Time Out, Part II

"I'm going to do a lot of nothing this weekend," I told my coworkers on the way out the door Friday afternoon. And God, in His wisdom, must have agreed; less than an hour ago, I bent to give the dog a forkful of catfood for her breakfast, and felt the familiar dagger in my spine of my back going out.

Since then, I have tried moving to work the kinks out, but a quick walk up the road got me no further than the neighbor's house. I followed that with a return to the middle of my living room floor, where I intend to pass the morning, at least, before trying additional physical therapy.

I'm not terribly worried about this; although I've been pain-free for some time, my back was in no wise cured, and will likely be an ongoing condition until I have no other option available but surgery. I was told when I got my last round of shots that they could last as long as a year and a half; it has been, by my reckoning, about three months shy of that. I will see what a regimen of rest and low activity does for me this weekend. But if all else fails, all I need do is make an appointment for another round of shots with my surgeon in Nashville.

I must admit, though, the entire process would be a lot more palatable if I wasn't also fighting my way through a sinus headache.

On to other matters; I had intended to touch base this morning in any case, if for nothing else than to say hello. Life has been good lately, and I have much to be thankful to God for. For starters, I am writing again. The outline of a particularly troublesome chapter in my long-neglected novel fell into place as I was commuting to work two days ago, and so I have had a reason to break into my freshly-updated version of my Apple Pages word processor.

I'm also putting a toe in the water when it comes to some old friends. I have been so inspired by the news that "The Hobbit" movie has been greenlit that I have returned to my abandoned promise to re-read the whole "Lord of the Rings" series. This time, my goal is to finish reading the trilogy by the time filming begins in February. I am still a bit anxious about whether or not the movies will, in fact, be filmed in New Zealand, but I am enormously cheered by the news that Martin Freeman will be our Bilbo. He doesn't look as close to the Bilbo in my head as Elisha Wood looked like my Frodo, but it's still a very near thing, and I am greatly cheered.

By the way; I fully expect Peter Jackson to take some of the new footage from "The Hobbit" — particularly Bilbo's finding of the ring — and insert it into the flashbacks in "Lord of the Rings" where he used Ian Holm in a curly wig as a much younger Bilbo. Personally, I think this is an altogether sensible idea, but some of you may be a little squeamish about it (despisers of Hayden Christianson's disembodied head, I'm looking at you). Either way, you've been warned — it's going to happen.

On the music front, I have returned to my track-by-track comparisons of The Beatles stereo and mono recordings. I just finished Sgt. Pepper last night, and will no doubt find some time today to make some headway into Magical Mystery Tour. My sonic forays have been accompanied by readings in a couple of Fab Four-related birthday presents; The Complete Beatles Chronicle by noted Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn, which is a day-by-day account of The Beatles' entire professional lives; and The Beatles: Anthology book; an impressively-detailed first-person history of The Beatles, by The Beatles, and the last piece of the Anthology project I had yet to own. There's also Beatle Gear, a well-researched book examining all aspects of The Beatles' instruments — probably boring as watching paint dry to many folks, but irresistibly fascinating to an old guitar slinger like me.

On the Star Wars front, I am very close to a long-overdue viewing of the Original Trilogy. I have two yet-to-be-achieved goals in my DVD-watching life; watching all three Lord of the Rings movies back-to-back, and an uninterrupted viewing of all six Star Wars films. I may try the former sometime before the first "Hobbit" movie is released (or immediately after seeing the second one), but have no firm timetable for Star Wars. I only know that I want to remember what I liked about the Saga. In order to do that, I have to begin at the beginning, which is the original three movies, without the special edition treatment, thank you kindly. I still intend to sit down and watch all six movies, in numerical sequence, as George intends them to be seen. At the moment, though, I'm not in a place where I can watch The Phantom Menace without wishing I was watching Empire instead.

Finally, we come to Disney. I am pleased to report we just obtained the BluRay/DVD combo pack of Beauty and the Beast. Since we don't own a BluRay player yet, I can only report on the DVD content, which is bare-bones compared to the BluRay stuff. As someone who decided, back in the day, that they needed Beauty and the Beast on DVD a couple weeks after the company put it "back in the vault" (a forced-scarcity policy on Disney's part that I heartily loathe), though, it was nice just to have it again. Happily, the new DVD contains everything that was on disc 1 of the original release — namely the original theatrical release, special edition version and "work in progress" version. The budding Disney animation geek in me loves this last version, since it gives a peek behind the curtain at the animation process in real time. The polished, final animation periodically drops out, to be replaced by rough-outs, storyboards, pencil sketches and other steps in the hand-drawn animation process. It can be a little jarring if all you want is to get caught up in the story. But if you're a fan of the movie-making process, as I am, it's great fun.

A little later, my daughter and I are going to do a little theme-park planning. This isn't the logistics and pricing exercises I spoke of in my last post. Instead, it will be a simple comparison of what attractions we want to see in what park; a little 'let's pretend' exercise that may help us narrow down what we want to do when we finally do arrive at the parks. All in all, fodder for a good, relaxing afternoon at home.

So that's life this week. I may be sidelined, but at least I'm not bored. And, God willing, I'll be back in the line up sooner rather than later.

Gone, but not forgotten

I just wanted to tape a quick note to the virtual refrigerator to let all four of my readers know that I have not forgotten my posting responsibilities here. My life has been very good of late, but also very hectic, so when the muse has struck, I'm usually too busy to heed it. Inspirations and blog-worthy notions that have bounced off my cranium during my morning commute have usually been forced into a back corner of my brain when I get home, if not forgotten entirely.

By way of a quick update on a previous post — namely electronic books — I will mention that I am discovering that having a portable device, such as a Kindle or iPhone, makes a world of difference in their appeal. Since getting my iPhone more than a month ago, I have found that the experience of e-book reading is enhanced greatly by being able to hold the thing in your hand, as opposed to hitting an arrow key on a keyboard. The portability is also a plus; I've been able to find times to read — while waiting at the pharmacy, for example — that would have been lost to me otherwise. On the down side, an eBook on an iPhone is still not the immersive experience that a real ink-and-paper book is.

As far as fandoms go, I have been a Disney geek for the past couple weeks. I am in one of my period phases of planning our next trip to see the Mouse, which usually involves the nasty sticker shock of pricing different accommodation scenarios. We've resolved to stay on property this time, which while appealing to the Disney geek in me, is also more expensive nearly any way you slice it.

This, then, is a brief snapshot of my life on these, the Ides of October. I will try to post a lengthier treatise in the future; until then, adieu.

A matter of priorities

This is going to be an off-the-cuff post, prompted by my disgust at a recent bit of Spam I just received from Lucas and company.

