My Top-10 favorite posts from a year of this blog

I'm still trying to live a life between runs.

It's hard for me to believe, but I have now been posting on this blog for a year. My first post, "A Life Between Runs," went live a year ago today, after a very enthusiastic response on Facebook to the possibility of my starting a blog. In that first post, I established what I'll pretentiously call the "mission statement" for this little project of mine:

I’ve started this blog mostly as an outlet for random thoughts—mostly pop cultural in nature—that I can’t or don’t want to publish elsewhere...This blog will...mostly contain my random thoughts, usually on the various popular culture products I consume (so mostly movies, books, some TV, and maybe a little music). For the real reason I’ve created this blog is that, over the past few months, I’ve found myself desperate to write about things that nobody will pay me to write about...

12 months later, I have done more or less exactly that. Though I reviewed no books here, I've reviewed plenty of movies (and even some television), commented on various social and cultural phenomena that were in vogue, gotten some thoughts out of my head that have been lingering in there for months (or even years), and written way more about Star Wars than I ever expected to, all while trying to live a life between runs. This will be my 59th post, meaning that I averaged slightly more than one post a week over the past year. I've also received about 22,000 page views, though I have no idea how many of them are unique visitors, Russian bots, or what have you. But I don't think these are the best metric by which to measure my blogging frequency. If I felt like it, I could figure out my word count, which has got to be somewhere in the tens of thousands by now. My top 10 alone includes 32,297 words (more words than are in George Orwell's Animal Farm).

To mark my one-year blog-a-versery, I've decided to list my personal top 10 favorite posts of my year of blogging. I determined these using a highly complex, arbitrary, nonexistent algorithm that I can neither explain nor defend. I will note, however, that I did take into account the overall views of individual posts in assembling and determining my top 10 and its order. I also cheated a bit and lumped a few posts together as "one," since I judged them similar enough in character and quality to do that. Also, it's my blog, so if you don't like my choices, tell me I'm an idiot in the comments section. Anyways, without further ado, here, in ascending order of personal affection (so the last one on the list is my favorite) are my top 10 favorite posts from my blog's first year, with explanations of their content and of my choice, and, of course, links to the original posts:

10) "10 Cloverfield Lane": Another (pleasant) surprise from J.J. Abrams' mystery box (1212 words)

This was a review of 10 Cloverfield Lane, one of 2016's most surprising and least appreciated cinematic gems. I liked the movie, of course: A tense paranoid thriller that may or may not be about aliens, with a terrifying John Goodman, produced by J.J. Abrams--how could I not? But this post earned its place in my top 10 because I think it is the best movie review I have written (and there are many). My goal with movie reviews is usually not merely to give my straightforward take on the movie in question. Instead, I try to write an essay of sorts about something related, reviewing the movie as a sort of tangent to or consequence of my larger thought. I think I did exactly that with this review by focusing on J.J. Abrams' creative obsession with mystery, and the strengths and weaknesses of that approach.

9) Reflections on a year since graduating college (2391 words) and The life and death of my manbun (1783 words)

Those who know me well probably know that I can sometimes dwell on--obsess over, even--the past, and also carry thoughts, ideas, and emotions with me for years on end. This post was a product of these two aspects of my character. Written a year after I graduated college, it was my attempt to analyze, assess, and come to terms with the fact that I am now fully at sail in the real world. It also became a means for me to honor the memory of my college house, whose destruction just after I left it still leaves me bitter. It is a remarkably self-indulgent work, but I make up for that, I think, by charging it with genuine emotion. Besides, if I weren't interested in being self-indulgent, then I wouldn't have started a blog in the first place. Also, this ended up being one of my blog's top-five most popular posts, which was a factor in its inclusion in this list as well.

It is with basically identical justification that I included the second post, a retrospective on the incredibly long hair I had during my senior year of college, but cut off to get the job I now have. Boy do I miss that hair...

8) I ate 5 pounds of food in a half-hour at Padrino Italian restaurant (2398 words)

The title says it all. Yet again demonstrating my strange personal characteristic of carrying ideas in my head for years before executing them, I had plotted to conquer this eating challenge at a local restaurant for at least two years before finally getting a chance to do so this past spring. Rereading the narrative, I find it thrilling, amusing, and, frankly, disgusting. I can still remember how it all felt, how close I came to throwing up, and how immobilized I was for the rest of the day afterward--especially with all of that described so vividly in the post itself. I'm not sure I'll ever do an eating challenge like this again, but this post stands as a record that I did at least once, and as proof and precedent for doing it again...if I want. It was also in this blog's top-five most-viewed posts, and justified my creating a category for posts related to food.   

7) Confessions of a former Pokémon addict (1520 words)

I loved Pokémon growing up: the cards, the movies, the games. Especially, obsessively, addictively, the games. I used the occasion of the franchise's 20th anniversary this past February to look back at my Pokémon past, and realized in doing so what should have been obvious: I was an addict. Can you blame me? Those games were freaking great; as I explained in my post here, the mad science and legendary Pokémon were two of my favorite aspects (and predicted some of my current interests pretty well, as it turned out). The North American release of Pokémon Go on my 23rd birthday this year made this post unexpectedly relevant again...and reminded me why it was so important for me not to download that mobile version of my former addiction under any circumstances. Which I did not. The lesson here, I guess, is that introspection can yield good writing, and help you avoid dangerous decisions.

