It doesn’t matter if I’ve been at my day job from 7-3, and then gone to my part-time job and done a 5-1am shift, and didn’t get home until 2, and didn’t get in bed until 3.
At six am, I will be wide fucking awake.
I can’t be wide awake Monday through Friday at six am, where I actually had at least six hour of sleep the night before, but on Saturday morning, BAM. Wide awake by six am.
This is actually kind of nice. I get to use the laundry room before anyone else is up. Well – almost anyone. The woman across the hall apparently has the same issue as I do because sometimes she’s got all the machines running.
But I can try to get my laundry started. I can have the community gym all to myself. Treadmill and an episode of the History Channel about World War Two destroyers? Sounds like fun!
One of the best things about being up so early is getting out to Columbia Heights for early morning errand running. Columbia Heights houses DC’s only Target, and it’s a good place for getting, y’know, crap. (You know how it is: “I need to go to Target to pick up some underwear” and then you wind up leaving with just about everything and spent $70 instead of $10 and isn’t $10 a bit much to pay for a three pack of men’s boxer shorts, anyway?)
I have a simply rule about doing a shopping trip to the Target in Columbia Heights: if I can’t be there before 10am, just fucking forget about it. What a nightmare. But at 9am, it’s quiet. At 8am, it’s even peaceful.
Last Saturday I ran out there to price some bedsheets. I wound up going with Bed Bath & Beyond (just across the way) – black sheets 400 thread count, plus an extra set of pillowcases (I have four pillows) wound up just shy of $100, easily the most I’ve ever spent on sheets but LET ME TELL YOU HOW AWESOME IT FELT WHEN I WENT TO BED.
Pretty fucking awesome, that’s how awesome.
Back to Target: I bumped into a guy I used to work with at the Bookstore. Good guy, fell in some hard times when the economy crashed, so I’m glad he found a safe haven (he’s working two jobs now). During our conversation, he mentioned that the store was ranked 18th in the company in terms of sales volume.
I was actually kind of surprised. The store’s not that big, after all, and it’s not the easiest place to lug stuff from. Only so much junk you can fit onto the Metro, bus, or Circulator, after all. But I guess it makes sense: it’s a lot easier to get to a Target that’s in the city then heading out to the ‘burbs, especially for those of us who are car-free.
I wonder how much their overhead is. Sales volume is one thing. Profitability is another. Rent’s not cheap.
(In other news, I’m kind of excited that DSW is moving into that shopping center this year. Holy shit, have I become Frank Ricard?!)
My favorite mode of transportation is my feet. Weather and distance permitting, I’ll opt for my feet. When the weather is nice, I’ll routinely walk to and from my part time jobs (on weekends, at any rate — three miles downhill to, three miles uphill from).
Bike would be here, except, I’m pretty much terrified to bike in the city. I do have a Bikeshare membership … which I never utilize. Those car drivers scare the shit out of me!
Car would be here, except, I don’t own one. I’ve owned four. An Acura Legend. A Jeep Wrangler. A Toyota Celica. A Toyota Matrix, which I sold to my dad, and which I still occasionally get to borrow for periods of time. But even when I borrow it for extended periods of time, man, I hate driving into the city.
After my feet my favorite mode of transportation is the bus. The NextBus app makes waiting for them much easier, and I’m pretty well familiar with a few key routes, and not quite so familiar with some more connecting routes, and every now and then I’m on a route where I’m crossing my fingers and my heart that I hope I know where I’m going. Bus is, after walking, probably the cheapest way to get around the city (especially with the free transfers for SmarTrip users).
After bus, my favorite mode of transportation is the Metro itself. I tend to travel off peak, and usually do my best to avoid the system during rush hour, and weekends. Fortunately, since I do live in the city, this is hardly a killer proposition. There’s really not many places I’d want to go that can’t be reached with judicious use of a bus, coupled with a short walk. But to get out to the ‘burbs, like to my day job, the Metro’s a necessity.