I've been subscribing to "The Homing Beacon," the official Star Wars e-mail newsletter, since — no lie — issue one. Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, there used to be actual news content in the Beacon; especially when George was making the prequel trilogy.

Sadly, those days died long ago. For the better part of a couple years, THB has been nothing more than a place for George & Co. to shill new Star Wars-themed Beanie Babies, or whatever the latest bit of Saga-related merchandising is.

This week, THB hit a new low — at least for this reporter.

In news, we designate the most important item in a news story, or laid out on the page, as the "lead." In a story, the lead is the most important bit of information that appears in the story, or the item that will impact the most number of people. We use a similar ethic ethos when choosing the lead story to go at the top of the page; what is going to affect the most readers. The question "what's the lead going to be?" is a question that I wrestle with every single time that write the most trivial of stories up to those times when I've acted as news editor for that day.

I don't own this, or much of anything else,
so don't bother sueing me, George.

So it was a great offense to me when THB's lead story in the wake of Celebration V was "Celebration V Merch Now At StarWarsShop!" I'm long since used to this sort of behavior from Lucas Inc., but what set me off the way the "real" news of George announcing that the Saga would be coming to BluRay next fall was buried "below the fold," as we say — you had to scroll down past the hawking of Yoda hats and similar dreck to find it. In news terms, this is worse than burying the lead. It is putting a car advertisement in place of an interview with the mayor on what his administration plans to accomplish this year.

Now, from an advertising standpoint, I understand this; the merch is here now, rotting in the warehouse. Likely, George's minions have just begun the work of compiling the material that will appear on the BluRay versions. So from a strictly business standpoint, the Celebration V chotskies are "now," with the BluRay announcement a distant "then."

But from a "news" standpoint, this is laughable and offensive at the same time. People have been clambering for the movies to be released on high-def DVDs since the HD-DVD/BluRay format wars of a few years ago. The movies are the single most important facet of Lucas' Empire — in my mind, they are Star Wars. That the long-awaited BluRay box is on the way was the single most important piece of real information to emerge from Celebration V.

I long for the days when we used to be able to get stuff like this from starwars.com. I loved getting new bits about making the new trilogies, or the frequent behind-the-scenes stuff about making the original trilogies. Not just archival photos; real articles and web documentaries.

Sadly, those days seem to be past. These days, starwars.com and the Beacon are all about product releases, and interviews with 'celebrity' fans. Don't getta me wronga — I'm glad that x bass player from y up-and-coming band grooved on Return of the Jedi when it came out. But I can only read so many such articles before acute boredom starts to set in.

I know. So they missed the lead? Big deal. And you'd be right. I guess what bothered me the most was that they had a bit of news that actually excited me, that woke up the slumbering Star Wars fan in me for just a moment. I haven't been interested in Star Wars for a while now; I've been busy with The Beatles and Apple Inc. of late, and haven't had much of a reason to find the goings-on in the Star Wars mythos remotely interesting — until now.

The BluRay release poses interesting questions; what archival stuff are they going to put on it? Are they going to include the "THX" versions as well? Is George going to go back and tinker with the films yet again? And is this just going to be "quickie" release, the first of a series of "new" BluRay editions, each just different enough from the last to justify a buying these films yet again for the upteenth time?

The first part of this question is genuinely interesting. You can cram a lot of stuff on a BluRay disc, and George has got a lot of stuff to use. As a teaser, he showed a long-documented scene from Return of the Jedi of Luke assembling his lightsaber at Ben's house (That little tidbit didn't make it onto THB either, BTW, although it is at least mentioned in this news item on starwars.com).

I liked Empire of Dreams, but it doesn't get a lot of repeated viewings — unlike the bonus material in the Extended Lord of the Rings DVDs, which I practically have memorized (can anyone say "bring the partridge?"). Heck, the stuff on The Phantom Menace DVD would be a step in the right direction. Say what you will about Episode I, it was the single best DVD release today as far as being a total package. The other two prequels were sadly lacking in extra features (none more so that Attack of the Clones), and to have a single disc of extra features for the entire Original Trilogy was kind of insulting.

Personally, I'd love to see the inclusion of From Star Wars to Jedi: The Making of a Saga, or something similar. George has got to have miles of behind-the-scenes footage and unreleased scenes that he's been sitting on for just such an occasion. Surely, this is that occasion.

The cynic in me is ready for George to use this release as a way to hype something new; say the live-action TV series we haven't been hearing much about lately. He's done that before, with several past releases: the plugs for video games on Episodes I and III, for example. And it would be very in keeping with Lucasfilm Inc. to use the weight of the Saga to drive interest in a new game for the PS3, or something similar.

But the optimist in me is trying to stay, well, optimistic. George has talked in the past about doing a "pulling out all the stops" box set of the Star Wars movies. A 10- or 12-disc set with lots of new goodies would go a long way toward regaining the confidence and, dare I say it, interest of fans like me. Like as not, we'll get six movie and a max of two discs of mediocre special features, with the promise of the better set yet to come "when he has time."

George has come through in the past — Revenge of the Sith may not have been what fans had envisioned in the early 80s when we first learned of the falling out of Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi. But I think you have be pretty picky indeed to have walked away from that movie thinking that he didn't deliver on everything that was expected of him.

So, in the end, it's going to be up to George; is he going to try to keep milking us for another twenty years, stringing us along with weak reissue after weak reissue? Maybe. But he might also come through in the end, and give every fan — not just the hardcore collectors — something they genuinely want.

Time will tell. But in the mean time, I have greata faith in the boy. We shall see.

Fresh resolve

I used to read.

I used to read books compulsively, as easy as breathing. When I was a teenager, I picked up a fresh book before the next one was cool. It was a wonderful time — I had friends like Heinlein, Tolkien, Adams and Vonnegut, not to mention a brace of science fiction and fantasy greats.

Later, after I married, I let my wife suggest some books to e. I Read Rice, Irving and a few others. After college, I tackled Tolstoy, and tried (and failed) to follow it up with Dostoyevsky.

I fell in love with Lewis, and spent several years pouring over his books. I also got caught up in some popular bestsellers; Rowling and Meyers come to mind.

Gradually, though, my reading became a special occasion rather than a way of life. I read when I wanted to share something someone else was reading, or I nibbled at books in a hot bath. But I didn't devour books anymore. I left several books half-finished. Finally, even the books I would classify as "easy reads" seemed too formidable for me.

I blame the Internet.

The same perfectly-made tool that's allowing me to post this on the World Wide Web has made it far too easy for me to take the Internet with me wherever I go. As a result, I use it — very likely much more than I should.

As a consequence, I've been feeling a little part of me slowly dying. I haven't been aware of it for long, but it's similar to what I felt when I noticed that my love of music was mostly dead. A disquieting sense that something that I used to like about myself, something important, was withering and dying. And, growing by degrees, a sense that I didn't want it to.