6) R.I.P. Davie Bowie (1947-2016) (1030 words) and Applause for the Waco Kid, aka Gene Wilder (1933-2016) (1293 words)

2016 has proven to be a pretty brutal year for celebrity deaths. Among the first notables to go in 2016 was David Bowie, on whose behalf I wrote this blog's first--and, I think, best--eulogy, managing to summarize his career and to interpret his life through the lens of constant innovation.

But I am loathe not to mention my obituary of Gene Wilder as well, as it does a pretty job, I think, of reading more closely into the specific aspects of that celebrity's performing style that made him stand out. Both are worth a read, even though, as bad as 2016 was for celebrity deaths, I think every year after this one for the next 10-15 will be even worse.

5) In Defense of "The Force Awakens": Special Edition (Parts I-IV combined) (5522 words)

Star Wars has loomed large over this blog since its creation, largely because The Force Awakens had just come out when I created this blog, and I had just seen it. The second post I wrote here actually first existed as a Facebook note as a "pre-action" to the release of The Force Awakens, perhaps the singular pop cultural event of the past 10 years. The inadequacy of Facebook notes for delivering my massive streams-of-consciousness inspired the creation of this blog in the first place. I very much enjoyed The Force Awakens, though I soon discovered that "the Internet" had already split in half over the film, with some of its loudest voices holding it up as a tremendous disappointment. I could not let this stand, so, over a period of at least two weeks, I watched the original trilogy, read every The Force Awakens take I could find, categorized each of the major criticisms I found in them into groups, and offered rebuttals, at first, serialized into four parts, and then combined into one. In all my writing, I don't think I have ever been so thorough. My rebuttal and the process that went into creating it were so extensive, in fact, that I don't know if I'll ever be able to watch a Star Wars movie just for pleasure again. But I can at least be satisfied knowing that I'm capable of defending them.

4) Is Harambe the anti-Christ?* (2389 words) 

Remember Harambe? This past May, when a child fell into Harambe's habitat at the Cincinnati Zoo, a zoo employee shot and killed this gorilla. "The Internet" quickly resurrected him, turning him to the meme to end all memes. Or was it something more? I argued, on the flimsiest of evidence, that in fact it was: Harambe's quick deification actually indicated that there was a strong possibility he was the anti-Christ spoken of in Biblical prophecy. Do I believe this? No, especially not after the meme seems to have died once again. But boy was this a fun creative exercise for something I had never thought about before it happened, unlike many of my years-in-the-making takes. I think I proved with this post that I can make a case for or write about almost anything, and walk quite easily on the fine line between serious and absurd. My readers agreed: This was also one of my blog's top-five most popular posts.

3) My prediction for 'Star Wars Episode VIII': Rey turns to the Dark Side (5081 words)

Another Star Wars post makes its way into the top 10. This is a bit different from my defense of The Force Awakens, though the extensive knowledge of Star Wars I accrued from writing that post certainly helped this one. For this post was my attempt to flex my screenwriting muscles and predict in thorough detail how Episode VIII might unfold. I had resolved, after doing everything I could to avoid spoilers before The Force Awakens, to avoid spoilers and even speculation for Episode VIII. But a random Facebook headline I saw--something to the effect of "What if Rey turns evil?--got my imagination firing, and so I took to the blog to imagine how Rey might turn to the Dark Side, and what that would mean for everyone else. Read the post to judge for yourself, but I would see the heck out of the movie I wrote; I think I did a fantastic job of operating within the constraints The Force Awakens and the broader Star Wars universe have set up to create a dark, compelling story. I'll know this time next year if my predictions were anywhere close to correct. I hope they are, for my own vindication (I predicted an aspect of Rogue One correctly), even if the lack of surprise will disappoint me somewhat.

2) Zen and the Art of Running - 5 years later (3994 words) and The Olympics and man's search for meaning (1663 words)

I am, in all likelihood, never going to be an Olympic-caliber distance runner. I'm really not even all that good of a runner to begin with. But I'm a runner nonetheless. And so I like to think I understand, to at least some degree, what it means to live a runner's life. My understanding of this lifestyle has been the inspiration for much of my writing over the years, as well as two of what I consider my blog's best posts (which is funny, because in my first post I said that "I expect to discuss my running very little here"). The first is a revisiting of an essay I wrote in high school about running, and a consideration of what the sport means in my life now against what I thought it meant to my life back then.

The second is a reflection inspired by the end of the Olympics on what it means to be a high-achieving athlete, and how the sense of comedown Olympians feel after the Olympics to some extent mirrors how I have felt on many occasions, and, in fact, how we all feel. Somewhat unexpectedly, and probably thanks, in part, to retweets from the unlikely pair of @Dumbflotrack and @hughhewitt, this second post became my blog's most popular, reaching 1000 views. Since I consider it some of my best writing here, I'm all right with that.

---AND THE WINNER IS---


1) An Open Letter to Disney/Lucasfilm: 22.5 reasons why I should be the next Han Solo (2021 words)

I'm sure you saw this coming. This is my pride and joy, my piece de resistance, my magnum opus. Much of what I have blogged over the past year has been rattling around in my brain for a long time. But never before I read this article listing the generic young white males up for the role of young Han Solo in the prequel telling the story of his younger self had I thought that I deserved the part. But reading that article popped a stray thought in my head--something like "oh, come on. These guys don't look anything like Han Solo. They might as well cast me!"--that quickly developed into a surprisingly long and compelling list of reasons why Disney/Lucasfilm should cast me as young Han Solo.

