With 600 million pounds of candy sold for Halloween, it seems we’ve given up the tricks in favor of the treats. Here are a couple tongue twister skits from Studio C to sooth your appetite for trickery.
The goal in each skit is a perfect run-through. One flub sends them back to the beginning.
Dana’s Dead (Oct. 2012)
Sam Sloan (Oct 2015)
C. T. Ferguson is the scion of a wealthy Baltimore family (his given name is, I kid you not, Coningsby). His only distinctions are skills at martial arts and computer hacking. He just returned from three years in Hong Kong, during which he helped some dissidents out and spent a horrific 19 days in a Chinese prison, before being deported.
Now he wants nothing more than to spend his parents’ money, but they are determined to make something of him. They’ve offered him a deal – work for free at some occupation that helps people, and they’ll provide a generous allowance. After some dithering, he settles on becoming a private eye. Thus he is The Reluctant Detective.
C. T. doesn’t really know anything about private investigation, beyond what he’s learned from TV and novels. But he sets up his office and goes to work. His first case is, as might be expected, a domestic. Alice Fisher is convinced her husband is cheating on her. C. T. uses his hacking skills to examine the husband’s life, does some discreet surveillance, and decides the man is faithful – even devoted. But now he’s curious about Alice, the wife. There are certain irregularities in her life that make him suspicious about what this whole exercise is in service of. Then somebody gets killed, and C. T. is hip deep in trouble and danger.
The Reluctant Detective wasn’t awful. The prose was generally good, which is a distinction in our times. But two elements kept me from getting engaged in the story.
First of all, I didn’t like the hero/narrator. C. T. never comes to life as a character, or inspires sympathy. His actions and thoughts seem uncoordinated, not rising from any central motivational core. I had the idea the author might have intended him to be a modern Lord Peter Wimsey, but Dorothy Sayers did it better. Perhaps C. T. needs to get a monocle.
Secondly, I didn’t believe the story. The author seems to be as clueless about the law, police procedure, and what a private detective does as his hero is. He seems to think that P.I.s carry some kind of official authority. He thinks a private citizen can just waltz into a police station and drop into an interrogation observation room without being challenged. And he greatly overestimates the willingness of cops to invite P.I.s into their investigations (even when, as in the case, the cop is the P.I.’s cousin). He also raises intuition to the level of evidence, which just doesn’t wash.
I read The Reluctant Detective all through, and that sets it above a lot of other books. But I really don’t recommend it. Cautions for language, as you’d expect.
I know you aren’t used to me blogging every day. Coming here and finding I haven’t posted anything is like walking out of a cramped corridor onto an open patio. The emptiness feels fresh, and you need a bit of air after wading through the ever-swirling stream of political social media. Filthy memes, floating GIFs, and faux deep thought that rises to the surface leaves a reader feeling foul. So naturally you come here, hoping I haven’t written anything.
Well, friend, today is not your day.
I recently finished Dean Koontz’s Odd Thomas, the first of his Odd novels. It was published in 2003. That’s about how long a book has to sit on the shelf before I read it. Trendsetters are like that.
Odd Thomas is amusing, despite a story the steers into dark territory. Odd, the young man narrating his own story, says he must keeps his tone light, because his editor and literary mentor is a very large man who has promised to sit on him if he doesn’t. But keeping a light tone can be a bit of challenge with what Odd is called to do.
If Odd Thomas is known for anything, he’s known for seeing dead people. And fluffy pancakes hot off the Pico Mundo Grille. And seeing these terror-eating shadow dogs he calls bodachs. He sees a few of these things slinking around a customer at the Grille and is compelled to follow him. This guy is probably planning to commit a terrible evil in Pico Mundo. Plus, his hair looks like it’s growing fungus. Maybe Odd can find a way to stop the Fungus Man.
Then the ghost of Elvis appears and doesn’t help one bit.
