My Pandemic Drop-Out
I write about my oldest’s challenges with depression and finishing high school in a pandemic here! Go take a look!
REVIEW: The Witcher S1, E1-3
I wouldn’t call this a full review. But I have a few thoughts, in case you were considering checking it out. Ahead be spoilers — readers beware!
First, let’s talk about how The Witcher sounds. Have I been walking around with shitty earbuds for too long, or has the sound editing for shows in this genre changed? Like, is it the $80 headphones I got for $winterholiday, or does the brutal violence of the blood-bath-battle scene really sound like slaughtering a field of over-ripe canteloupes with a dull blade? Has on-screen violence always sounded so… wet? When the armies of Queen Calanthe of Cintra and Nilfgaard clash, it’s an orgy of battle-blur-action staggered with your usual cinematic tropes. We’ve got your juicy eye-gouging and beheading scenes, my personal favorite–the hatchet-inna-yer-helmet–, and lots of splattering gut impales. It’s a hot mess of battle, culminating in the queen’s consort getting an arrow in the eye. You get a good sense for Queen Calanthe’s character, witnessing not just a new widow’s sorrow, but a warrior queen’s absolute rage — oh, Jodhi May, I love you in every delicious scene!
Geralt of Rivia: The Good, the Bad, the Muscles!
The entire gestalt of the main character, Geralt of Rivia, feels like a familiar casserole of the loner/bad-boy/hero character tropes we find throughout the fantasy genre, but Geralt is seasoned with a bit of spaghetti western flavor. Henry Cavill plays Geralt with a similar gravitas and poise of another man-of-few-words, a misanthropic, misunderstood good guy/bad guy outlaw, the man without a name — Blondie from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Like Blondie, Geralt’s morality is questionable. He kills monsters for the money, but you can see, early on, the fringes, the suggestion of a morality that is more chaotic neutral than good. He’s a straight shooter, like Blondie (har har), and is most definitely an outlier, a trait that is most noticeable in the differences in accent. Every other actor so far is speaking in an English accent, although there are certainly nuances to classify characters as royalty or common. But Geralt speaks in what sounds like an American accent. Cavill’s makes a very conscious effort to make Geralt’s accent … different. Cavill is after all, from the UK and has no trouble with English accents! It’s not like he’s Kevin Costner in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, and said “fuck it!” because he couldn’t do the English accent. Witchers are mutants, feared by humans and monsters alike. Cavill does a good job of reminding us of Geralt’s otherness with every word he utters.
Overall Impression
Unusual for me, but I came to The Witcher Netflix series in full innocence. I’ve never read the books, comics, short stories, etc. I haven’t played the game. For a voracious reader of fantasy novels, and a gamer who’s logged more hours slogging through WoW dungeons and levels than I care to admit, coming to this series untainted is saying a lot. That said — Witcher 3 is apparently on Steam. There go my Saturday mornings!
Here are my final thoughts:
PROS:
1. OK, I’m just going to go ahead and say it. I’m objectifying Henry Cavill an awful lot. Those darkly-lit shots of his bulging biceps **fans self** are maybe as voluptuous as the way dank swamps, battles, villages, castles, forests are filmed. It feels very much like you’re watching characters walk through a game like Elder Scrolls or Dragon Age. Chalk up some points here for great scenery, lighting, costume, the environs of the action.
2. The story. Setting aside the scenes of somewhat-naked Cavill, I’m still liking the direction of the narrative. I’m aware there’s some time-fuckery happening in these first few episodes. I’m doing the Tetris in my head. So far, I’m watching 3 movies. The Geralt movie. The Ascension of Yennefer. And the Innocent, Wandering Maiden Princess Ciri. And I’m curious to see them come together to weave something interesting.
3. The fight scenes. Holy bloody whiskers of Ares. It’s like every new entry in this genre has absorbed the lessons of Game of Thrones, LOTR, and other series with epic battle cinematography. Watching Geralt with the sword is some beautiful choreography.
CONS:
1. I truly do NOT like the glamming up of Yennefer from her more humble beginnings, twisted-spine-and-all. I was loving that there was a character overcoming physical challenges, becoming more bad-ass and accomplished. Growing more confident. And then. Ta da. Magic surgery, and she’s all fixed. That sucks. I was happily cheering her imperfectly perfect ascension (so to speak) to super-sorceress and thinking, YAY! We can finally have strong female characters who are imperfect! Down with the patriarchy! The change in Yennefer was a big turn off. I’m curious if this new perfect Yennefer will live up to her progenitor.
