On our trip to Montana, I brought three books. The first I started and finished en route. The second I started en route and finished flying home. Of the third I read the next four chapters while BARTing home. But that doesn’t mean Moby Dick will be showing up here any time soon. I’m still only on page 162.

Long book, that Moby Dick. But I have finished these:

☞

030) Saints Volume 3: Boldly, Nobly, and Independent, 1893–1955, finished April 11

I loved this book, the first of Saints that I’ve read through (slightly embarrassing as I have a number of friends who’ve worked on them). First, I recognize this is something of a trendy book in that it believes history isn’t just Great Man but examples of all the other people as well, “smaller” people doing “smaller” things. The thing is: I think that is great. We need to know what’s happening in Cincinnati and Berlin as much as we do inner Salt Lake sanctums. Otherwise, it’s not a history of the Church.

Anyway, I’ve already cited it in talks and even more in conversation. I liked getting to be friends with people now dead. That’s one of my favorite things. Love it.

Plus, it’s written in a cheery accessible way (without avoiding necessary darkness) and in bitesize pieces which make it perfect for pulling out during a solo breakfast or while waiting for someone to finish their shower. Which is largely how I read it.

Plus, knowing the amount of work that the team put into capturing things with accuracy—every quotation is a quotation, every sunny day was sunny in just that way—while making everything feel as natural as a Judy Blume novel, is just an astonishing accomplishment of both scholarship and artistry.

(Also, hilariously (but thought-provokingly), share this fun fact at your next writing group, they built the books using savethecat as a model.)

almost four years

☞

031) Wrapped in Plastic: Twin Peaks by Andy Burns, finished April 11

Six years ago I read the Pop Classics on Calvin & Hobbes which remains one of the finest (and most pleasurable) works of criticism in my experience. This volume on Twin Peaks doesn’t reach that level—it’s more praise and fun facts—but absolutely worth the time I spent reading it. Plus, it’s persuaded me to seek out other things (eg, the Psych episode that has over 700 Twin Peaks references which was delightful).

They’ve released a lot more since I last checked (Jurassic Park! Clueless! Labyrinth!) and, as there are now more I want to read, Imahafta.

But, also, it makes me want to finish my Napoleon Dynamite pitch. Someone needs to write that book and here I am, right here, available. (Soon as I finish this novel....)

perhaps a month

☞

032) After 1903—What? by Robert Benchley, finished April 15

I love Benchley’s short videos which is why the last time I read one of his books, I made a vaguely Benchleyesque video in response:

More recently, when I interrupted my Benchley reading for Dave Barry‘s memoir, I was delighted to learn that Dave Barry counts Benchley as one of his heroes and continues to reread him to this day. I felt in good company.

And a Benchley collection really is the ideal bedside companion. He’s a charming host, sometimes very funny, pleasantly old-fashioned, and the essays are all very short. I assume they were written for newspaper syndication but the book never says.

Speaking of, what the heck does After 1903—What? mean, anyway? The collection came out in 1938. So 1903 was 35 years earlier. Robert Benchley was born in 1889 so he turned 14 in 1903 and 50 in 1938. This does not help me any. I suspect it was a funny title in 1938, but why? Why???

Here’s my copy:

Here’s another version:

Neither of these covers makes the title any clearer to me.

You’re welcome to read it yourself and explain the thing to me.

Or you can watch an actually entertaining video from the man himself:

could be less than one year or maybe it was two

☞

033) Money: The True Story of a Made-up Thing by Jacob Goldstein, finished May 4

Loved it. Goldstein is a Planet Money reporter and the book shares that smart but accessible vibe. It covers everything from about four thousand years ago to 2020 and it opened my eyes to a lot of things I thought I understood and things I did not understand and even things I already understood. It’s a swift journey through posibility, which is the real thing. Things need not be the way they are. We know that because they haven’t been that way long. They haven’t been any way long.

Solid work of popular nonfiction. Recommended.

one or two or three weeks

☞

034) Montana 1948 by Larry Watson, finished May 6

We have five essentially new ex-library copies of this novel. Some teacher had got them purchased then couldn’t have used them more than a time or two. Then they sat for a decade or more before being tossed.

I grabbed five because “Montana.” The Big O was considering Missoula for school and I thought maybe reading this together could be a fun family activity. Currently we’re flying to Missoula for O’s graduation so obviously that didn’t happen. But Lady Steed grabbed two of them for us to read on the trip then give to O and his girlfriend when we finished.

Well, it’s probably best we didn’t read this with a 12yrold even thought that’s the age of the protagonist. Some of the blurbs compare this to To Kill a Mockingbird and part of the reason is the integrity of the father figure but it’s also because of the darkness that fuels the novel’s plot.

So why has this 1993 novel not had the lasting power of TKAM? They are similar in theme and quality. Its darkness might be slightly too clear for most high-school teachers. And it’s probably slightly too short. But the biggest reason might be the title. Montana 1948 is fine, I guess, but it had little evocative power compared to, say, To Kill a Mockingbird. No competition.

I was looking in the text for a better title for the novel. I found options, but it’s too late now.

It is a good book, though. I wonder if it will grow in my estimation as time passes.

[Spoiler: between handwriting this review on May 6 and typing it May 13, it already has.]

from sfo to slc

☞

035) Clever Girl: Jurassic Park by Hannah McGregor, finished May 11

A lot of “populist” queer writing shares a rhetorical problem: it makes no space for people who don’t already agree with whatever is being said. (Sometimes it even makes enemies our of allies for good measure.) Unless you’re already fully converted, you’re a damn fool and there is not enough time in the world to explain things for you.

This sort of anger is understandable—plenty of queer people fairly feel the world feels this way about them, but this stance not only fails to gain converts, it can’t even attain an audience.

Which isn’t to say Hannah McGregor isn’t angry. In her acknowledgements she calls Clever Girl an angry book. But her writing here is also sad and open and funny and deeply personably. Even if you came into Clever Girl convinced she’s wrong about averything, you’ll leave the book feeling friendly toward her and understanding why she feels the way she does, how she came to feel that way, and probably sympathetic to her argument.

(It occurs to me that one of Clever Girl‘s themes—the depth of time—might partly explain how she’s able to provide this context even to those who might start off assuming she’s batty.)

Which argument is excellent, by the way. No just her exegesis of Jurassic Park, but every part of reality which it comes into contact with.

This is the most personal of the three Pop Classics I’ve read, but that deep personal connection is the engine that runs the intellectual vehicle that is Clever Girl.

Good stuff.

(recommended companion readings: my favorite thing is monsters one and two)

one week

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ELSEWHERE
Hoopla

Strawberry Mansion (2021)

First, I like how Birney isn’t afraid to connect his movie through reusing props or even characters which making no attempt to suggest this is some sort of shared universe.

Second, I love how deleriously weird it is and yet students don’t hate it. I’m bummed we finished right at the bell. I should have intentionally started it twenty minutes late so conversation could pick right up as the movie ends, but I trust it’ll go well tomorrow. People were mostly saying good things as they left the classroom.

Also, so nice to have some pink after starting the day with 12 Monkeys and Children of Men. This might even have a happy ending! Maybe!


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12 Monkeys (1995)

I don’t know why I’m not a bigger Terry Gilliam fan. Feels like his aesthetic should appeal more to me. I’m almost a hundred pages into Gilliam on Gilliam right now! But I don’t love any of his movies. It’s kind of a bummer.

But I did like 12 Monkeys on this rewatch. I’ve seen La Jetée several times since watching 12 Monkeys the first time circa 2003 and so this time I didn’t really need to figure out what was going on. Or so I thought. I did not pick up on the identity of that woman in the final scene even though the subtitles identified her as Astrophysicist. Thank goodness I have students around to explain things to me.

Anyway, I like that there’s this ambiguity about his sanity but the movie never really takes that seriously. We have empathy for poor confused James Cole but we largely only believe he’s confused because the movie insists on it. There’s nothing in the storytelling that makes us doubt him.

It gets into the tragedy of time travel’s inherent, paradoxical nature while being a fun mid-to-low-budget star vehicle.


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Children of Men (2006)

Arguably the most acclaimed dystopian movie I haven’t yet seen. A mid-apocalyptic film. No baby’s been born, anywhere in the world, for over eighteen years. What governments are left are autocratic nightmares, rounding up refugees and doing nothing good with them.

And then: hope.

I don’t watch a lot of war films so keep that in mind when I say this film gave me more sense of death is entirely out of my hands and anyone could die before this scene is over than just about anything else I’ve seen. But this time, the baby!

It’s beautifully shot. The famous long shots aren’t showy in context. The accidental bloodsplatter works great but I’m happy it was an accident.

Look forward to someday watching it again and glad I own the novel!


ELSEWHERE
YouTube

The Hamster Factor and Other Tales of Twelve Monkeys (1996)

This is a terrific verite making-of. It’s fascinating to watch Terry Gilliam at work.

The title of this doc comes from one scene with a hamster in the background which, if you’re like me, you probably have not noticed, which brought production to a near halt until they could get the darn thing to work.

You wonder if Terry Gilliam would be happier if he’d stuck with animation and put together a Don Herztfeldt–style career.

But then he gets a happy ending—his movie opens at number one in every country it opens in. But can he be happy? Doesn’t seem like it....

There’s probably a lesson in here for us. Maybe it’s on this tshirt his editor wears.


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The Prince of Egypt (1998)

First time watching this since 1998 in a Bakersfield theater where I also saw As Good as It Gets (the new Bond film was sold out; I suspect I liked what I saw better than I would have 007; anyway, otherwise I wouldn’t have ended the night a Greg Kinnear fan). I really liked it. Lightning enlightening the Red Sea remains one of the most awe-inspiring movies I’ve ever had in a movie theater.

But I haven’t seen it since then and remembered very little about it. For instance, it’s a musical! I didn’t know that! Even as it went on, the only music I recognized was the priests’ playing-with-the-big-boys-now number and the final flourish before it cuts to credits.

It’s a beautiful film, still. Some of the cg doesn’t slide in perfectly smoothly, but the mix of 2d animation with clear computer elements (I know: it’s all cg, actually) largely looks great. Whoever animated Moses’s face is a terrific actor. Whoever animated Rameses’ face is an expert at transformation. Zipporah’s face always seems a little out of time, however. But Miriam and Aaron are great!

It really is a slimmed-down and modern-friendly adaptation, but it’s still seems daring for the time and hard to imagine existing today. I think this is the last great Bible epic? Unless you include Passion of the Christ has there even been one to achieved broad popularity since 1998? I’m not doing any research, but I can’t think of one....

In the end, it’s quite good. And I think my favorite cinematic Moses. It’s a well structured film and it gave me meaningful feelings. A fine thing for Holy Saturday.


THEATER
Grand Lake Theatre

Project Hail Mary (2026)

Happy to say I really liked this. I don’t knowy why people were complaining about act three (just that they were) but I would be willing to agree the pacing was a tad off. Lady Steed thought the ending had a tad too much Hollywood cheer. I’m fine with it although, on reflection, perhaps Ryan Gosling should have looked older.

For some reason, my review of the book was in the top two or three most popular posts on Thubstack for years. Why? I don’t know.

Al my complaints about the book are still true but so is all my praise. I enjoyed the book a lot and the things that bugged me about it I don’t remember (or didn’t until just reviewing my review). The movie loses a lot of the fun intellectual-puzzle aspects of the novel, but it’s still just a lot of fun. Sonthree cried a lot, I cried a little, we all laughed a lot. Ryan Gosling’s a movie star. Not everyone can star in Cast Away. Even with a costar that can emote better than Wilson.

(It was fun to listen to the audience react to Rocky.)

Anyway, he probably won’t but I hope he gets awards considerato in at the end of the year. And I can’t wait to see what Lord Miller does next.


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The Old Man & the Gun (2018)

A charming and lovely film. And so different from The Green Knight. Same writer/director—nice to know there are still eclectics in the world.

Great cast and a simple story about taking joy where you find joy. Takes all types, I suppose.

I liked the moment where the brakelights flushed Sissy Spacek’s face. It’s the little things, you know?

(Also, the special features were so great. I challenge everyone to make their cut scenes so beautiful. Sad I cannot also log “Everything Else We Shot” and “Prison Cats” on Letterboxd so I could then praise them in more detail.)


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The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1966)

Here are some things this movie does that movies just don’t do anymore and it’s a shame.

1. Make liberal use of charming and hilarious old ladies. The world is filled with aged actresses who can light up the screen. Why aren’t we still doing this?

2. Innocent romance. The first kiss between Luthor and Alma is so sweet and pure and simple that I count it among my favorite movie kisses. (Even though Don Knotts is 42 and Joan Stapley is 24.) (It’s a shame Don Knotts wasn’t being asked to make movies like this in his twenties.) (His first credit came at age thirty.) This is sufficient romance for a kids movie, thank you.

3. Goofy scores in kiddy horror comedies.

4. Nutsy mysteries that don’t care what Cinema Sins says, the just offer a fun excuse for jump and gags.

5. No-apology silliness.

Where this level of dumb fun in 2026?

We watched this because the 9yrold wanted to watch something and I sent her into the dvds to find something under 100 minutes. Then there was a bit of a narrowing-down process but we arrived here and we had a great time.

Although the 18yrold refused to join us. Being scarred by this movie is a treasured memory for him.


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(don’t ask me where they all come from)
(I don’t know)

A Few Good Men (1992)

A couple things haven’t aged well (the score, the credits) and I’m not totally convinced the movie would enjoy its current reputation if it appeared today, but it’s still pretty great. Such a cast and who doesn’t love an explosive conclusion to a courtroom drama? That’s what we crave! Even if it’s not in the courtroom proper (eg 12 Angry Men), we gotta have that moment. And this one is, I’ll grant, particularly earned. And the explosion is particularly explosive. And the risk Tom Cruise’s character is taking makes the whole thing particularly fraught.

You know what? I think I’ve talked myself into it. It’s better than just pretty great.


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The Fighting Preacher (2019)

Objectively, this isn’t a great movie. But it features comic scenes that are perfectly executed. It has moving scenes that are very effective. It has bits of dialogue and character work that are excellent. And in between those are shots and blocking and other choices that are so obvious as to be inadvertently funny, and egregious fan service. (Only instead of, I don’t know, Spider-Man, it’s Gordon Hinckley. That sort of thing.)

In other words, it’s a very T.C. Christensen movie. I end up really liking it, even though my better judgment has written a long list of reasons not to.

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Saturday at 8:43am Pacific, I finished the first draft of my new (as-yet-untitled) novel. This is exciting, because the novel begins today, no earlier than 6:30pm Mountain (probably more like 9pm Mountain).

When I started the original short-story version of this tale in fall 2024, it was set in April/May 2025. The goal was to get it into the world before the events occurred.

But it never was a short story, so I’ve spent the last year expanding it into a novel that begins April 28, 2026 and ends Monday May 4, 2026. It had to be then (now) because the protagonists needed to graduate from BYU and get married before things start, as you can see from the first page of my MS:

Temples are closed on Sundays and Mondays. Can’t get them married then. And we need a couple days of action before the weekend hits. Tuesday, April 28 it is.

Pre-dating is standard operating procedure with me. Byuck takes place in the 2000–2001 school year. I started writing it in 1999 and finished the first draft in 2004. Just Julie’s Fine takes place fall 2005. I started in in 2004 and finished its first draft in 2012.

I guess I want my books to take place the exact same moment their first readers read them? If so, I haven’t pulled it off yet. And it would take a miracle for this book to appear even next year. Tuesday’s out of the question.

Anyway, at least I got the rough done before the novel starts this time. I’m feeling good about that. I’m undecided if I should dig into the rewrite immediately or follow Stephen King’s advice and sticking it in a drawer until I’ve written something else. We’ll see.

To celebrate draft one though, I wanted to share a bit of how the short story became a novel.

First, it always was a novel. It was apparent from go that I was trying to cram way too much into 6,000 words (ultimately almost 12,000, notwithstanding my efforts at brevity). But still—how did that grow into this?

(Incidentally, mystery novels should generally land between 70,000 and 90,000 words and I was aiming for the upper count. Nailed it!)