I ran with the idea, gathering and creating evidence to fill out what became the best thing I've written in my year at this blog. The result deservedly became the most popular item on this blog, until "The Olympics and man's search for meaning" recently surpassed it. Unlike that post, however, this one had no aid from prominent retweets, but earned its popularity on the attention-grabbing clickbait of the concept and the unexpectedly persuasive content within. It may be a listicle, but it's still easily the best thing I wrote for this blog, and may be one of the best things I've ever written (for now, anyway...). Alas, it was not persuasive enough to get me the gig. But I think Disney, Lucasfilm, and audiences everywhere will end up regretting that (though less so if the creative personnel behind the movie take my screenwriting advice).

So there it is: The top 10 posts from the first year of A Life Between Runs. If you agree with my choices, think I'm neglecting something, think I'm rating something too highly, or just want to say hi, leave a comment below. I myself am pretty happy with this top 10 (a good mix of personal and pop cultural), and with the blog overall (the same). I've had a lot of fun, gotten some old thoughts out of my head, introduced some new takes to the world, and worked out my writing muscles regularly. I don't know how many of you are actually reading what I write, but from Facebook and blog comments, messages, and texts, I've learned that it's enough to make this seem to me like more than just one massive exercise in self-indulgence (though it is certainly that as well). I don't know what the next year of this blog will bring, or how frequently I'll post here. But I appreciate your readership as you've followed my efforts to live a life between runs.

The Force is strong with 'Rogue One: A Star Wars Story'

Star Wars, nothing but Star Wars...

A friend of mine once forever changed the way I think about Star Wars movies. He suggested to me that the best way to understand them is to replace every instance of "The Force" in dialogue with "the plot." He believed that the Force, whatever its pseudo-/quasi-mystical qualities, was also always a way to ensure that whatever needed to happen in the story happened, and that people and events important in the narrative got the attention their writers and creators thought they needed. Thus, to say one character is "strong with the Force" is to say that he or she is "strong with the plot." When Ben Kenobi, in A New Hope, says that "the Force is what gives a Jedi his power," he actually means that "the plot is what gives Jedi his power." When Yoda, in Empire Strikes Back, says that "my ally is the Force. And a powerful ally it is," he's really saying "my ally is the plot. And a powerful ally it is." And so on.*

I bring this up not to cast fundamental doubts on the soundness or enjoyability of Star Wars movies; the fact that I have an entire category dedicated to them on this blog suggests that I do, in fact, like and enjoy them. I mention it because the circumstances that have given us Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the most recent Star Wars movie, have put me in mind of this sense of compulsion and willed obligation. For, as I wrote last week, Rogue One is the first Star Wars spin-off of the property's new era under the ownership of Disney. It is a prequel, but one that does not focus on the Skywalker family,* or directly advance the story continued most recently with last year's The Force Awakens. The entire purpose of Rogue One is, in fact, to make money--oh, and also, to explain in film length the following lines from A New Hope's opening crawl:

It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire.
During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet.

Rogue One, then, is not only a property willed into existence mostly by the profit motive, based on a few throwaway lines from a nearly 40-year-old movie, but also a movie with a known outcome. We know how Rogue One has to end: the Rebels will get the Death Star plans. Rogue One's very existence constrains its storytelling possibilities, as much, if not more so, than the fact that it has to make a bunch of money. From all this, you might think that Rogue One is a remarkably cynical enterprise, doomed to mediocrity for lack of risk-taking but destined for success because of its brand. Well, the latter may be true (though the prequels indicate that creative success, at least, is not guaranteed for the Star Wars brand), but, remarkably, the former is not. For Rogue One's creative constraints paradoxically free it to become one of the best entries in the Star Wars canon to date.

Despite stiff competition. 

It does not do this, however, by creating compelling characters on par with Han Solo, Obi-Wan Kenobi, or Kylo Ren. The main cast of Rogue One consists of a Dirty Dozen/Great Escape-style ragtag ensemble; most of its members, aside from one or two distinguishing traits, are forgettable (with the standouts being Donnie Yenn's Chirrut Îmwe, a blind, plot--I mean, Force-believing mystic, and K2 [Alan Tudyk], a sassy robot). Even Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), the leader of this motley crew, is hardly compelling, with her character alternating unconvincingly between apathetic thief and idealistic rebel, albeit undergirded by an admittedly pathos-laden relationship with her father, Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen, fresh off a villainous role in Doctor Strange in November). No, the Rogue Squadron itself is mostly forgettable. As is Director Krennic (Ben Mendelssohn), the striving, not-really-all-that-evil, mid-level Imperial bureaucrat who serves as their primary antagonist**.

The movie also succeeds in spite of a story and some action scenes within that bite off a bit more than third-time director Gareth Edwards (of 2014's Godzilla reboot, on which I had some fond words here), is quite ready to chew. The narrative is relatively straightforward, and moves quickly--so quickly, in fact, that we sometimes don't realize why some things happen, or why certain characters are doing what they're doing, except that the Force and the plot demand it. And sometimes, there is simply so much going on in front of us that we can't quite follow it, though we know we're still supposed to be impressed by the ambition thereof.

Yet the genius of Rogue One is to be good enough in its execution and overall atmosphere to render these complaints minor quibbles. For while the action can at times be confusing, when it is not, it is easily the most brutal and visceral of anything we've seen in a Star Wars movie. We've never had as full an immersion in realistic, extensive, ground-based infantry combat in this universe before (though it has happened in bits and pieces). Rogue One promised to deliver on this front, and, at its best, it does exactly that (despite my concerns), even breathing new life into the classic aerial dogfights with some fresh visual and strategic approaches and innovations. And it creates, as a backdrop to that gritty combat, an appropriately nuanced view of the struggle between the Rebellion and the Empire. The Empire doesn't definitively win, and the lines are still clearly drawn, but there is a lot more violence, death, and setbacks, and there are a lot more gray areas. Rogue One proved that a Star Wars movie can still make its action and drama interesting, even if nobody has a lightsaber***.

