar. It really shows off some epic, rare and unusual vehicles. The full list of vehicles entered—both in the Classic and regular classes—has not been released but is expected to come this Wednesday November 25th. We’ll see the full list of Nissans entered at that point but already there are a few here in the Classic Class to follow and drool over.
First is the #225 Nissan Patrol of Lucian Carcheri
Second is the #220 Nissan Terrano (Pathfinder) of Francisco Benavente
There are also a number of other super interesting vehicles listed so far in the Classic Class including a faux-Rothman Porsche, a little Skoda sedan (one a female centric American effort and the other co-piloted by an American surfshop owner and prior Dakar bike finisher respectively) and a couple Sunhil buggies which I am in love with the looks of. We’ll be back to cover what the total of Nissan entries are after Wednesday’s announcements…
TV Review: Long Way Up
As an avid motorcyclist both dirt bike and ADV in their forms and having read Ewan McGregor’s written recap of Long Way Down, I’ve always followed along with he and Charley Boorman’s motorcycle adventures around the globe.
Here on AppleTV the budget is definitely there and the videography is the best of the series taking full advantage of modern HD cameras and drone capabilities. Eye candy abounds in all the different, truly stunning locations.
Previously on much more dirt oriented BMW GS bikes and crossing much more “off piste” terrain, Long Way Up sees them on Harley Davidsons and modified, roadgoing, electric ones at that. There was a great deal of hand wringing in the ADV community over this feeling that such a choice took away from the true adventure nature of the prior trips, confining the riders to tarmac and more travelled locales.
It does end up doing so…no doubt about it. The choice also has significant impacts on the continuity of the trip as you’ll see in viewing, causing very specific decisions based upon the limitations of both the electric and prototype nature of the vehicles.
It is debatable just how different the trip COULD have been, even if on the most current big BMWs or KTMs. For one, Boorman has been through quite a number of severe accidents over the years, ravaging his lower extremities in particular leaving him with a pronounced limp, weakened legs and as I saw it, quite unable to manage a 600 pound bike in a deeply offroad environ. Even in the limited dirt oriented sections of this route he struggles in both strength and confidence. McGregor on the other hand, while healthy, does not have the skill his Dakar and offroad racing companion possesses regardless of his impairments.
Both are some 20 years older than they were in the first version of these trips and a pavement focus here was perhaps inevitable. None of this is to say it makes the trip in its TV installment version much less enjoyable. At its heart the show is still more about the relationship between two lifelong friends out on a adventuresome walkabout than it is about the choice of bike brand or knobbieness of their tires.
Seeing the great salt flats of Bolivia, mountains of Patagonia, ruins of Machu Pichu, and local people all along the route are the key memories one takes away and would have been included and visited no matter the bike capabilities and exchanged here for flat tires and mud-stuck bikes are electric range concerns, broken support vehicles and hostage taking threats. Its all good…just different.
Two items of note: 1) Mexico in its lengthy geography is almost skipped entirely. A bit surprising given the potential of the landscapes and events but was crammed into the length of a single episode largely due to security concerns real or imagined that force the riders off their bikes for extended periods of travel 2) this truly felt like the end of these adventures. Not said explicitly but in having going around the globe, from Scotland to South Africa and now from the southern tip of Argentina to LA, I’m not sure what a next trip could encompass. A circumnavigation of Australia perhaps?? But in all likelyhood given Boorman’s body, McGregor’s recent divorce, the exhaustion of long trip routes and the demands Father Time puts on us all, this feels like the end.
Its been a good run, enjoyable in all its forms and worth it for simply encouraging folks to get out there and experience all our tiny little ball has to offer, even if nothing comes of it more than dreams.
Nissans at Baja Portalegre 2020
Rally Raid goes on regardless of Covid and worldwide disruption. I have my concerns about whether Dakar is going to happen in early 2021 but many organizations are pushing forward with events including the Baja 1000 coming up in Mexico, a host of rally raid events in Europe and South America over the past month or so and upcoming two events in the Middle East. So…some of us have gotten on with the business of living life….
Baja Portalegre is a big annual event that has a fairly lengthy history and brings out some big names. This year it was Dakar regulars Bernhard Ten Brinke and codriver Tom Colsoul taking home the win behind the wheel of a top flight Overdrive Toyota Hilux.
Nissans didn’t take the win (unsurprising!) but did have a number of respectable showings in what looks like a particularly wet and sloppy event. Five of the 29 finishers were behind the wheel of Nissans. Three of these were Navaras and two Pathfinders, finding themselves in 14th, 18th, 21st, 26th and 29th places out of 29 finishers. One Nissan ended as a DNF being the Navara of Nuno Tordo. Of additional note is that the 18th place finisher in Ronald Van Loon and 21st place Stefan Carmans were both VK56 Navaras manufactured by the RedLine Motorsports effort from South Africa who continues to produce these high end vehicles for Privateers across the globe. Photos of some of these vehicles in action at the Portalegre below.
