Mission Impossible Notes

While visiting Solvang one of the past trips, likely the most recent Thanksgiving, Cass and Uncle Val were perusing the menu on their enormous television. Cass probably said, "Whoa! What's that?" and Uncle Val surely said, "Aw, Cass! That's Tom Cruise and he's awesome. This is a Mission Impossible movie!" and he hit play. I came in later and the 7th film in the series was playing, Dead Reckoning is its subtitle.

I caught most of it, and knew about some of the scenes (like the motorcycle off the cliff), and can say I enjoyed it, mostly. It doesn't really have a conclusion as much as it ends, and the credits roll, and we get ready for the second half, the 8th film in the franchise with the ominous subtitle The Final Reckoning.

I came across some think pieces about the badassery of Tom Cruise in the ridiculous stunts throughout both this franchise as well as other Cruise-related films, and felt compelled to go back and rewatch this series.

But "rewatch" isn't accurate, since I hadn't ever scene any of the Mission Impossible movies. I did watch the 1988 reboot series, with Stefano's son Tony DiMera in the rubber-mask-on-face role and Peter Graves as the boss-man, and enjoyed the espionage content as much as any ten-ish year old.

But by 1996, when Mission Impossible the First was released, I was deep into my classic-movie rabbit-hole and had a Tom Cruise-shaped middle-finger blotting out projects he starred in. Even Corrie saw it and, against type for her, remembered a fair amount of it.

It was after the think pieces about action set pieces that I perused the Web...could I find a box set of DVDs reasonably priced...where were they streaming...and then last month, Corrie and Cass announced: Mission Impossibles, 1 through 5, leaving Netflix on April 30th.

Since we only watch the television in earnest on weekends, after 3pm, let's say we had some intense Tom Cruise afternoon/evenings. Brian dePalma, John Woo, Joss Whedon...directors from all over the "action" world come in and do their thing. Jon Voit, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg (playing the Ving Rhames role), Alec Baldwin(?), Jeremy Renner(??), even Angela Bassett and Henry Cavill and Philip Seymour Hoffman and Emilio Estevez?

The flow of women isn't quite James Bondian, but it's a thing, and you hope they develop someone beyond "hot for Ethan Hunt" or "someone for Ethan to be hot for." Is his wife (Michele Monaghan) someone who fits that bill? Nah...I guess the best foil would be Ilsa (Rebecca Ferguson). Maybe Agent Carter from the last two...?

Anyway, after four or five of these movies, while talking with Corrie, I realized that I didn't have a favorite. None of them were, for me, like, this is the one I'd watch again for pleasure, or, this is the one that hits all the right story beats.

That changed, though, for me. I do have a favorite now, and I'll give the reasons, similar to my bullet-point thesis about why Rogue One is the best Star Wars movie.

Mission Impossible: Fallout is the best Mission Impossible movie. It's number 6, so there's a ton of history built up, but watching them in order in close time to each other helped with the characters.

• It has Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg and nobody else on the team burning up time---no Jeremy Renner, no extra helpers beyond perpetually wobbly Alec Baldwin;
• It has two ladies for Ethan Hunt (Cruise, if you didn't know by now) to be complicated with, both his ex-wife (Michele Monaghan) and a MI6 British counterpart Ilsa, who both have complicated feelings for him, and he can't have either, nor does he really want either;
• The bad-guy group again has a stupid collective name (the Apostles)
• The bad-guy brains-of-the-op is smug and revenge hungry, but doesn't give me anxiety like the late, great Hoffman;
• The bad-guy muscles-of-the-op is awesome and menacing;
• Cruise ready to go with the CIA op team in the catacomb is peak "Ethan Hunt is still, actually, the good-est good-guy" moment.
• It has dual simultaneous nuclear bomb-disarming teams working against the clock (naturally) while Ethan chases down the other badguy in a helicopter. It's a helicopter chase scene.