"Excuse me, I believe you're forgetting someone..." 

The most impressive feat of Rogue One is its simultaneous fitting into and distinguishing itself from the larger Star Wars universe. Though it links itself to the movies we all already know and love many times***, it brings enough novelty into its tone, its action, its settings, and its approach to story and characters to be appreciated on its own. Where some might have seen only constraints and limitations imposed by everything it had to accomplish, and all that it could not do, the creative personnel of Rogue One saw an opportunity to create something new out of something familiar, and they seized it. While it may not rise, as a whole, to the heights of the best Star Wars, it contains plenty of individual moments, images, and general merit to earn a proper place in the franchise family. And, more important, it has proven that the Star Wars universe, now approaching its 40th anniversary, is not old and creaking, but young, vibrant, full of possibility, and may only be just beginning to be explored. May the Force--and the plot--be with us as we see where else we go in this galaxy far, far away.

*Even The Force Awakens works: It becomes The Plot Awakens, which makes perfect sense. It was the first live-action Star Wars movie of any kind in 10 years, and the first to move that universe's narrative forward in 35.
**You could also argue that Grand Moff Tarkin, played by a CGI-resurrected Peter Cushing, is also a main antagonist. But the most interesting thing about his character is that the actor who portrays him has been dead for 22 years, and Rogue One was able to return him to life in mostly convincing fashion, which means that we now have the ability to resurrect long-dead actors (I want to know how many people who didn't know he was dead thought something was off about him; I knew, and I still impressed, though it wasn't perfect). Ponder the possibilities and the ethics of this.
***Actually, somebody does have a lightsaber. It's Darth Vader. And, just as I predicted last week, he shows up and absolutely brutalizes people in terrifying fashion. It's awesome, in both senses of the word.
****Rogue One has many Easter Eggs, and ends up being almost a direct prequel to A New Hope.

Will 'Rogue One' let the Empire win?

This would cost a lot in real life. 

Four years ago this week, a White House petition to have the U.S. government build a Death Star earned 25,000 signatures.  This was the required threshold for the petition to get an official response from the White House. You can read the actual White House response here, but all you need to know is that, according to the designated responder to the petition, "a Death isn't on the horizon." 

Well, four years later, we may not be getting a Death Star, but we are getting a movie about the Death Star: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. If you somehow haven't heard about it (if so, Donald Trump won the election, FYI), Rogue One will somehow spin a whole movie out of these lines from the opening crawl of the first Star Wars movie: 

It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire.
During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet.

If you're not well-versed in the Star Wars universe--though how could you not be, if you are a regular reader of this blog?--you might be wondering why we're getting this movie. It's not a continuation of the main Star Wars story; that continuation, Episode VIII (whose plot I projected here), comes out next December. Rogue One is actually a sort of prequel, telling how the Rebellion procured the Death Star plans that exposed the megastructure's weakness and allowed Luke Skywalker to destroy it in A New Hope. It is the first Star Wars spin-off of Disney's efforts to squeeze as much money out of their recently-purchase property as they can. Another such spin-off, slated for near-future release, will focus on the young Han Solo, though it will do so without me in the lead role I deserve (but I still have some advice for the people behind the movie on how to make sure it's good).

Major missed opportunity on your part, Disney. Audiences will never forgive you for it. 

Fans and non-fans alike might be wondering whether this movie has any justification to exist other than the profit motive (a perfectly defensible justification, might I add!). The people behind the movie, of course, say yes. Their goal with the movie, they say, is to tell a story about the dark, gritty corners of the Star Wars universe, away from Jedi, Skywalkers, and the Force, and closer to the ground of the brutal struggle between the Empire and the Rebellion. That's what they say, anyway. Last summer, when unexpected re-shoots for the movie were announced, I worried that Disney execs saw an initial cut of the movie, found it too dark for popular consumption, and demanded it be "lightened up" so that kids would watch, toys could be bought, etc.

I could be wrong. Reviews suggest I might be. I haven't seen the movie yet, obviously (I'll probably see it this Sunday, and review it here when I do). It's a prequel, and so bound to tell a story we already know (which is why I'm not taking the "AVOID ALL SPOILERS" approach I took to The Force Awakens with Rogue One). Creativity and novelty could still emerge from these limiting parameters, but I still doubt that Rogue One will do the truly bold thing: Let the Empire win.

Not as important a letting the Wookie win.

There are two ways it could do this. One is incredibly unlikely, and would be one of the most unexpected and riskiest creative moves a modern franchise could make: Literally have the Empire win, like how Inglorious Basterds unexpectedly created an alternative timeline in which Allied forces successfully assassinate Hitler and kill most of the German high command well before his real-world bunker suicide in April 1945. Having the Rebels in this movie secure the Death Star plans and then suddenly get wiped out by Vader would be a greater pop culture twist than perhaps anything before it, and represent one of the biggest risks ever taken by a franchise. It would also create an alternate Star Wars timeline, confusing the general audiences already having trouble understanding that this movie is not a sequel to The Force Awakens even more. There's no way it will happen, but if somehow it does, you heard it here first.