Windham Vs. Londonderry 10/31/20 Gallery
This one is bittersweet. The day was great—bright blue skies, snow piles on the sidelines from the 4 inches or so we had gotten the night before, the sun was strong and warm and the kids were playing there best. The early 2 nothing Safety seemed almost enough on its own the way the team played and coming up a 1/2 yard short of a touchdown as time expired in the first half almost left you with the feeling that the scoreboard owed you one in the second. Not to be however.
I’d be dishonest if I didn’t show at least a bit of the heartbreak and finality of the season’s end and so that has been included here as well. Kids played their guts out and they actually CARED…which is so rare these days.
“The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
I’ll hopefully be back photographing the basketball season assuming there is one…hope to capture some moments just as worthwhile…
Windham Vs. Salem 10/24/20 Gallery
So we are going to try something a little different and put the larger photos here vs just on Instagram where they are tiny. Also…why give Instagram traffic, hits, advertising and so on?? Hope you enjoy. All photos are available in full rez on request if you need to print them out at a larger scale. I’ll be updating this gallery with more photos from the game as time goes on.
TV Review: Tiny World
This is one of the few shows to date that I’ve watched on Apple TV+ and its almost worth the service and its monthly sub $10 cost for this alone. This isn’t an Apple TV+ ad but I’ve enjoyed other programs from this service as well. We’ll see if their quality continues.
Tiny World narrated by Paul Rudd with a nice American voice spoken in a very calm and “nature show” manner with just a hint of his typical sarcastic and juvenile humor tone is focused on the small creatures that quite often go unnoticed in our natural world. At such a minute scale virtually all creatures become “cute” and are anthropomorphized so that the viewer can see themselves even in a spider.
The show nicely glosses over blood and guts of the natural world while still showing its kill or be killed nature…it just Disney-fies it a bit to make the show particularly viewable for children, likewise for mating and sex. Which I’m sure was deliberate. This isn’t a scientific discourse.
Taking place over six episodes, each in a different habitat and filmed over ten years, it is the camera work and imagery that you are left with. The colors are heightened for effect, music moves in time with animal displays and so on. Its a wonderfully enjoyable product helping you appreciate the world beneath all our feet and the fragility of life.
Taking things a bit beyond just the beauty of the show, it becomes to me an important primer for youth on evolution and species differentiation. Seeing the unique and remarkable adaptations to their environment and pressures of these animals makes you almost wonder if there isn’t some grand artist behind the scenes directing things…almost. Its when you make the logical connections behind each of these unique adaptations—from colors to arrow sharp tongues to poison spittle to predator mimicry that you understand the long paths that these species took to get there. This makes it all more impactful as you realize it has taken countless millennia to get these tiny wonders to the exquisite beauty and functions they have today…all of which can be wiped away in a fraction of time.
Absolutely worth watching yourself and should be viewed by every grade school class to fire their imagination and thinking.
Book Review: Alas, Babylon
Alas, Babylon for me falls into the category of works that come from a different but recognizable time while still holding key ties to the modern era.
Numerous items seem incongruous in today’s world—segregated schools, switchboard operators, Russians as a primary military threat, the US being behind in the space race, and so on. Yet enough of it remains familiar, particularly in today’s Covid world, that its reflections on society seems remarkedly timely. People hiding in their houses, the collapse of ordered society, “Prepping” for an apocalypse, fallback on the military, doctors and first responders as the remailing pillars of community—these are all relevant topics to this day.
Pat Frank the author, was a long time newspaperman and he has a reporters focus—the day to day life and personal characteristics of individuals is drawn out here. Idiosyncrasies add color to each character and Frank limits the number of characters he develops so that each can be fully fleshed out. As a reader you aren’t wondering 3/4 of the way through the work who on earth “Randy” or “Peyton” are…you’ve gotten to know each one in detail and become invested in each character.
The setting also helps this familiarity. Largely confined to a handful of houses and a single town Frank develops a world you can wander around in your head. Everything ends up feeling like your own small town.
Beyond the structure and style of the work, the content deals with how a small Florida town and a few of its townfolk deal with the aftermath of a Russian nuclear attack which has wiped out much of the US including all key infrastructure and government. It reads like a primer for our current series of zombie TV shows and movies. The breakdown of people into various tribes that all fight for resources, struggle against the radiation in the ecosystem which is largely invisible, emergence of leaders from within the unexpected, romances blooming amongst those who lost loved ones in the initial attack…its all here. Essentially a blueprint for The Walking Dead or similar. Simply sway radiation for a zombie virus. I’m sure there is some psychological analysis to be done as we have moved from radiation and Russians and giant ants (movies…not in this book) to evil governments, viruses, and zombies. The scary stories we tell each other is a direct reflection of our societal fears.
