Someone commented on my last post that one thing that helps them feel like a home is a home is putting books into bookshelves, and I must say they were totally right! A beautifully arranged and well stocked bookshelf makes a world of difference, and I thought now would be a perfect time to show off some books I got recently. (Also, thank you to everyone that commented such supp0rtive, nice messages! It really helped a lot and I appreciate all of you.)
When I was in San Francisco last month, I stopped by Pegasus Books, a bookstore that sells tons of used and new books, as well as lots of book adjacent goods like notebooks, puzzles, and greetings cards.
Though I was tempted to go wild, I knew whatever I bought I had to put in my suitcase, and by the time I made that realization I had already picked up two very bulky and heavy books, so I started to consider my choices more carefully.
That being said, here’s the books I ended up with:
And for the non-books:
Not pictured is a small, floral embroidered notebook I picked up for a friend, and a soft-bound notebook with “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” that I also sent to a friend (with an accompanying Great Wave notecard from that box of Hokusai notecards!). Also not pictured is the book I bought for The Prisoners Literature Project, an organization that believes everyone has the right to read, and you can buy books for incarcerated people at Pegasus Books! I don’t remember the name of what I bought, but it was just a paperback of forty classic short stories. Variety is the spice of life, after all.
So let’s talk about what is pictured. The only new book I bought was Something From Nothing, which is a book that literally just released last month and was something on my birthday and Christmas list. It’s a book that focuses on using pantry staples and making good, home cooked meals from simple ingredients. I figured I could use it since I’m about to cooking at home a lot more often than I have in the past.
Next up is The Foreign Cinema Cookbook: Recipes and Stories Under the Stars. I had no idea what The Foreign Cinema is, but it was the sheer size and heftiness of this book that caught my eye. It’s definitely poking into coffee-table-book size, and it was only eighteen dollars despite the inside of the book saying it was $40.
I ended up looking up the Foreign Cinema and finding out that it’s a restaurant in the area that also screens movies that opened in 1999! The book is written by the owners who are also the chefs, and has 125 of their signature recipes from the movie-focused restaurant. I love how beautiful this book is, it has some seriously stunning photos and extremely intriguing recipes in it. It was a steal, for sure.
Palestine on a Plate was prominently displayed right in front of the cookbook section, and there were actually two copies of it. I can honestly say I have never had Palestinian food, and even worse than that I realized I probably couldn’t name any dishes the country is known for. I feel like there’s no better time to invest in and learn about Palestinian culture, food, and history. It’s also a beautifully photographed book with absolutely incredible sounding recipes. I am looking forward to making recipes from such a rich and incredible culture.
If you’re curious about the non-books, I honestly can’t tell you why I was so interested in chili pepper notecards. I just thought the art was so cool and fun, and I’m always in the market for more cards to send to people (I say that as I have neglected my pen pals for uhh two years now). The pickleball notebook is actually for my cousin who loves pickleball, but don’t tell her because it’s supposed to be a Christmas gift! As for the Hokusai print notecards, again I always want more cards with cool art, and honestly I just think he has such an awesome style.
So there you have it! I’m not even remotely surprised that basically the only thing I left with was cookbooks and notecards. If I ever walk into a bookstore and don’t buy a cookbook, just know I’ve been replaced by a robot or alien.
Have you been to Pegasus Books before? Have you heard of Foreign Cinema? Do you like Hokusai art? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!
My partner is still in love with her ex. For ten years she believed him to be the love of her life. It’s been two years since they split and there’s no possibility of them getting back together because he betrayed her in the most despicable possible way. It was the kind of betrayal that … Read More »
A married woman and her husband agreed to open the marriage up, with clear rules and boundaries. Guess what! He flagrantly broke the rules. Now, she is considering sleeping with someone else as a form of revenge. Too toxic? A divorced woman is still very good friends with her husband. She’s so close with him, … Read More »
For more than two weeks, I had it on my schedule to write about This is Spinal Tap today, December 15, 2025. The day before this, director Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle Singer were (allegedly) murdered in their home. I sat in my office a lot of the day trying to decide whether to keep this on the schedule, whether to delay it, or whether to remove it from the list of comfort watches entirely, to be replaced by some other movie. I can’t pretend that Reiner’s death isn’t on my mind right now. I can’t pretend that it doesn’t make me terribly sad. I can’t pretend that a vast number of other people feel similarly, not even counting those who knew and loved him personally.
Here’s the thing. A day like this is exactly the day for a comfort watch, a movie that can give you joy at the lowest of times. This is Spinal Tap offers a lot of joy. It is one of the funniest movies ever made, a movie that can make you laugh until you cry, and also, make you laugh even if you have been crying. It is a film for a moment like this, when one feels bereft and out to sea and nothing makes sense.
So, you know what, fuck it. Whaddya say, let’s boogie.
Rob Reiner, it should be noted, was a master of comfort watch genre. When Harry Met Sally? Total romantic comfort watch. The American President? Total political comfort watch (although harder to get into at the moment, given the state of the White House). Stand By Me? Absolute “coming of age” comfort watch. And, of course, The Princess Bride, arguably the Greatest Comfort Watch of All Time, as I have essayed elsewhere. There’s probably no other single filmmaker whose entire canon is so damn rewatchable. This is not a skill that necessarily wins awards (Reiner was nominated for the Oscar only once, for A Few Good Men, a true legal comfort watch), but it is a skill that endears a filmmaker to their audience and peers. Rob Reiner is beloved, by fans and colleagues, like few modern filmmakers are.
It all had to start somewhere, cinematically speaking, and Spinal Tap was where it began, Reiner’s first feature film as director. It was not the first “mockumentary” ever made, or even the first rock-themed mockumentary: Eric Idle’s All You Need is Cash, which followed a Beatles knockoff band called The Rutles, for one, precedes it by six years. But it’s the one that really seemed to stick in the public consciousness. Riffing off the Beatles is one thing; that’s a known quantity. Spinal Tap, now. No one quite knew what they were getting into with this one.
