The Packbats' Weblog

Belated reply to alchemi's prompt: revisiting my Nuclear War Reading List.

Really, 'Nuclear War Reading List' is the wrong name. Especially as I expand it out to not-books.

Anyway, the list, expanded:

Books

• Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank (Harry Hart) - a remarkably clever story of events in a small Florida town after a nuclear war.
  
• Failsafe by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler - a good story, exploring the possibility of an accidental nuclear attack.
  
• Warday by James Kunetka and Whitley Strieber - another story about the aftermath of a nuclear war. Not so realistic as "Alas, Babylon", as it suffers from an excess of sci-fi zeal, but a worthy book on its own merits.
  
• The Curve of Binding Energy by John McPhee – a good nonfiction book about nuclear issues, including judgments of how difficult it would be to build weapons.

From the comments:

• kirabug: A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr. - a classic postapocalyptic science fiction story.
  Not included: Farnham's Freehold - these are stories about, not stories including, nuclear weapons; Earthwreck! by Thomas N. Scortia - I haven't read it yet.
  
  Movies
  (Excluding adaptations of the above books.)
  
  • The Sum of All Fears - modern, but still dealing with the same stuff.
    
  • Dr. Strangelove - duh.
  
  
  Songs
  
  • "99 Luftballoons", Nena - in the lyrics, a nuclear war is launched when the 99 red balloons are released and mistaken for an attack.
  
  From the comments:
  
  • baldanders: "8 1/2 Minutes", The Dismemberment Plan - 8 1/2 minutes is implied as being the length of the 'war'.
  
  
  I'm obviously missing tons of these - any opinions?

Of course, this is counting school plays recorded on videocassette as 'films', and I can't actually verify the existence of two of the links, but:

1. I was in a performance of the musical "Green Eggs and Ham" beside my voice teacher, Cate Frazier-Neely.
   
2. Cathryn Frazier-Neely was at Maryland with soprano Alessandra Marc, and hopefully was caught on video with her at some point (Weak Link #1).
   
3. Alessandra Marc "appeared in a gala concert at the Brooklyn Museum of Art co-chaired by legendary R&B/rap pioneers, Russell Simmons and Danny Simmons" (Weak Link #2).
   
4. Russell Simmons was in the 2002 film "Brown Sugar" with Kimora Lee (this link and the next forged by the Oracle of Bacon at Virginia).
   
5. Kimora Lee was in the 2005 film "Beauty Shop" with Kevin Bacon.
   

Therefore, I've a Bacon number of 5. Anyone else want to play?

Don't be like Spoonless Joe – buy a spoon today!

P.S. I got my laptop back!

Courtesy of paulsoth, a short video on Male Restroom Etiquette.

( LJ-Embedded Version )

I'm feeling silly. My roommate has a copy of Poolhall Junkies, which just watched for our movie night, and I'm going to grade it, category by category. Everything's on a scale from one to ten, with references for each category. (Obscure references, admittedly, but I have eclectic tastes.)

( The Scorecard )

Overall, though? I give this one a 8.5. Not a classic, but definitely choice.

Remember I said I wasn't sure if the movie "Z" made sense without the book? Well, I talked to my mom today, and she tells me Yes, it did, and it was excellent.

(Does the capitalize-no-quotes thing work as an indicator of paraphrase, here? Just wondering.)

In other news... err, I don't have any. Cranial remote controllers (link from Skepchick), anyone?

Yesterday, I saw "Elizabethtown".

Some movies do not restrict themselves to an emotion. That's true of all art, of course; Shakespeare opens "Romeo and Juliet" with a scene of witty banter that thrilled me to read it. Perhaps that is a characteristic which people have forgotten to appreciate – like some, maybe most, of the best movies I've seen, "Elizabethtown" was a terrific failure in theaters. But it takes something to make people laugh one minute and cry the next, and to do it as honestly as this.

( Spoilers, possibly minor. )


But really, what's most impressive about the movie is the characterization. People talk a lot, they interact, they get angry and sad, and from the greatest to the least they seem like real people. To talk about the movie again with my mother is to see even more in it than before.


Also, on the side, I shouldn't talk about this movie without talking about the music. The music in this movie is superb. I rarely notice music in movies and I could hear how terrific this soundtrack is.


Yeah, other stuff happened today – installation of a folding futon and so on – but some things aren't worth talking about, and others are.

Got back late last night, so here's yesterday's update. As implied in the Subj., the notable events were my watching "Ice Station Zebra" and my sister's orchestra in concert.

"Ice Station Zebra" is a good movie set during the Cold War. I suppose it's more like a John le Carré spy novel than anything else I can think of – it's got several dramatic scenes, to be sure, but there's also an intellectual complexity that's clear in it if you look at the subtleties. It more than stands up to a second watching; there's a lot there that you simply wouldn't know to look at if you hadn't watched it before. (I watched the first half again this morning.) We finished the movie just in time to head out to school to watch my sister's concert.

The concert was very good. She'd gotten us three comp tickets; my dad and I were sitting in the fifth row from the front, and it was amazing. Something that you don't get when you're in the balcony or towards the rear of the theater, and that you usually don't get if you're listening to an album, is how the different 'voices' come from different places. I remember near the beginning of, hmm, I think it was Mahler's Symphony no.5 in C-sharp minor, how the melody came in with one instrument on the right hand of the stage, and then gets picked up by another on the left side. More than just that sort of thing, the pieces in the concert – Siegfried's Funeral March from Richard Wagner's Götterdämmerung, Benjamin Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem, and the Mahler – all have a certain amount of contrapuntal melodies in them, and the fact that each melody comes from a different place makes them stand out in a nice way.

After the concert, my mom (who had been in row Q) and I went to the reception for a few minutes to congratulate my sister, then we went home. It was after 11 then, so we pretty much went to bed.


I'm cranky and strange today – don't know why. I don't think it's lack of sleep, but I'm getting annoyed over the stupidest things, like taking an hour and a half to write this entry because nanakikun is watching "Numb3rs" and playing Space Invaders simultaneously while interrupting me to point out various pieces of videogame news. Actually, I probably ought to warn him in case I do something stupid.