Alas, Babylon is a fantastic representation of those fears from the late 50’s and early 60’s that holds largely true today in a manner that is much more serious, knowledgeable, realistic and well developed than most of today’s works that don’t hold technical water and focus on merely how graphic and hopeless they can get. Here you gut an accurate (for the time) projection with a hefty dose of hope, ingenuity, hard work, and moral direction. Its uplifting like few apocalyptic novels without being soft. Read this…skip the next Walking Dead drivel.
Book Review: West With The Night
Just a brilliant book. Let’s start there.
Now many have compared it to (largely because of his flattering comments on the work) Hemingway’s works and I don’t find it too far off base. Hemingway I find deeper in its prose requiring rereadings to understand what is being truly said behind the simple language while this work is truly autobiographical in nature and more straightforward in its recollection. That said…its descriptions of flight, of hunting, of African life…all ring similar to Papa’s works.
Beryl lived an incredible life and shares it in unflinching memory here. From her life as an only child (she did have a brother but he is not present here) growing up on a farm and grain mill in east Africa, she inhabits the same lands as Hemingway’s stories and is in a manner…more scandalous. Her numerous affairs with members of British Royalty, Antoine de Saint Exupery, Denys Hatton and numerous others makes for great ink but its her independent adventurous nature that makes for the best tales. Savaged by a lion and later a warthog, raising, training and racing horses, largely left to her own devices amongst the tribesmen (she cared not for the activities of the tribeswomen) of Kenya, becoming a skilled pilot to the point of being the first PERSON to cross the Atlantic from East to West as well as the first commercial pilot in Africa and on and on. She filled her lifetime with enough stories, adventures, anecdotes and experiences to fill multiple lifetimes…this book capture a mere shadow of what she was.
The style is understated and rings true throughout. Having travelled to Kenya, Egypt and elsewhere that she describes one can see vestiges of what she saw some 90 years ago and feel the love she had for the continent and its people. The work is as quotable as near anything I’ve come across with just one example here though you could pick any page at random and find similar brilliant handiwork “I look at my yesterdays for months past, and find them as good a lot of yesterdays as anybody might want. I sit there in the firelight and see them all. The hours that made them were good, and so were the moments that made the hours. I have had responsibilities and work, dangers and pleasure, good friends, and a world without walls to live in.”
Great stuff…enjoy it. Its a rare gift.
Film Review: Midnight Special
Wow…what a gods awful film. I have rarely seen a bigger pile of dung and only goes to show what clickbait and media shills will do to try and drive views and revenue.
I came across one of those eye grabbing headlines on the Inverse website that was jammed into my brain by the Google algorithm seeming to key off my love of sci-fi. Well…Inverse is owned by “Bustle” which bought the old trash Gawker sites and has a ton of other “millennial” garbage sites as well. So I should have known.
But I didn’t. So when I saw the headline “The One Sci-Fi Movie You Must See Before It Leaves Netflix” I read through its article proclaiming how great Midnight Special was and then watched it the following weekend.
On the surface you’d think a film with Michael Shannon, Joel Edgerton, Kirsten Dunst, Sam Shephard and Adam Driver would be a lock to be good or at least well produced and that the actors would demand quality writing. Not so much.
Never have I watched a film with as many holes and question marks at this. Nothing…literally nothing is explained. Nothing makes sense. Characters show up and leave without explanation. No exposition is provided on anyone. Primary characters divorced but now meeting up? No explanation. Key “bad” guy having left the “ranch” but now providing help to the protagonist? No explanation. Blue light coming out of a child’s eyes? No reason. The earth shaking and splitting when the boy has light out of his eyes? No explanation. Aliens showing up from an alternate dimension? No explanation. And the biggie…the boy with blue eyes born to the divorced couple ends up BEING one of the aliens…How’d that happen?? No explanation.
What a complete, gross example of waste and hubris. This film could not possibly be worse…yet there it is…across the internet proclaiming how great it is with “aggregate critic and public scoring” to back up its claims!! Its a sham…its all a sham. Never…ever…waste your time on this.
Film Review: The Battle of Algiers
Truly a brilliant film. Not in terms of acting or filmmaking but in terms of content that remains stunningly relevant to this day some 60 years later.
Themes here include pacification of urban populations, use of torture on prisoners possessing information that may save lives, colonial powers in decline, tactical victories vs. strategic wins, guerilla warfare and on and on and on.
Opening with the French torture of a Muslim prisoner in Algiers toward the end of France’s colonial rule the film depicts both sides with a clear gaze. Neither is above reproach. France’s efforts to hang on to power over a population that largely doesn’t want them anymore is great “decline and fall” fodder…even containing a reference to France’s recent defeat in Indochina fresh on their lips and with lessons supposedly learned places the characters firmly in the most realistic of circumstances. French leaders and soldiers are given an impossible task and attempt in the best way possible enact their orders. Facing as we well know a largely invisible enemy disappearing within the general populace and acting in a way that does not spare fellow citizens puts the French in a no-win situation…a familiar spot for Americans in the 21st century.