The premise: Filmmaker Marty DiBergi (Reiner himself) documents the 1982 US tour of Spinal Tap, a British hard rock band, whose new album, Smell the Glove, is on the verge of release. The band consists of singer David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean), lead guitarist Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest) and bassist Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer), plus touring keyboardist Viv Savage (David Kaff) and drummer Mick Shrimpton (RJ Parnell), to whom one should not get too attached. As the film starts, there’s a big launch party and a mostly successful concert, and everything seems to be going well. And then…
Well, and then everything that can goes wrong starts to go wrong, and in truly awful ways: Cover art controversies, dropped tour dates, venue navigation issues, technical problems involving Stonehenge, the list goes on. The band and their manager Ian (Tony Hendra) try to weather this all while DiBergi gets it on film, interspersed with archival footage and interview scenes in which the band are asked to explain, among other things, what’s happened to all those drummers over the years.
The movie is famously almost entirely improvised, mostly Reiner, McKean, Guest and Shearer but also, one assumes, by the supporting cast as well, who are (generally) not saying as many funny things, but are certainly giving the band members things to play off of. What are not improvised are the songs, both the “in concert” and archival numbers, in which the members of the band, their actors all also actual musicians, are playing their parts. The “live” song as the full-fledged Spinal Tap are indeed loud and ridiculous, in a way that’s only a smidge off from actual early 80s hard rock and heavy metal. But for my money the real gold is in the archival bits, where Spinal Tap, with earlier members and earlier names, surf through whichever rock genres are of the moment, from Merseybeat to psychedelia.
In one beautiful bit, David and Nigel talk about the the first song they ever wrote together, and even sing a bit of it, a little snippet of skiffle called “All the Way Home.” It is, unreservedly, lovely, and the best song in the film. In that one moment, we learn something really important about David and Nigel (and by extension, the band): They in fact have the capacity to be really good musicians, and have had that capacity right from the start. But then rock n’ roll kind of got in the way.
Spinal Tap is about a lot of mostly small things, but what it is mostly about is the relationship of David and Nigel (with Derek, who in another life would be a weird mead-swilling druid lurking in a valley, there for non-sequitur pseudo-philosophy). David and Nigel are two blokes who knew each other since childhood, trying to stay friends when everything is falling apart around them. Hilariously so, sure, which is great for us. But for them, it’s their lives, and while other things are played for laughs, the way these two feel about each other is the film’s unexpectedly serious emotional core. You might not notice that, the first two or three or eleven times you watch the movie. But look for it the next time you watch it. It’s there.
This film is beloved of cinema fans and lovers of comedy, but the people who really seem to love it are musicians, particularly of the 70s and 80s rock era, many of whom experienced in real life the various mishaps Spinal Tap have fictionally. Ozzy Osbourne is legendarily supposed have thought the film was an actual documentary the first time he watched it, and honestly, if anyone was like to have these sort of touring misfortunes befall him, it would be Ozzy.
Far from being offended that McKean, Guest and Shearer were taking the piss at rock, hard rock musicians embraced the trio and the band — in 1985, in the midst of the “Do They Know It’s Christmas” and “We Are The World” era of charity singles, heavy metal and hard rock bands came together as Hear N’ Aid to make their own charity single, “Stars.” Who was there alongside members of Dio, Judas Priest, Motley Crue and Quiet Riot? Why, Spinal Tap, of course!
For a fictional band, Spinal Tap has been prolific, with four albums in total, two of which are independent of a film. There were few actual tours in there as well, with McKean, Guest and Shearer playing their respective characters to much acclaim. There have been other successful fictional bands, from the Monkees to Huntr/x, but no one else has so successfully made the leap into being beloved after being portrayed as so, well, stupid. Spinal Tap is the best proof out there that hard rock and heavy metal fans are in on the joke, and love it.
Four decades (and one year) after This is Spinal Tap, Reiner, McKean, Guest and Shearer reunited for Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, which was about the hapless-yet-storied band reuniting for one last (contractually obliged) show. We know now that this is the last feature film Reiner would ever make, although there is apparently a Spinal Tap concert film film completed as well (Spinal Tap at Stonehenge: The Final Finale). Either way, Reiner’s film career is bookended by this fabulous, ridiculous band, doing their thing to the delight, confusion and hearing damage of fans.
It’s bittersweet and also unexpectedly lovely. How many of us get to go back to where we began? How many of us truly get to come full circle in our careers? Rob Reiner, who created some of the best, most entertaining and enduring films in his era of Hollywood, has done what David and Nigel sang first and best. He has come, truly, all the way home.
Rob Reiner directed some of the most beloved movies of all time, including Stand By Me, This is Spinal Tap, and The Princess Bride. His production company also made movies like The Shawshank Redemption, Before Sunrise and Michael Clayton. The film industry has lost one of its titans.
I don’t have much to add about Rob Reiner and wife Michelle Singer’s shocking death that other people haven’t said better, likewise any more to add about his career and political activism. It’s clear he was a good man and a very good filmmaker. What I will say is that very few people, much less filmmakers, had the sort of career run that he had as a director between 1984 and 1992: This is Spinal Tap. The Sure Thing. Stand by Me. The Princess Bride. When Harry Met Sally. Misery. A Few Good Men.
I mean, come on. With the exception of The Sure Thing, every single one of those is a stone classic, and The Sure Thing is still pretty good! It made a star out of John Cusack! There are things we still say because Rob Reiner directed the film those words were in: “This one goes to 11.” “As you wish.” “You can’t handle the truth,” and so on. You could go a whole day talking to people by only quoting Rob Reiner films and you could absolutely get away with it. No disrespect to Stephen King, Aaron Sorkin, William Goldman, Nora Ephron, etc who wrote the words, obviously. It’s Reiner who gave those words the platform to become immortal.
It’s odd and in retrospect a little enraging that in that entire run of films, Reiner was nominated for an Oscar only once, as a producer on A Few Good Men, and not ever since then. One sole Oscar nomination, not only for his own work, but for the work his production company had a hand in. Of course others were nominated because they were in or worked on his films and Kathy Bates even won, for Misery. But for Reiner himself, that one single nomination. It’s a reminder that what wins awards, and what stays in people’s hearts and minds, are sometimes very different things when it comes to movies.
If you want to know who Rob Reiner was as a filmmaker, here he is:
The beloved man who comes to you at a low point, spins you a tale, and then, when it’s done and you say to him that you would be happy to hear another story sometime, says “as you wish.” Rob Reiner’s work was and is beloved and it will last because of it.
He did good. He’s going to be missed. He is missed. This hurts.