There's another way, though, that Rogue One could let the Empire win, and it seems much more likely. Here's how I imagine the movie going, in rough form: Along the way, a few of the motley crew die in their efforts to get the Death Star plans. But, near the end, it seems that they are about to succeed. All is merry. Then, out of nowhere, Darth Vader shows up. Since, to my knowledge, none of the characters in this movie have any kind of Force powers, Vader will be treated on-screen, essentially, as a horror villain. He will pop out of dark corners, float down from high places, block blasters with his hands, Force choke, dismember, decapitate, and utterly ruin whomever remains of Rogue Squadron by the end of the movie, and there's nothing anyone there can do about it. This, remember, is Darth Vader at his prime, when he was choking pilots and boarding enemy ships effortlessly. The main female protagonist in the movie, in classic final girl style, will barely escape Vader's grasp; as she flies away, she sees Vader staring at her, menacingly. That would be an incredible final act.

Having Vader be the sci-fi horror movie villain would let this guy take a break.

Again, I don't know if it will happen. But turning Vader into a horror movie villain would make sense. In the Original Trilogy, he was a fearsome force even for people with use of the Force. Imagine how terrifying it would be to confront him if you were just an infantryman in this war? What could you even do? Anyway, this is just idle speculation, mostly transcribed in advance just to see if I'm right about what will happen and prove it if I am. As with my predicted plot of Star Wars Episode VIII, I both hope I am (for vindication) and hope I'm not (so that I'm still surprised by what happens). Either way, though, until we get a real Death Star, Rogue One will have to suffice.

RIP Greg Lake, "Lucky Man" (1947-2016)

Greg Lake, in his element

These days, and especially this year, I get nervous whenever I see the name of a famous person from the Baby Boomer generation trending on Facebook. Sometimes it just means that person has done something to return to newsworthiness: a new album, a successful tour, a controversial statement, or some such thing. But, often (and especially in 2016), it means that person is dead.

Such was the case with musician Greg Lake, whose trending status on Facebook was how I learned the progressive rock pioneer died today at age 69, after a long battle with cancer. Lake is probably best known for the popular 1970s progressive rock supergroup Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, who somehow filled stadiums and sold millions of albums with an eclectic sound that drew as much from the raucous energy of rock as from the structure and sound of classical music and jazz (my father and I are particularly fond of "Karn Evil 9 Part II"). Their popularity and influence--as well as that of other acts, such as Yes and Pink Floyd--helped bring progressive rock, probably my favorite genre of music, into the musical mainstream.

But before ELP, Lake was involved in King Crimson, one of the founding groups of progressive rock. He produced and performed lead vocals on King Crimson's first album, 1969's In the Court of the Crimson King, which may be as well known for its cover as for the music it spawned:

I wonder what's going on inside this guy's head...

The sound of In the Court of the Crimson King, with its combination of Mellotron, bizarre time signatures, impossibly dense lyrics, jazz-influenced improvisation, and long, multi-segmented compositions, would define the then-nascent genre of progressive rock. And Lake's voice was at the vanguard of this young movement. I recommend the whole album; I own it on vinyl, in fact. But Lake's best performance is on "Epitaph," the final song of the album's first side. The lyrics describe the steady descent of a civilization into apocalypse; Lake's voice guides us along the way, starting soft yet foreboding, and ending with passionate desperation. I could only find versions of the song online that removed much of the music, but this may have been for the best, as they end up isolating Lake's vocal and providing further evidence of his talent:

As mentioned above, Lake was a cornerstone of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer. He was arguably its primary creative force; inarguably so with "Lucky Man," the unlikely--and ironic; listen to the lyrics--hit single Lake wrote in his teens that launched the band to international fame:



Lake also enjoyed a successful solo career. The highlight of it--in my opinion, anyway--is 1979's "I Believe in Father Christmas," a Christmas song that has all the chimes, bells, choirs, and soaring vocals you'd expect of classic Christmas music, but undercuts it all in a sneaky fashion with a somewhat cynical message in the lyrics:


Even though Christmas is the time of year when we are collectively more tolerant of treacle than usual, I still perk up when "I Believe in Father Christmas" comes on the radio, as it means I'm getting a Christmas song with high production values, progressive rock roots, and a contrarian spirit for the time of year. Seek it out on the radio this Christmas season, and give it a full listen.

Greg Lake's death is particularly noteworthy due to its proximity to other recent passings. This past March, Lake's ELP bandmate, keyboardist Keith Emerson, died (I eulogized him here); drummer Carl Palmer is now the sole surviving member of the band, a fact he sadly noted today. Palmer's sole survivor status is not unique, and will become more common as the years go on; Barry Gibb, for example is the sole surviving member of the Bee Gees, the genre-defining disco act of the late 70s. 2016 as a whole has been rather brutal; on this blog, I have also eulogized two of the many other notables 2016 has claimed: David Bowie and Gene Wilder. Indeed, on the same day as Lake, Ohio Marine, astronaut, and senator John Glenn died at 95.

I have written elsewhere about what all these deaths mean, but it bears repeating: An entire generation of our culture has begun the slow yet steady process by which it will pass away. John Glenn was a holdout from an earlier age that largely handed over the commanding heights of culture long ago; it is now the Baby Boomers who are in the long, slow process of passing the torch. They have defined our culture for a generation, but, as the years go on, more and more of them will pass away. Only time will tell what they leave in their wake (of Poseidon).

As for Greg Lake, I don't think that confusion will be his epitaph, as he sang in the King Crimson song posted above. His epitaph, I hope, will be that of a great talent, lost sooner than any of us would have liked. But lost it now is. What a lucky man he was.

Unlike Lake in the the ELP song linked above, I don't mean that ironically.

Someday, I'll persistence-hunt a deer

I'll probably choose different attire.