The pebble that started the avalanche was a post on News, Weather & Sports by one of my mentors, Neil Peart of Rush. He was talking about time machines of all sorts — cars, songs, photos; things that take you back in time, or make you aware of the passage of it. One of Neil's time machines of choice is are books, and he illustrated the point with a fat stack of nine books represented his reading list for 10 days one February. He talked in glowing terms about the worlds that lurked behind the spine of each book, waiting to be discovered, its contours mapped out individually inside your mind. And he alluded to notion that, if there really was a heaven, it might just consist of endless time by the fire, with nothing to do but turn pages.

I was inspired and intimidated at the same time.

Inspired because I immediately wanted to started checking books off my reading list. Intimidated because reading has always been kind of an effort for me, and the stack of books he was going to take down in 10 days would have taken me two months of vacation time. Maybe more.

It's not my reading speed, which is serviceable, if not spectacular. It's because often when I'm reading, there's always the restless notion that I should be elsewhere, doing something else. Usually, it gets the best of me, and I wind up doing just that. Add to this my regrettable tendency to get stalled halfway through a book, walk away, and usually never return, and you wind up with a person that doesn't get a lot of books finished.

The last time I had a good read was more than a year ago, when I literally had nothing else to do. Then, I did read nine books, but it took me a  little longer than ten days. I was flat on my back, recovering (or trying to recover) from a ruptured disc. Reading seemed like an excellent use of my time. And it was, but after four months, I eventually had to get better, and go back to work.

And that's a good thing, as far as it goes. But Neil's picture made me realize that it was time to get back to work in another way. And finally, two days ago, I yielded to the impulse.

I started by dusting off my Goodreads account, which I hadn't updated since finishing The Book of Mormon in October. My "currently reading" section had five books, four of them quite cold. I decided to pull those for the time being, and start with some new fare. And since I think the fact that I try to take down so many books at once is also to blame, I have decided to try to limit what I read at any given time.

At my wife's suggestion, I've decided to break my literary fast with something light, enjoyable, but with that hint of the fantastic I enjoy so much The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan. Also, there's a borrowed copy of The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions by Mark Lewisohn. Then there's the Phil Yancey ebook Prayer that I started a few weeks ago. And, of course, my copy of the Wesley Study Bible that I will never officially finish, but can't bring myself to take off the "currently reading" shelf. Because, like, you know, I'm currently reading it.

So that makes, ah, four books. Well, that's one less than five.

I'll keep you posted on my progress, dear readers. Until then, happy reading.

Maybe I'm Amazed

I'm just a few hours back from the McCartney show. I'm tired, my throat is sore, and I don't think I have it in me to distill three hours of once-in-a-lifetime experience into a few paragraphs of pithy commentary. But here goes.

In the back of my mind, I was worried that this show would not, could not possibly, live up to the experience I had seeing the great man in 1993. Then I was awed at the idea of seeing actual Beatle in the actual flesh. Since then, I have been inordinately blessed to have seen both living Beatles in concert one time each. So when Paul walked casually onto the stage last night, I didn't have the surge of "Oh my God, that's really him" that I did in 1993.

There was also the fact that I had accidentally seen the first five songs in the set lists from another venue, so I had a pretty good idea what was in store early on. And, as it happens, the early part of the show was weighted with largely post-Beatles material, which I don't have nearly the emotional attachment to. Also, there was the lady sitting near me, who had decided to favor us all by wearing a generous slathering of her favorite perfume; a thick, sickly and cheap-smelling floral that kept intruding on my consciousness for the first 30 minutes or so of the show.

When all these factors are taken into consideration, I think I can be forgiven for the fact that I was 10 songs into the concert before the feel of the thing began to take me over. The emotional reactions I wrote of in my last post first reared their head during an especially playful version of  "Let 'Em In." The interaction between the band; the way the drummer kept flicking his head to the left, the center and the right, the exact same way every time, as he drilled his way steadily through the song's military-inspired snare part; and just the whimsical nature of the song, hooked me, and pulled me into the show.

After that, I seldom left.

Oh, to be sure, there were minor annoyances; the beer vendor who bellowed "Ice Cold Beer!" three feet from my face as I was trying to enjoy the epic pyrotechnic excitement that was "Live and Let Die" (jolted from my concentration on the song, I bellowed "Shut up!" back at him nearly as loud). And there was the steady stream of people who opted to spend the concert plying their own special trade route between the concession stand, their seats, and the bathroom. Ordinarily, I would have never have noticed this last bit but for the fact that the steps leading down from our section crossed in front of our seats, and we had a steady stream of heads briefly crossing in front of our field of view.

But these were all minor trifles, and easily ignored, in comparison of what we got to witness. The delight I felt at "Let 'Em In" increased more and more during the next two hours, until by the time we reached the second encore, my wife and I were both in a more-or-less permanent state of slack-jawed amazement. The surprises, the "you've got to be kidding me" moments came regularly; "A Day In The Life," "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" (which he's almost never done live), "I've Got A Feeling," "Day Tripper," "Helter Skelter" — the arrival of each left me stunned, except for "Helter Skelter," which, instead, triggered a burst of maniacal laughter.

The most moving moment for me was "Two Of Us." The Let It Be album has been growing on me lately, and this track, which opens that album, has always reminded me of John and Paul's early friendship as Liverpool teens. A close second, and one of my wife's favorite moments, was his intimate and sweeping rendition of Something, which was a beautiful, touching and genuine tribute to George Harrison.

When we reached Hey Jude, the I felt the sadness set in. This number has long been a staple closing number of McCartney shows, so I knew we were close to the end. I knew going into this night that, all things taken into consideration, I would likely never be in the same room with Sir Paul again. I dutifully sang along with the roughly 20,000-strong crowd until the bitter end. Then, as he waved from the stage and took his bows with the rest of the band, I said a quiet "Goodbye, Paul."

Thankfully, Sir Paul takes not one, but two curtain calls in his show, and my mood had lifted considerably by the second one, when Paul's simple, beautifully done version of "Yesterday" was answered a few seconds later with the raucous machine gun guitar opening of "Helter Skelter." When the band followed this with the "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band Reprise," it was yet another treat in a long night of treats, and it felt like an acceptable, and even fitting, way to end the evening.

Then the band bounced off of one of the chords from "Pepper," and into "The End" from Abbey Road — long one of my favorite tracks from my favorite album. And with that, any reluctance I had to say goodbye to Paul, and to the evening, disappeared.

Paul traded guitar leads with the other two band members until the band crashed into the soft piano ostinato, and I watched, stunned into motionless, as he sang the lines "And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make." If he had asked me how I wanted him to end the show, I would not have dared to think of this.