As mentioned several times before, I used to be a professional film critic, leaving the job in early 1996 to take a job at America Online, which at the time was the new hotness in the exciting field of online services (it’s been a while, yes). When I left the reviewing job, I went from watching six or seven movies a week to… none. I had a serious movie-watching detox for several months, during which time I focused on my new job, read some books, appeared on Oprah, and did all those other sorts of things people do when they’re not watching movies. What film finally got my ass back in a theater chair months later? Twister. It was a good call for a re-entry back into the world of cinema.
Not because it was a great film — it’s fine! — or a classic film — it’s really not! — but because it was a “B+” sort of film, a summer entertainment that had lots of fun action, an occasional bit of better-than-average acting, cool state-of-the-art-at-the-time special effects, and some memorable scenes (“we got cows!”). It’s unapologetically a popcorn movie, with lots of butter and maybe, just maybe, a dash of fancy salt. It looked good on big screens, but it also looked good on small screens, where it was, famously, the first major studio film release in that revolutionary new format: The DVD.
The story is easy to follow, too. Weather scientist Dr. Jo Harding (Helen Hunt) is about to lead her seriously rag-tag team of University of Oklahoma grad students on a quest to map the interior of a tornado, when her soon-to-be ex-husband Bill (Bill Paxton), shows up in his new truck, with his new fiancée (Jami Gertz, taking on what used to be called the Ralph Bellamy role), with divorce papers for the apparently avoidant Jo to sign. But before that can happen, Bill gets rodeo-ed into helping Jo’s scrappy team of storm chasers do their science, and from there the tornadoes, and the stakes, keep getting bigger. It’s science!
Well, mostly. The screenplay was written by Michael Crichton and Anne-Marie Martin (then husband and wife), and has a lot of Crichton’s special blend of “science until science gets in the way of drama” (see: Jurassic Park, Congo, Coma, etc). It all feels kinda plausible if you don’t know much about meteorology, which is, honestly, nearly all of us. Crichton has Jo’s scrappy band of poor grad students go up against another team of storm chasers, led by an oily Cary Elwes, who have corporate backing and are just storm chasing for the money, although how there’s big money in storm chasing is never really explained (the nearly 30-years-later sequel, Twisters, explains how: By having the storm chasers be online influencer types. That avenue was not open to Mr. Elwes’ character. AOL was not that good). Nevertheless it’s enough for a second-order conflict.
The first order conflict is Jo versus the twisters; they are not just her academic interest but also her white whale, for reasons that are essayed in the first few moments of the film. The film never sells this point especially well — it’s more interested in doing a “will they or won’t they” bit of push and pull between Jo and Bill (you don’t really have to wonder how this is going to go, I already explained to you why poor Jaime Gertz is in this movie) — but it does give the film an excuse to keep putting Jo and Bill in situations involving strong winds that normal not-obsessed people would actively avoid.
Of course, if Jo and Bill avoided tornados, we wouldn’t have much of a movie. So in they go, and the good news for them (and us) was CGI in 1996 was just barely at the point where it could make twisters, and all the damage they do, look real, and really terrifying, onscreen (that and the absolutely monster sound design, which is often overlooked as a special effect but which really is key here. Both the VFX and the sound were nominated for Oscars). The twister effects are good enough that they still stand up pretty well three decades later. It’s not every bit of mid-90s CGI that doesn’t distract today’s viewer.
Speaking of special effects, this movie is weirdly overweighted with actors who went on to awards glory. Helen Hunt you probably know won an Oscar a couple of years later, but then, out there in Jo’s motley crew of grad students, is not only future Best Actor Oscar winner Philip Seymour Hoffman but also Todd Field, who as a director, producer and screenwriter has been nominated for the Oscar six times. Jeremy Davies has a primetime Emmy for acting, Alan Ruck and Jami Gertz have Emmy nominations. So did Bill Paxton, God rest his soul. This is movie is friggin’ stacked, and nearly everyone in the film is just being kind of a goofball. It’s lovely, really.
(This movie was also the high water mark for director Jan De Bont, who did Speed before this movie, and then, rather disastrously, Speed 2 right after it. He was also the cinematographer of some notable action films, including Die Hard, The Hunt For Red October and Basic Instinct. I mean, Speed 2, we all make mistakes, but otherwise, a pretty nifty career.)
There’s nothing in Twister that will change anyone’s life, but as a movie you can just put on and dip in and out of while you’re setting up the Christmas tree or wrapping gifts or keeping one eye on Instagram or, I don’t know, polishing your silverware, it’s hard to beat. I put it on when I’m signing signature sheets for books. When you’re signing these sheets you want to be distracted enough that you’re not bored by the repetitive activity, but not so distracted that you mess up the pages. Twister is perfect for this. I can sign my name a thousand times, easy, with Jo and Bill getting buffeted by high winds pleasantly at the edge of my consciousness. This may or may not qualify as high praise to you, but trust me, I appreciate it.
Also, the film’s soundtrack has one of Sammy Hagar-era Van Halen’s best and most slept-upon songs:
In any event: Twisters was a fun, no-pressure return to movies for me in ’96, and a fun, no-pressure movie to enjoy on the regular since then. It’s the very definition of a comfort watch. On this side of the screen. On their side, it’s a little windy. That’s a them problem.
I opened PostSecret this morning and I think “well thats relatable – I hate Christmas too”
Then “wait, that’s my handwriting — I made that secret!” I sent that postcard many years ago. So strange that it wasn’t postmarked.
Over the years, I have sent you 5 postcards, and you have now published all 5. I feel incredibly seen and I thank you for that. I still hate Christmas for many reasons and that’s not going to change. Skipping the holiday season is not an option but I would in a heartbeat. I am hosting a brunch today for 14 people and I will put on my happy face and make the next 11 days magical for everyone. I can’t wait for December 26 when I can take down all these decorations and stop pretending.
Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of the greatest adventure films of all time — if not the greatest adventure film of all time, full stop — but here nearly 45 years after its release, it’s also a hugely interesting cultural artifact. When it was first made it was explicitly an act of nostalgia, a throwback to the serial adventures of the 30s and 40s, where every 20-minute installment ended on a cliffhanger to drag you back to the theater the next week to find out what happened. Filmmakers George Lucas and Steven Spielberg kept the 20-minute cliffhangers, they just strung them along into a two-hour movie. Into that movie they poured a hero who discovered ancient treasures, beat up Nazis, wooed pretty women who had spunk, and even had a few supernatural events occur, because of course they would, if you’re pilfering the storage locker of God, what do you expect would happen?