I once had a dream that went something like this:

I am in the woods with two of my college track teammates. We are hunting for deer, hoping to chase one until either it or we collapse of exhaustion. Suddenly, we see a strong, many-point buck, and the chase is on. After a long, intense hunt through miles of dense forest, the buck stops, turns around, and charges at me. Thinking quickly, I assume a defensive crouch. Then, when the deer reaches me, I grab him by the throat. I hold fast until the buck's eyes fill with blood, and he collapses on the ground in front of me. Success.

I bring this up not as some window into my budding psychopathic mind (though readers can perhaps interpret it that way). No, what made me remember this dream was the appearance of a video earlier this month of Gwynedd Mercy University senior Justin Deluzio being totally leveled by a deer in the middle of his last college cross country race. Here it is, if you somehow haven't seen it already.

Nothing like that has ever happened to me in a race. I've jostled with other runners, fallen, been spiked--many things, but never this. And I'm happy about that. There's little worse than a major interruption to a race, and little harder than trying to get back into the groove you had so carefully constructed prior to whatever incident has laid you low. And while the incident was a bizarre misfortune, it could have gone a lot worse for Deluzio, according to NPR. With the help of a teammate, he got up and finished his race, bruised and sore but otherwise fine, and with one heck of a fish--er, deer--story.

So yes, I'm glad no deer has attacked me. But part of me--either the same part that still wants to confront a crazed clown on a run, or a part right next to that one--wants to get that close to a deer while running. For the dream I mentioned above was not a bizarre one-off. It was, in fact, a vivid subconscious depiction of one of my life goals: to persistence-hunt a deer.

Persistence hunting, for those who don't know, or who have never been hunter-gatherers, is how our hunter-gatherer ancestors got (and some modern-day humans get) much of their food. They would chase animals for hours, even days, on end, and then, when the animal finally tired, they would have their fill. I first learned about persistence hunting when I read Christopher McDougall's Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen. McDougall focuses on the Tarahumara tribe in Mexico, who are legendary distance runners, to make a fascinating--if perhaps exaggerated--argument: that running (specifically, running to hunt) shaped our mental and physical development as human beings. 

Running was basically the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Mentally, running gave us the ability to strategize, to coordinate, and to think long-term; physically, it gave us the ability to be distance runners--and all before anybody had running shoes. Indeed, McDougall even believes that running shoes are bad for us. They hamper the natural ability of our feet to facilitate running by constantly adjusting along whatever terrain they’re on, he claims.

The legacy of running also lingers in our modern obesity epidemic. The running-hunting model trained us to eat as much as we could when food was available, since hunting our prey meant we never knew when we would eat, and, after we ate, when we would eat next. Today, food reliability is nowhere near as big an issue in the developed world. But our bodies are still stuck in the past, and so they tempt us to gorge at all opportunities.

So when I saw that video, after I overcame my shock at something like that actually happening, my mind turned again to persistence hunting. I put myself in Deluzio’s spikes. It's probably for the best that I wasn't he, or that something like this has never happened to me. Because I'm pretty sure the first thing I would have done after I got up is run after that deer. 

I'm aware that this could go badly for me.

Those of you who don't think this is either stupid or dangerous--remember, deer have antlers and hooves--probably think it's just downright impractical. Deer are pretty fast, right? Well, yes. But they are only fast. They're great sprinters. Over a long distance, however, they tire out. Humans are far from the fastest animal, but we are near the top in terms of endurance, as McDougall notes. Which is why my persistence hunting dreams aren't as impractical as they may seem (even if they are still stupid or dangerous).

There are still a few practical difficulties I'd have to work through, though, even if I were in good enough shape to chase a deer to death. For one, deer are quite agile. They can bound effortlessly through densely wooded terrain. To catch one, I'd either have to become similarly agile (unlikely), become an excellent tracker (possible, but time-intensive), or get one in a flat, open area--like, say, a cross country course?--and keep it there (unlikelier still). But even if I figured all of this out, there's one final difficulty: What would I do if I actually caught one? Would it put up a fight? Would it just collapse of exhaustion, leaving no work on my part? Would other deer show up to protect it? All are possible.

Yet something in me keeps this dream alive. Maybe it's the amazing story that would come from it, or my longing for some hard-earned game. Or maybe it's the lingering remnant of the primal spirit of our ancestors, who chased their prey across tundras, plains, steppes, and savannas. If McDougall's right, then it was running--and hunting--that made us what we are today, even if we no longer have to live as our ancestors did. If that's true, then who am I to deny my humanity?

If you didn't run today, are you still a monkey?

Let me know if you want any of the venison. 

'Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life' (mostly) succeeds

In this instance, John Oliver is right

One of the hottest trends of our strange popular culture age is the "revival." A revival is a long-awaited sequel to a long-dormant pop cultural property that returns, to varying extents, the principal contributors to that property who made it popular in the first place. Indeed, usually the involvement of some, most, or, sometimes, even all of these people, on- and off-camera, becomes both a prerequisite for the revival's happening at all, and one (but not the only) measure of that revival's success. 

The most difficult trick these revivals have to pull off is twofold: They have to recreate the often-ineffable qualities that attracted fans to the property in the first place; and, even harder, they have to justify themselves, rebuff accusations of cash-grabbing and prime-passing. Recent revivals have achieved varying degrees of success at this: I thought Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens passed all of these tests, while the recent X-Files revival did not.