How did I get to 89,035 words? Well, of course, I filled in the parts that had gotten short shrit before. But another part of it was simply taking what surrounded me and shoving it into the novel. Here are some examples.

I probably stole more ideas from this book than I remember. I would already own my own copy of this (remember: I loved it) if Lady Steed wasn’t so freaked out by the cover. And, if I did, I could then thumb through its pages and see what else there is to admit to, but here’s one thing I definitely took from Chuck:

He said add a dog.

I added a dog.

I was at Stuff, gosh, two or three months ago? As per usual, alongside the LPs and tiki crafts and midcentury political buttons and funky furniture, there were piles and piles and piles of Playboys. On the top of one of these piles was an issue that didn’t look much like the other issues. For one thing, it didn’t star a buxom beauty on the cover. If I remember right, there was one of these but she was small and up in the corner of her issue’s orange-brown cover that otherwise was just a list of authors interviewed within. Ray Bradbury. Joyce Carol Oates. I think Normal Mailer and Joseph Heller were on there. Dozens of names.

I didn’t think much about it at the time—it was just one more Playboy in an antique consignment shop—but I kept thinking about the issue. And thus the issue came to play an important role in an extended flash back I intended to write. I wasn’t worried about being able to learn more about this issue when the time came because, as I believe I mentioned, there are endless Playboys in Stuff and this one had a particularly unsexy cover. It would still be there whenever I got around to returning.

Well, I didn’t get around to returning until I was ready to insert it into the plot. First, I did some looking around online but couldn’t learn the details I needed. In fact, I couldn’t even prove the issue existed. So I went back to Stuff and went through every single pile of Playboys without success. I took a deep breath and asked the proprietor and he was like, uhhhh, do you have any idea how many Playboys we have in this place? I took his point and went home sad (albeit with my wife’s birthday present in tow) (which I should mention is neither LP nor tiki nor politics nor furnishing nor Playboy) (and only cost me three dollars) (plus tax).

Anyway, back the internet. Searching and searching and searching. Playboy is a hugely popular brand and you can find anything you want. Except evidence that this orange-brown (special?) issue I saw with my own eyes exists in this timeline.

The issue was, gulp, out of the novel.

Yes, I could make up details, but that’s cheating. So now the two interviews I needed would have to come from individual issues. Wikipedia helped me out here, and luckily the interviews I wanted did exist and I did find them online. But now I had to rethink how the scene would play out. In the end, the differences weren’t that great and Playboy diehards will have fewer reasons to send me angry correspondance.

I didn’t read East of Eden recently (it’s been over five years), but I keep trying to capture its multigenerational epicness in shorter form. Now in the form of a mid-novel digression. I’m not sure what first gave me the idea but it may have been

Carla Kelly’s amazing novel about Utah coal mining or

a fascinating little article I read from a free magazine we picked up at Smith & Edwards last summer about prostition among said miners. (Ends up, I could’ve pushed the prostitution angle much longer than I did!) Both of those certainly had influece on my creation of Copper, Utah. But while they provided suggestions for the early years of my mini-multigenerational-epic, what would bring it into the present day?

An early assist was given by Murderland. This gave me information about the end of the first era and it provided context for the decades preceding now. Stuff from Murderland fit in nicely with the already extant history of Copper and provided help building out the nature of the place—a place that now had a suitable number of red herrings.

But the middle years were still missing.

Red Harvest is incredible. Maybe my favorite hardboiled noir. The Continental Op is cold and dangerous but moral in his own strange way. But that much is true of all the noirs I’ve been reading of late. What Red Harvest did separate from the rest is provide a template for Copper during the same era the Continental Op. Copper isn’t identical to Personville but aspects of the Continental Op’s discoveries absolutely influenced the way the mini-epic plays out.

If the book were being published this month, I would have got some things slightly wrong. Nothing fatal, but man—the price of gas matters here!

In December, on our way back from the Charles M. Schulz Museum, we stopped to see the holiday lights at the Marin County Civic Center. And, as it ends up, visit a churro truck. And, as it ends up, enjoy rooms filled with the work of local photographers.

Straight into the novel.

Around the same time as the Playboy crisis (and possibly engaged in because I was avoiding the Playboy crisis), I decided to name a character who had not yet made her appearance (and would be appearing just moments before the Playboys). I looked around here and there for options. Nothing felt right. What about naming her after a Norse goddess? Maybe.

This page convinced me that both Freya and Skadi were deserving namesakes. But would this character prove more a “goddess of love, beauty, fertility, and at the same time, war and death” or a “goddess of winter, mountains, and hunting”?

I liked the name Freya better and it definitely would work for the little I knew about the character. But Skaði was more precisely accurate. Given the, like, two tiny traits I knew about her.

In the end, the name made a huge difference. I altered the name to Scandy (it may change again, but she will remain Skaði’s namesake regardless) and with this new name, she because someone quite different than I had imagined. Ho boy, but did things get interesting with a Scandy in the house. Don’t know how similar a Freya-based high-school girl would have turned out. And now we’ll never know.

Anyway. You pick things up. You set them down. Some of them work their way into the story. Some become vital.

And the same thing will keep happening in the rewrite process. Who knows what silly YouTube video will result in a completely new scene.

But I made it. Draft one done.

On we go.

700 words at a time.

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I have a few of these posts in various stages of incomplete (or dishabille, if you prefer). Each of them give different reasons for the project. As I work on them, I don’t know which will be posted first, so I’m letting their competing raisons d’être stand.

Anyway. Romcoms. Hard to talk about romcoms of this century coming, as they do, immediately after one of the great romcom eras: the 1990s. I also made my definition so strict that it became difficult to make it all the way to five:

‣ No kids in the romance roles. Ergo, no Moonrise Kingdom.

‣ Must have a happy, get-together-at-end ending of some sort for characters who were of primary importance throughout the movie. Ergo, no (500) Days of Summer, no Once I Was Engaged, no Love & Friendship.

‣ The rom must be the primary relationship of the movie. Ergo, no About a Boy, no Damsels in Distress.

‣ The rom must be the movie’s primary plot engine. Ergo, no Hundreds of Beavers, no The Muppets.

‣ The movie cannot be sold more as drama than comedy. Ergo, many 20th-century Jane Austen period-adaptations are out, no Anomalisa.

‣ I need to think of it as a romcom—other people thinking so is not enough—even if they are clearly correct. Ergo, no Fall Guy, no Eternity.

‣ Cannot be sullied by Rob Schneider. Ergo, no 50 First Dates.

Although I consider the romcom one of my favorite genres, I really haven’t watched that many of this new centuries’ entries. As I’ve worked on the list, I’ve discovered that I generally have low expectations for romcoms, even though many romcoms count among my very favorite movies of any sort.

Compared to some of the other lists I’m working on, my romcom longlist (fifteen movies) seems to have less issue with recency bias:

I thought it might have the opposite problem because the two movies that are absolutely inarguable came out in 2003 and 2004, but this looks fairly measured over time.

(Note, these charts might not match what follows. For instance, I decided Love & Friendship didn’t qualify—I think after I made the charts.)

One thing about romcoms is that they tend to be particularly rewatchable. But of the fifteen on the longlist, only six have I seen more than once (*), and some of those perhaps entirely because I sometimes show them to students (†). Because they haven’t been rewatched, I’m not sure I’m correct in my opinions. I’m relying on what I wrote at the time for some of them and hope I will agree with myself when given the chance.

In the end, I picked the movies because 1) I love them, 2) they are tippity-top rom, 3) they are tippidy-top com, 4) the rom and the com meld together in that wonderful way peculiar to the best romcoms, 5) I’m up for watching them again right now.

Which, if I were getting paid for this sort of thing, I definitely would have done first.

My top five, in order of topness:

Intolerable Cruelty (2003)* (thutopia)

I do not understand how many people—even fans of the Coen brothers—dismiss this movie which, for my money, is both one of their best films and the best romcom of the twenty-first century so far. The Coens’ trademark cynicism is not a sign that they hate of humanity, but that their cleareyed form of love insists on honesty and wit. Yes, these people are deeply flawed, but that doesn’t mean they don’t deserve love. We’re all flawed. But nobody needs berry spoons.

Win a Date with Tad Hamilton! (2004)*

We watched this movie so many times when it was new. And I still think that the central relationship is one of the best examples of friends that could be more. When I saw it, I wanted this team to adapt Byuck to film. Friends, confusion, hurt feelings, growing up, happy ending. Watch this movie, then count your beloved’s smiles.

Molli and Max in the Future (2023) (letterboxd, thubstack, thutopia)

This is the newest entry on the list and I am in love with it and I really really really need Lady Steed to sit down and watch it with me. Because of Molli’s brief pass through an alien sex cult (nothing explicit, just awkward) I haven’t wanted to watch it with the kids, but my wife needs to see this and have it be one of her favorites too. What is love if not sharing romcoms?

Stranger than Fiction (2006)*† (thutopia, thutopia)

This is the weirdest movie on this list by which I mean the romcom elements make up the smallest percentage of the whole—certainly less than half. It’s an existential nightmare and a commentary on art and a couple other things with a romcom. But to hit up an ‘80s classic, “Hey! Hello in there! Hey, what’s so important? What you got here that’s worth living for?” (“Truuuue looooove.…”) That’s something Stranger than Fiction believes as well.

Crazy, Stupid, Love. (2011) (thutopia, thutopia)

It was hard to make the fifth choice, but I went with the one I most want to rewatch at this moment. Even though I had mixed feelings about it back in 2014, I did dig it. I don’t even think the couple pictured is my favorite couple from the movie. But if you concentrate meetcute and mix it with tiny overcomeable tragedies and then bake to perfection, you get Crazy, Stupid, Love. Whatever its failings, when that’s what you want, this movie’s got it.

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Honorable Mentions

Elemental (2023) (thubstack, thutopia)

Emma. (2020)*† (thubstack, thutopia, thubstack, thutopia)

Long Shot (2019) (thutopia)

The One I Love (2014) (thutopia)

Silver Linings Playbook (2012)

The Holiday (2006) (thutopia)

Pride & Prejudice (2003)* (thutopia)

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I don’t often write about television. A nonexhaustive search at the archives suggests I’ve only ever written about (chronologically) Planet Earth, Pushing Daisies, 30 Rock (in a post that has since fallen victim to entropy), Dexter, and, the only two recent enough to also appear on Thubstack, She-Hulk and Wednesday.

So the fact that I’m taking time to do this? Please take that as evidence that I feel strongly about this show, one way or another.

Let me start by admitting I don’t watch a lot of tv. And even tv I like, I often abandon. To stick with the Amazon ecosystem for a moment, I watched the first two seasons of The Boys and all but the last episode of the first season of Invincible—and I liked them both—but I just reached a moment when I was done. And that was it. I’ve never been tempted to pick them back up.

TV’s just a bigger commitment than I’m willing to make. And unless it’s something Lady Steed and I want to watch together, I probably won’t.

And then there’s the fact that it’s difficult to advertize to me. Even things I want to hear about, I often don’t because I’ve set up my life to be nearly ad-free. I’m quite happy with my ad-free life, even though the movies I’ve missed because I don’t see ads are...voluminous.

Plus, even if an ad were to make its way to me, I probably won’t pay attention to it or remember it. I think I may have seen a little square or something on Amazon with SCARPETTA in big red allcaps, but beyond recognizing it was a Prime Video offering, I’m not sure I even noticed. Even with me actively noticing Nicole Kidman for a few decades now. (Probably since my friend made me watch Far and Away and certainly since she was in Batman Forever [in fact, one moment with her and maybe Jim Carrey’s laugh might be all I remember about that movie now].)

So what caught my attention this time? Criticism. I was driving home from somewhere and David Bianculli’s Fresh Air review of Scarpetta was riveting, compelling, fascinating, and kept me in the car a couple minutes after arrival to reach the end of his observations, which ended: “I realize this whole series structure sounds complicated, and it is. But it’s rewarding, too. I’ve seen all eight episodes, and the plots and the characters really hold up.... There’s a lot to applaud here and a lot to absorb. And the way Prime Video is streaming it, you can gobble it up as fast as you can to help keep things straight, just like a good novel—or two good novels.”

Okay, David. I’m convinced.

I started watching it a couple weeks later on April 1st and finished April 22nd, which is a fast watch of eight episodes for me.

Before I start talking about what I did and did not like, let’s talk about how the show works.

As hinted at by David Bianculli, the show is based on two novels in Patricia Cornwall’s 29-book (so far) Scarpetta series. One from the early years, the ’90s, when Kay Scarpetta is just starting out as a chief medical officer, and one from the recent past, when she has three decades of storied excellence behind her. I’ve seen Cornwall’s name on many a massmarket paperback, but I’d never been tempted to pick one up. Although I’ve been making an effort to read more mysteries and thrillers of late, I have a natural antipathy to The Biggest Names Out There.

Because there are two time periods (primarily two, but there are flashbacks to even more) the characters are played by (at least) two different actors. For instance, ’90s Nicole Kidman is played by Rosy McEwen (in what must be a star-making turn) and ’90s Bobby Cannavale (most recently seen in Only Murders in the Building—which I really like and have not written about) is played by his son, Jake Cannavale. This is great. Nicole Kidman is beautiful but she doesn’t look 29 or however old she’s supposed to be in the other timeline. And letting two excellent actors work on the same character lets the audience triangulate the “actual person” in a way that feels somehow deeper than what even the most excellent actor can do on their own. As an acting showcase, Scarpetta shines. And the way the two plots work together to create levels of dramatic irony and offer different surprises than either plot would on its own is also impressive—especially considering this script is based on previously existing properties that go back thirty-seven years.

Which is a chance to offer props to Cornwall. Clearly, she is a master planner.

But now let’s get to why I almost quit watching the show during and after each of the first three or four episodes.

The show is largely about cracking serial-killer cases, one in each timeline, that seem like they might be related. The show has very few qualms about showing us violent, sexually grotesque murders. We see women suffering awfully, tied up, stabbed, you name it. It does have a few boundaries it won’t cross but they are indeed few. It’s unpleasant stuff.

But Dr. Kay Scarpetta is dedicated to treating the dead with respect. She treats corpses with dignity and demands of herself, on their behalf, to discover and tell the truth about the dead for the dead—and for those who love them.

This is noble and fine, but the camera does not share this dedication. The camera in Scarpetta is much more like the serial killers than our hero. The number of times a mid-autopsy corpse is positioned so her nipple is just visible in the corner of the sceen is dispicable. I find it fascinating how perverse and cruel the camera is in this show. Scarpetta desires to make her space one of dignity for the dead. The camera can’t stop gazing at them as if their corpses are starlets in a Russ Meyer picture.

But they’re not like Russ Meyer’s girls because they are dead. And since the camera has decided it won’t show us certain elements of living intercourse, it subsitutes with penetration of the dead. Scalpels cut into the flesh, gloved hands dig around in severed necks, fingers push inside bullet holes. Frankly, it’s gross. Recounting it for you, I’m amazed I kept going. Because, no joke, it’s...just really gross. It feels like violation after violation that can only be justified because, listen up, this is Prestige Television.

The only thing that brought me back in those early episodes was the excellent character work and, later on, questions of plot and identity that became too compelling to ignore.

And this is where I’m throwing out a spoiler warning because now I’m going to start talking about important things that resolve (or do not) towards the end of the series. If you want to continue, resume after the image. Otherwise, feel free to skip down to comment-leaving.

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did you know “scarpetta“ means mopping up the sauce on your plate with bread?
so appropriate!

As you might guess from what I’ve already said, these questions of who did what and how does who feel about whom wouldn’t matter if we weren’t so invested in the characters. Kay and her sister Dorothy are fighting with a constantness I find wild, but they also have moments of deep connection. In both timelines. Their relationships with their husbands are complex and messy, and we’re not sure, not consistently, how much we’re rooting for either marriage to survive. Kay’s niece / Dorothy’s daughter, whom they co-raised (messily), is a precocious child then a suffering widow, who can’t quite find her footing.

