Puttering in the Study

Grayson's first model

Grayson built his first model today - 1/144 scale B-25 bomber.  He decided on the paint scheme (FS 35044 Insignia Blue) and decal placement.

Descent Into Darness - Edward C. Raymer

It isn't often anymore that I start and finish a book on the same day.  Yesterday morning I started this one in the hotel in Houston, continued reading on the flight back home, and stayed up till some ungodly hour to finish it last night.  Raymer was one of the divers who assisted with the salvage of the battleships at Pearl Harbor, and his memoir of that time is fascinating.  He covers the technical details of the work well, providing details I had never heard before, as well as a great history of his detour from salvage work to Guadalcanal, where he helped repair the damaged US warships defending the island.  He also covers the camaraderie between the divers and their pursuit of alcohol and women when they had the chance.  The latter is unblinking, from using medicinal alcohol salvaged from the USS Nevada to seduce waitresses, to explaining the changes that the war caused in the practices of whorehouses in Honolulu.  (Hint - the average number of tricks a girl was expected to turn was upped from fifteen a day to approximately a hundred.  No more dancing beforehand - you had about three minutes, which gives in and out in a hurry a whole new meaning).

The book is very well written - there are a couple of places where a paragraph is essentially duplicated, but either this guy is a good writer or he has a very good editor, because it's one of the better Navy memoirs I've read - it doesn't have the schmaltzy quality many do.  And again, the book is interesting in terms of the historical events as well, because he knew the big picture of what was happening, so it's easy to tie this book into the other historical accounts of the salvage.

The Hellfighters

Along with Chitty, this was just about my favorite movie when I was about six or seven.  Hadn't seen it in a while (and never in widescreen) so I finally got the DVD.  Grayson watched most of it with me, and seemed to like it (especially the ending).  The music is more tinny than I recalled (but still a highlight) and John Wayne's character is more b oorish than I remembered, which makes sense, actually.  The lavish lifestyle of the characters is fun to watch (this was long before Dallas and Dynasty came along) and careful watchers will notice that there's a scene in the neighborhood on Universal's back lot that is currently the houses on Desperate Housewives.  I'd also forgotten how much Katharine Ross looked like Jackie Kennedy.  I was not, however, surprised at Vera Miles - I've always liked her, and she's a pleasure to watch here, cold or hot.

Overall, a really solid movie - good acting, good music, and good action.  Definitely a keeper.

The Martian War - Gabriel Mesta (final)

My favorite part about this history of the Martian invasion of the Earth related by H.G. Wells is the somewhat apologetic comment by the author on the first page that, after extensive historical research, the author has concluded that the events narrated in the book did not, in fact, take place.  But, he concludes, tongue firmly in cheek, they should have.  You have to like a "historian" that's that honest about the "history" he's about to write. 

Anderson (Mesta is a pseudonym for sci-fi writer Kevin J. Anderson, who co-wrote the Dune prequels - I know he's done more than that, but I don't read a lot of SF these days, and I did read these - solid workmanlike fiction that might do better with a tighter tale) spins a really entertaining story where the real H.G. Wells gets drawn into an adventure that later provides the ideas for most of his novels, from War of the Worlds to The First men in the Moon to The Strange Island of Dr. Moreau.  It's really very, very close to the basic idea of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.  I was already familiar with the idea of a novel following along with Wells' War from Christopher Priest's The Space Machine, but this lifts the entire story off its foundations, so to speak, and builds an entire historical structure under both it and most of the rest of Wells' oeuvre.  The only thing missing, as another reviewer has noted, and given the nature of the work it's a surprising oversight, is a simulcast of the book over the Internet by Orson Welles.

I enmded up not particularly liking the book - the idea was better than the execution.  It actually made Anderson's Dune prequels look better, because the writing and action is similar, but they're vastly condensed here.  Some characters zaip about the solar system in Cavour's sphere, stopping to hang with the Grand Lunar on the moon, then with the head Martians on Mars.  It was just too much happening too fast - morte like a cartoon that a book.  Again, not a bad idea - in fact lots of good ideas, but too rushed to really hold this much.

Collin & Parker's 3rd Birthday

Tuesday, July 26th was Collin & Parker's 3rd birthday.  While their party isn't until August 6, we went out to their favorite place (Chuck E. Cheese's in Longview) last night and had cake when we got home.

Collin with his circus elephant

Yesterday Collin insisted on taking pictures with the camera, and I got this one of him with the circus elephant he got in San Antonio a couple of weeks ago.

Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of the War of the Worlds - SACD Collector's Edition (update #1)

I remember the first time I heard Jeff Wayne's musical version of War of the Worlds.  It was Halloween night, 1978, and I was listening to the radio reading a book.  This bizarre art-rock piece with Richard Burton narrating was playing on some station, and I was hooked.  Two weeks later, November 18, 1978 to be exact, I bought the double album at Magic Mart.  I know the precise date and place not because I'm compulsive retentive (surprisingly) but because the checkout lady tore open the wrapper and scribbled the place and date on the cover of the album. I listened to the album quite a bit over the next four years or so, before I copied it to cassette, and started listening to that, and then later when I bought the double CD when that came out.