And then, the song was over. Paul took his bows, told us he would see us next time, and was gone, leaving my wife and I, jaws open, shaking our heads at each other in amazement.

The show I saw seventeen years ago stood at the top of the heap of the dozens of shows I've seen during my life. Until last night, that is.

I walked out of the Bridgestone Arena last night convinced, as I am now, that I will probably never see a better concert for the rest of my life.

And you know what? I think I'm okay with that.

…you get what you need

The year was 1990, or thereabouts. I had been married for a few years, and was busy trudging along the singularly unwise career path of the professional musician. My guiding stars musically (then as now), were Rush and The Beatles. Having the passions of youth, I held both bands in a near-religious esteem; particularly The Beatles, whom I'd been raised on. So when I heard that Paul McCartney was going on tour for the first time in ten years to support his Flowers In The Dirt CD, and would be playing a substantial amount of live Beatles material for the first time since he walked off the rooftop of 3 Savile Row in early 1969, I was frantic to go.

Word eventually came to me that he would be playing at an arena about a four-hour drive from my doorstep. This concert took place in the less-than-halcyon days before the Internet, when getting concert tickets involved standing in long lines, or waiting in interminable phone queues for the next available operator. Just finding out the date and time the seats would go on sale wasn't easy to come by. And so it was that, by the time we found out about it, it came with the word that seats were going for $200-$400 apiece. And just like that, the dream of seeing an actual Beatle in the flesh — one of my heroes — popped like a soap bubble.

Bitterness naturally ensued. I wasted a couple years hating the circumstances that had deprived me of this holy experience (and even McCartney himself a little — did he really need that much money?). I bought the 2-disc CD of the tour when it was released (in fact, I'm listening to it as I type this), but didn't listen to it much. The wound was still too fresh, and it only made me remember what had nearly been within my grasp.

It is surprising to me how quickly that wound healed when I finally secured tickets to a subsequent Memphis appearance by the Great Man some three years later. This time, the tickets were $35 — a hefty sum for concert tickets then, but one I considered, then as now, to be altogether reasonable.

I am delighted to report that the concert, when it occurred, was all that I had needed it to be. It began with the inevitable excitement I felt as McCartney casually strolled onto the sun-soaked stage (it would be dark when we finished three hours later), carrying the same Hofner bass he'd used with The Beatles, and ripped into "Drive My Car." Not only was he doing Beatles songs, he was opening with one! It was one of the first of a happy, hazy jumble of memories of that show —things like the mist rolling slowly down the sides of the Liberty Bowl during "Michelle;" joining with 60,000 people as we sang "Hey Jude;" the ripple of excitement I felt during the opening of "Paperback Writer," and, in pride of place, the massive, fireworks-fueled percussion kick during "Live and Let Die," which raises the hair on the back of my neck every time I think about it.

In fact, my adreneline-soaked emotional reactions are really what I treasure about that show. Because ultimately, what makes a concert special isn't what you see or hear in that tiny march of minutes, it's your emotional reactions to what you're experiencing. It wasn't the mists of "Michelle" that stands out in my mind — it was the relaxed, serene joy I felt at that instant. It was a phenomena that the late Spaulding Gray called "a perfect moment."

Needless to say, that show was replete with perfect moments, and it still stands as one of the high points of my life. Because the show happened as I was winding up my baccalaureate studies, and because of the utter perfection of the experience, I often refer to the concert as 'my graduation present from God.'

Sometimes — though not often — I'm even joking when I say it.

Flash forward 17 years.

I learned a few months ago that Sir James Paul McCartney was coming to Nashville, my concert city of preference, and the closest he had ever come to the home of your humble author. After coming down from the ceiling, I told several people that I didn't care what seats I had; I just "wanted to be in the building." I said this a lot over the weeks leading up to tickets going on sale, almost like a mantra. Every time I said it, thought, there was also an always-unspoken second part — "... but I also want really good seats."

At the same time, my daughter was equally excited about seeing one of her musical idols, one Adam Lambert. Naturally, the pre-sale for that show went on sale on that same day in early June as the McCartney show. The thankless task of juggling Ticketmaster orders fell to my wife, and she had a very tense morning indeed. I say thankless, because after finding out the location of our seats, the first words out of my mouth weren't "Brava," "Good show," or even "I love you." What I said was, and I quote, "Wow - we're really far back there, aren't we?"

And to be fair, there are only a few hundred people — at most a thousand — who can say they are farther from the stage than we are. That doesn't matter; this is among the more ungrateful things I've ever said in a long history of saying ungrateful things. It wasn't until that moment that I realized the existence of the unspoken second part of the mantra "…but I also want really good seats."

It continued to be a very tense morning; I had to convince my wife that I was, indeed, very thankful to have tickets, and very grateful for her efforts. Thankfully, she believed me, eventually. She then turned to getting tickets to Adam Lambert. We had planned to go as a family, in part so that we could experience the show, but also in part because we wanted to watch our daughter enjoying the show. And after many mighty struggles with the ticket gods, and some timely assistance from a friend, we were able to obtain two, individual tickets.

Elsewhere, other battles were raging. My best friend and musical partner in crime was having problems with McCartney tickets of his own. We had long known that we wouldn't be sitting together this trip because we needed three tickets each, and the limit was four tickets per sale. So sadly, we wouldn't be sitting together. But he came very close to not being able to get tickets at all; it is only because of a friend's generosity that he and his wife were able to obtain seats, but that is a tale for another time.

By noon, it was over. No, we did not have great seats to Paul McCartney. We did not even have good seats. But we had seats.

I would not be able to watch my daughter seeing one of her musical heroes. But she would get to see him.

My best friend and I would not be able to sit together and share the experience of seeing one of our musical heroes, as we had 17 years earlier. But we were each going.

Since that day in June, I've had a snatch of a Rolling Stones song in my head — ironic, for a lifelong Beatles fan like me.

You can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes you might find you get what you need.

We leave for Nashville in a few hours. Look for a full report soon.

Won't Get Fooled Again

For some weeks now, I have been promising an offering on the Mac vs. Windows debate. And I still plan to deliver it, but probably not in the way that most of you are expecting. I will give you all a bit of a hint of the tone of that essay when I say that a lot of the people on both sides, myself included, put entirely too much importance into a question that is, I feel, on the level of whether one's favorite color is red or blue.

That said, I do have a dog in that particular race, as they say. And for that reason, I cannot let a small bit of tech business news from today's New York Times website pass without comment.

According to the Times, Apple has just passed Microsoft as the world's most valuable technology company. Let me put that another way; as far as Wall Street is concerned, Apple is now officially bigger than Microsoft.

When I first read the news at work, I hunted down a fellow Apple fan boy and co-worker to share the news. We exchanged a quick high five, then got back to what we were doing.