After Metro, my favorite mode of transportation is a taxicab. When I say “favorite”, at the point, look: I’m using the word wrong, m’kay? It’s not my favorite mode of transportation. At all. But sometimes I need to lug some cats to and from the vets, or sometimes I need to just get home really quickly after working at my part-time job, or I just don’t feel like walking from the Metro to my apartment. Due to the expense, about $10 to $11 (fare plus a tip), I don’t do this often. I consider a cab ride a treat. Not always a good one: hard to read in a cab, especially at night. Public transportation is great reading time!
Because it is. It’s a treat. Cabs are not necessary to get around the city. Obviously, I speak only for myself, and my situation is not the same as I’m sure most people who regularly grab taxis, but I’d generally rather wait at a bus stop for fifteen minutes, knowing I’ll have to make a transfer, but get home only having spent a $1.50 than a whole hour’s worth of wages from my part-time job.
So tonight, for the first time, I called an Uber ride. Uber is a car service called from an app on your smart phone. It’s pretty easy to use. I’d registered last night from my (brand new) laptop, so I just logged-in, moved a pin to show the Uber driver where I’d be waiting, and got a notification that I had about a four minute wait.
I didn’t actually wait four minutes, he was there in about two, in a big, black sedan. I gave him my destination, and we were off. And then we got delayed by a motorcade running up Connecticut Avenue, but that didn’t take too long and we debated who it was. I don’t think it was Obama, since there was no ambulance with the procession. He didn’t think it was Biden, because it was running up Connecticut and not Massachusetts.
So. My receipt came in my email. My fee worked out to about $20 (with half off for the promotion, I paid just under ten bucks). The car was nice. The driver was friendly. There was even complimentary water. But I passed up several cabs waiting for the Uber. The ride was no faster than a cab would have been, and the driver was friendly, but honestly, I usually get cab drivers who tend to be on the friendlier side of things. Bottom line? Good service, but it doesn’t offer anything to me beyond cabs, and if a regular cab rate is pushing what I can afford, this is just …
… out of my budget.
I can see using Uber if I’m on my way to a job interview and don’t want to risk my suit carrying an scent of cab or bus odor, or just want to make sure I’m hedging my bets against traffic accidents or what have you, but for most occasions, I’ll be skipping.
Way back in late 1987 and early 1988, I’d spend my Saturday nights belly down on the basement carpet, head inclined towards the TV as Star Trek: The Next Generation aired. The Enterprise flew, Picard gave orders, Riker led Data and Yar on away missions. Geordi did cool stuff with his eyes, Worf was a Klingon in the background, and Wesley got into trouble. In later years, I’d sort of realize that the show’s first season was pretty rough in terms of story telling, but there was a magic that hooked me.
A few months ago, I became aware that CBS was remastering Star Trek The Next Generation for a Blu Ray DVD release. Going back to the original film negatives, and doing whatever it is they “do” to remaster something. As a promotion ahead of the season-by-season Blu Ray release, CBS (which, I don’t know, owns the right to Paramount DVD releases, I think) put out a sampler of the work they’d been doing, a single disc release with three episodes: the premier episode, Encounter at Farpoint, which introduced the show’s concept, the ship, the crew, and Q; Sins of the Father, from the third season, where Lt. Worf returns to the Klingon Empire to answer charges brought against his long deceased father; and The Inner Light, where Picard lives an entire lifetime on a dead world (and learns to play a flute).
I did not expect to see a huge quality difference between my regular The Next Generation DVDs and the Blu-Ray episodes. I queued up Encounter at Farpoint and was completely blown away by the opening: the planets glowed, the Enterprise was so sharp and detailed. And then the episode began, and the first shot of the Enterprise is a belly-shot: the camera is moving in reverse, then begins elevating. The Enterprise is moving towards the camera, and our initial view is her belly: the underside of the stardrive, and the saucer, and the ship moves forward until the camera passes over the top of the saucer.
The Enterprise looked absolutely amazing. I popped out the Blu Ray, threw in my DVD disc, and there was absolutely no comparison. The clarity was noticeable on interior scenes, too — uniform colors popped, Data’s eyes glowed (well, not really), the carpet of the bridge looked like it needed a good vacuum.