These things matter. Should Lucy be spending so much time with an AI version of her dead wife? Do our feelings change when we learn the dead wife invented the tech but did not approve of it and made Lucy promise never to use it? Does Pete actually love Kay more than his wife, Dorothy? What are his responsibilities to his boss versus his wife? does the longer length of the former relationship alter that math? Is Kay’s husband a sociopath who uses his job as an FBI profiler to get men to confess to his murders? And hey—who killed the AI wife? Is Lucy safe with the grief counselor with a grudge against the family? Is that possible danger part of why she’s there? Who in the world is Kay looking at in shock as her blood-spattered face stares off-camera in the final shot of the season?

Yes, the show ends on a cliffhanger. An excellent one. But still. Cliffhangers....

These questions work better because all these people are total messes. The heroes are screwed up in deep and painful ways. But this isn’t really a matter of engrained cynicism. Kay’s a mess but she genuinely is on a mission to serve the dead in righteousness. Ben really is a sociopath attracted to serial murder but he’s also doing a good job not murdering women. (It’s a higher bar for some people than others.) Pete probably could love Kay but he’s mostly a gentleman. Even if he is a cop about to face consequences (for the first time) after beating a suspect.

All people are a mix of good and bad. You have to see both to tell the truth about them. And, in melodrama (even with good lighting and acting, this is still melodrama), the good and the bad need to be n-times greater.

That’s what Scarpetta offers.

For all my reservations, in the end, I think I loved it.

(I wonder if the second season will arrive quickly enough for me to return?)

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The events of the novel I’m currently writing begin the evening of April 28, 2026. If you’re good at calendars, you may recognize that date as next Tuesday.

What I have left to write:

• two embedded short stories

• the climax

• the closing scenes

The good news is:

• the first embedded short story is completely outlined and parts of the end are written

• the climax and closing scenes exist in draft form, but they have to be rewritten to officially count as part of the completed first draft

That second short story is in a maybe 300-word shape when it should be between five and ten thousand words and I don’t really know what it’s about yet. Thus, I anticipate it being the biggest remaining hurdle to a complete first draft.

My time is not entirely free between now and the evening of April 28 but I think I might be able to finish that first draft before the novel begins, Tuesday evening.

I’m gonna go for it.

Wish me luck.

ps: the post that will arrive here tomorrow was written and scheduled yesterday before I saw the cosmic necessity of this firstdrafting plan

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I found this poem folded up in a book published in 2018 written on a piece of paper from a teacher training that’s dated 2018–2019. So I suspect we date this work of art to some meeting at which I was bored right around that time. It also had notes for some unrealized variation on my dystopian-literature assignments, which I will include as a bonus after the poem To illustrate this post, I went to Pexels and typed in three key words from the poem and chose from the first page of results.

“Reflection’s the Heart of Induction”
   At least, I hear, that’s what they say
But applying the art of deduction
   I think it could also be hay

If hay were the heart of induction
   Then horses could teach—yes! it’s true!
We’ll feed them; they’ll begin instruction
   And our state scores will go through the roof.

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dytopian angles

language
sex
love
reproduction
thought
association
communication
technology
choice
distraction
violence

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April 14th, Draft2Digital sent out an email to those who use their services when publishing books. I first learned of them in 2024 when I was asked to make an account by Lintusen Press when they published my story “The Hunger of Ghosts” in their anthology Ghostly.

I was impressed. Draft2Digital made it easy for a small press to split revenue with its authors. This is why, in 2025, when it came time to see what happens if Irreantum packages a special bonus issue more like a book than a magazine, I decided to use Draft2Digital’s services. The result was Eternities of Cats which, I’m happy to hint, is receiving awards consideration (details to follow as they become public).

Later in 2025, I decided to print use Draft2Digital to make my silly little art project Thubrina.

(FYI, Substack decided some months ago to take away the ability to adjust how large images appear in a post. THAT is the explanation here.)

Anyway, a week ago, as mentioned above, Draft2Digital sent an email out to its users. My comments italicized within brackets.

Dear Eric W,

For the first time in our history, we’re introducing account activation and maintenance fees. For many existing Draft2Digital authors, especially those with regularly selling books, these fees do not affect you.

Here’s how they’ll work...

Activation Fee for New Accounts

If you already have a D2D account (if you’re reading this, you probably do), the activation fee doesn’t apply to you. New accounts will include a one-time fee of $20 (USD). This activation fee, combined with our verification tools and human reviewers, will help us maintain a secure, high-integrity publishing environment.

Like many platforms, we’ve seen a significant increase in automated and low-quality account creation in recent years. This onslaught from automated content farms threatens reader trust in indie titles and risks indies being associated with low-quality “slop.” A modest activation fee can make a real difference and allow our team to stay focused on supporting genuine authors like you.

[This ties in nicely with something I was reading in The Atlantic yesterday (guest link will expire in one week); a slight barrier to entry (eg, having to apply for a card to use a public restroom) can keep out nearly all bad actors. And, as you know if you’ve spent much time looking for things on Amazon lately, is a real problem in the media landscape. Most of what AI has managed to offer us so more is crap—but in volume! This is absolutely a problem Direct2Digital should be focusing on. I think I feel that a $20 entrance fee is reasonable. I hope they’ve done research on what is large enough to keep out sloppers but low enough to keep their goal of democratizing publication feasible. But, as we’ll see more clearly below, I have questions.]

Annual Maintenance Fee

An annual maintenance fee of $12 (USD) will apply to accounts whose earnings from book sales, meaning your net proceeds after D2D’s commission, total less than $100 over the preceding 12-month period. If you earn $100 or more from your book sales over 12 months, you will not be charged this fee.

[I have three books (as far as I know) that have passed through Draft2Digital on their way to market. One is from a small, indie Canadian publisher; one is from a 26yrold literary journal serving a niche audience; one is a weird little ziney thing that would not exist otherwise. All three were human-centered project. And I don’t think it will shock anyone to learn that in the approximately nineteen months that I’ve been connected with Draft2Digital, I have not made $100.

[Now, Draft2Digital is not a charity. And perhaps it’s fair to call me a “hobbyist.” But what I most certainly am not is peddling AI slop. All three projects have been deeply human and, imo, have done intesting work that deserves space in the marketplace of (human) ideas. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Back to the email.]

Draft2Digital is primarily supported by earning commissions on book sales. For accounts that earn less revenue, a small annual fee helps offset a portion of the steadily rising costs we pay to maintain those accounts, including compliance, security, and infrastructure upkeep.

[The reason I expressed minor skepticism about the the $20 is the reason I’m deeply skeptical of the $12. But I appreciate Draft2Digital giving us their second reason.

[Reason one: Keep out slop.

[Reason two: Make the little guy pay for his lack of hustle.

[In short, I think their research (which I do assume existed) that landed on $12 had nothing to do with keeping slop out. The $12 is chosen to be as minimal as possible in order to keep those who don’t make $100/annum into subscribers. Because that’s what Draft2Digital is about to become: a subscription service. If you want to believe in yourself as a “writer,” pay for the privelege.

[I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, Draft2Digital is turning into a traditional pay-to-play vanity press. They’re no longer a disrupter; they’re a vanity press. They’ve found a new way to do this but it’s the same old scam.

[On the other hand, having a bunch of people putting up unedited rough drafts because it makes them feel writerly is not something they should have to subsidize.]

Maintenance fees will start going into effect in 30 days, on May 14, 2026, and will be based on your account anniversary date. We’ll always notify you in advance.

[Which I think means I have to move Eternities of Cats and Thubrina off their services. Which is a shame. I like knowing you can get the books from your library, for instance. For all its imperfections, Draft2Digital really is (was) the best way for the little guy to publish small-audience work that I knew.]

The Bottom Line

Our goal is to keep D2D a place where authors can publish with confidence. [This is a good goal. But it’s also a tad disengenuous. Because the nature (and especially the details) of their solution says either that ain’t true or “authors” is a category that only includes people who sell $100 per year. Which, I grant you, is not a huge number. But in this world it excludes everyone who isn’t bigtime hustling. Make it your job or go away, is the message they’re sending—loud and clear.] That means continuing to invest in our tools, maintaining strong relationships with retailers, and protecting the legitimacy of indie authors and the trust that readers place in indie books. [Again: true. Especially with retailers, keeping slop out will be a success or failure tied to the Draft2Digital name. And rejecting people who sell in small numbers won’t hurt them with retailers either. But relationships with authors? That’ll take a real hit. It’ll make more people give up before they get to that $100/ann threshhold; it’ll keep more niche writers away from their more niche readers. A book written by one and sold to three lesbian Pakistani autistic Airbnb landlords might be doing as good as it can. That had worth.

[I understood Draft2Digital’s raison d’être to be this sort of big-tent, people-matter, democracy-actually-means-δῆμος desire. And maybe they’re losing money like crazy and charging the writers is their only way to survive. Or maybe they’ve moved on to thinking more about quarterly reports than those they serve.

[Maybe the ethics of publishing are changing.

[I suppose corporations can levy regressive taxes all they want. Because, in the end, this is a business, not a democracy. Regardless of good intentions, if we don’t make them money, screw us. That’s capitalism, baby.]

If you have questions, additional details can be found on your Account Status page, or you can read our updated terms of service. You can also reach out to our support team via our contact us form at any time.

[If you’re wondering, no, I haven’t done this. I’m undecided if I should. I’m not mad, as they say, just disappointed.

[Draft2Digital acquired their main competitor in this space, Smashwords, in 2022. I suppose this is what happens when consolidation happens in a space. The people get squeezed.

[Who among us can be surprised that the good guys are compromising their morals in order to make more money? Because there are other ways to solve these problems besides charging your customers.

[Even a really well written and reasonable email does not change that fact.]

We appreciate your trust in D2D [Mm.], and we remain committed to developing and protecting opportunities for indies to reach readers. [I grade you 10% on developing and 70% on protecting. But remember: I allow rewrites.]

Sincerely,

Kris Austin

CEO of Draft2Digital

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I’m preparing this to post about eighteen hours before I’ll be presenting it which means I might make some changes still. I had a hard time writing this one and I really didn’t decide this talk was the talk until this morning. And even now I’m not sure if that’s because it’s the talk or because I’m out of time. But, as I mention below, maybe that doesn’t matter.

Part of the reason this talk was hard to write is because the topic was so similar to the one I gave in January (the one that’s forthcoming at Wayfare). I’ll admit I did cannibalize one bit which is something I do not like to do—even when the talks are given to different wards. But they were just too close together in time and topic….

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:

And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.

And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.

And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

The fourth day was good, but there is some stuff about it we don’t really buy anymore. For instance, we no longer think there’s a firmament—a dome covering the earth—to which these lights are attached. It would have come as a great shock to the Artemis astronauts if they’d suddenly crashed into a firmament!

But the ancient Hebrews who passed down this story never thought it was supposed to be a science textbook. Reading Genesis “literally” wasn’t invented until we discovered evolution and geology and the concept of billions of years and were, frankly, kinda freaked out.

The Bible I chose for my study this year has a footnote every few dozen chapters that points out the ancients didn’t try to understand the world analytically like we do—the scientific method and all that—but analogically. When you sacrifice an animal, you separate its organs from it’s fat from its muscle and skin—three layers. When you enter the Tabernacle, you have the inner sanctum, the curtain, and the outer areas—three layers. While Moses enters the Lord’s presence on Mount Sinai, Aaron stays hallway up the mountain, and the people stay at the bottom—three layers. Three examples of three layers—each an analogue of the other. I bet you we can think of other things in three layers—the endowment, the afterlife, the land–the sea–the firmament. Anything we learn about any of these, Moses might tell us, will help us understand the others.

Anyway, back to Genesis and things we might be less sure of in 2026.

God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs—

For signs?!

But—but—but I make fun of horoscopes! The stars are in the sky to give us signs?

I mean—that is how the magi found baby Jesus so I guess I believe in the stars, but I haven’t the foggiest idea how to get information from God via the stars myself. If that’s a spiritual gift, it’s not one I’ve been given. And I’ll admit I’m pretty skeptical that the stars can provide daily updates. They seem pretty set in their positions, at least from the scale of one human lifetime. Unless Orion draws his sword, I’m not looking to the stars for information on what’s for dinner.

But I certainly do believe God guides us. So where do I see God’s guidance in my life?

Joseph Smith received a revelation that taught us that we “all have not every gift given unto…[us, but! Each and every one of us] is given a gift by the Spirit of God. And all these gifts come from God, for the benefit of the children of God.”

Two weeks ago, Elder Bednar told us that “All individuals who receive the gift of the Holy Ghost” get spiritual gifts which, get this, “are…essential to…coming unto the Savior, being blessed with His attributes, and ultimately becoming more like Him.”

Part of maturing as a spiritual person is figuring how to listen to the Spirit, figuring out what our own, individual spiritual gifts might be. Because we don’t all hear the Spirit in the same way. Consider this story of the resurrected Christ visiting Bountiful:

Following the great destruction and darkness, the people were gathered at the temple, discussing their miserable experiences, when they heard

a small voice [that] did pierce them…to the center, insomuch that there was no part of their frame that it did not cause to quake; yea, it did pierce them to the very soul, and did cause their hearts to burn.

I’ve always thought of that moment like this:

There was a small voice and they, each of them, every person at the temple that day, felt pierced and quaked and burned.

But that’s not quite what the Book of Mormon says.

That might be how it was.

But it might also be that when that voice spoke to them, some of them were pierced and some of them quaked and some of them felt their hearts burn.

It’s okay for us to experience the Spirit differently. If we pay attention, we’ll get better at recognizing what’s being given to us.

Thomas S. Monson told a heartbreaking story from his time as bishop. He was in the middle of a meeting. The stake president was speaking and, as bishop, wasn’t it part of his job to listen to the stake president? So when the Spirit told Bishop Monson to go and to go NOW, he waited until the stake president was finished speaking. Then he rushed to the hospital to enquire of a friend. But his friend had died—asking for Bishop Monson, his bishop, till the very end.

This is when Bishop Monson decided never to hesitate when a prompting arrived. The rest of his life, he strove to act as soon as a prompting arrived.

I think he told this story not so we could analyze it but so we could consider analogs in our own lives.

President Monson’s insight is probably the key insight I’ll share today: Act when prompted. Act. Then it will be easier to recognize the next prompting. And when you act on that one, you’ll be all the more prepared for the next. And so on and so on till that final day.

But how do we hear that first prompting?

Again, it’s probably different for all of us. But I’d like to share an experience of Richard G. Scott’s that he said taught him how to gain spiritual guidance.

I know he died only eleven years ago, but eleven years is long enough that, say, our elders probably don’t remember Elder Scott’s unique way of speaking in General Conference. He would prerecord his talks then play them in his ear, speaking alongside the recording he’d made. Because of this, he didn’t use the teleprompter. And because he didn’t use the teleprompter, he could look directly into the camera in a way no one else does. When Elder Scott spoke at General Conference it was like his eyes were locked onto yours and you dared not look away.

Anyway, this is his story. Pretend I’m Elder Scott and talking very slowly while staring directly into your eyes instead of flitting between my paper and the vague middle distance as I talk way too quickly.

Okay. Ready? He said:

One Sunday I attended the priesthood meeting of a Spanish branch in Mexico City. I vividly recall how a humble Mexican priesthood leader struggled to communicate the truths of the gospel…. I noted the intense desire he had to share those principles…. He recognized that they were of great worth to the brethren present. In his manner, there was an evidence of a pure love of the Savior and love of those he taught. His sincerity, purity of intent, and love permitted a spiritual strength to envelop the room. I was deeply touched. Then I began to receive personal impressions as an extension of the principles taught by that humble instructor. They were personal and related to my assignments in the area. They came in answer to my prolonged, prayerful efforts to learn. As each impression came, I carefully wrote it down…. I was given precious truths that I greatly needed in order to be a more effective servant of the Lord. The details of the communication are sacred and, like a patriarchal blessing, were for my individual benefit. I was given specific directions, instructions, and conditioned promises that have beneficially altered the course of my life.

I suspect Elder Scott, decades later, didn’t remember the specifics of what the man was teaching. When you think about it, I’m that important in your story today. The words I’m saying just don’t matter all that much. You will almost certainly forget each one of them.

