Sherlock

I like Sherlock Holmes.  I don’t love it, but I do find it rather enjoyable.  And truth be told, I find many of the adaptations to be more fun than the written stories themselves.  Now, granted, I haven’t even come close to reading all of them, but I have read the first two novels and one or two of the collections, and frankly, some of the early short stories are really bland and it is so rare that Sherlock and Watson really put themselves at risk solving the crimes.  A lot of the mysteries solved are from a distance.

But, as I said, the adaptations are generally more enjoyable.  There are, of course, the movies with Jude Law and Robert Downey, Jr.  The stories are almost too explosive to be a real Sherlock story, and if it wasn’t for Downey’s charisma, Sherlock would have felt as over-the-top as some of Jim Carrey’s bits.  But, overall, a lot of fun and very compelling.

House was probably a more true adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries.  Always a great medical mystery and the bromance between House and Wilson is the most believable friendship of all the Sherlock stuff I’ve seen.  However, while Holmes is rude, it’s more because he is oblivious to the feelings of others.  House is not oblivious, merely spiteful, and while I cracked up many and many-a at his witticisms, it could be exhausting watching too much of him at a time.  That, and most of the relationship dramas were pathetic when they weren’t nauseating.

I’m happy to say, though, that there is a great new TV series that BBC (the hub of quality entertainment) has brought us Sherlock, a modern day consulting detective.  I’ve only seen two episodes thus far, but considering that each one is an hour-and-a-half long, frankly, and the four other episodes are the same.  These could be seen in a movie theater and I would be happy to pay the ticket prices for them.  Of all the adaptations there are, these may be the truest to the spirit of Arthur Conan Doyle’s sleuth that I expect to come across.

A New Skill

Picking up a new skill is hard.  It’s why it’s best to start early.  I learned how to play the piano when I was seven and even though I quit at age twelve, the habits of fitting my fingers in crazy positions was not difficult for me.  It’s why later playing the clarinet, using a QWERTY keyboard, and recently learning how to use this Steno keyboard is not such a difficult thing for me.

It certainly has given me an edge in my court reporting program.  It did not take me long at all to figure out what the alphabet was like on the Steno machine, how to form words, and given that I do have a strong vocabulary background, I managed to pass my theory class in less than three months.

This is not to brag.  Well… maybe a little.  But the fact is that I have unknowingly prepared to use this Steno machine for a good portion of my life, really before I even knew that this was a career.

New Year’s rolled around and I wanted a new talent.  Something that has dazzled me since I was seven, stirred the imagination whenever I’d read about it, and bring so much jealousy when I see it on TV.  This year, I resolved that I was going to pick up this skill no matter what.

Turns out that juggling three balls is harder than learning shorthand ever could be.  Heck, just throwing two balls around is more of a pain than I’d expected.

It’s not catching the balls that’s difficult.  Anybody can do that part.  The trouble is the throwing.  The key to good juggling is controlling how the ball is thrown from one hand to the other.  You have to make sure that it goes in a perfect arc and the only way you know you’ve succeeded is when you don’t have to move your hand to catch the ball.  It just falls into your palm as easily as ice cream touches the tongue.

I have not one gotten mad at the machine.  Exasperated, but never mad.  I have cussed at those bright multi-colored bean bags.

We’ll see how dedicated I am after another month of this.

The Remains of the Day

I belong to this book club that I never attend.
 

I read the books.  I make a lot of notes on the books.  These notes are generally read and I’m given to understand that some great conversations flow from what I’ve written.  I’m just never there.

My notes are usually handwritten and thrown away (because I have enough paper floating around my bedroom that should have been tossed out weeks before.)  Hand-writing something gives me time to think and prepare for a very particular audience.  But this month, I’m tired.  And my hands are sore.  Typing is faster.  Now I’m only ruining my fingers.

I’m also out of ideas for a blog post this week.  So to make sure I keep to a schedule and my book club has an opportunity to hear from me, here are my thoughts on Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, which has as much information on the qualities and duties of the butler profession as Moby Dick has on whaling or From A Buick 8 has on police procedures.  Well, maybe not that much.