The plot and all its twists work well. I can’t say the story is scary. It has some grit that leans into scary, but nothing like many of the Koontz novels Lars has reviewed. More common are lines like this: “Mr. Thomas, you have a rare opportunity for perfect bliss, and you would be ill advised to poison your life with either academia or drug dealing.”
I’ll be reading the next Odd novel sometime, but I’m picking up a different Koontz book next, after the library sterilizes it or finds it in the stacks or something.
The book I’m reading now is taking a while, so what shall I say to you tonight? Went out for a walk this morning and exchanged a few words with a neighbor I barely know. That counts as a major social event these days. Alert the Society columnists!
Went out for lunch (the daily deal at Red Lobster), and then stopped on the way home to do my civic duty and get my flu shot.
Consumer report: I preferred the nanorobots they included in last year’s vaccine. Those gave me dreams of the University of Timbuktu, and produced a compulsion to vote for the Green Party, though it was an election off-year. So far this year’s nanorobots have only turned my toenails teal, and I think I detect the beginnings of a vestigial tail, for which I can think of no good practical use.
I streamed an old movie, “In a Lonely Place,” with Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame. It’s about a screenwriter with homicidal inclinations, who may or may not be preparing to kill his fiancée at the end. I can’t say that it matches my own experience in the film industry, but my participation has been limited so far. Once I start doing power lunches with producers, I may see more action.
There was a time to take refuge in the arms of those you loved, and there was a time to stand up to great evil and not be bowed. If you didn’t know the difference, then you were doomed to perish about two-thirds of the way through the story, when the narrative needed a jolt of violence and emotion. (As a reader who hoped one day to be a writer, she was always alert to authors’ techniques.)
Dean Koontz is back with a new adventure, entitled Elsewhere – this one is sort of a sci-fi/fantasy cross. It’s very much in the familiar Koontz style, but (also in his style) it’s significantly different from his other books in concept. Also, there’s no mystical dog in this one (there is a pet mouse, but it has no special powers).
Jeffy Coltrane and his daughter Amity are mostly happy in their life in Suavidad Beach, California. He repairs and sells antique Bakelite radios, and she is a smart, well-adjusted kid. Their great sorrow is the disappearance of their wife and mother, Michelle, some years ago. Michelle abandoned them to pursue a career in music, and they have never heard from her since.
One day Jeffy gets a visit from a local eccentric, a homeless but fastidious man they call Spooky Ed. Ed gives Jeffy a box, which he says contains “the key to everything.” He is to hide it somewhere, and if Ed doesn’t return for it, he’s to sink it in the sea in a barrel of concrete.
Then a group of armed men who claim to be official invade their house, searching for the “key.” Jeffy and Amity are suddenly forced to consider the possibility that Creepy Ed knew what he was talking about. They take the “key” out of the box and examine it. It gets activated, and suddenly they’re transported to an alternate universe. This universe appears pretty much the same as the one we know, but it turns out to have a few sinister differences. Soon they’re flitting from universe to universe, trying to not get separated and to escape a dangerous enemy who considers them expendable and understands the multiverse better than they do.
Elsewhere scared me to death, and touched my heart. In other words, it’s pretty much what you pay your money for when you buy the Koontz brand. A couple political points are hinted at, but they were points I liked, so I didn’t mind. It’s a charming and compelling novel. Cautions for language.
It occurred to me more than once over the last few days (but never at a useful time) that I misled you last week. I told you I’d be gone Thursday and Friday, to do a lecture at a church school in Iowa. Then you doubtless came to this page in breathless anticipation of my absence, and there I was, reviewing as usual. Without so much as an apology.
I apologize.
What happened was the weather, something of which we have no lack in Minnesota. When I got up on Thursday morning, prepared to pack and go, I learned that several inches of icy snow were predicted that day. I didn’t like the sound of that – offhand, I can only remember one instance in my life when I actually spun out on a highway and ended up in the ditch, but I’m sure there must have been more. It’s a distressing feeling, like somebody inside one of those YouTube disaster clips, where you watch one idiot after another sliding their cars into one another on a slick, downhill street.