But let Elder Scott tell a little more of his story:

Subsequently, I visited the Sunday School class in our ward, where a very well-educated teacher presented his lesson…. It seemed to me that the instructor had purposely chosen obscure references and unusual examples to illustrate the principles of the lesson. I had the distinct impression that this instructor was using the teaching opportunity to impress the class with his vast store of knowledge. At any rate, he certainly did not seem as intent on communicating principles as had the humble priesthood leader.

Let me just interject here that I feel very seen by Elder Scott in this anecdote, if not in a good way. But I’m happy to say the story has a happy ending:

Strong impressions began to flow to me again. I wrote them down. The message included specific counsel on how to become more effective as an instrument in the hands of the Lord. I received such an outpouring of impressions that were so personal that…I sought a more private location, where I continued to write the feelings that flooded into my mind and heart…. After each…impression was recorded, I pondered the feelings I had received to determine if I had accurately expressed them in writing. As a result, I made a few minor changes to what had been written. Then I studied their meaning and application in my own life.

I find this story remarkable. And a bit relieving. The fact that I wanted to be clever, starting this talk in the stars, might work out okay.

Elder Scott then went on to pray about his jottings and was sent a feeling of peace. He thanked God for what he had written and asked if there might be more—there was, so he wrote those feelings down as well. He asked again if there might be more—and again there was.

He ends the anecdote by describing the results of that terrible Sunday School class as

some of the most precious, specific, personal direction one could hope to obtain in this life. Had I not responded to the first impressions and recorded them, I would not have received the last, most precious guidance…. I believe that you can leave the most precious, personal direction of the Spirit unheard because you do not respond to, record, and apply the first promptings that come to you.

Elder Scott admits that, yes, absolutely, the Spirit can come in moments of desperation. And, yes, promptings may arrive when you’re not looking for them. But, he adds, the Lord will not force us to learn from these experiences. We have to decide to listen. We have to decide to act. We have to decide whether we’ll write it down and ask if there’s more.

Then, when that surprise guidance comes, we’ll be all the more ready for it.

But paying attention is not easy. In another talk, Elder Scott once compared the Spirit to a grape. Delicious, but its taste is soft and sweet. And in our online, AI, earbuds-in, zangwow, lookitme-lookitme-lookitmenow world, we are trying to taste that grape while simultaneously sucking on a jalapeno.

Not easy.

But: the Spirit’s a grape? That’s a useful analog.

What does your grape taste like?

When and where and how do you gather grapes?

And what are your jalapenos?

Here’s my favorite Moraga story:

St. Mary’s College.

October 17, 1989.

The campus chapel.

The middle of mass.

The priest is giving a homily about the beheading of John the Baptist when the Loma Prieta quake begins to shake the chapel.

The head of the John the Baptist statue is knocked off its body and rolls across the sanctuary and down the altar steps.

There’s no reason to analyze that story. It’s just a funny thing that happened.

But it did happen, right here in Moraga. And maybe, for you, there’s an analog in it somewhere.

Or maybe not.

But the only way to know if the Spirit is talking—whether through the stars or in a piercing small voice or a silly story or a humble teacher—is to learn the taste of grape.

Accept those promptings when they arrive—because they will arrive—and then act on them. And then remember. And then, maybe write it down? And then: be prepared to act—again and again and again and again.

If you’ve been baptized, you have the gift of the Holy Ghost. And that means you have spiritual gifts. We all have different gifts, but they all come through the Holy Ghost and they all give us the opportunity to be prompted, to act, then to be prompted again as we “[come] unto the Savior, [are] blessed with His attributes, and…[become] more like Him.”

So: Let’s listen for grapes and touch stars and see voices. Whatever unique way God has chosen to communicate with you, that’s the gift of the Holy Ghost he covenanted to give you. And he certainly will. We just heard it in a prayer:

As we always remember him, we will always have his Spirit to be with us.

Listen.

Act.

Remember.

Repeat.

In the name of, etc.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

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First, Allbirds. I’m sure you’re heard by now that the ten-year-old Kiwi company that became the it item in Silicon Valley on its way to becoming a four-billion-with-a-b-dollar company has fumbled its advantages into near-bankrupcy and their solution is:

To become an AI company.

I don’t want to get into the details because it’s all so stupid but if you know of better evidence we’re in a bubble than a failing footwear company putting AI in their name and short-term plans in order to boost stock value and stave off bankrupcy, please tell me about it. This is so peak. I don’t think I could make a joke funnier/sadder than this story.

Incidentally, it’s working. I’m not going to keep updating this paragraph as I work on this essay, but it leaped up 600% upon the announcement and is still 400% up even after some as-the-week-goes-on-and-the-jokes-pile-up attrition.

Anyway, if it walks like a bubble and swims like a bubble and quacks like a bubble, I’m sure it won’t pop like a bubble. You have nothing to worry about.

Meanwhile, in New York City, Rockport (recently acquired by the banal(ity of evil)-sounding Authentic Brands Group is having AI problems all its own. Brace yourself for some original reporting, friends.

First, know I’ve been wearing Rockports a good portion of the time since 1994 when the salesman at Sears who said he knew all about Mormon missionaries promised me that what I wanted on my feet was Rockports. I bought two identical pair and in two years of constant walking in South Korea returned home with them held together by black-sharpied Korean-green ductape. But they never failed me and treated my feet well to the end.

If you don’t know, this is what Rockport’s been all about since its founding in 1971. The shoes that argued that walking was a good way to spend your life. And you could look like a grownup doing it.

As I said, I’ve worn a lot of Rockports in my life since 1994. I’ll try other shoes but the balance of comfort and cost and look always eventually brought me back. When Trump announced his tarrifs a year ago, I made my first (somewhat panicked) purchase from Rockport’s actual website. I bought four pairs of shoes.

With that many shoes, naturally I never wear them two days in a row (you shouldn’t do that any way to shoes, if you can help it; they’ll survive more wearings if you let them air out between uses). If it were my goal, I could go a week without repeating shoes.

I’m shoe rich. I admit it.

Anyway, Tuesday I home home from school and, while taking off my boots, the heel rips off:

I suppose I should mention here that these are probably the least comfortable Rockports I’ve ever owned. And that my wife despises them, doesn’t like me to wear them if we go out together, and feels secondhand embarrassment whenever she sees me leave the house. Also, my fashionista teenager also thinks they look terrible. So they both see their destruction as no tragedy. I get what they’re saying and honestly I only bought them because they were on a crazy sale when I got them.

Anyway, I figured there was nothing to be done, but I reached via the email Rockport provides to see what they would say. Obviously, a well made pair of shoes shouldn’t do this 361 days after they were purchased.

Almost instantly I received a reply back:

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Hello Eric,

Thank you so much for reaching out and for providing the order information and photos. I’m truly sorry to hear about the issue with your Men’s Kevan Boot heel — that must be really disappointing, especially as a loyal Rockport customer.

We do not offer exchanges, but you can return the damaged boots for a refund to your original payment method. Please use our returns portal to start the process: https://rockport.happyreturns.com/. After your return is authorized, you’ll receive a prepaid shipping label or a QR code for a Happy Returns drop-off location. There is a $6.95 restocking fee for mail-in returns, but no fee if you return your item in person at a Happy Returns location.

If you would like to reorder the same item, we will match the original price if you place your new order within 30 days. Just reach out after your purchase and we’ll handle the price match for you!

Additionally, your case will be escalated to a specialist who will review it further to make sure everything is resolved.

Thank you again for your patience and loyalty. We’re here to make this right! 👍

Best regards,

AI

Customer Care Agent @ Rockport

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

That sounded pretty good, actually. Thanks, Al! But then I remembered Al looks just like AI and so I coppied the signature and posted it into search and sure enough, this wasn’t an Albert or and Alfred but some silly LLM.

Which became even less surprising when I went to the provided link and was told my shoes were purchased too long ago to return.

I wrote back with one sentence: “The link you've provided tells me I am not allowed to return these shoes.” This time it took Rockport 14 hours to respond:

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Hi Eric,

Thank you for contacting Rockport, and for your long-time loyalty since 1994. We truly appreciate your continued support over the years.

I’m very sorry to hear about what happened with your Men’s Kevan Boot, purchased on April 13, 2025. I can understand how frustrating and disappointing it must have been to have the heel come off.

Our return policy covers unworn items within 30 days of delivery, and for quality-related concerns, we’re able to review items within 6 months of the purchase date. As your purchase from April 13, 2025 falls outside of this timeframe, we’re unfortunately unable to authorize a return, refund, or replacement.

While we’re unable to accept a return or offer store credit, on behalf of Rockport, I’m happy to offer you a 20% off coupon code as a courtesy for the inconvenience you experienced. This code is valid on both regular and sale merchandise available on our website. Please note that the coupon cannot be applied to existing orders and must be entered at checkout, as it cannot be applied retroactively.

Coupon Code: RP20

I truly appreciate your understanding. Please do not hesitate to reach out with any other questions or concerns.

Kind regards,

Charlene

Customer Care Agent @ Rockport

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

I’m assuming Charlene’s a real person. No hard feelings, Charlene! I like to think if you worked for Rockport, you would have had more options to serve me. I think, had I known I was actually dealing with Authentic Brands Group, your response might have depressed me less. Largely because I would have already mourned the end of Rockport proper.

I really don’t mind that much that they won’t do anything about the shoes. A soulless corporation that buys up brands [and does whatever it then does] to maximize profits obviously isn’t going to do that much for a customer like me, but we’re here to complain about AI.

Here’s what really bugs me.

Their stupid AI agent screwed up. It never should have offered me the chance to return my shoes for a refund, but once it did, Authentic Brands Group should have honored it. (A lousy $28! Really!) Sure, they’re probably swimming in problems because they’re relying on AI but that’s their screwup.

I already suspected, after a year in my new Rockports, that quality has gone down. (Again: purchased by Authentic Brands Group in 2023.) The interior fabric on these boots was tearing off and some days I had to take the boots off a dozen time to shake out the bits of junk that were accumulating under my feet. Another of the pairs I purchased at the same time is looking like trash and I didn’t even start wearing those for probably four or five months after I purchased them because they’re a silly color and I had to get used to the idea. The quality of their shoes is down. I wasn’t sure I would stay loyal to Rockports when I next needed by buy shoes.

But now I see that the whole company is infested with termites. Product quality is compromised, customer service has been moved into a data center, and no one seems to have a plan to integrate integrity going forward.

Again: this is all anecdotal. These are simply my experiences over the last year.

But it’s one more data point suggesting that any company willing to employ an LLM to deal with any part of their business—production, customer-facing…—has probably lost its way.

When you live on a diet of hype and imagine future profits based on promised given you by other companies that live on a diet of hype, you’re not going to excel. Maybe you’ll do fine. Maybe we’ll all get so used to our enshittified world that we’ll happily welcome crap shoes where good shoes once walked. I hope not but until we eat the rich, probably.

Anway, this is two very different ways AI is impacting footwear disastrously.

Happy trails.

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Since writing this, I’ve decided this Terry Pratchett is a lesser satire compared to, say, his Moist Von Lipwig books because it ends by erasing everything. There’s no room in Discworld for movies when things close. And the presumed future of Holy Wood is left unstated. Which might be artistically justifiable but this is a novel in which his wizards play a large role so this is irrelevant.

Anyway, that’s my hot take this time!

☞

025) New & Selected Things Taking Place by May Swenson, finished April 2

This was an exciting find one time walking through Pegasus Books. And now, lo these many years later, I have finished reading these 297 pages of May Swenson poems.

Starting, I knew snippets of her work well enough to predict some sexy stuff and some playing with type on the page, but thinking that was embarrassingly reductive. It’s appropriate here, the day after we sent someone to the moon for the first time in my lifetime, to celebrate May Swenson, the great poet of NASA space missions. She is also the great describer of everyday New York, the sly master of sexual metaphor, the acute observer of plants, the undercover agent of distant Mormonism. She has no shyness to be silly, no aversion to splashing words and notwords across the page. She’s happy to carry on longer than seems necessary—but is.

I straight-up loved this book. I’m glad I spent so long on it. Reading it in bursts and trickles then setting it aside only to return for fresh pleasures months later.

I’ve marked the book with favorites and with things for class and potential epigraphs. The two main questions left for me now are 1) as I put it on a shelf, how easily accessible should this shelf be? and 2) how many years should pass before I return it to my nightstand?

gosh probably fifteen years at least

☞

026) Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett, finished April 4

This was one of the hardest times I’ve had getting through a Terry Pratchett novel. First it was my in-the-car book then it was stolen and read by a son then it moved from car to car, from book-stashing location to book-stashing location—no matter who was reading it, it tended to get lost.

So when I say it seemed liked lesser Discworld to me, who knows is that is at all true or fair. But it’s take on the movie industry seemed less intellectually rich than takes on journalism or the post office (for instance) and while funny it seemed to rely more on taking established characters and sticking them into new situations for laughs. In other words, for a series that really welcomes anyone no matter where they show up, I’m not sure this would be anyone’s best first-Discworld book.

But there are smart observations and funny bits and cleareyed satire and interesting characters and provocative observations on the nature of the world and all those sorts of things that we love about a good Pratchett novel. So maybe the issue is really losing the book over and over and taking so long to get it read. Maybe that’s the problem.

But who can say with absolute certainty what is cause and what is effect?

likely well over a year

☞

027) Loved Ones by Kevin Klein, finished April 4

Kevin and Scott Hales both had books come out from Greg Kofford at the same time. I’d known about Scott’s and preordered it, but Kevin’s came as a surprise. I figured I’d pick it up but before I got around to it, he sent me a pdf. I don’t usually finish booklength pdfs, but a collection of poems means whenever I stop, when I start, I’m starting with something new. So that worked. Plus, the collection’s a manageable size and Kevin’s poetic manner is easy to slide back into.

I was talking to someone recently about how to make poetry more appealing to a broader audience and I mentioned Loved Ones and how Kevin is reading and commenting on the poems in his newsletter—in fact, each poem in the book has an accompanying qr code which you can scan to see as much. Accessible! Anyway, the person I was speaking with noted that might be the elementary-school teacher in him.

Could be.

Anyway, his poems are lovely: easy to enter and welcoming. How about if I, right now, share a short one? Click the title if you want to see a discussion of the poem that goes from simple to studied.

Your Hair Your hair, my love, is soft and black with gleaming brown streaks and gray gobs that drip down my arm from the clot I pulled out of the bathroom sink trap with my bare hand because it’s your hair.

month and a half

☞

028) Grace Is Not God’s Backup Plan: an urgent paraphrase of paul’s letter to the romans by Adam S. Miller, finished April 5

I’ve owned this for a while but picked it up after reading Miller’s Original Grace.

This much shorter book is, of course, largely Paul’s words rather than Adam’s, but in a very real way this book is well read as a necessary preliminary work, preparation for Original Grace.

Funny: I bought my copy used. The first nine chapters are filled with underlining from the original owner. The final chapters, however, are filled with my own marks.

Because this is a great way to read Romans. You will find things to mark.

Perhaps the making of urgent paraphrases should be an exercise we all undertake.

seven months

☞

029) The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler, finished April 9

Of what I’ve read so far, I think I like John M. Cain best although Dashielle Hammet’s Red Harvest might be my favorite but then maybe that’s recency bias talking. Anyway, now I’ve met Raymond Chandler and he’s great too. I thought the book lost its way for a while but it all came together. The ending makes me wonder if he’s a little softer than Cain or Hammet, but I don’t have enough data to be sure.

I picked up my copy, a beat-up paperback from the early ‘80s, not that long ago and didn’t take long to dive in. I think I have me an epigraph that I found on page 268 but it’s too soon to say if I’ll use it. Anyway, I had to tape the cover more than once over the last month to keep it from falling off.

I was carrying it the other day when a friend and former colleague of mine asked what I was reading as said a friend of his at Berkeley was teaching it this very moment. I wonder what the class is.