Sins of the Father was not entirely complete – the crew in charge of updating the footage was unable to find thirteen seconds of the original footage. It’s from when Crusher is on the bridge briefing Riker about a second survivor of the Khitomer attack. CBS wound up “up converting” the original DVD for this sequence, and it’s very noticeable.
In fact, I think maybe that’s why they included this episode on the disc. So that anyone who saw it would have a very visible indicator of the lack of quality on other formats. Surprisingly, the DVD quality is worse than Netflix streaming: I suspect this is because Netflix streaming cuts the corners off the film, whereas my TV stretches the show. I’m sure I could adjust this fairly easy on the menu settings of my TV, but blah.
There’s no set release date for TNG Season One — just sometime this year. From what I’ve seen, though, I think I’ll probably pick it up.
Since January is over, here’s where I stand: I bought three books.
At Home by Bill Bryson was a birthday gift for a friend.
The other two were for myself: I picked up a trade copy of Lee Child’s Running Blind, and a used hardcover of his 61 Hours.
Personally, I’m still pretty happy with myself. That’s a lot fewer books than I usually buy in, honestly, a day.
I have another reading related goal this year. I wanted to read as many John LeCarre novels as possible, the first four of George RR Martin’s Fire & Ice, and all of Lee Child’s Reacher series (which will require another book purchase for The Affair). Additionally, I’ve had the complete Sherlock Holmes lying around, and I’d like to get through that as well.
How am I doing?
Well, I got through George RR Martin’s A Game of Thrones. Even wrote a blog post about it. I’ll probably pick up Storm of Swords in April (yes, I already own it).
For LeCarre: I actually started this late last year, and am halfway through A Small Town in Germany. Chalked off the list are Call For The Dead, A Murder of Quality, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, and The Looking Glass War.
As for Lee Child … guys. Guys. My cousin’s boyfriend Jared first told me about Lee Child and his protagonist Jack Reacher. I’d heard Stephen King mention Reacher a few times (and he cameos, sorta, in Under The Dome), but I just wasn’t impressed. Then my uncle started reading the books and enjoyed them, and then my dad got the bug, and one day last fall at Second Story I found seven of the books on the discount cart for fifty cents a pop. And now I own all of them (except for The Affair). I read A Killing Floor back in December, and enjoyed it, but took forever to hunt down a used copy of Die Trying (I really hate this half-way-between a mass market and a trade the publisher has adapted and refused to buy it new). So, in very short order, I’ve read Die Trying, Tripwire, Running Blind, Echo Burning, and Without Fail.
Basically: I’m doing really fucking well on this goal!
***
I somehow agreed to not drink alcohol for the fine month of February. Thank goodness it’s the shortest month of the year, but why oh why did it have to be a leap year?
I remember the first time I watched Snatch. I popped it out of the DVD player, not entirely certain what to make of it. Then I put it back in and watched it twice more in a row.
That was, for a number of years, the best Guy Ritchie movie I’d ever seen. Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels felt like Snatch reshuffled. It suffers from what I call the Austin Powers Theory: if you saw the first film first, that’s your favorite and you tend to think the second film is crap. If, however, you saw The Spy Who Shagged Me first, then the original film is, to your eyes, crap.
I mean – all rules have exceptions, but … generally.
Anyway. Revolver was disappointing. I didn’t even bother with Swept Away, and I wasn’t sure what to make of Sherlock Holmes, so I avoided it at theaters.
When I finally got around to watching it, however, I was very impressed. I felt the folks behind the film put together a unique take on the character, albeit mostly by mining the stories for information, and abandoning the deer-stalker hat. I thought the script was solidly built, the score delightful, and the visuals borderline steampunkish (wonderful combination).
Alas: the sequel kept the score and the visuals but abandoned story telling in favor of action sequences. Moriarty, a mysterious character in the first film, is not an unknown character in this film, in fact, he’s pretty well known to everybody: Holmes has his photo, Moriarty’s out signing books and giving well attended lectures, while trying to organize a world war to line his pockets. Moriarty comes across less as a brilliant manipulator and more as a guy who has a hard time getting anything to go his way. Not to mention that his whole scheme from the first film – stealing the radio device isn’t even mentioned in the sequel. ‘
Finally: a quick note about the ending. What could have been a really daring ending — and if you’re familiar with the Sherlock Holmes mythos, you probably have an idea — is cheapened by the final scene.