This was a very hard novel to understand for the first half.  The first-person narrator, Mr. Stevens, is a butler for Mr. Farraday, an American gentleman who has given Stevens an opportunity to go on a week’s vacation, something Stevens is very uncomfortable with until he finds one business item to take care of during his trip.  During this trip, Stevens spends a lot of time reminiscing about the old days when his former employer was Lord Darlington and he served the world’s elite.  And with the reminiscing, his mind wanders to the philosophy and practices of his profession.

He spends a lot of time on his profession.  This threatened to bug me and I did put the book down a couple times because I wanted something to happen and it just wasn’t.  I wondered if this would be the first book I didn’t finish for the club.  The thing that did draw me back time and again, though, was Stevens’ charm.  And he does have charm.  He is a deep-thinker within the scope of his profession and it’s clear that he loves being a butler.  He’s built his entire life around it and he is quite poetic as he contemplates the meaning and pursuit of dignity.

More than that is the inherent humor behind everything he does.  This mostly shows in his relation with his current employer, Mr. Farraday, who like most Americans has a penchant for “banter.”  Stevens has the impression that Mr. Farraday would like Stevens to banter with him, but Stevens feels totally out of his depth.  He’s like Roland Deschain from The Dark Tower series; he has no sense of humor.

The irony is that Stevens is funny; I couldn’t help but laugh at what he was saying and some of the situations he got put in—his trying to explain sex to a 23-year-old was priceless.  But the joke is completely lost on Stevens.  He’s spent his whole life being practical that he’s never been able to appreciate the ridiculousness that constantly surrounds him.

Despite this, I was a hundred fifty pages in wondering what the story was about when it started to fall into place.  It’s during the dinner where diplomats from all over Europe attend Darlington Hall that Stevens’ father dies and continues his service that I began to understand what was happening.  His father dies, but he continues his service at the dinner because he believes with his whole heart that duty comes first before all else.

By the end of the book, you see him go through one more personal crisis, where the woman he won’t admit that he’s fallen for is leaving for good and his employer seems to be making a great error in judgment, Stevens continues to stand in place as his butler duty demands, and instead of sorrow and confusion, he feels triumph in a job well-done.

This gave me quite a bit to think about.  Sacrifice is not a foreign concept to me.  Indeed, I love stories of sacrifice.  Usually, I apply it to soldiers going to war to protect their homes or to save the downtrodden.  Or maybe it’s the guy gets hit by a bus to save a kid that was in the way.  It’s the fireman who runs into the burning building.  Since Martin Luther King’s Day just passed, it can be the ones who never stopped speaking truth against the hard-hearted and oppressive.  Or it could be the prophet who gives his life proclaiming his God is real.

These are people who soften my heart and make me realize that I’m not doing enough but that it is in power to do so.  But they are also pro-active, in the middle of events, actively trying to change things for the better.

Stevens is that worst sort of fictional character: one determined and successfully remains an observer.  He takes pride in that he doesn’t get involved with the great events of his day.  His determination to remain obedient to his employer no matter what and never question the sense or the morality of his boss’s commands can lead one to wonder whether or not he’s human.  Except that by the end of the story, you realize that he’s not a mindless robot but that he committed himself to be the most worthy servant he ever could be and in that, he never faltered.  I was actually very proud of him for fulfilling his duties.

That cost him a lot.  And had I been in his position, I know I wouldn’t have made the same decision, but that’s because I haven’t put my profession as my number one priority.  But in the end, it wasn’t even his profession that mattered most to him, it was Lord Darlington that he loved more than anything.  Lord Darlington was who Stevens felt to be among the best of men, somebody he trusted to bring peace and happiness to his society.  He believed in his employer and he gave everything he had to make sure that he did his own small part in letting Lord Darlington accomplish his dreams and goals.  The butler profession was simply the way that Stevens could serve best.

And the last chapter made me understand why the book won an award.  It’s because at that moment, he realized that he hasn’t shown that same devotion to Mr. Farraday and yet he resolves from there to show that he does care for his current employer and he will sacrifice and better himself. Because he is a man who gives his best in all that he does.

It’s a very quiet and yet triumphant moment.  Well worth plowing through that charismatic yet confusing start.

And Then There Were None

Agatha Christie would have made a great horror novelist, if that had been her field of choice.  And Then There Were None is the first novel I’ve read of hers, as it seemed to have been her most popular.  What a thrill.
 