So I called the school and asked if we could reschedule. The pastor was amenable, and we moved it to Monday (today, in case you’re not certain after months in lockdown). Then I looked at the weather forecast, identified Saturday as a likely driving day, and moved my trip to then.
What happened subsequently in Iowa is that an almost identical storm blew up on Sunday night. So when I got up this morning, I learned that my car would have to be scraped off, and the highways were slick. Better leave early to compensate for slow travel.
I left about an hour and a half before showtime (the trip should have taken about 40 minutes), and drove like an old man (a clever ruse on my part). Road surfaces varied, but I opted for caution at all points. I still got to the school in plenty of time.
The lecture went well. The students pretended to be interested as I talked about the conversion of the Vikings in Norway, and even asked questions. Lots of questions.
My personal favorite question was, “Would you stop talking so we can look at your stuff?”
I smiled kindly and ignored the young man. The questions went on for some time, but finally they ended, and the students got a chance to examine my “stuff”: I had brought my helmet, sword and shield for them to peruse. Nobody, I am happy to report, attempted to kill anybody else with them.
Then back to where I was staying. It was past noon by now, and the sun had kissed the road surfaces, improving their general disposition. I drove home to Minnesota at normal speeds, and stopped off in Kenyon, my boyhood home, to examine the family cemetery plot for personal reasons. The grass was covered with about an inch of snow, but the stuff had melted off the granite marker stones so that they could be read. In case I’d forgotten who they were. Which I hadn’t. Grandpa and Grandma, Uncle Vernon and Aunt Marcene whom I never knew, and Aunt Jean whom I knew very well indeed.
I stopped at the gas station where my dad used to buy most of his gas, and ran into an old high school friend. This gave me a chance to brag about “Atlantic Crossing” (I may not have mentioned it before, but I helped translate this excellent miniseries, coming to PBS Masterpiece this spring).
Now I’m home. It was nice to take a Viking trip of any kind at least once this summer. Thanks to Scarville Lutheran School for their hospitality. Also to my brother and his wife, for the bed and meals variety. Now all I need to do is unpack, which may take several days unless I work up some energy. I’ve taken road trips two weekends in a row now, and I’m not sure I can handle the wear and tear.
Everyone’s favorite author of pirate stories, Robert Louis Stevenson, once wrote to Henry James that he, J.M. Barrie, and Rudyard Kipling “are now my Muses Three. And with Kipling, as you know, there are reservations to be made. And you and Barrie don’t write enough.”
Stevenson was writing from Samoa during this time. His letters have been published in various collections, but his correspondence with J.M. Barrie has lacked Barrie’s letters until now.
Dr. Michael Shaw of the University of Stirling found the letters in a cardboard box at Beinecke Library in Yale University, not realizing they were unpublished until later when he followed up his research with the published correspondence.
“I just assumed that they had been published and I didn’t know about them,” he said. “I was judging myself, thinking I really should have read these.”
Apparently Stevenson told Barrie how to get to his Pacific island, a little over 4,800 miles southwest from the San Francisco bay, in this way: “You take the boat at San Francisco, and then my place is second to the left.”
I’ve answered several political surveys this year. My state has three contested congressional races on top of the presidential election, so pollsters want to know what we’re thinking. My ‘favorite’ line of questions sound like an exercise in sowing deception. They give you statements you’re asked to assume to be true in order to predict whether you would be more or less likely to vote for the dirt-bag candidate who hates children or the saint who is sponsoring this poll. I told one pollster after he had read a glowingly positive statement about a candidate, “If you put it that way, how could I not vote for him?”
I’d like to know what Americans (or even people throughout North America) believe about normal life. For instance, how many of us would agree that life is conflict? Thinking of Jurassic Park, perhaps more of us would accept life as change or growth, but both change and growth involve straining against the current state and that’s a type of conflict. It may be man against nature or against himself.