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows – totally Netflixable.
I was reading an article today that cracked me up – movie patrons in the U.K. were wanting refunds because they hadn’t realized there was no dialogue in the French film The Artist.
I got out to see the movie last Thursday (I know, I know, I’m very untimely on this). What follows is SPOILERS so please be careful about continuing to read (you know how I get).
I can tell you when I bought A Game of Thrones, and I can even tell you how much I paid for it. I bought it August 2nd, 2008, and I paid — including tax — thirty-seven cents for it. I can even tell you when I bought A Clash of Kings. I did that via Amazon.com. February 23rd, 2007. I paid $7.99 for it, and I also ordered a copy of Watership Down.
I remember that I’d tried to order A Game of Thrones, but later got an email from Amazon stating that it was unavailable.
I’d heard it about one afternoon at Towson University. So: quick recap. I’d dropped out of college, bummed around for a few years, then re-enrolled. Winter semester I had blocks of classes in the morning Tuesday and Thursday. I also had a night class on Tuesdays and would usually just hang out on campus for four or five hours — good time to get a bite to eat, and do studying and coursework. One late afternoon I was at The Brick, an underground cafe convenient to Linthicum Hall. I recognized a woman I’d had a lot of classes with my first time through, and we started talking.
Funny story: I used to actually have a copy of a paper she turned in for one of our classes. It was about Buffy: The Vampire Slayer and literary portrayals of vampire slayers. I also remember she once, semesters before this, came into class wanting to talk about the previous night’s episode of the show, and pointed at me and said “I know you watch the show!” I didn’t, at the time, but I since have.
She told me she was devouring a series of books by George RR Martin. They were being developed as a TV show by HBO. I ordered the first two books from Amazon, but as I mentioned, the first book was unavailable. Obviously, I wasn’t going to read the second book without having read the first, so I stuck it on a shelf and forgot about it.
Flash forward fourteen months. I’ve been hired at a job in Bethesda and I’m looking for an apartment and part-time work in the city. I found it at Borders. Flash forward to August. I’ve been at Borders for just under four months. I’ve never seen a copy of A Game of Thrones in our sci-fi section, but I’ve looked for it. I’ve never given it much thought. Since it was being turned into an HBO series, I figured maybe they’d just let the printings lapse to build up interest.
(I had no idea the show was in production for so long … it got to the point where I figured that woman had just lied to me).
Then I come into work one night, and passing through the stock room to the break room, I saw multiple copies of the book on a cart. At some point that night, I stuck a copy of it on the employee held shelf, and bought it after we closed. The receipt says I purchased the book at 9:08, which means it must’ve been one of those nights where we had to practically force the customers out at knife point.
I mean … not literally at knife point.
And so I had a copy of A Game of Thrones (my employee discount, plus “Borders Buck” pulled the price down to the .37 cent point).
And now it’s January 15th, 2012, and I’ve just finished reading it, having started at some point in December. Basically, it’s been a practically five year journey since I first heard of the book, until I finished reading it. I had actually tried reading it a year or two ago, but couldn’t really get into it.
Before you ask: I’ve got a few more books by other authors before I get to the next in the series. This year I’m focusing on George RR Martin, John LeCarre, and Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series.
So back to the book — I really don’t see how this story is going to be played across seven books. I also don’t know how far I’ll get into these books. I know how many George RR Martin fans came in complaining about the gap between the fourth and fifth books (like, five years), and if there’s any solace anyone should take, it’s this: if HBO wants to keep to adapting the books at the rate of one a season, and want to produce and air a season a year, then Martin’ll have to be finished by, what, 2017?
Back to Game of Thrones. My favorite characters:
-Jon Snow
-Tyrion
Also, why bother calling people “Ser”? Why not just “Sir”? It just seems weird. Everyone dresses in armour and prances around on horses at tournaments, why that switcharoo? Also: I kind of hate that one of the nastiest characters has a bastardization spelling of my own name, and I can’t wait until Joffrey’s killed by somebody. I hope he cries like a little bitch.