It was everything you could want in an old-timey adventure but more — “more” in this case being a decent budget ($20 million, not extravagant by 1980s standards but more than any Republic serial ever got), a rising star in Harrison Ford instead of whatever second-order actor could be cheaply assigned by the studio, and two of the hottest young filmmakers in Hollywood, Spielberg and Lucas (three if you counted Philip Kaufman, who co-wrote the story with them). Spielberg had just flubbed with 1941, so there was some minor tarnish there, but only minor, and Lucas, well. When you have a calling card like Star Wars (followed up by The Empire Strikes Back, which went out to theaters almost exactly the same time as Raiders started principal photography), you have some credibility to burn.
Spielberg and Lucas did not burn their credibility. Raiders was the smash of 1981, the number one movie of the year by a considerable margin, and a massive cultural event that might have been even bigger than it was, had its filmmakers not wedged it between a Star Wars installment and E.T.: The Extraterrestrial. We were not starved for absolutely ridiculously huge blockbuster entertainments in the early 1980s, I tell you what. Spielberg and Lucas were cottage industries in of themselves.
45 years on is actually a really good time to think about Raiders of the Lost Ark, because 45 years prior to its release, 1936, was the start of a golden age of movie serials: Universal’s Flash Gordon made its debut and was an instant serialized smash, becoming Universal’s second biggest hit of the year, while Republic Pictures jammed out Darkest Africa and Undersea Kingdom, both with “exotic” locales and/or wild fantasy elements.
By the time 1981 had rolled around, however, serials were very old news. Some were re-edited and repackaged as single films that lived a weird afterlife in local TV channel movie slots, but most were just gone. Flash Gordon had enough cultural cachet that in the wake of Star Wars, Universal decided to make a big budget movie with the character, but not enough cultural cachet to have that movie actually be a hit (Lucas, who had wanted to do a Flash Gordon movie before making Star Wars, may have dodged a bullet).
The serial, as a format, was long dead before Spielberg and Lucas mined its corpse in Raiders, killed by television, a wholesale change in film distribution and theater ownership, and the end of the studio system that give film studios actors under contract that they could plug into these mini-movies at will. Raiders brought back the vibe of serials, but it also upgraded everything about it on the technical and filmmaking side, from story to special effects. No serial was ever as good as Raiders of the Lost Ark. They didn’t have to be; they were mostly filler in a whole program that also included a newsreel, a cartoon, a b-movie and a feature film. Raiders was the main course. It was always meant to be the elevated form of the serial, and was.
And now, how does Raiders fit in to the modern landscape? Well, like the serials at the other end of this timeline, its moment has run its course. The most obvious sign of this was the 2023 installment of the series, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, being the lowest-grossing installment of the series even without factoring for inflation (when you do factor for inflation… ooooof). The film also cost $350 million to make, and was the first of the series not to make a profit at the box office. There are lots of reasons for this, not the least of which was that an octogenarian action hero strained credulity, no matter how much one may love Harrison Ford in the role.
But a lot of it is simply that the world is a different place than it was. An American archeologist grabbing artifacts from their native soil plays a lot differently in 2025 than in 1981, and “it belongs in a museum!” is not the rallying cry it once was. Not to mention that Dr. Jones’ method of procurement for many of these objects is, shall we say, highly unorthodox and possibly ethically suspect. These facts were famously lampooned in a classic McSweeney’s article from 2006, in which Dr. Jones has learned that he has been denied tenure, for the reasons above, and the fact that he has “has failed to complete even one uninterrupted semester of instruction.” Even in our current new and regrettably stupid era of American Exceptionalism, Dr. Jones, his methods and his goals, are now relics.
(Plus, Raiders a little and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, rather a lot, trade in the casual racism of the era, in a way that ranges from mildly annoying to outright ugly. The 80s! What a time to be alive!)
If anything saves Raiders from this latter-day change in the opinions regarding respectable archaeology (and there will be differing opinions about this), it’s the fact that in this movie, and in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, easily the best of the sequels, his actions are at least keeping important and supernaturally-charged ancient objects out of the hands of the damn Nazis, who want them to get a mystical buff to their world-conquering plans. There has never been a bad time to punch a Nazi at any point in the last century, and, alas, this is true even and especially now. Say what you will about his methods and modes of science, but when it comes to punching Nazis, Indiana Jones has no peer.
Time may have passed on Indiana Jones for various reasons, but Raiders of the Lost Ark remains a masterclass in adventure film making. You can follow the action, for one thing — the Michael Bay style of rapid-fire cutting to give action a cocaine-snort boost is still a decade and a half in the future, and very few directors are or have been as good at coherent action and fighting than Spielberg. His battles are physical! And followable! And that makes them enjoyable to watch, rather than exhausting or disorienting, or both. Are there better action directors than Spielberg? I mean, allow me to pull John Woo, for one, from behind the arras. But if you have to deploy John Woo in this sort of argument, you’re already at an exceptionally top-tier level of action competence.
Even then, Raiders, I have to say, outclasses nearly every other action film across all sorts of levels of filmmaking. It’s not just Spielberg working here. It’s Spielberg and Lucas and John Williams and Philip Kaufmann and Lawrence Kasdan and Ben Burtt and Richard Edlund and so on. Raiders is a murderer’s row of filmmakers, all at the top of their game. The movie was nominated for eight Oscars, won four, and was given another for special achievement in sound effects editing. I would argue that you might have to wait for The Lord of the Rings for another film (taking them all as a single film, as they were shot at the same time and shared most of their cast and crew) to get at that level. And The Lord of the Rings was a very very very different sort of adventure film.
One final thing to love about Raiders: Indiana Jones is our square-jawed hero, who is (by the standards of the time the movies are set, and the time the movies are filmed) upright and outstanding… but he also gets the shit kicked out of him a whole bunch. In Raiders and the rest of the series, he bruises, he bleeds, he aches and he limps. He punches the Nazis, yes, but the Nazis sure as hell punch back (he just ends up punching them more). There’s a limit to this because Indiana Jones has to survive every adventure, sure. But in Raiders and in the other films, Spielberg and other folks crafting the stories aren’t afraid to take him right up to the line. If Indiana Jones were real, he would have a massive case of PTSD, and by the time of the final film in the series, he probably wouldn’t be able to walk.