The plot is that ten strangers have been called to have a party on an uninhabited island.  When they arrive, a mysterious recording accuses all of them for committing murder and promptly and that they have been brought to the island for justice.  Soon after the recording is finished, one of their party promptly dies.

And then the true bloodletting begins as they come to realize that the murderer could only be one of them.  The only way to prove innocence entirely is to be among the dead.

The story kept me guessing until the end who the murderer was, and boy did it throw me for a loop.  This book alone might get me back into reading the mystery genre like I used to when I was a kid.

Funny enough, though, I already know the solution to have made sure everybody lived.  The examples are clearly set in the Star Trek novel, Kobayashi Maru, and in that Family Guy episode “And Then There Were Fewer” (guess what that one was based on): everybody stays together in the same room at all times, eating, sleeping, and even have two partners with you going to the bathroom.  If there are always at least three pairs of eyes watching each other, there is no way the murderer could even try to get away with a killing because the rest of the party would beat him up.

Khan Academy

I might have mentioned Khan Academy once before on this blog but I talk about it a lot more in daily life.  Going to www.khanacademy.org has been life-changing for me.  It was originally a bunch of YouTube videos that Salman Khan made to help tutor his niece in Algebra and has grown into this miraculous website for the express purpose of giving the whole world a free education.

I spent most of my time there studying math or reviewing old subjects to freshen my mind.  Even though I don’t need it or even intend to use Trigonometry, it’s nice to know there’s a place out there where I can find a good teacher and I can do it on my own time.

I have felt nothing but happiness and accomplishment (and even a little bit of pride) from watching these great videos, where he can go from the sciences to banking and current events.  But this past week, I started the Humanities videos and I feel something new: anger.

I finished American History and went onto European History, and the more I watched, the more pissed off I got because I realized just how badly I’ve been screwed by the American public school system.

I took AP World History in high school and continued to make my best grades in History classes.  I took nearly every History class they offered when I went to college and I never learned half of what is contained in a handful of twelve-minute videos.  American History was bad enough; except for Revolution, Civil War, and WWII, a lot of American History gets glossed over in schools.  It’s taken me four years graduated from college to finally learn what the Vietnam War was all about.  It’s one of those subjects people who lived in that time get hugely passionate about and it sure makes a huge conflict in movies like Forrest Gump, but is it explained to the next generation what was going on?  Fat chance.

Bad as that was, though, it was the European History that pissed me off.  So far, all Khan has covered is France from the First Revolution until just after Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo.  This is one of the most colorful, dynamic, tumultuous and bloodiest periods of time we’ve had in the last couple hundred years.  And the impact France has had on Europe and both the American continents is not to be sniffed at.

Take the Louisiana Purchase.  I have only been taught about the American side of events, how it was a brilliant move on Jefferson’s part to buy all that land so cheaply.  Turns out that it might have been an even more brilliant move on Napoleon’s part.  France was poor, its navy demolished, and really there was little to keep other nations from just conquering Louisiana on their own initiative.  Instead, Napoleon managed to get money from land that was out of his reach anyways.

In fact, Napoleon could very well have been the catalyst for Spanish-held America to revolt just by his conquering Madrid when expanding his own empire.  The whole history is just fascinating and I’m eager to see more of these new films.  And actually learn what I should have years ago.

The Walking Dead

I finished Compendium Two of The Walking Dead the same day I finished A Feast for Crows by George. R. R. Martin, which is the main reason for me being done with big epics for a few weeks (no hypocrisy in that sentence at all.)

It was worth it, though.  I mentioned before that I don’t care for zombies but I made exception with The Walking Dead after seeing a couple episodes from the third season.  They were doing something that hadn’t been attempted in a zombie story before and I was interested to see how this played out and came to be.  However, I did not want to take the time to start the TV series from the beginning.  There are other things I’d rather be doing (like writing this stupid review.)

But I was all too happy to read the comic books, which tell a different story than what the show does but still just as delightful.

It starts off like most zombie stories: end of the world, walking corpsicles, and lots of fear.  Plus, (and this is the strength of zombie yarns) forming a community that battles more within itself than without.