Anyway, Philip Marlowe starts the novel by making a friend, but things don’t go well for the friend. He ends up dead in a Mexican hotel room. He works his way through every element of society—hoods, cops, money—seeing what he sees and keeping his thoughts to himself without it feeling like he’s hiding anything from us the readers. He’s just not a chatty guy. But he has his moral code. He’ll never make money or slide into bigger slots but he’ll be able to live with himself. That has to count for something.

a shade over twenty days

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For a few years, I would take notes during General Conference then post them on the blog. I always thought it was an absurd, self-indulgent exercise, but every time I said I was stopping, people would tell me they looked forward to this mess of comments and quotes and ask me to keep going. Talking about Conference live on Twitter finally killed it, but I’m bringing it back this year because I’ve been asked to prepare a few thoughts for Dialogue about this conference and making some pulic-facing notes should help keep me focused for the mere eight hours left of Conference in 2026.

That’s my introduction.

On with the show.

Saturday Morning

Christopherson conducting.

Choir starkly split, the women in bright white, the men in black.

I do like this thing of inviting singers around the world to join the choir. Do the singers have to pay their own way? I hope not. Appropriate that Wales gets shouted out as it’s own entity—a nation of singers!

Pr Oaks up first, welcoming members and nonmembers alike. Introducing the solemn assembly, calls it both sustaining and voting. This recognizes the challenges of leadership in a significant way.

Solemn Assembly!

“Is this good tv?”

I suppose this is best treated as a meditative opportunity. Best of luck to those with young children.

Am I right that General Authorities were not given the opportunity to oppose?

Am I wrong in remembering the RS used to stand after the AP? A sensible change if my memory is correct.

Elder Patrick Kearon

mid-twenties convert, sustained in sacmoim, felt welcomed

a week later, bishop thwacking ruler, offers him a calling, based in prayer: assistant ward clark/clerk

sustained again

back in the days, I assume, when there was a lot of paper and stamps involved

meanwhile, sustaining others

Common Consent “a beautiful mix of something, agency, and faith”

“we sustain each other with our prayers and something and our faith”

(I’m not transcribing very well this morning)

serving with love sometimes with people different from us

not all can always serve

whatever our offering in the lord’s economy we always come out ahead

drop your nets!

what call could have been more incomprehensible than that one?

“pur service is a choice, an offering to god, and a blessing”

callings have a foundational role in growing our faith

(I wonder if accepting callings is a worldwide problem and not just something blossoming locally….)

your callings today do not predict your callings tomorrow

he’s not saying this directly, but what I’m hearing is “stay humble”

the solemn assembly as a type of whatever calling you were sustained to

can it make us see the holy connection more clearly?

in accepting a calling we’re joining the Savior in his redemptive work

Sister Yee, painter

“ministering brother” (anachronism) invited her father at a low point to weekly temple attendance

it changed his behavior to others, his motivations, and more

that couple still his dearest friends

when we serve in our assignments we are the savior’s hands and blessing people loved by their families

“I find the Savior when I minister”

(current Conference theme: serving in the Church)

love one another as I have loved you

we minister while we and they are yet imperfect

loving someones over somethings

just go

exercise faith

HF wants you to be happy; ministering is designed with that in mind

this is the way (don’t miss the mandalorian and grogu in theaters this may)

new guy, Clark Gilbert, starts with a nice callback to a Kearon joke

one’s first talk as a member of the Twelve is a special genre of talk, innit?

pledge my life to be a witness of Jesus Christ

today, focus on “redeemer” and “repairer”

His first quotation as an apostle is Shakespeare which I have to say bodes well.

Next allusion is Minerva Teichert! This is doing a lot to dilute the negative things I’ve heard about him from people who went to highschool with him or disliked his work in university administration.

Reaching out to those who feel set aside is an appropriate first topic.

this story reminds me of a work of fiction I published in Irreantum a few years ago

life is long but eternity is longer—what is thirty years, really?

comparing oneself to others really is a viciously demonic tool

anchor in the things you do believe and the lord will help you out with the others

recognizing the Holy Ghost is step one

truth so well disguised now you need the HG to recognize it

everyone’s journey is unique; we can’t ask people to take steps identical to anyone else’s

Elder Bednar has a love/hate relationship with running

He’s not selling me on running

ah. a metaphor for enduring to the end

many of us associate endure with drudgery

but in a spiritual context it is more than that

confirmed members eligible for spiritual gifts, which are essential to coming to the Savior and becoming more like him

the very term teaches that they are gifts, unearned solely by effort or discipline

charity is the greatest of all

endure used to describe charity

charity never faileth

found with charity at the last day? well with you!

we can possess charity but, ultimately, charity must possess us

(charity is truly one of the primary spiritual queries of my life—the double direction of of is an excellent point I’d not previously considered)

hope to be able to endure all things

we do not merely do benevalent deeds but we are changed

jesus was with the father in the beginning—so were we

when he came to earth he grew grace to grace until he received the fulness

that’s the patter we follow as well

fun substitution game

“endure to the end” = “is possessed of the pure love of christ”

enduring to the end is inseperable from developing charity

compelling thought, Bednar

“enduring to the end is the joyous quest of a lifetime”

a gradual process of trusting in and becoming like our savior

John U Teh

ah, the rich young man—we need this as a culture

when traditions are incompatible with the gospel

a process of consideration, action, outside pressures

takes faith to keep covenants over nationalized peer pressure

Oaks: the gospel challenges us to change

(will the Nelson-era trend of constantly quoting the current church president continue?)

he quotes Oaks a second time

we can reflect the Son onto others

ends with testifying of leadership

Elder Becerra

miracle of the used car(s)

[sorry, got a little distracted]

windows of heaven—windows allow light in—tithing does this

Pr Eyring

fun fact: his family was almost certainly part of my current ward before he was born (although it’s possible they lived in Oakland; that’s where son one was born)

let’s not be afraid!

wars and rumors of wars, economies faltering, etc etc

people are petitioning the lord for comfort, peace, etc

perhaps you have observed prayers both more numerous and more heartfelt

turning to the lord in times of chaos a trend as old as mankind

do I think I will be heard for my much speaking (a poky question for one as I)

lift up your heads and be of good comfort for I will ease your burdens even while you are in bondage—and so it was

the lord will do this for us just as he did for alma and his people

as we pray continually no matter the circumstances the lord will offer peace and abiding support

nice quoted blessing

the Savior’s promise is true

a humble prayer or peace will be honored

I felt this at the funeral of my wife

allowed to envision the happy reunion ahead

peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you…let not your heart be troubled

…..…..…..…..…..…..…..…..…..…..…..

Saturday Afternoon

Choir from the University of Idaho? That’s interesting.

Elder Rasband conducting

Oh, no. It was BYU–I. Less surprising.

Some more releases and sustainings.

Did the new Primary president share a last name with a released 70? Coincidence? Was he released so she could serve, perhaps? Shall I start any more rumors while I’m here?

Wish we had more detailed money reports…. Was interested to see during the World Report the totals spent on charity. That was nice. No breakdown, but still.

He shouldn’t read that off the teleprompter….

You really got to reign in your Utah accent when announcing that hymn. I assume the choir ain’t actually singing all hell to Jesus’ name.

GE Stevensen worried about luggage

33million bags mishandled last year?? Maybe low as a percentage but still a big number!

one Japanese airport, in 30yrs, did not lose a single bag

they believe in the preciousness of luggage to people and their attention to detail follows

kaizen

fragile items hand-delivered to passengers, bags returned handle-out

but what about their dealings with other airports?

we are the luggage in this metaphor, come to earth to be cared for by others until we can be returned to Him

his label on our heart

this is more than logistics; thisis redemption

ministering as baggage hangling

I’m charmed by this metaphor but I predict some people being offended online thereby

Eduardo Ortega

spirituality is not just heritage—it must also be a decision, a search for one’s own testimony

growing up attending meetings was not enough; I needed to know for myself

that undeniable testimony didn’t arrive before serving a mission

your circumstances though imperfect maintain hope in Christ

time reveals the hand of Christ

Did he call him President Nephi?

Ah! Another Oaks quotation. I’m thinking this might be an at least semi-permanent alteration to GC culture

interesting in this safe and sure path being better than the shortest path—a common misreading of strait for straight

Elder Wu

I’d love to know more about this religious tradition—Chinese polytheism!

then immigration to Bolivia where he met missionaries

WHERE IS THE DB-PUBLISHED BIOGRAPHY OF THIS MAN??

(quick internet search) he’s only six years older than me….

very straightforward call to Christ

Elder Wunderli

kids and rocks—my favorite genre of anecdote?

(this was a pretty good one)

removing Jesus will not lighten your load

curious to see if the Jesus-is-rock metaphor will find its way into this talk

keeping Jesus with us requires daily worship (pray, read, trust, repent, live, renew)

Oaks said: Jesus Christ is the way (not as good a star wars ad)

Elder Gérald Caussé

up above a tiny flickering point of light then another
the sky filled with stars

this is like our relationship with God—when you look, He is here

ala David, how is it you have made us a little lower than the angels?

how can I be discourage when I know my father watches the sparrows?

God and Son love all and love each

reading the scriptures and noticing the alls and eaches and everys

all=universal aspect of love
each=care for the individual

there really is no end to the lenses one can bring to the scriptures

no strangers or outcasts, only brothers and sisters

we don’t serve those we already love
we come to love people as we serve them (fine thesis, that)

la belle et la bête—disney version

a number of connectings of service to joy today

Elder Holmes

expecting to get the right talk here, no matter how improbable

combining Bednar’s running with Ortega’s mountain, with a hint of blindness

another Oaks quotation!

Jesus as guide

only he has the words of eternal life

to walk with jesus is to follow his prophet

God desires us all to come home

Jesus climbed the steepest mountain of all, ergo we never have to mountaineer alone

this guy’s a year younger than me…if you’re wondering what stage of life I’m in

Elder Matswagothata has a challenging name, evidence we can do hard things (assuming I did spell his name correctly)

[missed a bit as I explained teleprompters to the 9yrold]

“pain and silent tears”

“many carry quiet burdens”

“trust his promise that the sun will rise again for you”

(incidentally: four years younger than me)

“when are you going to stop being a naughty boy?”

“I felt seen, I felt known, I felt not alone”

(yes, yes, I’m crying)

“just as [that family] prayed for me, there is someone praying for you”

come follow him and find peace in this tumutuous world

(nicely international Conference so far)

he reaches for us because he wishes to lead us home, one by one, by name

Elder Ulisses Soares

blue ties are in

abiding in Christ is a constant and conscious and sacred choice

including in digital spaces: consecrate

(exhibit a: svithetacular)

abiding in Christ does not remove our burdens but makes them lighter

in a world of many voices it’s essential to remain connected to the true vine

anecdote: Eld Holland called Soares to welcome him to the Quorum only moments after receiving the call; feeling served by the Lord through his servents

as we hear the savior’s voice through his servants we bring forth much fruit

His voice IS THE voice of truth and light

abide in him
continue in his love
recognize his power in your life
his love will be perfected in us

…..…..…..…..…..…..…..…..…..…..…..

Sunday Morning

Pr Eyring conducting

Acting President Uchtdorf

Happy Easter!

From those in the Quarum at the time I memorized the Twelve in the MTC (Packer Perry Haight, Maxwell Nelson Oaks, Ballard Wirthlin Scott, Hales Holland Eyring), this is the first time someone not on that list leads the Quorum (ie, I’m getting old; cf, ages of Seventies noted yesterday)

the best place to go when the world is dark: the light

bc of what happened easter morning we can speak of Jesus Christ in the present tense

bc of His strength, all obstacles can be overcome

we too must encounter the Empty Tomb
confront what it means
then share our witness with others

blessed are those who have not seen but have believed includes us

like the women at the tomb, even when things seem dark, we can walk forward in faith

that faith will be rewarded

each morning let the daily rising sun remind you of Jesus

He is not here! He is risen!

let that inspire you

with a disposition to do good continually

jesus is our strength, our guide for making choices, will bring joy now and later

“he lives” is the testimony that has made all the difference in my life and it will make a difference to you

President Sister Emily Belle Freeman

wedding + cancer = mortality

best days and worst days allow mortality to do its work on us

Peter’s best day: recognizing messiah
Peter’s worst day: messiah calls him satan
——only three verses apart from each other

walking on water to immediately sinking—
best day / worst day

accepting an invitation from the Lord? He is there in (on) the water with you

worst day: Peter sees Jesus arrested then denies him

on the next walk, Jesus looks at him

what was that look to mean?

perhaps Jesus’s instructions to remember and to strengthen thy brethren—through the worst to come

whether today is a best day or a worst day (or both day) remember: God’s plan is for you and you can trust him; he knows you; pour out your heart; be still and listen (from fsy booklet)

fsy not just a guide for standards but a guide for strength

which angel do you suppose it was that was sent to strengthen jesus when he required it?

Elder PX Larreal

his accent makes me realize I shoulda just gone for it in Spanish

honestly, genuinely difficult to follow

when Jesus taught the sacrament, he was equally focused on us

the sacrament is for you and for me

a time to remember we are never alone

gift of HG a compass

Elder Ed Rowe

deactiviting mines without knowing where they all are

“Carefully follow your guide. Winta knows this place from personal experience. Follow in his footsteps, a few paces behind. Where he steps, you step.”

as time passed, my trust in Winta grew, and I returned home without harm

I developed a great trust and gratitude in him

we follow in His footsteps through covenants / temple worship / sacrament / ministering

following His example builds trust

even our very natures change to become more like him

when injured by spiritual landmines Christ’s healing power is enough

you can be too

return unto me and repent of your sins that I may heal you

Elder Rasband

ON Easter Sunday, yes, but THIS Easter Sunday?

tfw angels announce the risen savior

Pr Oaks has testified the resurrection a pillar of our faith the trickles into everything else

Jesus more than just a prophet

baby Paxton

blessing him just two fingers on his skull

“weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning”

“because I live ye shall live also”

someday Paxton will be resurrected whole and perfect

resurrection not just a whole body but whole with God and Christ and our family

that’s the new painting from the World Report!

he is risen, he is risen, tell it out with joyful voice and let the whole wide world rejoice

Elder Renlund

the parable of the two balls

two balls were too many for this poor dog

we have even more balls and we too may want to climb back into bed

remember: not all balls equal; maintain an eternal perspective

why focusing on Jesus is of greatest value and helps us no matter how many more balls we have

“no man cometh unto the father but by me”

the Savior can and will declare guiltless all who repent and strive to the end

all means everyone

if eveyone then anyone

if anyone then even one

if even one then even you

(nice use of language, that)

repented-of sins leave no scar, no trace

post-repentence, we owe no more to justice

focus on the ball that matters most: Jesus
and you’ll be okay

Elder Th. Mutombo

the pascal greeting / easter affirmation:

1O: Christ is risen.
2P: Truly, he is risen.

blessed are those who come unto me

he’s arguing God loves you more each covenant you make which isn’t something I buy (according to the latest Sunstone, this is an argument Oaks used to make)

four of their ten children died in the early years of their marriage

our prayers did not change God’s will

his family tried to split him and his wife given their bad luck with children and according to their children

he didn’t go for it

Oaks: following Christ is a continuous commitment

keeping covenants can require leaving behind that which is highly esteemed among men

satan’s program is play now, pay later (if ever) or so he claims

Elder AR Walker

into treasure

I’d love to know his list of favorite movies as a kid

living next to the Andes seems good for treasure

the word treasure occurs in scriptures dozens of times—warnings against earthy treasures—but also the Lord speaking of us as his treasures, “a peculiar treasure” if we come unto him and keep his covenants

each of us has a special place in god’s heart
he has high hopes for us

think of blessings Only He can bestow

another Oaks quotation! (obedience essential to rise above life’s challenges)

as we choose to follow prophetic counsel even when hard that’s a signal to God of our priorities

“a continual stream of blessings from god”

a real…baby-bird kind of talk

President Dallin H. Oaks

1: the Resurrection

Jesus’s resurrection settled doctrine for all Christians
a universal resurrection settled doctrine for those who accept the Book of Mormon

do we accept the significance of believe in a universal resurrection?

death not being a conclusion affects our entire perspective on day-to-day life and life as a whole

mortal deficiencies, only temporary

death, even premature death, nbd

many people call today toxic (accompanied by delightful stock photo)

even those whose Christian beliefs should be preventative are toxic

Jesus taught the two great commandments, clarifying with the Good Samaritan

He also declared you should love your enemy

“bless them that curse you…pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you”

hard words in 2026, to be sure

our enemies to our beloved children of God

old stake conference story:

inspired to ask woman in yellow dress to give surprise talk

she’s a nurse in a max-care facility

one of her patients the most repulsive man she’d ever met

he had an accident in his room at which point she felt an “almost electric current of love from God to this man” and she saw him as God saw him; she held him and comforted him as he cried that he just wanted to go home

that was one of the great spiritual experiences of her life

and a powerful lesson to me

loving others isn’t surrendering our values—it IS our values

balancing various responsibilities is hard

expect to be accused of not valuing obedience when showing love and of not showing love when valuing obedience

strangers’ hostility give way to friendship over time and contact

follow Jesus by choosing to love others even when they show no love for us

how it would change the world if Christians would embrace peacemaking

drawing a deliberate continuous line from Nelson’s tenure by focusing on peacemaking

as followers of Christ let us forego contention and embrace peacemaking

let us seek to be holy like our savior

(was there no #2?)