I don't think I've ever wanted one helicopter to ram another helicopter as bad as when I watched this scene. There have been a few times in my life when I've wanted to holler and cheer while watching a scene. This helicopter scene as as close as it's been in a while. (In the first Expendables, when Sly dumps the fuel on the badguys on their fly-by and then blasts it just to ignites it? That was one...)

The Burj-Kalifa excursion; the motorcycle off the cliff to parachute to the train; the bar is set pretty high, and while the helicopter chase from "Fallout" isn't the same as these two scenes, it's part of a satisfying whole. Which led me to:

• Fallout is the 6th film, meaning you know the goodguy team will win---those stakes are pretty nonexistent. I mean, "They're gonna nuke the food supply for two-billion people!" is a pretty good pickle to have to solve, but you never think they won't, and I'm fine with that. It's in witnessing the execution that the fun happens.

To recap: two complicated love-interests with no actual romance happening; no extra people on the team; awesome badguy boss that doesn't give me anxiety like PSH; helicopter chase scene while everyone else is diffusing nukes; Angela Bassett.

Maybe Final Reckoning will be the bestest best. I reserve the right to change my opinion, but it's a tall ask for this viewer to be better than Fallout.

May the 4th

We've got March 14th (Pi Day), and now we claim May 4th as Star Wars Day, or at least we lean into it some more. At first I was confused. Why May 4th? Say it out loud, I was told: "May the 4th be with you."

Ohhhhkkkaaaayyy. 

And now Disney+ is also leaning heavily into it, with their splash screen heavy duty with Star Wars stuff. Awesome...now we, the capital-N Nerds have at least two days.

There's also, going on year 20-ish, Free Comic Book Day, the first Saturday in May. At our local shop it was quite well-attended:

Cass and I waited in lone to make a donation to a local food bank and grabbed some free stuff. This year it looked like there was a competition going on:

Some of the comics were labeled "Free Comic Book Day", while others were labeled "Comics Giveaway Day." Um...what?

It turns out the FCBD label and logo was owned by Diamond Distribution, who had a de-facto monopoly over the distribution of most of titles available. It began to unravel when DC Comics broke away, and once Marvel joined them, their days were numbered. Diamond went under and the distribution rights went (mostly) to two different companies, Universal and Penguin, but only Universal has the rights to the logo and name, so, to compete, Penguin's distribution arm went with CGD. 

Is this the only year we get this competition? Are we, the readers and fans, the true winners?

Can we claim Life Day, November 17th, too?

Happy May Day

May 1st is the International Labor Day, and for the workers in the world, Huzzah!

And, for the day (kinda like on 420 this year) as an adjacent topic, let me share something I think gets lost in the American educational system, or, really, the teaching-history part of school, age 5 to 18 (besides the Parkers and the Harrisons): the founding of Haiti.

I remember lessons on the Mongols and the Mughals, but not the Franks nor the Saxons. We got some Mesopotamia history (good) but almost no Mesoamerica (lame).

Did you know that Haiti was the only country in the world that was founded by a rebellion of enslaved people? Enslaved Africans and natives from the island, called Haiti (or 'Ayti') in Taino, had a successful insurrection and threw out their French oppressors. 

Is it shocking that we were never told about that in school? The enslaved rebelled, successfully, and founded a nation. Is it shocking that few countries came to its aid when the Spanish side organized and engaged them in war? Is it shocking that in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake, the international response seemed like a shoulder shrug and a juvenile, "Sucks for you, bro?"

I think we should find a way to celebrate Haiti and its founding as an important step in the Enlightenment era. It was the first country in the Western hemisphere to abolish slavery, obviously; but they're also the most likely to be declared a failed state...obviously, especially when no one wants to help.

Also, I want to learn more about Simon Bolivar and South American revolutions---which all happened after Haiti, by the by.