Last Friday, Gilmore Girls threw itself into the revival fray with Gilmore Girls:A Year in the Life, now on Netflix. As an unabashed male fan of Amy Sherman-Palladino's story of the relationship between a young mother (Lauren Graham's Lorelai Gilmore) and her daughter (Alexis Bledel's Rory), I broke with my long-standing, self-imposed ban on binge-watching to watch all four of the show's 90-minute, season-centric episodes (summer-to-fall) while I was home over Thanksgiving Break with my family (my sisters being the ones who turned me on to the show in the first place). Judged by the criteria I set out above, A Year in the Life excelled at recreating the overall impression that made fans love the show in the first place, but its narrative was less impressive in justifying the show's restart after a near-decade absence. 

I'll start with what I'll call the show's "atmosphere," for lack of a better term, for that's what A Year in the Life does best. As I said above, it often can be hard to describe or identify what exactly makes a pop culture object great in the first place. Gilmore Girls is no exception. But as a fan of the original show, I can begin to suggest some of the concrete items that, taken together and imbued with an ineffable quality of Gilmore Girls-ness, "make" the show: the quaint and fully-realized New England town of Stars Hollow; its quirky residents; fast, reference-and-joke-laden conversations; the occasional sly social commentary; believable relationships among the main cast; a knack for evoking autumn that rivals Over the Garden Wall in its power; and much else (I go into greater detail about some of these things here). A Year in the Life has all of these things in spades*. This shouldn't be much of a surprise, since the show returned not only virtually every major actor from the original series (even if it had to force some of them in via contrived and artificial means**, and others for split-second cameos), but also creator Palladino, who left the show for its last original run season. A Year in the Life successfully recaptured that ineffable Gilmore Girls-ness fans of the show love.

There is definitely some Gilmore Girls-ness in the original series' title screen

 The journeys of the Girls themselves, unfortunately, were a bit less impressive. By far the best arc of A Year in the Life belongs to Emily Gilmore (the seemingly-ageless Kelly Bishop), who basically becomes a primary character in the revival, whereas she hovered on the edge of secondary in the original. I mention above that the revival returned virtually every major actor from the original series. One of the only people who did not return to A Year in the Life did not decline by choice (presumably), but on account of his untimely demise. I speak of the late, great Edward Herrman (d. 2014), who, in the original series, played Richard Gilmore, Emily's wife, Lorelai's father, and Rory's grandfather.

The revival does not ignore his passing; it, instead, rightly makes Richard's death a major factor in the story. Naturally, it affects Emily most of all. Alone for the first time in 50 years, she finds herself adrift ("It's like a part of me is gone," she laments to Lorelai). She copes in some strange but understandable ways. In the end, she decides to leave the house in which she and Richard lived, as well as -- in an incredible scene -- the staid, elitist historophilia of the Daughters of the American Revolution (as the show depicts them, anyway). She exchanges them for a house in Nantucket and a volunteer position at a whaling museum, where we already see her regaling schoolchildren with visceral tales of whale murder. She alone comes out of this revival with an arc complete enough that fans know she will be content enough for the rest of her days, even if we never see her again on screen.

Emily Gilmore, in her element

Lorelai has a less satisfactory but still complete enough journey over A Year in the Life. Her arc is mostly of the mid-life crisis variety (though her character would deny that she is anywhere close to mid-life, or anywhere near old enough to have such a crisis). After hemming and hawing for virtually the entirety of the original series, she has finally settled down with (but not married) Stars Hollow diner owner, gruff-yet-lovable Luke Danes (Scott Patterson). Her inn is going well, her life in the town seems fine, etc. The drama emerges when she has to work out some still-unresolved issues with her mother that her father's death uncovered, when a classic "what are we?" conversation with Luke leads to some life-questioning places, when her inn undergoes some growing pains (with a treasured staffer threatening to leave), and when she has to deal with the perpetually-undecided Rory (about whom more below). The first three of these plotlines resolve well enough; the last, well...

...the last seems content to remain unresolved, because, well Rory. Rory, Rory, Rory. When last we saw Rory, she was off to cover the 2007-2008 Obama presidential campaign for the Boston Globe. 9 years later, she is...still an "aspiring" journalist, desperately making pitches*** and looking for jobs to fund her itinerant, wanderlust lifestyle. And, most disappointing, she is still in a fling with Logan Huntzberger (Matt Czuchry), a rich jerk Rory can't seem to stop debasing herself for, even though he is engaged and soon to be married and totally not right for her (#TeamJess). In the first few episodes, as Rory continued to jet back and forth between New York and London, it seemed to me that the whole show had been made great again, but Rory's jet-set, wannabe-elitist lifestyle was...off (it doesn't help that she's just not a very good journalist).

Perhaps fulfilling my expectations, Rory does end up back in Stars Hollow more permanently. There, things started feeling better for her character. I think what was wrong with Rory's journey at first was not, as some claim, that the show refuses to let Rory transform into the kind of young journalists who like to write about Gilmore Girls and get paid for it. Contrary to that article I linked to, I think what the revival shows is that Rory belongs in Stars Hollow, with Jess (Milo Ventimiglia), and, most important, her mother, however long she has spent denying it. There's nothing wrong with being rooted in a place, especially your hometown, and especially if your hometown is as beautiful and wonderful as Stars Hollow.    

I would love to experience a Stars Hollow autumn

Those who have watched the revival in full know, however, that it does not simply end with Rory back in Stars Hollow. For the sake of those who have not, I shan't reveal how it ended, or what its last words were. I shall simply say that these words both dramatically change the nature and direction of the series...and practically demand that it continue in some form. That the revival did this points to one of the other main characteristics of revivals, one that may as well take the form of a question: When do you stop? The whole point of these continuations is to bring back characters and worlds we know and love, to revisit and to reacquaint ourselves with them. But that can't go on forever. And doing it at all basically requires you to bring characters out of a sort of stasis implied by temporary non-existence, and to introduce some kind of drama or dissatisfaction in their lives once again, just so that we can enjoy the privilege of seeing it resolved before they enter stasis once more. I am incredibly skeptical of sweeping statements that use TV and movies as evidence, but our popular culture's obsession with revivals may be a function of our larger inability to let go.