He…chose not to say amen! Quite the move.

…..…..…..…..…..…..…..…..…..…..…..

Sunday Afternoon

Elder Renlund conducting

Pres D Todd Christopherson

Peter back again, this time reminding us the last days will have Second Coming doubters

but, hey, you nondoubters—what manner of persons ought you to be?

live a life holiness

obv we should emulate Jesus, so what is his character?

Christlike character grows out of a Christlike heart so how do we obtain his motivations, desires, intents?

a willingness to correct when moved upon by the HG / always a willingness to forgive

character is revealed in being able to see the suffering of others when we ourselves are suffering

what better example than missionaries

a life of moral excellence is virtue is thought patterns good

no one of us alone can change the world but we each can have an influence on the world

Elder Wong

five remember-remember verses in BofM

see? so many ways to sort and resee the scriptures

God gives us knowledge and thus makes us free

Elder AT Hall, Happy Easter!

I glory in my Jesus for he hath redeemed my soul from hell

in every circumstance, bitter and sweet, Jesus trusted

“perfect empathy”

he heals us one by one

I rejoice that he can deliver us

Oaks quote!

Sister Porter

after establishing she’s gonna speak to the children, she changed to her for-the-kids voice

more speakers should speak to the kids than just the Primary presidency

your spirit is old, kids

He can help you stand for truth so you can share the light with others

even small children can say here I am, send me / here’s what I have, share (as in loaves and fishes)

dessert anecdote: get blessings now and later

she has an interesting way of suddenly changing how quickly she is speaking

Elder Neil L Anderson

sealing power’s pretty great

(the l is for linden)

marriage is a journey—to what God would have us become

“love is not love that alters when it alteration finds”

which is the real test of the opening months of marraige

the napkin joke’s pretty good.

second time today quoting you need the HG bc the devil’s so good at masquerading as truth

Packer gets a nice bonmot at Anderson’s expense! Zing!

everyone gets a righteous companion of their choosing eventually

sometimes divorce has to be a yes but always proceed with caution

this health-based anecdote seems a peculiar response to the divorce question….

Elder Q Cook

Moroni not letting Joseph sleep

questions Joseph likely had after this infodump

Cook and Holland escorting folks including religious leaders through open-house temple tours in Utah; discussing baptisms for the dead; connects directly to Malachi; read about Solomon’s temple; some leaders recognized this, some moved by it; in sealing room, Holland, teary, compelled to share that Elijah had come and restored the sealing keys; Jewish visitors appreciated all the OT stuff; later invited to go to Jerusalem to note anniversary of Orson Hyde’s dedication; Holland in his 30s spearheaded BYU–J; he worked with both Israeli and Palestinian leaders; together at the garden tomb with wives reading relevant scriptures; you do not needto visit Jerusalem to feel these same things yourself

Elder Wakolo

daughter called GC unmisunderstandable

but stop signs might be clearer

Oaks: doctrine of church centers on family which centers on temples

lots of temple stuff this weekend

some families are not yet sealed—to you I say you are essential to God’s plan

his example stories are so stripped of detail as to lose their value as lived experience

I repent—the second one’s better than the first one

but all these stories are resolved before death which I think could offer limited comfort to many

throwback to Elder Gong’s last-conference talk: no one sits alone

Elder Gong!

(incidentally, I was thinking, the Bay Area is deeply over represented among the 15 right now: Gong’s from San Francisco; Bednar’s from Oakland, which is where Clark too was born; Cook was a San Francisco stake president; Eyring was born a couple years after his family left Berkeley—am I missing any?)

never judge people for not recognizing what is directly before them—have not we done the same?

let’s just all abide with each other

historical aside on solemn assemblies

that must make Pr Oaks feel old, that Gong was a new student when he was the new president, turning forty and feeling old

Oaks told him a story about a grandfather who offered up coins to his grandchildren; the granddaughter who was careful only chose the best

if you see someone walking alone and sad, will you please walk with them?

no one should walk to road to Emmaus unseen

Pr Oaks

true nuff—lotta Jesus stories this conference

brief summary of such

we’ve been reminded about marriage and families

may we all represent the pure love of Christ in all our interchanges with God’s children

as these messages are published, check them out (until then, you have this svithetacular)

amen

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previous svithe on thmusings

previous svithe on thubstack

previous svithetacular on thmusings

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The Thin Man (1934)

She rarely if ever bothers to smolder but no one in the history of film is more attractive than Myrna Loy. I would watch her sit and be bored for thirty minutes at a stretch. How does she do it?

I wonder if the dinner scenes in Black Bag were inspired at least in part by the Charleses’ dinner scenes?

It is astonishing to me how slobberingly drunk people were during Prohibition.

While I don’t think any of the movies is perfect, this remains one of my all-time top franchises.


ELSEWHERE × 3
Prime Video

A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1999)

I’ve seen this movie, on average, once every nine years since it came out and all of them yesterday and today.

I kinda loved it, actually. I was a little worried from reviews at the time that it would be too sexy and/or not well acted, but come on. It’s exactly the right amount of sexy and the acting’s pretty solid throughout. A few lines really hammered the blank verse (but I actually liked those line readings, Ms Pfeiffer, don’t worry), but I wonder if what was disliked at the time (by those who did) was the pure theatricality of it all? The woods are all sets. But it remains cinematic. The characters, in their greatest madness, move in and out of sightlines much as they might on a stage. But it never stops being a movie.

Also really like some of the dramaturgical choices. Allowing Bottom to be more than a joke, the tension (and eventual resolution) between Theseus and Hippolyta, the way the women watch the play differently than the men.

And I like the darned bicycles.


ELSEWHERE
Kanopy

The Worst Person in the World (2021)

In twelve chapters and a prologue and an epilogue, so a great film to split over four days (as I did), but a little hard to wrap my arms around. The acting from the leads is excellent. The various angles on human experience are intriguing. The closeness of death to life, of truth to living—and yet, do they meet?

It seems like it has a 50% chance to be a movie I’m still thinking about years from now.

I liked the use of static cameras and the recurrent motif of our hero walking through the streets with the camera on her front. And I was more satisfied that usual with how it displayed psychodelics.


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Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

It’s amazing to me how much I like this movie. Sure, I love Wes Anderson’s work, but movies about preteen love and such obvious French New Wave debts usually rub me the wrong way and this is both! So why is it so great? I hate 12yrolds kissing!

I guess what it comes down to is that, in the end, I just believe Wes in a way I don’t believe Truffaut (for instance). I think he means it. I find him sincere. The artificiality of his imagery is a tunnel to truth, and that gets me to overcome even these burdens. The colors and the delivery and the cuts and the pans and the angles and the music and the sound mix and the miniatures and the costumes—it all adds up to something straight from the soul, and that I cannot not appreciate.

And so I do.


ELSEWHERE
Prime Video

A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2017)

Of the six options I brought to students, this is the one I gave my lowest expectations. (Or maybe this one, but it was close.) But, in fact, I kinda loved it.

It’s a modern-day Shakespeare which can really be good or bad, but it dived right in with terrific wit. The script employs lots of lines from other plays (a tradition that goes back at least to Baz Luhrman’s Romeo + Juliet) but it does it particularly well and with particular wit. The most blatant one (and perhaps least clever and perhaps also most delightful) was a 2B-or-not-2B bit. And it delights in the anachronism of modern-day Shakespeare—one I particularly liked (though the subtitlers missed the joke) was calling the phone AI Sirrah rather than Siri. Clever. And sensible. A fine and tiny gag.

For me, the movie stalled out in the forest, but the conclusion was also pure entertainment.

Part of the problem is that I found Puck utterly without interest and part of the problem is that the monochrome forest scenes while a cool idea, just rendered the screen...plain—uninteresting to look at once you’re accustomed to everything being red.

It’s always interesting to see what new ideas for line delivery a new production might employ. For instance, I liked Demetrius giving his lines about falling back in love with Helena in private to Helena. That was a nice.

Lastly, I loved how deliriously SoCal the whole thing is. Lots of examples, but the overtanned and oversurgeried Hippolyta was perhaps the most subtle example.

Happy to have laughed this much.

ps: young gen z dismisses the humor as “millennial”


ELSEWHERE
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A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2016)

Gen Z has had it with stuff from the Teens. This too is very “of its time” (meaning ten years ago) and they found it hard to like. THAT SAID, they absolutely enjoyed every bonkers moment of this adaptation and they had a LOT to say when it was over.

In this one, Theseus is a heavily Nazi-coded fascist and Hippolyta is imprisoned like a magical Hannibal Lector. And that’s just for starters.

I admire how British television just embraces bonkers effects without too much concern how they mesh. That said, this is cleaner than, say, the Terry Pratchett things I’ve watched.

As for me, I loved it. It’s absolutly bananas but it’s wholeheartedly engaged with its bananiness and so I am as well. Every other scene brought a startling and unexpected surprise even though I know perfectly well what comes next, according to the text.

One of Gen Z’s complaints is its awkward attempts at being diverse, but, man, this play was hella queer to start with. That that freak flag fly, Midsummer. Let it fly.


ELSEWHERE
Kanopy

Julie Taymor’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2014)

This is my favorite.

Generally, if I’m watching a movie, I prefer a movie to a filmed play, but they did an excellent job with the cameras and editing here. And Taymor’s mindaltering imagery and blocking is just terrific all the way through. Kathryn Hunter is, of course, a deliciously weird Puck. The king and queen of the fairies are regal to the point of godly and the rude mechanicals are freshly modern in their funny. My only real complaint is that Theseus sounded so much like Matt Berry I couldn’t figure out if he was trying to be funny or not.

I’ve liked all the Midsummers I’ve watched the last couple weeks but, again, this is my favorite.


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Because of Winn-Dixie (2005)

The 9yrold’s teacher just finished reading this in class and, by a bizarre coincidence, the same day we discovered the dvd in our collection. The universe is looking out for her.

She was (naturally) hyperconcerned with slight changes but overall she liked the movie.

It’s...not that great. It’s not bad! don’t get me wrong! but it’s just a typical family film with some of the eyerollers we associate with the genre.

But I definitely liked it, if for no other reason because we get to see elderly Eva Marie Saint and Cicely Tyson plying their trade. The former didn’t get much to do, but Cicely Tyson worked her scenes like nobody’s business. On the other side of the spectrum you get a 6yrold Elle Fanning. It’s the darn circle of life.

I was surprised by the tiny amount of magical realism (the candy made with sugar and sorrow) and kinda wished this smiling dog had pulled a Mary Poppins and just vamoosed at the end of the movie.

But you can’t get everything you want.


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Peacock

Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain (2023)

“Therefore we must judge a [comedy] not by the author’s intent, or by the mere mechanics of the plot; but by the [hilarity] level which it attains at its least mundane point.” --- H. P. Lovecraft

Look: it’s not a good movie. But, by Lovecraft’s standard, its a terrific comedy. Because there were some moments I laughed a lot. And those are redemptive.

Largely, the movie’s an awkward transition from sketch to feature, but let’m try again, says me and Lovecraft.


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The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie (2004)

Remarkable little film. Genuinely scary, utterly stupid, truly funny, and somehow feelgood. I mean—isn’t that as much as one may reasonably ask of a cartoon movie?


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Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang (2010)

It’s amazing the dvds that turn up in our collection. Where did it come from? Anyway, eight months after the then8yrold and I watched movie one, here we go again.

(Incidentally, yes, our dvd has the American title. I don’t know that the British title is better, but it’s less boring than Nanny McPhee Returns.)

These are curious movies. Obviously, she’s in the Mary Poppins vein, but Nanny McPhee has quite different ideas about ethics—compromising other characters’ agency, for instance. The nature of time and place is also peculiar. And the tie-in with the first movie is also surprising. And the nature and democracy of the world’s magic requires attention and uncovering. It’s asking similar questions as Mary Poppins about appearance and character but coming at it from an opposite direction. And it has surprising (and uncredited) stars in R**** F****** and E*** M*******! But some of the minor characters are the most exciting. The two scary women for instance: amazing.

In the end, they’re charming movies and I’m glad to watch them but they’re no one-two like, say, Babe or the first two Paddington movies. But what is?


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Bugonia (2025)

The closing credits are the best part of the movie. Normally this would be an insult but these closing credits are, visually and aurally, wonderful.

That said, I didn’t like the movie. It was very compelling up top, but the last act was filled with twists like someone was making fun of the worst excesses of M. Night Shyamalan having only heard Twitter haters talk about M. Night Shyamalan.

Without his track record with excellent weird movies, I don’t know that such good actors would have signed up for this nonsense.

Beautiful cinematography and knitwear though!


THEATER
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The Bride! (2026)

I get people’s complaints but if “The Monster Mash” did not reveal to you that Maggie Gyllenhaal knew exactly what she was doing, I mean, come on. Yes she did.

I’ll grant it’s a mad film. Honestly, could’ve used a couple more honest eyes on the script before going into production. But it was great! I wasn’t always sure what was happening or why, but I was very happy to be along for the ride.

And what a great film to watch the day after Jessie Buckley won for Hamnet. Even though I could not recognize her as the same woman to save my life even knowing it was her.

Plus, I appreciate that this too rewards familiarity with the Whale movies, with the novel, with a huge grabbag of relevant popculture history. That was fun. Thank you.


SEWHERE × 3
Prime Video

Die Hard (1988)

After learning that Die Hard is “based” on Midsummer Night’s Dream, I knew I had to teach Midsummer and then sic the kids on Die Hard. Allegedly, after rereading Midsummer, the screenwriter reduced the action from three nights to one and had a couple new ways to think about the film:

Anyway, the students naturally found a lot more than just this Aristotelian time limit. They have the option to write about it tomorrow and I’m excited to see what they come up with.

It’s always enlightening to watch a movie three times back to back (half one, half one, half one, half two, half two, half two). You can notice slight errors (Karl’s hand keeping him alive ain’t the next time we see him; Holly blouse rips open during a single cut), intentional motifs (John checking out hostess/airportgirl/sexycoworker/nextdoorneighbor/pinupposters, broken glass). Doesn’t mean I know what to do with all that stuff, but this is a movie that holds up to close inspection. Lots of smart decisions that are easy to miss when watching it only every third Christmas.

But I think this may be why Die Hard holds up so well: it embraces being part of the One Story. It embraces being a Shakespearean comedy, it embraces being a Christ story—but, less highbrow, it embraces being a mashup or genre pieces as well: cop, action, buddy, etc.

Good movie.


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Peacock

Ticket to Paradise (2022)

• I’m guessing the screenwriters laid out all their favorite beats and moved them around in circles until they found an order that felt good.

• I was just listening to an episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour about the magical challenge of casting and I think that might be part of the problem, even with Julia Roberts and George Clooney and Kaitlyn Dever.

• It feels like an advertisement for Bali even though all the big geographical taxbreak logos at the end are for Australia. And it really did make me want to go to Bali. Sorry, Australia. I think you got ripped off.

• Almost nothing in this movie works (but not nothing! a couple moments play!), which feels like such a waste. Somehow, this bad movie makes me sadder.

• Was the primary motivation just wish-fulfillment for kids of divorce?


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Nanny McPhee (2005)

I have complaints about removing agency in order to teach but the character work and certain lines are simply incredible.

Even only half paying attention and missing twenty-some minutes in the middle I teared up with some frequency.