2. IF I HEAR THE WORD “DESTINY” ONE MORE TIME, I’M GOING TO HURL. It’s like Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy. Watching The Witcher and waiting for the talks about destiny would be a great drinking game! Every time you hear the word destiny you take a shot of whisky and send a nasty email to the screen writers. Yes. I get it. Destiny is at play. Destiny destiny destiny. Do we need to be bandied about the head with it at all times?
The Pros outweigh the cons for me, and The Witcher is definitely the kind of show that appeals to my love of fantasy. I recommend it if you like epic-feeling fantasy narratives with mythic qualities of the eurocentric variety, and you aren’t too squeamish about jump scares, lots of blood and some sexy times & nudity.
Guilt Cookies and My Plastic Rage
My battle against single-use-plastics rages on, and it’s getting in the way of the family cookie supply because our favorite cookies come in plastic packaging. Any day now, I expect a full-scale revolt.
As a consumer, I can choose NOT to buy some products. Cookie containers are the hill I will apparently die on.
Let me explain. I really believe we can — as part of our efforts to effect change in the world to reduce plastics — end manufacturers’ maniacal fetish of packaging products in single-use plastics. We can influence the market through choice, and theoretically, it will shift in response. Right? That’s what I learned in Microeconomics I think. I don’t know. I got a C.
The store’s big plastic vat of chocolate chip cookies for $5 really wants to jump into my cart. But every time I buy them, I am sending the message that I’m OK with that packaging. So, they become, for me, guilt cookies.
You would think, wouldn’t you, guilt cookies might be tasty? Like, forbidden. Taboo cookies. Like your mom saying “Don’t you dare eat that cookie, 5-year-old Terry with no impulse control! And now I’m going to leave the room for reasons.” THOSE COOKIES. Those were the tastiest. My conscience isn’t allowing the guilt cookies to taste good. Either that or the plastic outgassing affects the cookies? Maybe they are, in fact, toxic. And I am saving my family members from certain death. Just know. If you don’t hear from me, when you find my body — it was no accidental death. It was matricide. They murdered me for cookies.Resume – a poem from the past
When I was in grad school many years ago, the years of the faux leather briefcase bought with those sweet grad school loan funds, I landed a kick-ass job as the managing editor of the school’s literary magazine, Panhandler. I was in school in the literal panhandle of Florida, but the journal’s name was quite apt for a low-budget literary magazine that printed underrepresented writers, and it’s produced by grad students of literature at one of Florida’s lesser known schools.
We would regularly receive submissions from prison inmates. Bad, just terribly bad poems. Poems with so much heart, though. The suffering and lonely words scratched onto crinkled, cheap lined paper, reaching out, trying so hard to BE poetic. It was a heartbreaking enterprise to turn these souls down. I would sift through the mail, searching for jewels among the submissions, our mailbox swamped with penitentiary & state prison return addresses. And there were always jewels, my friends. Among our staff, even, were poets and writers just warming up. Writers who today I still have enormous respect for.
Panhandler still exists today, and I hope they don’t sue my ass for this post. This poem has stuck in my head and still brings tears to my eyes to this day. Especially when I’ve had a glass of red wine and a little too much nostalgic longing for years past, when I was important in a different way than I am today. This glass is for you, Paul Grant, wherever you are today. Thank you for writing something that stuck with me for 24 years.
Resume
I can’t take apart a perfectly good watch
and ever make it run again. In a box
in a bigger box, I have a jar
filled with leftover parts from the times I tried.
But I can come up with enough passings
of hands over soft skin to soothe small wars away,
and I can put hospital corners
on the sheets of rain in your eyes.
And when time refuses to tell you anything
of its plans for you, and the pain of waiting
lays about you with its wicked thoughts,
call me. Because when called,
I can come and go. I can do that.
-Paul Grant
50 Birthdays: Half-Way There and Living on a Prayer
Not only is it ominously 2:02 on 02-20-2020, but I’m writing to you from the very precipice of age. I turned a half-century-old recently. And it’s not like it snuck up on me, Snidely Whiplash style, and tied me to the railroad tracks as the locomotive of death chugged menacingly toward me.
I felt it coming in the creaking of my right knee. And in the chest x-ray that came back with “degeneration of lower vertebrae” and my doctor shrugging and saying “Meh, you’re 50.”
