Quite the busy month. I became a grandfather again, this time to a granddaughter, my first. Given that I've had two daughters, I'm not a stranger to fatherhood, but the birth of this one, I don't know, man. It really hit me with intensity. Could it be because she has the same piano fingers as me (nobody else in the family has them?) Maybe it's simply because she's my first granddaughter. Anyway, I shall look at the world entirely different now, probably for the rest of my days since she is here. The world has become crazy and my sensitivities are perhaps a bit more brazen because of this birth, kind of like maybe a chipped tooth down to the nerve would feel like while walking outside on the coldest day in winter. I want to protect her but I am only one man. Stephen King was right, this world doesn't love you, but it doesn't hate you either. I wish I could live long enough to see my granddaughter become old and gray. I want to be her steadfast companion, always there to protect. And that's the great tragedy, that I can't.
Saboteur: A movie that perhaps would seem contrived by today’s standards, but I’m sure enthralled audiences when it released in 1942. The “saboteurs,” noble looking people enmeshed in big money high society who are truly evil. Looking back, it’s almost prophetic in that despite the almost melodramatic tone of this movie, there are people in high power who hate this country and want to see it fail. In typical Hitchcock ingenuity, the famed director did numerous unusual techniques for the time in making the film. He shot extensive on-location shots which Hollywood rarely did at the time, and he incorporated the shootout scene between the saboteur and the police within a movie theater depicting a movie involving a shoot out which inevitably makes the audience more involved than something like 3D effects would do later on. Oddly, the fight for democracy against those who would oppose it occurs on the torch of the Statue of Liberty. This movie contains similarities to Hitchcock’s North by Northwest which was filmed twenty years later. When questioned if Northwest was perhaps a remake of Saboteur, the master of suspense said yes. This 4K presentation results in some clean up that supposedly even plagued the blu-ray version. The whites are bold and the blacks are deep and pristine. This is the version to own.
Forza Horizon 3 on PC: I’m making good progress in this open world racing/driving sim that depicts the whole of Australia. I wasn’t sure of what to do to see the end credits roll. As it turns out, you grow certain festival points on the map by procuring fans. Gain enough fans and it notches up the size of your festival. Get them all to level five and you beat the game. Sounds easy enough, right? Wrong! It’s taking forever to accomplish enough tasks to gain enough fans. However, the variety of cars in the game and the unlimited upgrades one can acquire make this game a blast. The graphics look amazing for a game that came out in 2016 and features HDR. It’s no wonder PC Gamer gave the game a 92.
Between Planets by Robert Heinlein: This was a part of Heinlein’s juvenile series written in the 1940s and 1950s. Oddly, it seems a bit more mature for such an audience as there are some violent interludes here including a man being shot in the face, described graphically. The story concerns a youth named Don who was born on a spaceship in trajectory between Venus (where his mother was born) and Earth (where his father was born) and as the boy is at university on Earth. Venus and Earth go to war against each other. In light of this war, Don simply wants to reunite with his parents who are scientists living on Mars. Don becomes proactive in the war, all the while shedding his boyhood and becoming a young man. Like other books in Heinlein’s juvenile series, this story moves fast and makes for fun reading.
Rush Permanent Waves on FLAC: Lying in bed one night, listening to the radio and trying to fall asleep because I had school the next morning, “The Spirit of Radio” came on. I’d never heard anything so cool before. Not only did the song make me an instant fan of the band, it also made Alex Lifeson my favorite guitarist from that point on. The album was a perfect segue of the works before it: Hemispheres, A Farewell to Kings and 2112 into what would be their next album after this one, Moving Pictures. Loudwire.com just listed their top 11 prog albums of the 1980s. Rush’s Moving Pictures was listed as number 1 (is that a surprise?) but Permanent Waves placed 5th, and they said the same thing I stated here: Permanent Waves continued at the exact point Hemispheres left off.
The Pathfinder by James Fennimore Cooper: Book 3 of Cooper’s famous Leatherstocking Tales. Perhaps the strangest thing about this series is the manner in which they were written. The books were written way out of synch of their chronological order. Of course, The Last of the Mohicans is regarded as Cooper’s magnus opus, (and I’m sure you remember the excellent movie starring Daniel Day Lewis). The Pathfinder continues the adventures of Natty Bumppo as he boards a small warship on Lake Ontario and falls in love. Passages are bittersweet in which Natty confesses to the object of his ardor, that he would rather give up scouting and deer slaying and his life among the forests, which he considers a majestic existence, to come home to a fire in the hearth and this woman who he would love beyond measure. It is true, Cooper is guilty of verbiage, but the man is a good writer. I can see why these books were popular entertainment in their day.
Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines: on GoG: After ten months of using walkthroughs and cheats, I can finally notch my belt. I saw it through to the end. Released as an action RPG, the game fits the bill, however, the last ¼ of the game is very combat heavy. And some of those bosses, whew! There’s no way I could have gotten through without cheats. Still, the storyline is exceptional, and the same old adage of “you are the chosen one,” works. This game released in 2004 in the wake of The X Files and Deus Ex which you can easily see traces of in the game’s environment. I’m glad the game is finally over, but you know what? I’m going to miss the world it took me to. I doubt I’ll ever replay it, though I have Steam friends who have played for hundreds of hours. But hey, there’s always Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines 2, right?