Anyway, maybe this is all stemming from witnessing the slow motion dissolving of the American democratic experiment, aided and abated by a pro-fascist group of terrified bigots. Maybe we all should fly the flag of Corsica, the large Mediterranean island that is currently a French holding, but remains a difficult place to colonize and/or subdue. The flag is called "the Moor's head," and represents marginalized people battling occupiers:

Anyway, Happy May Day!

And, if you're interested...

At the Dentist

I was at the dentist, waiting in the lobby with Camille for a 5pm (WTF?) appointment for some X-rays and a cleaning, and the television was on up in the corner of the room.

When I'm there in my own, I usually read in their outdated magazines and ignore the H&G Network shows they air in perpetuity. (Everybody else is on their phone, obviously.)

This time Camille was goofing around in my lap and paying half-attention to the show, and we caught some of the premise. It was a show about "winning the lottery" on getting a house. Cool, I thought, people won a house?

The host is a slender gay Asian man, highly tattooed, and he approaches the 'winners' and makes a scene where they all celebrate and show off for the camera, and the 'winners' are couples. At the end of the celebrating, he asks, "So...how much money are you giving me to find your new house?"

So...these 'winners' really just won the chance to have a TV show follow them as they shop for a new home? And have this cool personality do the legwork for them? Right? That's what I could gather in the few minutes this first episode aired.

So, the tattooed Asian guy is asking how much will you give me, the music crescendos and then cuts out, and the couple announces: "One-hundred thousand."

Um...okay...besides 15 months in Austin and 6 months in Sacramento, I've spent the last 26 years living in San Luis Obispo, New York City, and Southern California, three places that have more cars in the $100k price range than houses.

$100k? For a house? IS THIS EVEN POSSIBLE IN AMERICA TODAY?

The answer is, yes, absolutely this is possible. In fact, the specific episode of this show was filmed in Cincinnati, where, as per the show's structure, the host finds three places that fit their desires and budget, and he did this exact thing. One cost $110k, one cost $87k, and the last cost $84k.

Two houses that cost less than one-hundred-thousand dollars.

That must be my California showing.

We waited a while in that waiting room, even watching the beginning of the next episode, where a couple in South Florida won a lottery and wanted to upgrade their home, and they had a half-million to spend. And, a half-million will get you some crazy stuff in Jupiter, Florida, it can at least get you 780 sq. ft. in Long Beach.

For all the waiting, this is a pretty cool dentist. They rock you in and out, once you get out of the lobby. Plus, we ride bikes over there. Pretty sweet.

Mario Galaxy and Promethazine

The trip to Solvang at the beginning of April was great, but while there I came down with whatever the kids had: my body was achy and run-down, my face was all congested, and I had a hearty cough. One day in the morning before work, my eyes felt like I was having a hay-fever attack, or some other kind of allergic deal, but I don't normally have allergies. So...

After a second day of painful eyes, terrible sleep, a nasty cough and a stuffy nose, I went to checked out. They took mercy on me and gave me a script for eye drops, some nice decongestant, and a plastic hip flask of promethazine.

Back in the summer of '98, Vallejo-based rapper Celly Cel released his most famous single, "Pop the Trunk." I mention this random tidbit because this song was the first time I ever heard of promethazine, as guest rappers UGK (Underground Kingz) rap the lyric "Sippin' on promethazine, poppin' the trunk." (The song still hits, for what it's worth.)

Cut to the next Saturday and I feel pretty much better, and we're headed wit the kids to go see Mario Galaxy in the theater. I did enjoy the Super Mario Movie from a few years back: it was a low-stakes story that tried to 1) make the gameplay feel like a natural part of the world the characters (from Earth) were thrust into; and 2) stuff a bunch of easter eggs into the movie, foreground and background. Mission accomplished on both fronts. It's absurd, but fun.

This movie, the sequel, Mario Galaxy, felt like the best outcome for making the gameplay from the more advanced Super Mario Galaxy games feel natural and/or novel, with easter eggs galore, and Yoshi! I especially liked how Yoshi kinda shows up and immediately gets adopted into the crew, with only Toad being like, "What's with the dinosaur?"