At any rate, my final judgment of Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life places it somewhere between The Force Awakens and The X-Files on the recent revival scale, probably more toward the former than the latter. I am definitely happy it happened. And I hope we get more. Someday, there won't be anymore Gilmore Girls. Until then, though, oy with the poodles already!****

*In terms of social commentary, I particularly enjoyed the digs on coffee place wi-fi and unemployed Millennials.
**Did anything about Paris Geller's (Liza Weil) original series run suggest that she would be in charge of a fertility clinic, for example? Maybe something did, and I'm just forgetting it.
***As a part-time journalist, I found some of this very relatable.
****I thought these were going to be the last words of the revival. I was mistaken.

Tune in, turn on, and drop out to 'Dr. Strange'

I probably should have expected a strange movie, with a title like that.

There are two major criticisms of the perpetually-unfolding, undeniably-successful 14-film (so far) franchise known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). The first is that the films in this series, from 2008's Iron Man to this November's Doctor Strange, are overly formulaic. They present a competent, if unspectacular, mix of action, comedy, and relatively high (but always diffused) stakes with a standard hero's journey narrative, and maximize the whole recipe for popular consumption. The second criticism, related to the first, is that MCU movies tend to lack a strong villain (Tom Hiddleston's Loki excepted). Every MCU villain is usually either a dark mirror of the hero, some deep-voiced cosmic threat bent on mass destruction, or both.

You could say both of these things about Doctor Strange. Its basic narrative is the hero's journey of Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch, doing his best Gregory House impression), a brilliant, arrogant, sarcastic, know-it-all neurosurgeon who loses the proper use of his hands after a car accident and goes wandering to the Himalayas for answers after exhausting every other recourse, becoming a mystical defender of Earth in the process. Along the way, of course, he confronts difficulty, is humbled, and emerges from the process a better man. And he has, in Christine Palmer (Rachel McAdams), a(n) (ex-)love-interest; in the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton) and Karl Mordo (Chiwetel Ejiofor), two wise mentor figures; and, in Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelsen), a megalomaniacal, dark-mirror villain (in thrall to a deep-voiced cosmic threat). So, yes, you could say it's all there.

"Call me 'formulaic' one more time..."

But that paragraph above should provide your first hints that Doctor Strange does something special within the somewhat predictable Marvel template. Just look at that cast. Cumberbatch, one of the best younger representatives of the classically-trained British school of acting working today, at first might as well be playing Robert Downey, Jr., playing Stephen Strange. By the end of the film, though, he has given his character a satisfying, credible arc, distinguishing him from Downey's Tony Stark/Iron Man. McAdams is a bit underused, but at least does a bit more than the typical movie damsel, saving Strange on at least one occasion. Swinton, who must now serve as a proxy David Bowie after the Thin White Duke's death, imbues her role with an alluring mysticism. Ejiofor puts way more soulfulness into Mordo than you'd expect for a Marvel movie, selling you on his character's interesting philosophical journey. And Mikkelsen pulls off that classic movie villain trick of acting like he's the hero of the story, making you wonder whether he has a point or two. All of these performances (and, frankly, the actors who provide them), and some I didn't mention, are almost gratuitously exquisite for a Marvel movie.

And it's not just the actors that make Doctor Strange more than just the Marvel formula. A thoroughgoing psychedelic spirit, consistent with the 60s culture origins of the original comic book character, also helps. You see it in big things, such as the (surely-Inception-inspired) manipulation of time, space, and planes of existence to make the action scenes way more interesting than they otherwise might have been, and in the various other sequences to which the word "trippy" rightly applies. Most profound is one sequence where two characters discuss their mortality while watching lightning crawl across the sky in slow-motion, a scene I'd argue qualifies as one of the most unique and affecting to appear in any Marvel movie to date.

One of the trippier scenes of the movie.

You also see it in little things, such as scoring one key scene to "Interstellar Overdrive," a song from Pink Floyd's 1967 psychedelic/space rock album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (to which I listened while writing this review, and which I highly recommend), and having Marvel legend Stan Lee read Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception, a founding text of the hallucinogenic 1960s (Jim Morrison named The Doors after the book), during his requisite Marvel movie cameo. I am a sucker for psychedelia, so I may be a biased judge in this area. You can be sure that, if Doctor Strange came out in the late 60s, drug-addled college students would be packing theaters to drop acid to it (though the special effects of the movie would have been impossible until the past few years). But, my psychedelic bias aside, this stylistic choice allows Doctor Strange to do things that make it far more novel than you'd expect.

Fun fact: Doctor Strange appeared on the cover of Pink Floyd's 1968 album A Saucerful of Secrets

One of these choices--to introduce and rely heavily on time travel as a plot device--was both interesting to me as a time travel aficionado, and potentially worrisome. I don't want to say too much, since, as with Arrival, at least some of your enjoyment of the movie will likely depend on how well you think this time travel becomes part of the narrative. I will say this, though: In future movies, people may wonder why Doctor Strange doesn't just do this anytime something is too difficult. For now, however, Marvel movies continue to qualify as consistently above-average entertainment--working from a formula, to be sure, but one that seems to work, and one individual movies still seem capable of making interesting. And Doctor Strange is no exception.