I am a relic of the 80s as much as Raiders of the Lost Ark, and while I acknowledge how storytelling has changed between now and then, as a storytelling vehicle, in many ways it is still peerless and endlessly watchable. It’s distilled the best parts of movie serials from the past, and still has lessons to teach the moviemakers of today in terms of pacing and plot and technique.
I don’t want today’s filmmakers to make another Raiders of the Lost Ark. I want them to look at it and do what Lucas and Spielberg did when they looked at the serials that inspired it: Take all the things are amazing about it, and use today’s tech and techniques to make something that blows the minds of the audience of today.
I search my name on a regular basis, not only because I am an ego monster (although I try not to pretend that I’m not) but because it’s a good way for me to find reviews, end-of-the-year “best of” lists my book might be on, foreign publication release dates, and other information about my work that I might not otherwise see, and which is useful for me to keep tabs on. In one of those searches I found that Grok (the “AI” of X) attributed to one of my books (The Consuming Fire) a dedication I did not write; not only have I definitively never dedicated a book to the characters of Frozen, I also do not have multiple children, just the one.
Why did Grok misattribute the quote? Well, because nearly all consumer-facing “AI” are essentially “fancy autocomplete,” designed to find the next likely word rather than offer factual accuracy. “AI” is not actually either intelligent or conscious, and doesn’t know when it’s offering bad information, it just runs its processes and gives a statistically likely answer, which is very likely to be factually wrong. “Statistically likely” does not equal “correct.”
Still, I was curious who other “AI” would tell me I had dedicated The Consuming Fire to. So I asked. Here’s the answer Google gave me in its search page “AI Overview”:
I do have a daughter, but she would be very surprised to learn that after nearly 27 years of being called “Athena,” that her name was “Corbin.” I mean, Krissy and I enjoy The Fifth Element, but not that much. Also I did not dedicate the book to my daughter, under any name.
Here’s Copilot, Microsoft’s “AI”:
I have indeed dedicated (or co-dedicated) several books to Krissy, and I’m glad that Copilot did not believe that my spouse’s name was “Leloo.” But in fact I did not dedicate The Consuming Fire to Krissy.
How did ChatGPT fare? Poorly:
I know at least a couple of people named Corey, and a couple named Cory, but I didn’t dedicate The Consuming Fire to any of them. Also, note that ChatGPT not only misattributed to whom I dedicated the book, it also entirely fabricated the dedication itself. I didn’t ask for the text of the dedication, so ChatGPT voluntarily went out of its way to add extra erroneous information to the mix. Which is… a choice!
I also asked Claude, the “AI” of Anthropic, and to its (and/or Anthropic’s) credit, it was the only “AI” of the batch which did not confidently squirt out an incorrect answer. It admitted it did not have reliable search information on the answer and undertook a few web searches to try to find the information, and eventually told me it could not find it, offering advice instead on how I could find the information myself (for the record, you can find the information online; I did by going to Amazon and searching the excerpt there). So good on Claude for knowing what it doesn’t know and admitting it.
Interestingly, when I went to Grok directly and asked to whom the book was dedicated, it also said it couldn’t find that information. When I asked it why a different instance of itself incorrectly attributed a different dedication to the book, it more or less shrugged and said what I found to be the equivalent of “dude, it happens.” I also checked Gemini directly (which as I understand it powers Google’s Search “AI” Overview) to see if it would also say “I can’t find that information.” Nope:
I’m sure this comes as a surprise to both Ms. Rusch and Mr. Smith, who are (at least on my side) collegial acquaintances but not people I would dedicate a book to. And indeed I did not. When I informed Gemini it had gotten it wrong, it apologized, misattributed The Consuming Fire to another author (C. Robert Cargill, who writes great stuff, just not this), and suggested that he dedicated the book to his wife (he did not) and that her name was “Carly” (it is not).
(I also informed Copilot that it had gotten the dedication wrong, and it also tried again, asserting I dedicated it to Athena. I’m glad Copilot got the name of my kid right, but as previously stated, The Consuming Fire is not dedicated to her.)
So: Five different “AI” and two iterations of two of them, and only Claude would not, at any point, offer up incorrect information about the dedication in The Consuming Fire. Which I will note does not get Claude off the hook for hallucinating information. It has done so before when I’ve queried it about things relating to me, and I’m pretty confident I can get it to do it again. But in this one instance, it did not.
None of them, not even Claude, got the information correct (which is different from “offered up incorrect information”). Two of them, when informed they were incorrect, “corrected” by offering even more incorrect information.
I’ve said this before and I will say it again: I ask “AI” things about me all the time, because I know what the actual answer is, and “AI” will consistently and confidently get those things wrong. If I can’t trust it to get right the things I know, I cannot trust it to get right the things I do not know.
Just to make sure this confident misstating of dedication facts was not personal, I picked a random book not by me off my shelf and asked Gemini (which was still open in my browser) to name to whom the book was dedicated.
It certainly feels like Richard Kadrey might dedicate a book in the Sandman Slim series to the lead singer of The Cramps, but in fact Aloha From Hell is not dedicated to him.
Let’s try another:
Daniel H. Wilson’s Robopocalypse may be dedicated to his wife, but if it is, her name is not “Kellie,” as that is not the name in the dedication.
Let’s see if the third time’s the charm:
It’s more accurate to say this was a third strike for Gemini, as G. Willow Wilson did not dedicate Alif the Unseen to a Hasan, choosing instead her daughter, whose name that is not.
So it’s not just me, “AI” gets other book dedications wrong, and (at least here) consistently so. These book dedications are actual known facts anyone can ascertain — you can literally just crack open a book to see to whom a book is dedicated — and these facts are being gotten wrong, consistently and repeatedly, by “AI.” Again, think about all the things “AI” could be getting wrong that you won’t have such wherewithal to check.
What do we learn from this?
One: Don’t use “AI” as a search engine. You’ll get bad information and you might not even know.
Two: Don’t trust “AI” to offer you facts. When it doesn’t know something, it will frequently offer you confidently-stated incorrect information, because it’s a statistical engine, not a fact-checker.
Three: Inasmuch as you are going to have to double-check every “fact” that “AI”” provides to you, why not eliminate the middleman and just not use “AI”? It’s not decreasing your workload here, it’s adding to it.