But now that I've had a chance to ponder this little tidbit, the ramifications are starting to hit me, and my sense of stunned disbelief is starting to rise. And I hope you will bear with me when I say that for me, this feels a lot like the way the end of the Cold War felt.

Not that I'm even remotely elevating the fall of Communism to the level of one brand of grown up toys selling more stock than another. The latter happens all the time, as businesses wax and wane. But what makes this news so epic is the context of history; for all of my life, Microsoft was the big boy on the block when it came to computers. As I think about it, 7 of the 11 computers I've owned in my life have had Microsoft operating systems (the other four, and the most recent, were, of course, various flavors of Mac's OS X).

Back when I bought my first computer (running MS-DOS 4.01), Microsoft seemed relatively benign, and even vaguely likable. And mean, what can you say about a company whose idea of a game is a flight simulator accurate enough to do low-level flight training on?

But the more software they sold, the bigger they became on the big electronic playground, and the more of a bully they became. No one seriously challenged their operating system, and any rivals that were foolish enough to go up against them in other areas were smashed; the Netscape web browser, Lotus's 1-2-3 spreadsheet, and my own beloved WordPerfect word processor; all were ground beneath the boot of Redmond. They did this with tactics like loading free versions of programs like Internet Explorer and Microsoft Word onto every computer sold, and arranging for some computer manufacturers to sell machines with pre-loaded copies of Microsoft Office which customers couldn't not buy (and yes, I speak from personal experience on that last one. I wound up choosing another PC maker rather than buy $150 worth of software I didn't want).

So even before I made the switch to Apple, Microsoft was the 800-pound gorilla in the room, and everyone's symbol of technological tyranny — you danced to their tune, or you didn't dance at all.

At the same point in time, MacIntosh computers simply weren't a viable alternative for me until 2005. They were too expensive, impossible to get software for, and incompatible with every piece of software I had ever bought in my life. As a result, I wasn't one of the old guard Mac users; people for whom today must seem even more surreal.

For me, though, it is plenty surreal enough. In the 1990s, the idea that Apple would ever be bigger than Microsoft was strictly the province of rabid Apple fan boys (known among us Apple geeks as Kool-Aid drinkers — a tactless allegory to the Jonestown Massacre, with Steve Jobs in the role of Jim Jones). But times change, and apparently, Microsoft didn't; at least, not fast enough. Apple still only accounts for about 10 percent of computers, but computers are moving off the desk and into pockets — an arena where Apple has been giving Microsoft a beating since the iPod. Microsoft isn't dead yet, but its influence is dwindling; the new tech powerhouses are Apple and Google, and the new battlefields are smart phones and search.

It's starting to feel like a bit of a hollow victory, though. As Apple grows in power, the new Apple is starting to seem a lot like the old Microsoft. The last few weeks, we've been hearing about Apple demanding apologies for ad parodies, shutting out apps for the iPod Touch and iPhone for no reason, firing an employee who violated company security by showing an iPad before it's release to the (now retired) co-founder of the company, among other things. In other words, it's not all puppies and rainbows in Cupertino.

So I'm happy for my favorite toy maker today. But I hope they remember that the people that kept them alive in the lean years supported them precisely because they weren't Microsoft. I hope they take a page from their new rival's playbook — namely, "Don't Be Evil." And to paraphrase one of my favorite composers, I really, really hope that the new boss doesn't turn out to be the same as the old boss.

The shape of things to come?

The other day, I got an e-mail from Amazon.com. The good people there just wanted to remind me that there was a free Kindle reader available for my PC, should I feel so inclined.

Now, I have been eyeing the Kindle since they were introduced a few years back. Portable book reader that does for books what the iPod did for music = good. A sticker price of $259 and no color display = bad.  Also, there's the matter that Amazon insists on charging for e-books, which is okay so far as it goes, but I only have so much disposable cash. I have a sizable library of CDs that I can load onto my iPod. And while I have a small library of public domain books in .txt format (thank you Project Gutenberg), none of them are in Kindle format. So while I approve of the basic concept, the Kindle wasn't something I sat up nights plotting on how to get my hands on.


Fast forward to a couple of months ago. Apple, my gadget maker of preference, introduces the iPad; a sleek little piece of hardware that does everything a Kindle does, only in color, and with an iPod, web browser and some light laptop functionality thrown in for good measure. This = really good. A starting price of $499 = really bad.

Another point that shouldn't be lost in all of this is I like books. Not text files, not e-readers, but books. The codex format that the early Christians found so useful works just fine for me, venerable as it is. And in some ways, it's infinitely preferable. I would never take a $500 iPad into a hot bath on a Sunday afternoon, for example.

Nevertheless, when the e-mail from Amazon arrived, I finally decided to put a toe in the water. I downloaded the Mac version of the app (free), and almost as quickly, found a book on prayer by Phil Yancey (oddly enough, also free). Yancey is one of my favorite living Christian writers, and I'm still trying to figure out what one of his books is doing floating around on Amazon for free. Yet, there it was, on Amazon's top ten downloads list for $0.00.

And so, I find myself a few chapters into Phil Yancey's "Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference?" — exactly 12 percent, as it happens (try judging that with a paperback). And so far, it's had a few differences from a regular book. For starters, it's a little too much like reading a web page. Instead of the satisfying flick of turning a page, I'm obliged to lightly draw my fingers against the trackpad to move on to the next section; not quite the sensory experience I'm used to. On the other hand, it remembers exactly how far I've gotten, so no more jagged bits of paper marking my place. There's also supposed to be a notes feature, which would be a little slice of fried awesome for some texts, but I haven't figured out how to make it work yet.

At the moment, it's a curiosity, and no more. I still think more than $250 for an e-book reader is too much. And even if I didn't, it would just be one more thing to carry. Too much cost, and not enough of a multi-tasker. So while I'm content to add Kindle functionality to my MacBook Pro, I can't begin to justify spending the money to get what would be the coolest thing about it — to be able to take a library of books around with you on a hand-held device a little smaller than an issue of Time magazine.

Of course, there is always the Kindle app for the iPad…

Glad tidings

Slightly less than two hours ago, my daughter was baptized by immersion in the waters of Kentucky Lake. Next week, she will formally join the congregation of the church we attend, along with other members of her confirmation class.

In the words of my pastor, "Let the people say 'amen.'"

Heavy weather

Well, as many of you have no doubt heard, we've had our share of weather this weekend. My family and I have just returned from an overnight 'holiday' at my parents house, after a 10:30 p.m. tornado warning  prompted us to take shelter. I could make glib remarks about the time, or complain about the fact that because it lasted until 5:30 this morning, we weren't able to judge about whether we needed to take shelter or not. I could do that, but the fact remains that I am eternally grateful that I have someplace to take my family in the event a tornado decides to drop in.