But, the movie theater in 2026 has reclining seats, swivel trays like a college classroom built-in desk, and they sell beer.

Saturday afternoon, bike riding to the movie house, taking a big swig of codeine-powered promethazine, getting a big tall beer, kicked back in a recliner watching a low-stakes feast for the eyeballs with my kids? 

Living the dream!

Now, if I could only get some time for me and Corrie...just the two of us...

Birthdays are for Those who Love You

A great line from "That '70s Show" is when Red Foreman, the patriarch of the family is upset about having to do this or that for his own birthday, and he pines, "Isn't it my birthday? Isn't this day for me?" And Kitty, his family-and-household-running wife laughs and says, "No! It's for the people who love you!" And she sends him on some kind errand (or commands he take his pants off, I can't remember exactly).

M birthday was this past week, and I'm pretty sure my kids were more excited than I was.

They were on Spring Break and went shopping. They picked out a bunch of clothes, which is nice, because clothing is one of the few things I care very little about, and they have better taste than me anyway.

They wrapped them, stuffed the wrapped presents into random bags, then stashed the bags around the house and had me "scavenger hunt" for them. Then they mostly sat in my lap as I opened each one, breathlessly watching.

It was a good time, even as we try to figure ourselves out in this world.

The Pelagic Nature of Long Drives

Sometimes, as the mind wanders during hour two of a five hour stint along Interstate 40, I start to imagine the highway like the open ocean's water column, its verticality mapped onto the horizontal axis.

Tiny drifts of plankton, moving up the column to eat even tinier oceanic rotifers, and, as the sun descends behind, and the hours pile up and we start driving towards night, it's almost like we're heading higher and higher into the safe darkness.

The tiny animals that drift up in the night and then back down as the sun brightens the sky constitute the biggest mass migration on earth, and it happens daily. Trillions upon trillions of organisms feel a margin of safety once it gets dark, and then stuff happens. They move up and feed on smaller things, and larger animals eat them.

And larger animals eat them. And tiny fish eat them and become plentiful. Eventually they school in enormous numbers, and away the food chain goes.

The life cycle in the open ocean, the pelagic life cycle, and my brain spends half its energy on surrounding traffic, and the other half imagining that we're just a marine mote riding up and down the column.

Interstate 40, from Barstow to Amarillo, is long, straight, and far more mellow than the similarly long and straight I-5, or even I-10. I-40 is quiet, populated by few trucks---slow moving larvae in the column---and virtually no jerks that feel they must be in the fast lane going the speed limit. 

I thought that I wrote this piece before, and when I couldn't find it under my searches, I thought I should type it up. Why now? I have no idea. I've been hammering away at a large project and needed to decompress, and haven't been sleeping well, and maybe that's been bringing me back to these weird metaphors for the slow 1800-mile boogie.

Also, I like the idea that something could be titled "The Pelagic Nature of Long Distance Interstate Driving," and that then the title could seem too verbose for a blog post, and that it could be edited down to what we see here.

Maybe that's what this is about. Maybe its about Artemis II hurtling back to Earth today. About solitude, about making slow progress, about placement in the vast sea on earth...also, about the funny looks people give you when you use a word like 'pelagic' in normal conversations.

Me: Can I get the receipt on 8? (Corrie tracks the cost for work.)

Attendant: 'Course. (Bzzt-bzzt-bzzt) Long drive, huh? Where y'all coming from?

Me: Ooph...southern California. On the road to past Amarillo...

Attendant: Wow! Howzit going so far?

Me: (Still in a daze) Well...you know, just contemplating the pelagic nature of the drive...

Attendant: ..........

I think I have something here to explore more later. Always procuring projects, like Sick-Boy and his "contacts." (Also, random Trainspotting reference!)