What this one does different—and because they have the space to do it—is turn it from your midnight horror, cabin-in-the-woods scenario and make it a true post-apocalyptic tale, where the main drama is not surviving the zombies, but creating a civilization that handles the undead the same way you handle other forces of nature, like hurricanes, earthquakes, or tornadoes.  The zombies are just another natural threat that they are finally learning how to take care of and are building communities that can overcome that threat.  The zombies really aren’t the worst force out there but another obstacle in the grander drama of recreating civilization.  It’s powerful and moving and I can’t wait for the next volume.

I love how Rick never gives up.  Almost every idea he’s gets blown off the table and left him in a worse position than he was before, and yet he takes those failures and does it better next time.  He will rise and the rest of the survivors will follow and for good reason, because he puts himself on the line.  He never asks more from them than he’s willing to do himself, except maybe in love.

Speaking of which, I hope he stops being a wuss and hooks up with Andrea.  Those two are perfectly compatible, more so than his deceased wife and she would be a good mom for Carl.  Certainly, nobody would defend the kid with more fervor or ability in that harsh world.

Although if I’m going to be honest, there’s an evil side of me that wants to see Carl croak.  Not because I don’t like him; I like the boy a lot.  But this story is about Rick and I want to see whether he could rise above his son dying and continue to do the right thing—meaning make a better world, even though it’s one that his posterity will never get to see.  That would make him even more heroic than he is right now, and as it is, he’s way up there in fictional heroes.

Though I won’t complain if Carl lives either.  It would be fascinating to see how the rising generation lives in this world without any memories of the old.

Michonne is only going to get bitter, even more so, as time goes on.  Nobody could argue that one.

Abraham is going to take over the new community but I don’t know if that would be a bad thing.  By that point, I think Rick will be onto something even grander by then.  The story changed and reached for something much more.  Rick’s mantle will get heavier and Abraham’s new role may be the thing that helps lighten the load.  But we’ll see.  If the series goes on as long as I think it will, there will be plenty more time to put Rick through the meat grinder and I look forward to every painful moment.

As with all zombie stories, this one is incredibly gory.  Parents be warned, although, I think with horror, this ought to have been a given.

Titus

Sorry about no posts on Tuesday but it was New Year’s and I decided I didn’t care.  I was too busy enjoying my new subscription to Netflix and having a Family Guy marathon.  Anyways…

Christopher Titus might be the funniest comedian to come from the last decade, which sucks for him because bulk of the humor is derived from his horrible life.  Titus comes from a childhood where his alcoholic father went through five marriages, his mom was a murderous psychotic who committed suicide, his sister committed suicide, and his adulterous wife took two million dollars from him in the divorce.

I’ve known some screwed up folks who had less in life stacked against them.  They give up.  Not Titus.  He makes jokes about it and he makes us enjoy being in his company.

You can check out his stand-up comedy on YouTube, Netflix, and whatever else is out there.  However, I just got done watching his too-short lived TV show, Titus, based on his first stand-up Norman Rockwell is Bleeding.  If you watch the stand-up, it’ll be fun to see every joke make an appearance.  If you watch the show first, you’ll have no need to watch the stand-up.

The show follows Titus and a cast representing his girlfriend, step-brother, best friend, and father.  Some of the stories and situations are made-up, but not as many as you would think.  Every episode is based on something that really happened.

It’s all funny, from the ups-and-downs of his romance, his father’s distaste for wussies, to the bridge-jumping episode, I laughed so hard my sides hurt.

But what makes the show rise above his stand-up was Rachel Roth guest-starring as his girlfriend’s niece, Amy.  Rachel Roth is a gorgeous actress playing a teenager who deals with personal tragedies with stronger sarcasm and violence than Titus ever put into his.  The show up until then was really about his relationship to his father and how it did and didn’t work for them.  The moment that Amy moves into his home and he takes responsibility for raising her does the show find its heart.

The most important episodes of this show was seeing him take charge of this troubled and back-talking and backstabbing (sometimes with real stabbing) child come to trust her new guardians.  This parent-child show didn’t feel complete until Titus became a parent himself.  It’s a shame Amy never became more than a guest star.  I kind of wonder what would have happened had the show been allowed to run longer.