For those interested: Storm of Swords I bought at Barnes & Noble a few months ago, and A Feast for Crows the day after Thanksgiving.
It’s a gift for someone’s birthday. Remember the caveat in my New Year’s Resolution post: books for gifts are okay. With the unspoken provision that I actually GIVE the person the gift.
It’s a copy of Bill Bryson’s At Home, because we’d been talking about stuff in our apartments and I was laying down all this know-how about how guys used to jump on a bench with holes on it that were positioned all close so they could talk and poop at the same time. I could never have lived in the past, I don’t even like reading a book when I’m pooping. I’m afraid one of the characters is going to be like, “Woah, dude, your shit stinks so bad I’ve stopped being a fictional character with a fixed path to tell you to eat better smelling stuff!”
Or something.
I worked at the Cinecave until ten, and then began a three bus odyssey home. I jumped the D6 to Dupont Circle, where I disembarked, dashed to Kramer’s, found the book, bought it, and was at the stop to catch the 42. Next Bus showed one arriving in 0 minutes, and one arriving in two minutes. I couldn’t see the next one, so I figured maybe it was that weird counterpart of the “ghost” bus on NextBus (that’s a bus that is running the route but not showing on the application, so the counterpart would be a bus that wasn’t running the route but is showing on the application). Anyway, I got on the 42. The completely jam packed 42. Because everyone got on it. And more people got on it. And more. And more. And we weren’t going anywhere.
This was like 10:30 at night. More and more and more and more people. Always more people.
And then I’m standing in the back, and the bus starts moving, and I’m so unprepared I practically fell in the lap of some guy. Me? Oh, I was embarrassed. Beyond embarrassed. I was so happy to jump off at Columbia & 18th. And you know what I saw?
Another 42. Directly behind the one I’d been on. Completely empty.
I need to have faith in NextBus. And usually I do, and given the option, I’ll wait for the second bus because the rule of mass transportation is this: if two vehicles are traveling the same route with a short time span between them, everyone will crowd onto the first vehicle, and the second one will be nice and empty.
Anyway. I crossed two streets to get to the catty corner stop, and took the 96 the rest of the way home. Finally got in around 11-ish.
This is really only a story about how I almost crushed some poor guy because I wasn’t holding on to the bar tight enough. Sorry guy I almost fell on.
Holy shit – those opening credits. Beautiful. Mesmerizing. And set to a cover of Immigrant Song by Karen O. and Trent Reznor? Amazing. I am not kidding when I say those credits were practically worth the admission cost by themselves.
(Kinda wish I’d known they were on YouTube before now…)
It’s been a couple of years since I’ve read The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. It’s been close to two years since I saw the Swedish film, starring Michael Nyqvist and Noomi Rapace as Blomkvist and Salander.
So: impressions.
Pretty damn good. And long. The change to the plot at the end of the film was kind of confusing — in the book, as I recall (and I might not) Harriet has fled to Australia where she’s lived under her cousin’s identity. Her cousin, meanwhile, lives in England. In the movie, Harriet’s cousin has been killed in a car wreck, and Harriet has assumed her identity and works as an investment banker.
I dunno – that seemed weird. Like fleeing your Nazi incestuous relatives from your home in Georgia by moving to South Carolina. See what I did there? Ned Beatty and Deliverance. If you’ve seen either of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo adaptations, or read the book, you know what I’m talking about. “Squeal piggy, squeal!”
The ending went on forever. For. Fucking. Ever.
I watched an interview with John le Carré once where he said that he judged an adaptation not for how faithfully it kept to the book, but how faithfully it kept to the medium. In other words: don’t follow the literal words in the book, follow the spirit. I agree (this is why Order of the Phoenix is my favorite Harry Potter adaptation – they butchered the plot, but kept the building terror of the book). Fincher followed the literal letter, but, in my mind, lost the spirit of the book.