I wonder how many of us see conflict as a natural part of communication. I can’t say I do. Minor conflicts jar me too much. It can be embarrassing to step on someone’s toes because your responsibilities overlap with theirs. Or you’re in someone’s home and they do something you think is unnecessary, and you say what you think. Those are the negligible conflicts that inspire people like me to worry. They can feed a lingering suspicion that we are always wrong and should avoid speaking up in any situation, just because someone doesn’t see it our way or know the same things we know.
And if we did do something wrong, that only multiplies our bad feelings. Of course, we don’t really believe we’re always wrong. If we did, we’d never get the mail. But our suspicion has that absolute quality to it. That slip-up we made, we believe, illustrates everything notable about our lives.
If we were to see conflict as a natural part of life, then we should expect to disagree without incurring a moral problem. No one has to have sinned during the commission of this disagreement/conversation. We were just talking. And talking entails conflict (or change or growth).
The Lord said he would fill every valley and lower every hill; he would beat smooth every rough path. That’s going to be difficult, but the Lord hasn’t called us into it to handle on our own. He is our king, master, and ruler. Even in this, his burden is light.
Regardless our feelings, when we rest in Christ we are not wrong.
Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash
‘We’re not allowed to,’ said Robin.
‘If I hear not allowed much oftener,’ said Sam, ‘I’m going to get angry.’
Blogging my way through The Lord of the Rings, final installment from The Return of the King.
I have come to the end of the story. For each reader of The Lord of the Rings hereafter, I expect, one of the final impressions of reading the saga must be the Scouring of the Shire, made conspicuous by its absence from the Peter Jackson movies.
I’m not going to look back and check, but I’ll bet the last time I did this pilgrimage on this blog, I remarked on this very subject. I can see why, for dramatic reasons, a filmmaker might leave the Scouring out the story. It makes for a substantial anticlimax, which might detract from the eucatastrophe of the defeat of Sauron.
But I have an idea there might be other reasons.
Moviemakers today, it would be redundant to say, are generally leftists. The Scouring is highly problematic for leftists, particularly in these times. The same people who read the books as Hippies in the ‘60s, and cheered when Merry, Pippin, and Sam tear down all the signs posted by the Chief’s men, are now Woke leftists. There’s nothing Woke leftists today love more than lots of cautionary signs – No Smoking, No Firearms, No Automobiles (Tolkien wouldn’t have minded that one), No Pets, Please Recycle, Masks Must Be Worn.
There’s a quotation making the rounds in which Tolkien says that his political views tend toward Anarchism. He didn’t mean 19th Century, bomb-throwing Anarchism, of course. Those guys assassinated kings, and Tolkien loved kings. He meant something more like what we call Libertarianism today (I’m not a Libertarian myself, so I have my own issues here). The fans of the movies, who often believe (I suspect) that it’s all about environmentalism, probably don’t enjoy reading about the hobbits tearing signs down and smoking all over the place (in the movie they suggest that pipeweed is really marijuana, but they’re wrong). But Tolkien’s environmentalism is different from that of today’s left. The professor loved trees, but he didn’t love wilderness as such. In the time of the King, he writes:
…the evil things will be driven out of the waste-lands. Indeed the waste in time will be waste no longer, and there will be people and fields where once there was wilderness.
Tolkien’s ideal world is a world of villages, solidly middle-class and bourgeois.
One other point is even more delicate. The Shire needs scouring because Saruman has filled it with foreigners. Men of low character who bully the hobbits and have no respect for their property or traditions.
For today’s England, and for most of the West, that’s a subject best left alone.
Modern Age asked several people who they want for president, “any character from any book, film, play, television program, poem, or folk tale” or anyone else. If you’re still looking for an outside candidate, you could consider one of these.
I confess I may have voted too early.