And brother, do we get tornados. Tornados seem to really like the town that I work in. I've personally covered five of them for my newspaper, and have developed a deep, abiding hatred for them. And yes, I mean hatred. I know it's bad sport to hate anything, much less something that came from the hand of God, and I'm sure he knows better than me. But I've developed an actual hatred of tornados. I've only seen a handful of smashed houses — places where nothing but the sheer violence of wind created a soggy debris field of wood, insulation, clothing, photos and all the other things that people own spread hundreds of feet across their neighbor's bean field. But those few times have been enough to make me hate the word 'tornado.'

But I digress; the point of this post is simply to let everyone know that we're fine, and to say "goodness, we certainly are getting a whole lot of wet." We were obliged to go to town yesterday, and I must say I haven't seen flooding like that in the entire time I've lived here. We had to take an alternate route at least once because of submerged roads. The parking lot of The Catfish Place, a popular local eatery, was entirely submerged (needless to say, they were closed). And the creek that borders the back yard of my daughter's best friend's home had risen all the way up to the house. When I was there, the muddy water rushing through the yard made it look like they'd built on a river bank.

So we have had an interesting time here, but all are safe. By the way, the title of this post is a twofold musical reference. For starters, Heavy Weather is the title of a Weather Report album (that I do not own).  It is also a lyric from the Jethro Tull album Heavy Horses (which I do own — picked it up in England on my honeymoon). The phrase comes from the title track.

Bring me a wheel of oaken wood
A rein of polished leather
A heavy horse and a tumbling sky
Brewing heavy weather.

Stay dry, everyone.

And then there were none

It is done. The portion of my bookshelf that holds my Beatles CDs — both mono and stereo versions — no longer has any gaps in it. I bought Help, the last missing piece of the reissued Beatles catalog, at my local Wal Mart shortly before 10 p.m. tonight. My collection is now complete (and pardon me while I sound like Darth Vader).

Now all that remains is for me to enjoy it. And for the past two or three weeks, I've been busy doing just that. I recently embarked on a track-by-track comparison of both the mono and stereo versions of each song in The Beatles' catalog, starting with Please Please Me. I plan to take each release, in order, until I reach the end of Abbey Road. To be sure, it is a silly little exercise, and very subjective, to say the least. But it has been enormous fun, and I'm discovering wondrous things in both recordings. I'm also falling in love with The Beatles again with an intensity that I haven't had since I was a young lad with a bass guitar in my hand and a gleam in my eye.

It's good to have the boys back again. As always, they were worth every penny.

Facebook and me

Hello, dear readers.

I know I've been gone for a while. My next post was supposed to be a zippy little essay about the deeper issues underlying the Mac vs. Windows debate that so monotonously abounds on the tech news websites. That's still a work in progress, and I fully intend to give the world the unvarnished glories of my thoughts on this subject in the near future.

But since I also want this blog to be more timely, I'm going to interrupt your regularly scheduled programing with a brief announcement about Facebook — or, as I now think of it, my Datamining page.

In recent weeks, Facebook has become more much more aggressive about adding "features" that are really just sweeping attempts to collect users into ready-made groups for advertisers. I don't have the time to go into details here, but you can read a pretty good summation — and an approximation of my feelings on the subject — here.

The last straw came this morning as I was logging onto my FB/DM page. Before I could get past the first page, I was confronted with a box that "asked" me to link all of the interests in my profile to their appropriate web pages: education, music, books, and that sort of thing. For example, it asked me to link to pages for both of my colleges as well as my high school. I didn't want to deal with this issue right at that moment, so I looked for a "cancel" or "ask me later" button.

Instead, I was given the choice "choose all" or "choose individually." I opted for the individual choice, thinking the option to put it off or, even better, not do it at all, could be found there. It wasn't. Instead, I only had the option to deselect all of the pre-checked boxes that corresponded to each of my listed interested. I did that, and told it "ok."

Facebook responded with the news that this would result in all of my unchecked interests being removed from my page. Apparently, in order to show you like something in Facebook-land, you now have to link to the official site. True to their word, the only interest I have on display now is for the band Rush — because it and The Beatles were the only sites I had cared enough in the past to link to. Why The Fab Four didn't make the cut, I don't know.

I may chat about the deeper ramifications of this in a future post; in the meantime, I just want to pass on that this little exercise in totalitarianism will result in my withdrawing from Facebook as much as possible. I intend to use it as a way to communicate with friends, and little else. From now on, what I like is none of Facebook's business.

The good news is that I intend to keep posting items here, and even plan to refer some of my friends from Facebook to this site. I may even shift some of my regular updates over to my long-neglected Twitter feed. Maybe it's making a tempest from a tea pot. But at the moment, I think that Facebook is looking at their users only as a commodity that they can deliver to their advertisers. And with all the myriad communications tools at our disposal today, I assure you that they need us far more than we need them.

Mono musings

   Well, it’s finally here — the crowning jewel of my Beatles collection, and indeed, my entire CD collection, arrived a week ago. I first learned of the existence of The Beatles in Mono set in April of last year. Slightly less than a year later, I am finally a proud owner.

   The journey has been long, and I admit, looked bleak at times. Because of its limited edition status, the set essentially sold out before it was even released, which cast serious doubt on my ever owning it, and temporarily sending me into a serious mope. I still suspect that this was an attempt on EMI’s part to create an artificial excitement for the set — the “If it’s sold out this quickly, it must be good” mentality. Even if I was manipulated in such a callous manner, it’s a moot point; I would have wanted this set even if you could find it at every Wal Mart and Walgreens between here and Topeka.

   Exactly why I wanted it so badly is another question. Since I announced my fervent desire for this set, I have been asked by nearly everyone, “why mono?” Mono, as we know, is only half of stereo, and very often, not even the best half. Why on earth would I pay for something that is going to, by its very design, limit my listening experience?

   Well, for starters, there’s the fact that this was what The Beatles intended most of their songs to sound like. When the group recorded its first album in 1962 — the exalted year of my birth — hi-fi stereo units were the province of rich audiophiles, and stereo recordings had all the earmarks of a pricy, gimmicky fad. The bulk of the record-buying public spun monophonic platters on a record player equipped with but a single speaker — as were most car and portable radios.

   My own experience from those days was no different. I first heard The Beatles as a no-doubt cranky 1-year old who was trying be convinced to go to sleep by my sisters. A few years after that, I started my journey into music appreciation sitting in front of an orange and white portable record player with a single speaker. While my sisters both had access to players with built-in stereo speakers about the same time, it wasn’t until the early 70s that I got regular use of one myself. Radios took even longer to make the switch — the new kitchen radio we bought for my mother in the late 70s was a mono unit as well.