This was intended to be the 25th anniversary version of the album, but it was delayed a couple of years - probably to coincide with the Spielberg movie - but it was well worth the wait.  The album itself is remastered in SACD format, which I can play in the study, and which sounds pretty good.  While Burton's narration is muddy (to me) when the music is playing, you hear many, many things that you've never heard before, and the treatment, a 12 x 12 hardback book with separate pockets for each of the seven discs and a 80 page color booklet inside on the history of the album, is fantastic.  If any album deserved such treatment, this one does.  It was, and is, an extraordinary concept.

Other pluses, which I've read the liner notes to, but haven't played yet (I'll post on those when I do), is a DVD with a 90 minute documentary on the album, a disc of dance music "dubs" of cuts from the album, and three discs of outtakes from the recording of the album, including prior and alternate versions of songs, and the entire Richard Burton narration (what was on the album was a fraction of what he recorded.  That didn't make a lot of sense till I read the liner notes while listening to the album last night, and now I realize that for fans of the album (like me) these will really be something to listen to.

Looking at this yesterday, I realized how lucky I am - in the past year or two we've seen high quality releases of a lot of the movies, TV shows and albums that I've always liked, just like this one.  From the DVDs of the original Battlestar Galactica, to a too-good-to-be-true new Battlestar series, to a Horatio Hornblower series that's slowly covering each of Forester's books and doing a very good job with each, to a Lord of the Rings trilogy that was beyond anyone's expectations (with extended DVDS that even exceeded that), to a rereleased widescreen (finally) with extras Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, to rereleased Star Wars trilogy(ies) to a terrific new Spiderman movie series, to a reedited Star Trek: The Motion Picture... It's good to be me right now.  Okay, Pearl Harbor was a bit of a misfire, but at least the music and aerial combat scenes were good.  I'm still waiting on a remake of Midway that'll accurately portray the carriers Enterprise, Hornet and Yorktown, but in the meantime, I have to be pretty happy with what I've got.

Update #1:  Finished disc #3, the DVD containing the documentary on the making of the album.  Wayne goes through the inspiration for the work, and deconstructs the music itself, sounding very much like the composer he is.  The CGI accompanying it is crude, but it gets the point across, and gives you a good idea what visuals he thinks the story should have.  Was also my first glimpse of what the real Primrose Hill and Horsell Common looked like. 

The twins (at least) seem to like listening to the album (pretty loud) - their favorite part is the sound effect for the unscrewing of the cylinder.  Here they are mugging for the camera (making the face I make to get them to smile) listening to "Horsell Common and the Heat Ray".

War of the Worlds - movie

After reading the book (finally) last week and getting interested in the rerelease of the Jeff Wayne musical version, I managed to sneak out of the house long enough to see this Saturday.  Not a bad movie - I thought Cruise did well, the effects (especially the sound effects) for the Martians were well-done, and it was a good treatment of the book.  I prefer the 1893/London countryside setting Wells envisioned, but I'm trying not to be small-minded about this.

But at bottom, as much as I like the story, and as good a job as Spielberg did with it, it's basically a lousy plot for a movie.  All hell breaks loose, and then the aliens just drop dead and the war is over.  It's like Independence Day without the big finale.  I suppose I should be grateful that they didn't try to change Wells' original vision, but, frankly, it was a let-down.  I ended up caring more about the characters than I did the plot, but it was hard to escape a feeling that they just got lucky.  This wasn't like surviving a sinking - eventually it's over and whew! you made it.  It was someone stepping in in the middle of the sinking and bailing you out.  I don't know what they could have done - I just know I wasn't satisfied with it as a movie.  As a screen treatment of the tripods smashing through things - it was unparalleled.  I especially liked the "call" that the tripods put out - the modern version of Wells' "Aloo" (or Wayne's "Ulla").

Miss Congeniality 2

Jamie has wanting to see this for weeks, and it was the first movie she actually made time to watch in the movie room.  Good movie - I always like Sandra Bullock and I thought she was fine here - better than you would think.  Movie was okay - not as good as the original, but worth a watch.

Strangely, Grayson asked to see it again yesterday - asked to see the movie with the "strong woman."

The Pacifier

Grayson got me this movie for my birthday (our new thing is to let the kids pick out their birthday presents to us) and we watched it (twice) in the past couple of weekends.  It's really a cute movie, and I enjoyed it.  Vin Disel is a likable character, and does just fine until he has to talk.  I mean, he's totally believable until he has to say something dramatic, and then for some reason it just doesn't work.  Still, I liked it.