Oh, who am I kidding. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is a twist on Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians (eh, sorta – isolated island, someone’s killed, etc.), with a recurring theme of men betraying women, most visualized through all the crap that happens to Salander. She’s raped (repeatedly – orally, anally), robbed, and then betrayed romantically by Blomkvist. In the book, there’s also a lot of plot-stopping rants (like Larssen’s explanation of the Swedish custody system) and some really awful dialogue (“Lisbeth Salander, you’re a fucking hacker”, as I recall) that fortunately skipped the movie.
Well – I don’t know. I guess he kept the spirit. I think he could’ve just rushed the ending a little more. I had to pee, man.
Basically: there goes two and a half hours of my life. It was really too bad Christopher Plummer wasn’t in it more, but, hey, look, there’s that old dick from Lost who valued his Scotch more than his daughter’s happiness.
No, really, that was one of my favorite parts. When he’s all “Hey, when was the last time you ate?” and she’s all “Oh, I have a high metabolism, stop talking about my weight” and he’s like “Oh, well, when I show you these photos you asked for, you’ll probably vomit” and then she’d say “Oh, I hope we’ve both learned a lesson about assuming stuff.”
Bob Anderson, who performed as Darth Vader when it was time to duel, and who was a Hollywood sword master, died yesterday morning in England.
You can view a list of all of the movies & TV shows he worked on here. I will probably remember him most through his work on Highlander: The Series, where he was sword master for the first two seasons.
I have many, many, many more. Many, many, many more.
Okay – not all are used for books. Two I use for general storage in my closet. Three and a half are primarily for digital media – they hold a TV, and DVDs, and box sets, and DVD players, and receivers, and cables, and other things. One is half books, and half shoes. But the rest, of my total eighteen bookshelves, hold books.
They hold books from left to right. They hold books stacked. They hold books sitting on top of stacked books. They hold sock monkeys in front of books. Little clay penguins from atop a wedding cake. Ties on top of books, ties in front of books, ties on shelves. Why haven’t I put that hammer away? That’s on top of a bunch of books, too.
There is very little room left for books in my apartment. (There’s almost no room for me, either).
But that’s not why I’m stopping buying books in 2012. That’s my resolution (one of them, anyway): I will not buy any more books in 2012. Let me now, quickly, apologize to Second Story Books, Books For America, Kramerbooks, Idle Times, Bridge Street Books, Politics & Prose, and Capitol Hill Books. To a far less extent, allow me to apologize to Barnes & Noble, and Books-a-Million. (I shall refrain from apologizing to Amazon, as I will still be buying vast quantities of cat food & toilet paper from them, and they’re set to conquer the world soon anyway so whatever).
So: no more book buying in 2012. I feel I need to go back to late February/early March, when I found out my dear part-time employer Borders, was closing the 18th & L store that I’d worked at for just shy of three years. I found another job and, sadly, left Borders in the dust. And it’s weird, because even though it has been less than a year, I really have no concrete memories of my last shift. I vaguely remember that a few of us went over to Mackey’s that evening for drinks but …
Anyway, so skip ahead a bit. I bought myself an Amazon Prime membership. And I began exploring all of the bookstores in DC. I got a bit … how do I put this … I got a bit hoardy.
I don’t know if it was because I somehow thought actual paper bound books would disappear. Maybe I just wanted one more book. But I started trolling Amazon’s used book listings, and scored some amazing deals: used and new books, in great condition, coming to my door with two-day free shipping. And I scored some great deal – a “used” trade of Lynn Olsen’s Citizens of London in practically new condition from Amazon for $1.90 the same week it was published in paperback. I stocked up on Bill Bryson’s catalog, and picked up several titles from Richard Russo and Arthur Phillips. I rounded out my Alan Furst spy novels.
And from used bookstores I was finding a treasure trove of titles. I picked up a bunch of classic Len Deighton thrillers from Second Story’s Rockville warehouse. From a handful of bookstores I found all of the Graham Greene books on my assorted shelves – Our Man In Havana, The Power & The Glory, Brighton Rock, The Quiet American, and more. The Sunday after Thanksgiving I found seven of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series on the outdoor carts in Dupont, and bought them for $3.50. I made a resolution to buy all of the books in the series used, and with two exceptions failed – I did not find a used copy of The Affair and declined to pick it up new, and I picked up Running Blind at Politics & Prose, only to find a used British edition at Idle Times this past weekend.