The 9yrold prefers the sequel as the dancing pigs are funner.



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Robin Hood (1973)

The first half is not that well paced, it’s true. But the second half is perfect. The music throughout is excellent. The voice work is terrific (and probably more period-accurate than Errol Flynn, truth be told).

Those looking to hate will find reason to, but the pacing is tight and once it finds its rhythm it’s excellent and haters ought let themselves be won over.

Part of the trick is that it manages to create high stakes even though no one dies.

Since last seeing this, I’ve watched too many YouTube videos about how either this movie is great or how portions of it are great and I just cannot disagree.


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The Terminator (1984)

I wonder if the production company being named 1984 Cinema ‘84 meant anything.

The sex scene isn’t really sexy but if I ever remembered the shots of Linda Hamilton’s breasts I’d probably hesitate on showing this to teenage boys. Too late. (Again.)

It does feel old now but it’s still good. And once you embrace the idea of paradoxes all the way down, no worries!


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The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025)

We wanted to see this because of the cool midcentury visuals. Not sad we missed paying twenty bucks to see it because that’s about all it had going for it. The script is an absolute mess. The edit is a disaster. Only Vanessa Kirby does anything interesting and that might only be in comparison.

It’s a bad movie.

They didn’t learn from all the bad things that have been done in previous Marvel movies and they didn’t learn from all the good things that have been done in previous Marvel movies and they certainly didn’t learn anything from The Incredibles (other than who to hire to write the score).

It’s not good.

None of the characters make sense, from the heros to the bystanders. It’s a disaster. More’s the pity.


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Song Sung Blue (2025)

It’s Certified Fresh but it doesn’t surprise me that the audience score is 20% higher, almost perfect. It’s a crowd-pleaser if any movie ever was.

The film is well made though I don’t think it’s perfect enough to become a classic. (I like what Josh Larson said: “Writer-director Craig Brewer...does more veering that [sic] navigating.”) But Kate Hudson and Hugh Jackman are both incredible. Perfection from them both. And, in the last half of the movie, the same can be said of Ella Anderson and King Princess.

I thought this was just going to be a fun, feelgood, ragstoriches story—plucky nobodies make good! And they do make good. More than I had even guessed. But oh, it’s not so easy. There is pain. There is suffering. There are the absurd slings and arrows of fortune. But it’s lovely and beautifully and, ultimately, life- and art-affirming.

(Foreigners will definitely read this movie as a damning commentary on the American healthcare system. And they will be right.)


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Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

The T-1000 looks just as good as the Silver Surfer in last years Fantastic Four. I’ll leave it up to you whether that is a compliment for T2 or a knock on FF.

The movie’s great and, had the studios known enough to leave well enough alone, this would have been one of the great one-two punches in movie-franchise history.

One question: Had Linda Hamilton spent the last seven years working on her arms and shoulders?

You know, if Robert Patrick had been ten years younger ten years later, he would have made a great elf (and not had to be the one falling into the lava). And being an elf probably would have been better for his future as a leading man.

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I’m sitting here eating Trader Joe’s Sugared Hearts Rice Crackers (better than anticipated) uncertain how to introduce this collection of books, so I guess I just won’t I have other thing to do and if you’re here, it’s probably because you already like books. I’m with you.

015) The Path and the Gate: Mormon Short Fiction edited by Andrew Hall and Robert Raleigh, finished March 15

It took me a long time to read this, which is typical of shortstory collections, even ones I’m in, even ones filled with my friends, even ones I’m very excited about. This is all three.

And now I’m nervous to talk about it because of course I remember some well and others not well and I’m deeply unsure how much I can trust any of the things left to say!

Ugh. I’m the worst.

Anyway, I do feel confident calling the collection worthy of your time and money. It’ll be the standard for at least another 15 years so you still have time to be hip. But: dally not.

over two years

☞

016) Hyperion by Dan Simmons, finished March 19

I think I liked the book more this second read. My complaints from the first goround are still valid, but they just don’t bother me as much. The book’s strengths carry the weight. Although knowing ahead of time that the book ends before the characters reach their goal probably eases the frustration.

Perhaps I would like the second book better as well.

I’ve since recommended these two to my son who has read them many times and has all four volumes. I really want to go on and read all four, but I’m not sure I will. After all, he suggests there are diminishing returns. And, the reason I reread Hyperion now is because he suggested it to our shared book group. And coming up soon is Moby Dick so it’s not like I’ve got lots of time for three five-hundred paged books. I thought I was going to read some classics casually this year!

Anyway, if you don’t recall, Hyperion is basically Canturbury Tales. These distant-future pilgrims are headed to the planet Hyperion to ask questions of its godlike resident the Shrike (who looks nothing like what’s on the cover of the book; someone really needs to come out with classier covers for this near-classic scifi series. I would probably buy them for my son.) On route, they each (save one pilgrim who goes missing) tell their story explaining why they suppose they were chosen for this, the final Shrike pilgramage. Each of these six stories is about novella length and is told in a different fashion. They are the volume’s greatest strenght, though I would not call them all equally successful. Or, perhaps, it would be better to say that they are not all successful in the same ways.

A couple sentences on each (the bit before each title is a descriptor added by Wikipedia):

The Priest’s Tale: “The Man Who Cried God”

Of course one needs to be diaries and/or letters and frankly I’m glad it was first, get it out of the way rather than waiting for it to drop. This has a truly fascinating and horrifying alien concept. Best comparison: if Speaker for the Dead had never stopped being a horror tale.

The Soldier’s Tale: “The War Lovers”

Never have sex and violence been more fully entwined. Maybe it’s been matched, but ne’er exceeded.

The Poet’s Tale: “Hyperion Cantos”

The most annoying character gets to be annoying about his writing. It’s kind of perfect for a book so concerned with the literary arts to make the most literate character such a bastard.

The Scholar’s Tale: “The River Lethe’s Taste Is Bitter”

This is my favorite of the six. It starts with the mundane lives of two people who love each other and the most bizarre event imaginable—the backwards aging of their child—complicates their everything. A moving metaphor for many things, dementia perhaps the most obvious.

The Detective’s Tale: “The Long Good-Bye”

I just picked up a copy of The Long Goodbye! We got a lady space detective and it’s delightfully noirish and scifiïsh and it’s exciting and it’s just great.

The Consul’s Tale: “Remembering Siri”

Two in one this time. The initial story I like best—imagine being married to someone, only one of you stays on the planet and the other travels around near the speed of life. When you die of old age, your other is only four years older. The most important relationship of your life and you only spent a hundred-some days together. Over four years. Or, perhaps, over seventy. Heartbreaking. The second half is a small story of politics and betrayal that sets us up for the final act.

But the final act never comes. I love the smart worldbuilding and the interesting characters and their compelling journeys and reasons to risk their lives approaching a god made of blades, but, just as each of their stories ended on a cliffhanger, on the cusp of approaching the Shrike, so does the novel.

So...am I gonna actually read the other three books?

I honestly do not know.

probably a bit over a month

☞

017) The Wife Upstairs by Rachel Hawkins, finished March 21

If you’re a Jane Eyre fan, it won’t take you long to recognize that this is a spin on that classic. I mean—the title gave it away, which is why I picked this book up in the first place. And you get the sense Hawkins likes Jane Eyre and enjoys playing with the source material. For instance, the main character’s name is Jane (as in Jane Eyre) Bell (as in Currer Bell) but no, actually, her name is Helen Burns (as in Helen Burns) only when her best friend Jane Bell died of illness (ala Helen Burns) she stole her name.

I didn’t like the book in the opening pages but then the first twist happened and I really liked it then it went on for a lonnnng time and I was getting bored and then there were a bevy of twists all of which I liked and then it ended.

It’s funny though. I was a trifly surprised that the author had failed to notice an alternate explanation of her mystery which is to say I was surprised none of the characters had considered that possibility, but each time I felt that way, it ended up being the truth of the matter. I’m not sure if this is what mystery readers enjoy or not. Is it?

Anyway, it played with one of my favorite novels in fun and interesting ways but I honestly don’t know if I’ll remember having read it a year from now.

three or four months

☞

018) Visitations by Corey Egbert, finished March 23

I became aware of Corey Egbert almost two years ago, four months before Visitations came out. I spent a year trying to talk my library into buying it (so strange they did not considering the size of their YA comics collection) before just finally buying my own copy (maybe because of this?) which I’ve now had for months and months. Glad I finally picked it up as it is excellent.

And it makes me think about myself at the same age. His mother went insane. My father went insane. Our stories don’t have much else in common (I’m about fifteen years older but also Mormon), but I know the places he talks about (Northern California and Utah and nowhere Nevada) and the whole thing feels like a near miss. His anxieties and doubts and worries are deeply familiar.

I’m glad he laid all this bare. It was a rough journey but a worthy one.

If I wanted to get more nitpicky I might talk about the third act being less well placed or make some petty complaints about Utah culture, but whatever. The fact is Visitations is a very good book. Thought-provoking and lovely and easy to recommend.

two days

☞

019–021) After the Blast by Zoe Kazan, finished March 25

It’s been a year and a half since I selected After the Blast to be the play I read in class while students are broken into groups reading different novels out of class. So how did it do? Did I select well?

Well.

First, it did not engender great amounts of discussion between scenes, which I was surprised by. Students suggested this is because they understood it and since they didn’t need to ask what stuff meant, there was nothing to talk about.

At first, I totally rejected that premise, but I’ve been thinking about it in the six days since we wrapped up reading and I wonder know if they’re onto something. Let’s say a piece of literature has three levels of understanding. First is surface. Easy to do with After the Blast. It’s a straightforward work in plain English and simple to follow. Third is deeper understanding where you have smart things to say about the book.

Here’s what I’m wondering: If level one is too accessible, is there a path to level three? Perhaps the usual path to level three is a failure to reach level one on your own. Discussing level one as a class leads to connection making that might not otherwise occur. Perhaps those connects are level two. If we skip level to because level one came to easy, what path is there to level three?

I’ll be interested to see how their essays turn out.

two days

☞

022) Accidental Devotions by Kelli Russell Agodon, finished March 30

Loved this collection of poetry. Loved it. As the title suggests, there are many happened-into prayer-like moments, and that angle of attention was a pleasure to read. But also, naturally, her language. What is poetry without language.

Looking around online for a couple of my favorites I find this one and this one but most of them don’t seem available. I wish I could point you to more.

Which I guess I have? Click that link to buy the book, after all.

(And, as it doesn’t come out till mid-May, it’s not too late to be the first on your block with a copy!)

probably a couple months but maybe more

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I was asked to write the program for our Palm Sunday program today. This is not the final draft (I had inadvertenty left out an strings version of “I Believe in Christ” and was apparently way too long) but I think it’s my favorite version.

I’ve included the music, but these are obviously not recordings from today; they’re not even the identical arrangements. But they’ll do.

.

BISHOPRIC:

The sacrament is our weekly reminder of Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection, of his atoning sacrifice and our salvation. today is Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week, which closes with these great crises and conclusions. VOICE-ONE and VOICE-TWO will now guide us through the remainder of our program.

VOICE-ONE:

We come here each week to remember. We come here and someone we love kneels upon the ground and prays:

O God, the Eternal Father, we ask thee in the name of thy Son, Jesus Christ, to bless and sanctify this bread to the souls of all those who partake of it; that we may eat in remembrance of the body of thy Son, and witness unto thee, O God, the Eternal Father, that we are willing to take upon ourselves the name of thy Son, and always remember him, and keep his commandments which he has given us, that we may always have his Spirit to be with us.

And we do partake of that bread. And we do remember him. And we do accept his Spirit to be with us.

And then someone kneels to pray:

O God, the Eternal Father, we ask thee, in the name of thy Son, Jesus Christ, to bless and sanctify this water to the souls of all those who drink of it, that we may do it in remembrance of the blood of thy Son, which was shed for us; that we may witness unto thee, O God, the Eternal Father, that we do always remember him, that we may have his Spirit to be with us.

And we drink of that water. And we do remember him. And we do accept his Spirit to be with us.

And this is something we have done, more or less with all our soul, more or less every week, more or less correctly, both as individuals and as Christians together, since he ascended into heaven.

No doubt, on that occasion, Jesus reminded his disciples of what he had taught them before:

The Father shall give you another Comforter to abide with you, forever, even the Spirit of truth. You know him—for he dwells with you.

And when I am gone, you shall know that I am in my Father—and that you are in me—and I am in you. I tell you the truth. I must go away—for you—because if I do not go away, the Comforter will not come unto you. But when I depart, I will send him unto you.

Let’s travel backward, from the Spirit abiding with us today, to the ascension of Jesus and his message to his disciples as he left them with each other and with the Spirit.

Listen.

Listen as the choir sings:

If ye love me, keep my commandments,
And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another comforter,
That he may bide with you for ever,
Even the spirit of truth, even the spirit of truth— [PAUSE]
Even the spirit of truth.

[THE CHOIR SINGS “IF YE LOVE ME”]

VOICE-TWO:

Stepping backward in time to the resurrected Christ, as he sat and broke bread with his disciples, as their doubts and confusions dissolved and they gloried in his holy presence, as the deeper meanings of his teachings became clear and they marveled at their salvation—how must they have rejoiced!

Jesus, the very thought of thee
With sweetness fills my breast,
But sweeter far thy face to see,
And in thy presence rest.

Nor voice can sing nor heart can frame,
Nor can the memory find
A sweeter sound than thy blest name
O Savior of mankind.

Jesus, our only joy be thou,
As thou our prize will be:
Jesus, be thou our glory now,
And through eternity.

[THE CHOIR SINGS “JESUS THE VERY THOUGHT OF THEE”]

VOICE-TWO:

Travelling further back to the numb hours of Jesus, the Messiah, dead, and buried.

The disciples—lost. In mourning. Their hearts aching with grief.

Had they not understood? Had they not heard him speak beautiful truths and promises of a glorious future? Where had it all gone wrong?

Their hearts were confused and filled with fear. Without Jesus, they were lost.

And, as that first voice sang of her discovery that no, no—he lived!, it took time for each heart to understand, to believe, to sing along.

Let us now stand together and join them in this moment of wonder and joy. Let us sing of our savior, newly risen.

Turn to Hymn #198 and let us sing of that Easter morn and of a grave that burst.

Let us sing of that man who has risen again and conquered pain.

Let us sing because this morn renews for us that morn when Jesus cast our bonds away, when he took living breath and conquered death.

Let us sing in gratitude and give our love and pledge our all.

Let us sing as we shed a grateful tear.

Let us sing as we conquer fear.

Let us sing.

[THE CONGREGATION SINGS “THAT EASTER MORN”]

VOICE-ONE:

Moving further backward in time, imagine the crowd that gathered around the dying god upon his splintery cross.

Some came to mock. Some came to mourn. Some came to plead. Some just enjoyed a good show.

The sky darkened. The earth shook.

The Roman centurion—a man just doing his job—assigned to keep guard with his men over what was no longer “just another execution,” was frightened by the chaos, and cried out, “Truly! [PAUSE] This was the Son of God!”

[PAUSE]

Others knew this already. They looked around at each other and knew this was a day of horror and disaster they would relive for the rest of their upended lives. There were men and women there. Surely, some of the children who loved him could not be kept from this scene. And no matter what age, they knew, from this day forward, they would ask each other,

Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Oh! Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

Were you there when the sun refused to shine?
Oh! Sometimes it causes me to tremble.
Were you there when the sun refused to shine?

Were you there when they laid Him in the tomb?
It causes me to tremble—tremble—tremble.
Were you there when they laid Him in the tomb?

But they soon would discover another question to ask of each other:

Were you there when He rose up from the dead?
Were you there when He rose up from the dead?
Oh! Sometimes I feel like shouting Glory! Glory! Glory!
Were you there when He rose up from the dead?

[THE CHOIR SINGS “WERE YOU THERE”]

VOICE-ONE:

Jesus would spend forty days with his disciples. He would explain what it all meant. He would send them on journeys around the world. He would task them with sharing his story through time as well, through the scriptures they would write.

Nicodemus was old at this time. Mark was young. There were children who knew with a purity that came from seeing their Savior with eyes unwrinkled, children who would grow up to carry his gospel even further.