The Muslim fighters are intelligent, organized, brave and patriotic but themselves not above committing atrocities. They fight with what they have…disguising themselves as women, hiding weapons is baskets, assassinating targets with bullets in the back of the head.
There is no honor among these parties…each recognize that there is no winner, only survivors. The film plays this out with all parties coming away scarred if they come away at all.
Its also a great primer on the North African Muslim culture. Seeing the Casbahs, drug usage, prostitution and so on comingled with the calls to prayer, devout followers of the faith and enmasked women gives one a good sense of the mix of European and Middle Eastern influences present in the region. The conflict between European interlopers and actual residents less than 10 years after the end of WWII (this is the same area English and German and American and Italian tanks and planes rampaged across scarcely a decade earlier) is disconcerting to me…history and the winds of change move faster than one ever can imagine at times.
But here we are some 60 years later and I’m imagining the film with be just as relevant at its 100 year mark. Maybe Americans won’t be the ones using this film as a primer for their military forces as a learning exercise as we have been in recent years. One can only hope.
Baja Szczecinek Nissans and Result
So there was an actual Rally Raid race about a week ago. Over in Poland they have gotten back into the swing of things and most of the major European photographers were out there shooting as they have had little to do. There were also some top flight teams present including Jakob Przygonski and Miroslav Zapletal. Przygonski took the win by 2 minutes over Zapletal but that’s not what we’re here for.
Two Nissans ran in the event. One a Frontier/Navara and the other a pickup style, short wheelbase Patrol. The Frontier finished 7th of 20 in the top flight FIA class and 1st in the T2 class. The Patrol was in a regional race and finished 7th of 9. Some good looking cars and…if you have the coin, it appears the Frontier is available for rent to race!
Baja Szczecinek Facebook Link:
Book Review: Stranger in a Strange Land
I REALLY wanted to like this work…Heinlein is a great SciFi novelist having written at least one of my all time favorite sci-fi works in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress as well as Starship Troopers which is also great but just short of TMIAHM.
Unfortunately I have to agree with some of the quotes from the original NYT review which included a feeling that it is “a disastrous mishmash of science fiction, laborious humor, dreary social satire and cheap eroticism”. While “disastrous” is a bit of a stretch, this overly lengthy work is of Heinlein’s lesser ones despite the platitudes it has been given and that it is his best selling work.
Crafted over a decade SIASL feels like it….in fact it feels like at least two separate novels in one. The first is more traditional Heinlein with an individual caught up in strange circumstances beyond their control and having to deal with it as the sci-fi part is brought in with the central character being a human who was born on Mars and raised by Martians, arriving back on Earth as an adult with capabilities far beyond those of existing Earth residents.
The second novel and the part that is the most tedious develops as this “Man From Mars” attempts to reshape humanity into a new ideal. Inclusive in this new ideal are commune living, spouse sharing, psychic powers, teleportation, and more. Zzzzzzz….Now Heinlein himself has said that he wrote this as a challenge to existing social mores and could not have published it when he first thought of it in 1948 due to then cultural restrictions—to which I say “hogwash”. There is nothing here that Hemingway, Henry Miller, Shakespeare or a 100 other known writers hadn’t already published…nothing scandalous beyond its peers certainly. Instead I believe his delay in publishing was simply that the story wasn’t good enough and was just adding to it and adding to it and by a certain point, his initial structure went by the wayside and he got waylaid by his puerile focus on “free love”…Now this was prior to the big hippy movement, so of course this book sometimes got thrown in with the Beats and similar and called a great piece deconstructing our existing society but I think Heinlein ended up with this content as many sci-fi nerds do—curiosity due to repression and inexperience.
Regardless of how he came to it, the second half of the work’s focus on “free sex” being a key component to transcendental growth of humanity comes off grossly juvenile. As Heinlein drags on and on and on as more and more of the central characters get drawn into the “free love” circle of the “Man from Mars”, one, as a reader responds with “OK, I get it…move on…” but Heinlein never does.
Referring back to the prior statement that Heinlein wanted to “challenge current mores”, he doesn’t really have any mores he wants to challenge in detail other than monogamy….race isn’t really brought up, nor is capitalism in any meaningful way. Religion gets a bit of a critique but gets wrapped directly into the “free love” commentary as well so doesn’t stand on its own. Again I revert to Heinlein’s lack of focus, length of the novel’s creation and fixation on his personal values than any desire to critique others or drive meaningful discussion. This one will NOT be going on my shelf alongside his better works…