So, what is FIFTY like? I feel like I spend a lot of time measuring the expenditure of effort against the potential benefit, weighing the importance of results by the amount of work needed to get them. I’m trying to get as much bang for my buck out of anything I possibly can. Do I go to my friend’s dance party and have drinks and social? Well, given that it’s possible to have x amount of fun with y amount of preparation. As long as y isn’t going to take more than 15 minutes, it is worth doing, to get x amount out of it. I do algebra all the time!
At 50, I’ve learned how to prioritize and let myself off the hook. Does my house have to be spotless for $bestfriend visiting? As spotless as when the landlord is coming, or a new friend? Can I let $bestfriend see my house at this stage and not suffer internally? Is taking a nap more important than furiously cleaning? The answer is easy: if you can nap with a clear conscience, do that.
Fifty is ambitiously putting all the things on the calendar you want to do, and hoping like hell you can get to some of those, but realizing that you probably will miss 25-50% because of family/illness/exhaustion/don’t wanna — and being OK with setting those expectations.
It’s accepting the fact that your knees are a bad design for weathering time, and learning how to make choices for their longevity. I could take chances and try to ride that skateboard. Show that kid how to do it. But if I fall on my knee, I’m on crutches–best case scenario. OR I’ll need surgery and one-level living. So, there are body parts getting noticeably . . . worn. Being aware of this and starting to be at least cognizant of how you move about the world and make choices about what you do — that’s the wisdom of age.
Turning 50 as a person who has teeth is somewhat horrifying. Those years of blowing off flossing are now catching up. Even regular, twice-yearly cleanings lead to disappointed hygienists who tsk tsk you for not taking better care of your gums. It’s not enough to run the Sonicare over your teeth in the two days preceding your cleaning and make your hygienist happy. Now they actually want to involve the periodontist, do surgical things, re-do crowns. It’s getting expensive to maintain a mouth full of teeth.
So, what about mental health at 50? Because I’ve been through some shit, and I’ve learned the importance of therapy and sorting out my PTSD, learning how to go easier on myself and others through the work with a mental health professional, I’m actually in pretty good shape mentally/emotionally. If it doesn’t appear so because you learn from me or someone close to me that I am out of cope, or suffering in some way, it’s because I’ve chosen to begin sharing my journey, an experience of trusting others that’s still new to me.
I’m also more flexible in my thinking. I can allow myself to have multiple conflicting emotions simultaneously and still be OK! I can foresee complications in plans and thwart discomfort by being prepared. Like, what happens if Snidely Whiplash comes along and ties me to the railroad tracks! Always pack a knife in your purse! I mean, that’s a metaphor for emotional stuff. But still, you really should always pack a knife. I always have at least one knife on me at all times!
Being 50 means I care less about what people think of me. Last year I decided I was done investing so much care and time into having my hair long and brown, in an attempt to hold on to what I thought was beautiful about me. I stopped–after more than 20 years–dying my hair brown, and I let it go gray. Then in July, I just cut it all off, down to a pixie-like length. It’s fantastic.
I keep waiting to blame stuff on being 50. I’m ready to blurt out “Dude. I’m 50!” But it’s not working out so far. For instance, I can still outrun all 3 of my kids. It’s not that I’m faster. It’s that I last longer and am more stubborn. I’m better at knowing my boundaries, so instead of blaming my inability to do something on age, I instead choose not to do the thing!
Last, coming up on 50 means thinking about a list of things you want to get to, and that’s an experience that suggests there are more years behind you than ahead. It’s staring you straight in the face, that no one gets out of this thing called life, alive. So if you want to ride a motorcycle in the Pride Parade with Dykes on Bikes, you better get your license and start making that happen! You want to go on that experiential ride through slow winding roads, just for the journey? Buy the motorcycle!
Being a person on the other side of 50 means having a list of physical accomplishments you want to attempt. Walk more of the Appalachian Trail. Train for a multiple-day bike trip. Stop thinking of physical exercise as a race you have to win. If you want to do the triathlon, sign up for it! Train for it! And know you aren’t going to be competitive. You are in it to finish it. Kind of like… life? Right?
As this milestone year chugs along, I’ll post more about aging, and about being 50. But so far, using my somewhat morbid but — I hope — darkly humorous rating scale of grave stones, I’m rating “Turning 50” so far as a 3.5 out of 5 gravestones experience. Things could be better, and at the same time so much worse. I’m happy for the years I’ve been around, and as I creep toward the inevitability of death, I’m grateful for the time I’ve had.