I bought used books because their covers looked beautiful, or interesting. I found a love letter in one. I don’t even know when I’ll read the book.
I own close to fourteen hundred books. In a four hundred square foot apartment. That’s a lot of books. And many, many hundreds of them, have been bought this year. If you think I’m exaggerating? Believe me I’m not.
So the problem is that I’ve been buying books far faster than I can read them. The other problem is all the money that I’ve been spending on books — a couple of hundred bucks a month, at least — is money that I could be, y’know, putting into my savings account or something.
So. I am not going to buy any books in 2012*. The goals are two:
First – to decrease the amount of books I own versus the amount of books I own that I’ve read.
Second – to increase my savings account. I am far too old to neglect that account as much as I do.
*With the caveat that I will still buy books for people as gifts. Otherwise, next Christmas would be really weird. (“You’re not giving us books?!”)
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Did you see it? Did you understand what happened? Don’t feel bad if you didn’t: Malcolm Gladwell who’s a pretty damn smart man said of LeCarre’s “The Spy Who Came In From The Cold” that he’d read the book once every five years since he was sixteen, and only started figuring out what was happening on the third or fourth read. LeCarre doesn’t provide a road map for his readers, he sort of shoves them off a cliff and hopes they can keep up.
Digression!
The thing about working in a movie theater (hereafter referred to as “the Cinecave” – because it’s a cinema that’s underground. Literally. It’s an underground cinema, hence, it’s “cinema” + “cave.” It’s very clever, but only because I didn’t come up with it) is that you get to go see movies for free.
The other thing about working in the Cinecave is that you really don’t want to go to see movies there, for free or otherwise. It’s not because it’s not a nice theater. It’s not because it doesn’t play good movies. It’s because for the love of holy Jesus Mary and Joseph I already spend a lot of time there and I don’t care to spend my non-working hours at work, even if I’m enjoying myself.
But sometimes I do go there on my non-work hours, because there are films that I am so dammed excited to see.
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is one of those films, and I wrote about going to the after hours staff screening of it roughly two weeks ago. Actually, two weeks ago exactly, now that I realize today is Thursday. I’ve been having a hard time keeping track of which day is which this week.
I went to see the movie again today, for a couple of reasons. First, because I was seeing it so late the last time, I drifted asleep in a few parts. Second, I’m reading the George Smiley books — in order! — and wanted some Gary Oldman in the role. I’ve also started the BBC series with Alec Guinness as dear Mr. Smiley — I almost prefer him to Oldman.
I mean. Obi Wan > Sirius Black. Sorry, Harry.
So I caught the first show today (I took today & tomorrow off from my full time job). After, I was the last person out of the theater (it was the biggest auditorium and it was pretty full for a Thursday afternoon), and I was talking with one of my coworkers who’d seen it with her husband. “Okay,” she said to me, “Explain this movie to me, because I didn’t follow it.”
So as she cleaned the theater, I explained. And since I’ve had lots of people tell me as they exited the auditorium that they didn’t follow what had happened, I thought that my explanation to my coworker would make for a good blog post.
A Warning in Two Parts:
First, this reconstruction of the film’s plot is based on what I remember of seeing the film. I may at times misremember certain things, either due to my failing memory, or because I’m confusing it with events in the book, or the BBC adaptation. Also, the reconstruction will attempt to proceed on chronological order (the film frequently utilizes flashbacks).
Second, spoilers. Lot of ‘em. You are entering a Spoiler Zone. Avoid Avoid Avoid!
, a single disc release with three episodes: the premier episode, Encounter at Farpoint, which introduced the show’s concept, the ship, the crew, and Q; Sins of the Father, from the third season, where Lt. Worf returns to the Klingon Empire to answer charges brought against his long deceased father; and The Inner Light, where Picard lives an entire lifetime on a dead world (and learns to play a flute). 