Does “AI” have uses? Possibly, just not this. I don’t blame “AI” for any of this, it’s not those programs’ fault that the people who own and market them and know they are statistical matching engines willfully and, bluntly, deceitfully position them to be other things. You don’t blame an electric bread maker when some fool declares that it’s an excellent air filter. But you shouldn’t use it as an air filter, no matter how many billions of dollars are being spent to convince you of its air-filtering acumen. Use an actual air filter, damn it.
I dedicate this essay to everyone out there who will take these lessons to heart and not trust “AI” to tell you things. You are the real ones. And that’s a fact.
About a decade ago there was some noise made about trying to figure out what day on the calendar Ferris Bueller’s Day Off took place. The day that was decided on by the nerds who think too much about this sort of thing was June 5, 1985. This was decided largely by the fact that the Cubs game Ferris, Cameron and Sloane were seen attending happened on that day, and apparently you can’t argue with the baseball schedule.
I can argue with the baseball schedule, and I will tell you that June 5, 1985 is not Ferris Bueller’s day off. For one thing, anyone who knows Midwest school schedules knows that by June 5th, all the kids are out of school. For another thing, asserting that the Cubs game, which our trio only attend, is definitive, when the Von Steuben Day parade, which Ferris actually inserts himself into, is disregarded, is nonsensical cherry picking of the highest order. The Von Steuben Day parade was as real as the Cubs game, and took place on September 28, 1985. If any real world day has to be picked, I would pick that one.
Except that one won’t work either. September 28, 1985 was a Saturday, for one, and it’s too early in the school year for Ferris’ hijinks, for another. We know Ferris has skipped school nine times by the time The Day Off rolls around, and missing nine days when school has been in for barely a month is a lot, even for Ferris. Ferris is a free spirit, not a chronic truant.
If one must pick a specific day — a questionable assertion, as I will relate momentarily — it would most likely be a day in late April, when Baseball is in season, the kids are not quite yet attuned to things like prom and graduation (and for the seniors, college), spring has sprung in the Chicagoland area, and Ferris would decide that that the day is too great to spend all cooped up in class.
But ultimately, trying to pin The Day Off to an actual calendar day is folly — and not only folly but absolutely antithetical to the point of The Day Off. The point of The Day Off is freedom and possibility, not to pin it down with facts and schedules. Facts and schedules are for classes! The Day Off doesn’t ask for any of that. It only asks: What will you do, if you can do whatever you want?
What Ferris wants is to have a day in Chicago with his best friend Cameron and girlfriend Sloane. Inconveniently that is a school day, and while Ferris has bucked the system before (nine times!), as he says to the camera — Ferris breaks the fourth wall more and better than anyone before or since, yes, even better than Deadpool, I said what I said — if he does it again after this, he’ll have to barf up a lung to make it stick. That being the case, The Day Off needs to be a day more than just hanging with friends. It has to be an event. Making it so will, among other things, require the “borrowing” of an expensive car, the chutzpah to brazen one’s way into a place that will serve you pancreas, the cunning to evade parents and school principals and, significantly, the ability to make your depressive best friend confront his own fears.
Oh, and, singing “Twist and Shout” in a parade. As you do.
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off came out the summer before I was a senior in high school, which meant when I watched it I was very much oh, here’s a role model. Not for the skipping of school precisely; I went to a boarding school and lived in a dorm, skipping days was a rather more complicated affair than it would have been in a public school. But the anarchic style, the not taking school more seriously than it should be taken, the willingness to risk a little trouble for a little freedom — well, that appealed to me a lot.
Before you ask, no, I did not, become a True Acolyte of Ferris. I lived in the real world and wanted to get into college, and while at the time I could not personally articulate the fact that inherent in Ferris’ ability to flout the system was a frankly immense amount of privilege, I understood it well enough. Ferris gets his day off because he’s screenwriter/director John Hughes’ special boy. The rest of us don’t have that luck. Nevertheless, if one could not be Ferris all the time, would it still be wrong to have a Ferris moment or two, when the opportunity presented itself? I thought not. I had my small share of Ferris moments and didn’t regret them.
(I even got called “Ferris” once or twice! Not in high school, but in college, at The University of Chicago, where somewhat exceptionally among my peers at that famously intensive school, I didn’t grind or panic about my grades, I would actually leave campus to see concerts and plays and to visit a girl at Northwestern, and I got a job straight out of college reviewing movies for a newspaper, in the middle of a recession. I apparently made it all look easy, thus, “Ferris.” Spoiler: It wasn’t all easy, not by a long shot, the girl at Northwestern wanted to be just friends, and I got that job because I was willing to be paid less on a weekly basis than the newspaper paid its interns. I only achieved Ferris-osity if one didn’t look too closely.)
There has been the observation among Gen-Xers that you know you’re old when you stop identifying less with Ferris and more with Principal Rooney (this is also true when applied to the students of The Breakfast Club and Vice-Principal Vernon). I’ve never gotten to that point, but it’s surely true that Ferris becomes less of a character goal and more of a character study as one gets older. Ferris himself understands that he is living in a moment that’s not going to last: As he says in the movie, he and Cameron will soon graduate, they’ll go to separate colleges and that’s going to be that for them. Ferris’ trickster status is predicated in his being in a place and time where his (let’s face it mild) acts of transgression have little consequence. The penalties for him here are of the “I hope you know this will go down on your permanent record” sort, and even those are thwarted by Cameron letting him off the hook for property damage and a soror ex machina moment. Ferris knows it, which I think is why he takes advantage of it. After graduation, things get harder for everyone, even for privileged white boys from the north suburbs.
This might mean that Ferris eventually becomes one of those people who realizes he’s peaked in high school, and what an incredibly depressing realization that might be from him (Cameron, on the other hand, will not peak in high school; once he’s out of his dad’s house he’s going to thrive. Sloane is going to be just fine, too).
I do wonder, from time to time, what has become of Ferris. Many years ago I wrote about what I think happened to Holden Caufield of Catcher in the Rye; I said I expected he went into advertising, was good at selling things to “the youth” and became a mostly functional alcoholic. My expectations for Ferris are similar, although more charitable: He goes to Northwestern, is popular but not nearly at the same level (Northwestern has a lot of Ferris types at it), gets a job in marketing, does very well at it, marries someone who is not Sloane, moves back to his hometown when they have kids and when they get old enough to go to his high school, he bores them with his stories about his time there. The kids, it turns out, didn’t ditch. Ferris has grandkids now. He keeps in touch with Cameron and Sloane through Facebook. They’re fine. He’s fine. It’s all fine.