Because of the predominance of mono, The Beatles and George Martin put all of their time and effort into the mono recordings. They did this until near the end of their partnership; only Yellow Submarine, Let It Be and Abbey Road are stereo-only. In fact, George Harrison once talked about how suspicious he was of stereo at first because the extra speaker diluted the sound.

   So it’s little surprise that The Beatles, and occasionally not even George Martin, weren’t even in the building when the stereo masters were done. For them, the finished version was the mono version. So one of the main reasons for shelling out the extra dough was for the sake of simple historical reference — back in the day, this was what they wanted the songs to sound like.

   Once the mono set was in my hands, and I had a chance to compare the mono mixes with the stereo versions, I realized the true value of this. The mono versions serve as a great road map to what both the Beatles and Martin considered to be the important elements of the song. Sometimes, an instrument or vocal part that's buried in the stereo mix rises to prominence in the mono version. And occassionaly, the mono versions even sound better than their stereo counterparts.

   Before I go further, please understand that I am blown away by the stereo remasters. Each and every one of them have something that was sometimes lacking in the 1987 CD versions — separation and accuracy.

   You should also know that my preferred method for listening is with earphones or headphones. This is for two reasons; first, it spares the rest of the house the both of having to listen to what I’m in the mood for, and second (and most important), it allows me to focus much more easily on individual parts. One of the invaluable lessons I gained from my days as an active musician was an appreciation of the way individual parts go to make up a cohesive whole. It is the single thing I value most about music.

   There is a scene in the movie Amadeus that I adore; Salieri is taking musical dictation of a requiem mass from his rival, Mozart, while the latter is too ill to compose. As we watch, Mozart, from his sickbed, sings the individual parts of the confutatis section to him one by one; first the percussion, then the brass; then the individual string parts, and finally, the vocal parts. As he sings each part, you hear the actual part being played by the instrument in question as he sings it to Salieri. Finally, Mozart takes the music from Salieri, brings his hand down as if he’s conducting an orchestra, and the entire glorious piece is played back from the beginning, all parts intact. It is a brilliant way of giving the viewer insight into how a whole song is made up of individual parts, and how beautifully those parts can intertwine.

   The new stereo masters allow this to a remarkable degree. I can easily follow each individual line; much is being made of the way the new remasters cement Ringo’s invaluable contribution as a drummer, but for me, one of the jewels is the way it allows me to focus on Paul McCartney’s virtuoso bass work. McCartney has always been in my top five of all-time greatest rock bassists, but I never really emulated his style, or tried to re-create his lines, the way I did with Geddy Lee of Rush, Chris Squire of Yes, or John Entwhistle of The Who. If I’d had access to these discs when I was actively playing, I likely would have been committing Mr. McCartney’s work to memory as well. As it was, his contributions were often muddy, and buried at the bottom of the mix next to Ringo.

   That’s certainly not the case in the new stereo masters. All of the instruments on the stereo mixes sound incredibly clear and lifelike; it’s like sitting in the middle of the band while they’re recording. For example, the crashing opening chord in the stereo mix of “A Hard Day’s Night” reveals not just the chime of a Rickenbacker 12-string, but also an acoustic guitar and bass. The sound is so realistic, I can easily make out what kind of bass McCartney is using on a given track just from the sound of it. And in fact, the quality of the bass part on the mono mixes is one of the main things I have against the set.  The bass on many of the mono songs I’ve heard — I’ll give “Nowhere Man” as an example — are unpleasantly muddy and indistinct; precisely what I disliked about Paul’s playing when I was a young musician. I realize now it wasn’t his fault — that was the best that could be managed with the recording equipment of that time.

   But this ‘fault’ — that the monos have a lot of the flaws I remember from my youth — is also the mono set’s greatest strength. Because, at the end of the day, the mono versions sound like to original releases a lot of us heard in 1960s. I was completely sold on the mono set from the moment I heard the mono version of “I Want To Hold Your Hand.” I have fond memories of spinning the original 45 rpm single of this tune on that orange record player I mentioned, but the song has never sounded quite right since the ’87 CDs. Now I know why. The Past Masters Vol. 1 version was in stereo; I remember from my youth must have been in mono, because the mono version sounds right for the first time in a long, long time. In some cases, it’s like getting the music you loved back.

   Conversely, there are times when the stereo versions, as well done as they are, simply don’t sound like the same song. Sometimes, the stereo is a great boon — “Nowhere Man,” for example, which has a big, spacious clarity that compliments the song beautifully, especially in comparison with the mono version’s cramped muddiness. Just a few tracks later, though, the same spacious quality in the stereo mix completely undoes “In My Life” into an incoherent jumble of (admittedly great-sounding) parts, while the tight, clean mono version sounds like a cohesively-mixed song, and one that sounds better than it ever has.

   There are some disappointments in both sets. For example, both the mono and 1965 stereo versions of Help are generally lifeless, and sound, to use a borrowed phrase, as if they were dubbed from a cassette. As of this writing, I have no idea if the 2009 stereo mix follows suit.

   Happily, there are also some new revelations as well. For example, there’s a curious silence during the falling arpeggios played by George Harrison in Help’s title track. Further investigation revels that a full measure of Ringo’s drums, including a fading cymbal crash, and the light beat of a floor tom keeping time, were scrubbed from the mono version. This further showcases Harrison’s part, and ads a new ‘surprise’ to a song I’ve heard hundreds of times over.

   This brings me to the final, glorious, fun of both sets — the two versions are so different, in so many different ways, that one could devote weeks or months to just going over the differences in the mixes between the two albums. Needless to say, this is precisely what I intend to do, from the beginning, once I obtain the final pieces of the puzzle — the stereo remasters of Please Please Me, Beatles For Sale, Help and Yellow Submarine. In the meantime, I’ll be happily get acquainted with both new versions for a long time to come.

   So what versions should you get? That’s easy. Unless you’re a completist when it comes to the Fab Four, go for the stereo versions. You can buy them piecemeal, and you’re probably going to be a lot happier with the sound.

   Sorry if this post was overlong; I’m afraid I was writing this one for myself, and neglected to follow the first rule of writing — namely, “pity the reader.” I shall return in a few weeks with a hopefully non-partisan discussion of Macs vs. PC debate. You have been warned...

Fiat Accompli

Almost a year ago, I put up a fairly longish post about The Beatles box sets that were due to be released in September. I explained in some detail why I was going to spend what, for me, was an absurd sum of money in order to own both the stereo and mono box sets. And I left the reader with the impression that the purchase of both sets would take place shortly after their release, or shortly after Christmas at the latest.

That estimate was, as it turns out, rather wrong.

By the time Sept. 9 rolled around, my wife and I were still in the process of paying for my new MacBook Pro. One CD box set, let alone two, was simply out of the question. Weeks went by, and still, I hadn't so much as heard one of the remastered. I couldn't afford the set, so there was nothing I could do. And slowly, but surely, I started getting twitchy.

It took me until mid-October before my wife finally convinced me to give in, and just buy one or two to tide me over. I chose Abbey Road and The White Album, and was delighted to learn that they were all that I'd hoped for, and a bit more. Since I wanted to own the entire catalog as soon as possible, and since my bank account was still no great shakes, I began to revise my strategy. As the stereo box really had nothing in them but the individual discs that were commonly available, I decided to start picking the remasters up a few titles at a time, and leave the elusive mono box as the big prize. Maybe if I'd been buying drugs instead of CDs, I might have recognized what atrocious rationalizing this was. At the time, though, it seemed perfectly reasonable and logical.

As to the grand prize itself, I will spare you the tale of how the mono box sold out completely virtually before it was released, and how great my chagrin and suffering was that I would never lay hands on it because I couldn't afford to pre-order it when I had the chance. Suffice it to say, by the time Christmas rolled around, EMI had rescinded the set's "limited edition" status, and both sets were in stock at Amazon. About twice a month, I would check the site to make sure the set was still available, and promise myself "some day."

"Some day" is apparently today. This morning, over the usual stumblings of the morning, and amid the haste to begin going about our respective days, my wife said the words "Easter present" when I brought the mono box up for the upteenth time. And after having a day to consider both it, and our financial situation, I acquiesced, and reached for my debit card. And with much fear, wonder, and trembling, I overcame my reluctance to spend that much money on myself, and ordered the silly thing.

So, the thing is done. My copy of the mono box is on its way. I am equal parts excited and relieved, but most of all, I am grateful. Grateful that I have a wife who loves me enough to think that spending $166 on a set of mono recordings of a musical catalog I already own nearly twice over is a reasonable use of our money. Grateful that EMI decided to manufacture the silly little trinkets long enough for me to scrape the money together. And most of all, I am very, very grateful that I have received so many blessings in my life that I can put so much energy into the luxury of fretting about things like my music collection.

Facebook is eating my brain, and I don't seem to care

This past week, I joined FarmVille on Facebook. May God have mercy on my soul.

For those who don't know, FarmVille is a Facebook app that lets you grow pretend crops, sell them for pretend money, and do favors and send gifts to your real friends, who are also busy in the growing of fake food, milking fake cows, etc.

I had no choice in the matter whatsoever. Last Sunday, my wife told me "I don't care if you play it or not, but you have to join FarmVille so that I can get a bigger farm."

Now, I love my wife, and live to help her anytime I can without movement or labor being involved. So I signed onto my Facebook profile, and accepted her Farmville friend requests I'd been ignoring for the past 4 months. I planted my first crop (soybeans and strawberries, I think), and walked away.

Now, here I am, one week later, waiting to harvest a rice crop that takes up most of my arable land, and plotting my days around when I have be available to harvest crops. It is the nature of this insidious little game that you can always get a bigger harvest, or more stuff. Seemingly, the game only takes 5 or 10 minutes of your time. Seven or eight times a day. Or more. And because the game is so addictive, you don't really care.

I've already got my exit strategy in place for when I inevitably get tired of feeding make-believe people. One day, I will sell all my animals, leave my land fallow, and put up a sign telling any visitors that I have gone away to read and play in the sunshine — another abandoned virtual farm on the vast digital landscape.

And I think I should do it soon.

Unless, of course, I make level ten. I've always wanted my own cranberry bog.

Mini movie review — "The Da Vinci Code"

With my daughter staying the night at a friend's house last night, my wife and I decided to watch The Da Vinci Code for the first time. Thanks to donations from family members, I have had a hardback edition of the book, as well as an audio cassette version, for several years. However, I had become resigned to the fact I was never going to read either one, and that the movie version in this case would do just fine.

As a movie, Da Vinci works pretty well; it's suspenseful, and has an interesting narrative and subject matter. Plus, I like the idea of a symbologist as an action hero. The scenes illustrating his thought processes as he tries to crack a puzzle are pretty neat to watch.

An impressive stable of actors has been recruited here, and the performances are pretty solid throughout. Particularly enjoyable for me were the always-impeccable Sir Ian McKellan and the likewise first-rate Paul Bettany. Jurgen Prochnow was also enjoyable in his role, as was Alfred Molina.

That said, a lot of the plot twists were seen coming a mile off, both by my wife and myself, so there were few real surprises. Most alarming, it plays extremely fast-and-loose, and somewhat cynically, with church history. Some of the conclusions it takes are decidedly from a certain point of view, and, just based on my limited knowledge of the subject, it takes a cafeteria approach to both gnosticism and some of the so-called "missing" gospels. I'm no one's expert on that subject, but from where I see things now, it seemed as if they were taking a lot of things out of context to try to justify their conclusions.

So, overall, as a movie, I give it a solid B, but a theological and historical D-.

Long time, no see

If blogs were houses, this one would be the house on the corner that the family moved out of a couple months ago; freezing inside, somewhat dusty and moldy, completely barren, and starting to give way to the elements. Life, the holidays and Facebook have effectively diverted my attentions elsewhere.

No longer; it is a new year, and I haven't given up on this little diversion just yet. I have just been refreshed by prolonged contact with 'purt near everyone in my extended and scattered family, and am eyeing the coming year with a sense of optimism and purpose.

To that end, I plan to go back to the 'notes on the refrigerator' school of blogging. I may post the occasional essay. but like as not, it will just be 'thoughts for the day.' After all, what's the point of being brilliant if I don't share (he said, tongue firmly in cheek).

We'll begin our journey into my mental processes with a quick thought about the Twilight series. As many know, author Stephanie Meyer is a Mormon, and I've just pieced together what I believe is a bit of Christian symbolism included in her books, unintentional or no.

The "good" vampires, the Cullens, are "vegetarians" — living on animal blood, and not human. This isn't a new idea; Anne Rice did the same thing in Interview With A Vampire. But in so doing, the vampires in both books are rebelling against their created nature, and choosing a moral path rather than a natural one.

In the same way, Christians rebel against their created nature, and live according to a moral path rather than a natural one. There are a hundred temptations we resist each week that our natural impulses tells us to give in to. They can appear small; white lies, excessive venting about why we're angry with someone, and other little moral shortcuts. Or, for some, they can loom large: fighting the urge to drink or smoke; resisting the urge to cheat on one's spouse, or any of the multitude of demons and compulsions being fought at this very minute around the globe. Either way, it is a seemingly natural drive that we, like the Cullens, resist because we are heeding "the better angels of our nature."

Now whether or not Meyer intended to be that deep is a question for further debate.