If it sounds like I’ve given Ferris an ordinary life, well, that’s kind of the point. Early on, I said the point of The Day Off was, what will you do, if you can do whatever you want? It turns out, for all his cleverness and antics and quoting of John Lennon, what Ferris wanted was actually pretty ordinary: To have a great day with his friends, while he still could have a great day with his friends. And, well: Who wouldn’t? Just because what he wants is ordinary doesn’t mean it isn’t good, or that it wasn’t a shining moment that all three of them will be glad all their lives that they got to have. Our lives are made of moments like these, where one day you get to do what you want with the people who matter to you, and you look around and you say to yourself, yes, this.
Most us don’t then mount a parade float and lipsync to a Beatles cover, true, and if we did we would probably get arrested. But this is why Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is a fable, and why the actual date of The Day Off doesn’t matter. What matters, and why I come back to this movie, is the joy of a perfect day, with the people that will make it perfect. My Day Off isn’t this day off. But I’ve had one or two of them, and, hopefully, so have you.
It was her first time pegging a man, though she’d dreamed of it for years. Dream fulfilled. How did it go? What did he wear? Who brought the gear? All of your (and Dan’s) nosey questions are answered. Do you have a tale to tell? Write it up and send it in: Q@Savage.Love Do you … Read More »
No, the 2014 version of Godzilla, the US-produced one directed by Gareth Edwards, is not the best Godzilla movie in the several-decade, several-dozen-installment history of the franchise. If I had to rank it, I would probably put it at three or four, depending on how I was feeling about Shin Godzilla that day (for clarity, number one is the original 1954 production, the Japanese version, not the cut-up US release, and number two is Godzilla Minus One, proof that $15 million goes a long way if you know how to spend it). So don’t be jumping down my throat about that. Remember that the thing about these “comfort watches” is not that they are the best movies, or, sometimes (but not in this case) even actually good movies. They are the movies I find myself watching over and over.
And why do I rewatch this Godzilla, more than the others? Well, for one reason, I think this movie is one of Godzilla movies that actually gets the kaiju right.
I wrote about this a year or so ago in my film column in Uncanny magazine. You can follow this link to see the whole essay (and I recommend you do!), but the brief version is this: The recurring problem with Godzilla, the monster, is that the longer he sticks around, in sequel after sequel, the less he is an unstoppable force of nature and the more he becomes, if not an outright friend to humanity, then at least an entity whose interests appear to align with ours. That makes him progressively less interesting and, ultimately, boring. When a kaiju gets cuddly, it’s all over. Then the only thing left to do is reboot him and start over.
The 2014 Godzilla was not the first US-based reboot; there was the 1998 version, directed by Roland Emmerich, which was financially successful and a critical and cultural flop, the latter being especially interesting to me, even at the time. The movie did what it was supposed to do: make money (it was the #8 top-grossing movie of its year domestically), but at the cost of Godzilla’s cultural cachet; the humans in the movie were kinda soft and goofy and Godzilla, while not at all on the side of the humans, didn’t feel like Godzilla. Godzilla is (to varying degrees of effectiveness over the years), a vessel for humanity’s fears and a representation of the world smacking us back for our hubris. 1998’s Godzilla was… just a monster, and not one that actually looked like Godzilla was meant to look (also, the laying of eggs in Madison Square Garden didn’t help much). It’s not a surprise that Toho Studios, the owners of Godzilla, later retconned the ’98 Godzilla into “Zilla,” a kaiju, yes, but not the kaiju. Not Godzilla.
For the 2014 movie, Gareth Edwards and the other filmmakers didn’t screw with what makes Godzilla Godzilla, they leaned into it instead. There were some criticisms of the monster design, because of course there would be, nerds are gonna nerd, but this film’s Godzilla looks like it’s sharing DNA with its Japanese predecessors. I remember some complaints about this monster looking too chonky and thicc, but speaking personally I didn’t consider this a problem at all because (and here I get super nerdy myself), look, a 300-fucking-foot-tall monster ain’t gonna be svelte in any of its dimensions. It’s going to have meat on its bones, okay?
(Also, before you get in on me about the square-cube law, remember I wrote a whole novel about kaiju and I get into the square-cube law in it. Whatever you’re going to throw at me, I already thought about it. Anyway, we’re ignoring some elemental physics at the moment for this movie. Accept it, my dudes).
More importantly, Edwards, et al understood Godzilla for what is meant to be, a force of nature — indeed, the force of nature, a huge variable designed to zero out the equation when something threatens to unbalance it. In this movie that would be the MUTOs, a pair of Kaiju who eat radiation, which is why one of them was attracted to a nuclear facility in Japan at the turn of the century, wrecking it and then cocooning there to feed until the time was right to pop out, a weird, sleek kaiju that looks Art Deco, or maybe like the vector tanks from the Battlezone videogame. The monster heads east, looking for a mate…
… and then here’s Godzilla to stop it, at, of all places, the airport at Honolulu.
And what a very fine entrance it is, too. Edwards has learned from Spielberg, Scott and others that your monster is more effective the less you show of it, until, that is, it’s time to show it all. Our first introduction to Godzilla are his back fins and body parts illuminated by spotlights and flares and exploding planes. And then, finally, there he is… and he is pissed.
This is the other thing this film does right. Godzilla is huge and Godzilla should feel huge, but for much of his existence, he hasn’t. For the first several decades of his existence, as much as you might want to, you couldn’t escape the fact that Godzilla, king of the monsters, was a dude in a rubber suit, stomping around a scale model of Tokyo. It didn’t make the early movies bad (note my position of the original Godzilla in the rankings), but special effects tech was what it was. As time went on, more advanced compositing and CGI could have fixed that, but in the 1998 Godzilla, at least, didn’t. That monster moved too fast and had no mass onscreen.
The 2014 edition doesn’t make that mistake. Godzilla’s big, and he’s massive, and he acts and moves like it. Every move Godzilla makes in this movie is a spectacle of heft. There’s no doubt he’s going to do damage with every step he takes. Godzilla and the MUTOs eventually settle their scores in San Francisco, and while there is never any doubt that the city is going to get wrecked, here it’s getting wrecked at a level of special effects mastery that gives it all an extra dollop of, well, not realism, exactly, but certainly consequence. Buildings don’t fall over like cardboard when a kaiju smashes into them. They crumble, and they eventually fall, like they are actually made of concrete and rebar, and the Kaiju get smashed to match.
This wasn’t Edwards’ first time at the monster rodeo. He made his directorial debut with Monsters, a 2010 science fiction film about, you guessed it, monsters, which did some amazing things on a reported budget of half a million dollars. His budget for Godzilla was 32 times as much, for the monster fights alone, he got some good value out of the money.
I’m mostly into this movie for the monsters and the havoc the wreak, but the human stories here, unlike most Godzilla movies I’ve seen, don’t make me want to just fast forward to the good stuff. One, it has a level of gravity to it that I appreciate; all the humans in it take what’s happening seriously, and so does the screenwriter. There’s generational drama, a husband and wife separated by monsters, a mysterious NGO dedicated to the tracking of kaiju, and a race to deal with a nuclear bomb that it was humanity’s fault was there in the first place (there’s that hubris!), and so on. It’s fine! It moves along and no one acts stupidly, which is never a guarantee in a monster movie no matter how high-toned it is. Godzilla, I’m happy to say, gives almost no shits about anything the humans are doing, any more than any of us would worry about ants if we got into a brawl with our cousin at a cookout.
That wouldn’t last. There have been several sequels to Godzilla in the last decade, all as part of a “Monsterverse,” some involving King Kong. The further we go along, the more Godzilla is becoming an ally of sorts to humanity, and the more the stories feel drained of consequence. In the latest movie in the series, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, Rio De Janeiro is laid to waste with the same gravity as a bunch of kids knocking over a LEGO set. It’s pretty, and silly, and since New Empire made more money than any other film in the series, the series will almost certainly continue to be pretty silly.
Thus is the nature of Godzilla. At a certain point, the returns will diminish and they will reboot him, yet again, to be a force of nature and not our pal (actually they already did with Godzilla Minus Zero, but that’s not in the same timeline or extended universe, so (jedi wave) forget about that for now). Until they do, I have the 2014 Godzilla to keep me company. It lets Godzilla be Godzilla, and I like that about it.
I’m taking a break from Struggle Session until after the new year — the HUMP Jury meets this week, I have early deadlines for the holidays next week, the week after that is chaos and carbs — but I’m gonna keep the GangBangs coming! My boyfriend and I have been together a long time and … Read More »
Or maybe Moving Irrationally Angrily? Because both are true.
You may have seen on here a bit ago that I got a house. Well, you would probably expect someone to be happy about this sort of thing, or at least pretty excited, which I am, but it has been completely overshadowed by stress and anxiety, and I’ve been having a really hard time with moving.
Since the move began, from the get-go I was immediately overwhelmed. Right off the bat, I was distressed by the inspection, which while it went “well” still revealed that there were plenty of things that needed fixing.
I was overwhelmed with the fact that I had to transfer utilities into my name, hire movers, get internet installed, pack everything up and then unpack everything and put it away somewhere. The previous people took their washer and dryer, so had to go buy those and have those delivered and installed, plus got a new microwave so had to have that installed, now this entire week has been electricians and insulation guys and a plumber, and you get the picture.
Yes, I know that transferring utilities and getting bills and internet and whatnot is completely normal and a regular adult thing to have to do, but I’ve never fucking done it before, okay? It’s a little stressful.
I knew moving would be hard, but I didn’t realize how hard it was going to be for me. The overwhelm shut me down. The stress made me unable to function. I wasn’t coping well. I couldn’t bring myself to do anything. And not just stuff related to moving, I wasn’t doing anything.
For a bit there, I was crying everyday, the to-do list getting longer and longer and me getting more stressed and depressed. It felt like every time I checked something off the to-do list, two more tasks would pop up in its place. It’s a hydra of a house. And yes, I know, “welcome to being a homeowner.”
While I’m largely through the move, with most things being in decent order and shape, there’s still so much to be done. While I haven’t been in the trenches this week like I previously was, I’m still not doing great emotionally. A big reason for this is because of how many people have been in the house working this week.
I know they’re here to do the work that needs to be done and of course I appreciate their service and whatnot, but it’s becoming hard to be stuck in the house while four guys are here from 9am to 4pm and I don’t even have internet or power in some of the rooms because the electricians are actively working. It’s not like I’m nervous to have men in the house or anything like that, but I am on alert that there are people in my house and if I leave my room I’m going to be in their way or something. And I can’t even do laundry or dishes or shower or something productive. I just have to sit there and listen to them drill and bang around and do their work. And they track SO MUCH MUD IN!
And I’m tired of people being late all the time. The internet guy said he’d be here from 8-10am and that installation would take about two hours. So I planned my day expecting the guy to be done at around noon or one at the latest. So I practically waited at the door until he came, and the guy didn’t even show up until 11:45am, and then didn’t leave until 4pm! My day felt like it was gone!
What it comes down to, I think, is that I don’t feel at peace (yet) in my home. I feel trapped and stressed and I can’t find my fucking pans to cook with. I want eggs for breakfast gosh dang it.
Ugh, this just sucks. And I know everyone says moving sucks, but boy does it suck. I underestimated the suckening. And I underestimated how poorly I was going to handle it all.
I’ve been angry, and lashing out a lot. My patience is low and my stress is high, and I keep snapping at people close to me. Then I feel bad afterwards and cry about that, too.
Also, word of advice, don’t move the week of Thanksgiving, and don’t move when it’s fucking cold as shit and snowing outside. Normally, I really like the holiday season, but I feel like my festive spirit is being ruined by the moving stress. December is flying by and yet everyday is also exceedingly long.
I am looking forward to this part being over. Soon, hopefully. I want to be happy in my home.
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scalziwhatever_feed) wrote2025-12-16 02:38 pm
Someone commented on my last post that one thing that helps them feel like a home is a home is putting books into bookshelves, and I must say they were totally right! A beautifully arranged and well stocked bookshelf makes a world of difference, and I thought now would be a perfect time to show off some books I got recently. (Also, thank you to everyone that commented such supp0rtive, nice messages! It really helped a lot and I appreciate all of you.)