The gospel will always be carried into the future by those who, today, are young.

As the Primary children come up to sing to us, consider the testimony they are about to share. They will remind us of when darkness veiled the sky on that day that Jesus died in agony upon the bitter cross. They’ll remind us of how, when they took His body down and laid it in a tomb, his friends believed that everything was lost. But then they will remind us, when the third day came, the darkness turned to light, for Mary heard her name, and she saw the living Christ.

He was risen—risen to set the captives free. That means you—that means me.

They will remind us that the world was forever changed when Jesus rose that day to bring us home again.

They will remind us to praise His holy name and to see the living Christ and to remember—He will come again.

They will mean it as they sing: “Alleluia, He lives.

They will mean it as they sing: “Alleluia, He is risen.”

They will mean it as they sing: ““Alleluia.”

[THE PRIMAY SINGS “RISEN”]

VOICE-TWO:

Let’s continue our journey backward through time.

Jesus is preaching. He is greeting those unused to love. He is touching eyes and healing wounds.

He is arriving unknown and asking his cousin for baptism to fulfil all righteousness. He is a youth, talking of God with authority. He is a child. He is a babe in a manger. He is watching his people before his birth, leading them through prophets who teach of an atonement to come. He is walking with the ancients and founding covenants to tie us all together into one family—his family. As we were, all, together before this earth. He was there as well, before the earth was, with all the noble and great ones.

We were all noble and great, more or less. The current Church statement tells us that “the doctrine of foreordination applies to all members of the Church, not just to the Savior and His prophets.”

Before the creation of the earth, we were.

But that wasn’t worth anything until Jesus stood and said, “Here I am. Send me.” And we followed.

O God, the Eternal Father, we thank thee in the name of thy Son, Jesus Christ, for bread and water, to remember his body and blood, and to take upon ourselves the name of your Son, whom we love and honor and always remember. We’re trying, Father, to always remember. We’re trying, Father, to keep his commandments. We’re grateful for the Comforter he sent us. We’re thankful for his atonement, which saves even us, every day.

We’re thankful this Easter, for the God of Easter, Our Savior Jesus Christ.

Christ the Lord is ris’n today.
Alleluia!
Love’s redeeming work is done.
Alleluia!
Lives again our glorious King.
Alleluia!
Alleluia!
Alleluia!

[THE CONGREGATION SINGS “CHRIST THE LORD IS RIS’N TODAY” with horns and organ]

(benediction)

==============

previous svithe on thubstack and thutopia

I had a poem drop last week on Wayfare:

Wayfare

ποτήριον

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2 months ago · 5 likes · 1 comment · Theric Jepson

The only comment (to date) is from a poet whose work I have some familiarity with. It’s a fifty-percent compliment:

Lovely. Deft. “Little” is an unnecessary adjectival, leaning towards sentimental.

I appreciate the compliment.

I also appreciate the criticism. I think it’s fair, and since I get so little helpful feedback on my poetry, worth considering. The poem’s quite short, so allow me to reproduce it here:

A sacrament cup
falls under the bench
and a little child
unfolds it.

What if we do as he suggests?

A sacrament cup
falls under the bench
and a child
unfolds it.

Honestly? I don’t like it. It now demands a caesura after child in order to keep the pacing right, which nothing in the is asking for. I can hardly put a comma at the end of line three.

But can we follow his advice (removing little) while keeping the scansion? Maybe this:

A sacrament cup
falls under the bench.

A child
unfolds it.

This is better than the previous version, but is it better than the original?

The differences are subtle and their relative merits are debatable.

I think the original is still more fun to read. But this final version might in fact be an improvement in terms of grounded emotions.

Should it appear in a collection someday, which version to you prefer?

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And having a calling that gives me about four opportunities a year to do so is, therefore, delightful.

I’ve been posting my talks online since 2006 and I’ve built up a healthy collection at this point. So healthy, I’m flirting with, a couple years from now, putting them in a book tentatively titled Thermons (and some other religous writings). I very much doubt there’s a market for such a thing, but when has that ever stopped me?

My most recent talk (given in January) I have not posted simply because Wayfare expressed expressed interest in the talks we (all of us) give. So I thought: why not send them this one? And so I did.

The very day I was about to pull my submission and just post the talk here, I heard back from them with the news they wanted to publish it. Given Wayfare does good editing, I was told “Thanks for this gift of a sermon! I wish I would've been in the chapel to hear it the first time. I'm seeing a lot of wonderful styles at use here: a meandering, inductive, misdirective approach that comes at things sideways but then resolves into brilliant epiphanies, several humorous techniques like juxtaposition and non-sequitor and sequences of expectations and (non)fulfillment, and in general a kind of gracefulness and kindness toward body and spirit. There's serious wisdom in here behind the playful and inviting tone. I love it, and we're excited to publish it.” and I was also told it needs a rewrite and here are a bunch of things to fix. Editors are the best!

Anyway, that’s why that talk still hasn’t appeared here, but it did get me thinking that if this talk (which I thought was less than my most interesting, if I’m being honest) got people interested in me and my talks, perhaps I should make them easier to find. And so here is a list of (I think) all the talks I’ve posted, along with links to reading them on Thutopia, The Weekly Svithe, or Thubstack.

I suppose doing this could impact sales of Thermons but, well, sales were never the point anyway.

By the way, I do recognize the spiritual irony here. As I was hunting down the following twenty talks, I also found this, from 2009:

Stake conference this week and we heard from the Sunday School general president.

He reminded teachers (and aren't we all teachers?) that we should be focused on learning, not teaching. In other words, it's not about how cleverly we teach, but about how well learning occurs.

Teaching in a way that glorifies the teacher rather than serves the learner is a form of priestcraft.

I'm taking this as personal instruction, for church, for here, for m'job, for life.

Sins thus recognized, here we go!

Hope, Jesus, and the New Year (2025 Berkeley Ward)
thutopia — thubstack

What is grace? What is justice? What shall we do? (2025 Oakland Seventh Branch)
thutopia — thubstack

A Thanksgiving Svithe (2025 Berkeley Ward)
thutopia — thubstack

Ward Variety (2025 Oakland Sixth Ward)
thutopia — thubstack

A svithe on friendship (2025 Walnut Creek Ward)
thutopia — thubstack

Aaronic Priesthood (2024 Berkeley Ward)
thutopia — thubstack

A sacrament meeting talk about trees and Jesus and stuff (2023 Berkeley Ward)
thutopia — thubstack

♲ Easter Svithe (2020 Berkeley Ward)
thutopia

The prompt is, “The Book of Mormon brings me closer to Christ because...” (2020 Berkeley Ward)
thutopia

Consumption and Creation (2018 Berkeley Ward)
thutopia

The Ninja Warrior Megadolphin Svithe (2016 Berkeley Ward)
thutopia

We svithe after these things (2016 Berkeley Ward)
thutopia

“There was a young man who thought....” (2015 Berkeley Ward)
thutopia

Heavenly Mother on Mother’s Day (2015 Berkeley Ward)
thutopia

Talk on the Book of Mormon (2011 Berkeley Ward)
thutopia

Joy + Misery = Joy (?) (2011 Berkeley Ward)
thutopia

Pioneer Day (2010 Berkeley Ward)
thutopia

Growing My Testimony through Action (2009 Berkeley Ward)
thutopia — the weekly svithe

Alma 5 (2006 Berkeley Ward)
thutopia — the weekly svithe

Happily Ever After (2006, El Dorado Ward)
thutopia — the weekly svithe

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Come, join with me if you want to find your hat or your true love in a forest. Whether she (he?)’s your true love or not.

☞

009) Where Hats Go by Kurt Wolfgang, finished February 20

According to the author bio, this is the “first of many books” from the pen of Wolfgang. As is was published in 2001 one that should be true and I can check. So I will. Soon as I write about this one. Which was terrific. Visually, this comic’s a cross between Peter Bagge and Tom Neely’s rubber-hose stuff. But it’s not nearly as cynical or ugly as most of the Bagge stuff I’ve read and it’s more grounded and human than Neely’s. So...maybe I like it more? Certainly, he’s competitive with these guys and I definitely like him better than Bagge whom I often find tiresome.

Anyway. It’s a small little first-book and it’s utterly wonderful. It’s a kid who lost his hat and he embarks on a quest to get it back. It hits plenty of the required elements to make Joseph Campbell happy. But you don’t need to be a scholar to enjoy his growth. But his growth was particularly enjoyable because I didn’t see it coming. I suppose the cynicism of indie comics of the ’90s and ’00s led me to assume everything would suck. But this is a human story and even with all the darkness in the corners of the images, the thrust of the humans story is goodness and betterment. So, Wolfgang, thank you—I enjoyed that.

(click image to see more [and more representative] images on ebay)

Now...where are you today?

Hmm. Okay. Goodreads has one more book from 2013. Okay. There’s supposed to be a version of Pinocchio out by now. Amazon hasn’t heard of it. Okay. Well, good news is I couldn’t find an obituary. But I refuse to believe such a talent simply disappeared. Can’t find him on LinkedIn. Lots more Kurt Wolfgangs on Facebook, but I don’t think any of them are it either. Bummer.

I’m not totally susprised. Lots of people—even the very best—slip away from the arts. It’s hard to do something so time consuming for so little reward. I hope he’s still out there, still making stuff. But the fact that I didn’t recognize his name (even though he was in the first-ever Best American Comics) suggests someone who disappeared, for one reason or another. Whether it was discouragement or a horrible car crash, I can’t say. But I’ll reread his BAC entry and wish him well. Let me know when Pinokio comes out.

(Best case scenario, he’s a mad genius working on page 983 said book right now.)

(Exactly my home for Adam Hines, incidentally, whose first book I wonder if I should steal from the library.)

saturday and friday

☞

010) Kafka’s Manuscript, finished February 27

At first this seemed like a bad joke played on the bookbuying public. Simple to the point of ripoff.

But.

Then.

The story of the friend who saved Kafka’s manuscripts and saw them through to publication was—suddenly moving.

How in the world did that happen?

the intro one day, the book another

☞☞☞

That last book and this next one break me no-library-books-in-2026 rule. Before the new year began, I delayed all books I had on hold to not appear until 2027 with ONE EXCEPTION: books I had asked the library to buy. I figured those should get checked out as soon as they arrived, and since most of them were comics, it wouldn’t get too much in my way re reading books I already own.

Three of them arrived earlier this week—these two comics and Scream With Me: Horror Films and the Rise of American Feminism (1968-1980) by Eleanor Johnson. Don’t remember how I heard about this one but it’s right up my alley. But I probably won’t read it. I have read one chapter (Appendix A: “Brief Synopses of the Terrible Remakes of the Original Six Horror Films”) and will probably read at least one more (Chapter 7: “Bad Men Making Good Films: An Interlude”) and maybe the one on Stepford Wives because I love Stepford Wives, but I don’t know all the movies in the book (some of them I don’t even care about) and, well, it’s a library book and it’s 2026.

Incidentally, if you’re interested, the six movies primarily under discussion are:

• Rosemary’s Baby (sad never to have seen it)

• The Exorcist (active disinterest in seeing it)

• The Stepford Wives (love it)

• The Omen (can’t imagine wanting to see this)

• Alien (I claim I want to see this one but our year-long Hulu subscriptions keep expiring before I get around to it)

• The Shining (seen it; don’t like it)

☞☞☞

012) Lucas Wars by Laurent Hopman and Renaud Roshe, finished February 28

Absolutely loved this. I’m no expert, but I was surprised how much new information I picked up. And the writing and art is so generous—Lucas in particular becomes beloved. Weirdo kid perseveres against all odds. It’s real hero stuff. And win he wins, so emotional. Someone should adapt this book into a movie! Sort of a Nouvelle Vague sort of thing!

You can also tell it was originally in French. Who else in the 2020s would have so little commentary over the Ford/Hamill affair?

But I think what I love most is Roche’s art. He captures famous faces so well and with a clear-reading simplicity that allows for a lot of information to be presented cleanly. It’s great work. It’s his first comic but I’d keep an eye on this veteran of storyboarding and advertising, see what he does next.

two days

☞

013–015) A Midsummer’s Night Dream by William Shakespeare, finished March 9

Never taught this before. Haven’t read it well over twenty years. And I...really liked it. I know it’s popular (part of the reason I’ve never taught it before—it’s the play students are most likely to have encountered in junior high and I figure either it’s a beautiful memory or a horror they don’t wish to revisit) but I get why. It’s mad in all the best ways. An absolute blast to read in class. And so many solid movies to choose from. (Come back for March movies to see the one’s the students voted for.) In other words, all the elements of time well spent in class. Tragedies are still better in terms of volume of discussion topics, but a quick fun read it surely just as good a way to get people into Shakespeare? Surely.

Anyway, a pleasure to read.

four school days

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The books are adding up very slowly this year. That’s less because of the no-library-books rule and more because I’ve committed myself to reading Robert Alter’s The Five Books of Moses (the fascinating footnotes have many more words than the text itself) and keeping up with the book club I’m in (currently reading Hyperion with Moby Dick yet to come). And when you consider that I imagined this year might include The Count of Monte Cristo or Adam Bede, I’m unlikely to speed up the odometer anytime soon.

In other words, less books, but possibly more words. What’s the right way to count?

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HOME
Prime Video

After Life (1998)

I remember reading about this film—I think first at BYU when it was at International Cinema—bust mostly when Like Father, Like Son came out. Everyone wanted to talk about After Life in their reviews of that (then) new film. (You can read about both Like Father, Like Son and his even newer film, Shoplifter, here.) So I’ve been thinking about this film for a long time. It’s good to finally see it.

It’s in a genre with Defending Your Life and Eternity in that it’s the early days of the afterlife and you have to deal with a bureaucracy. In this case, you have to choose the single memory from your life that you wish to carry with you as you go forward. It’s high-concept stuff and I’ve spent the last twenty years pondering the question without quite arriving at an answer.

The thing that surprised me most is how documentary-like it is. Lady Steed was just reading about it and apparently the interviews with the newly dead are actual interviews with real people recounting their real memories. Or at least some of them? I’m happy to learn this and I don’t need more details.

The story isn’t really about what I thought it would be. I expected it to be from the perspective of the newly dead (as with >Defending Your Life and Eternity) but in fact it’s more interested in the deadland bureaucrats. But it keeps changing what it’s about in the final act, so no promises that I’m clearing things up for you.

It’s a thought-provoking film. It definitely feels no shorter than it’s one hour and fifty-nine minutes. But I think, having seen it, I now will only think about it more.

Addendum: There’s one more film in this genre I’m eager to see, A Matter of Life and Death. However, while trying to recover the title of that movie I found a couple others that I think won’t quiiiite be of the same cloth but still seem worth watching: Between Two Worlds and Heaven Can Wait.


ELSEWHERE
our dvd

Wag the Dog (1997)

Due to a weird schedule thing, it was just me and five seniors for over two so I let them choose between this and Groundhog Day. I think my suggestion that this was Epstein adjacent won the day.

Anyway, it’s great. On this viewing it felt a little long to me (mostly because I think of the Kirsten Dunst scene as the main part of the movie and it’s not main and it is early), but it’s sharp and funny and so, so cynical, and the Class of ‘26 appreciated that.

There’s some fun camera play here—I wanted to share my favorite quick zoom then jumpcut matching Dustin Hoffman’s words outside a limosine, but, alas, can’t find the clip on YouTube.

If you’re looking for a comedy with modern relevance, here you go!

(NOTE: One student, on her way out, thanked me, said she enjoyed it, and wondered how many years it had been since she’d last seen a movie.)

HOME
Peacock

Long Shots: U.S. Biathlon’s Underdog Story (2026)

This is a great little documentary of the sort we expect come Olympics time. This one’s about the American quest to finally medal in biathalon. The film got me pumped up that this might be the Olympics we pick up the last first medal!...until the last, like, three minutes when I was forced to admit that we’re not beating the Europeans any time soon. Impossible? No. But far from likely. I mean, guns or not, this is Europe’s second most popular sport. We are so far behind.

But I think they convinced me to spend some of my month-of-Peacock watching biathalon. So mission accomplished!


HOME
home

Cruella (2021)

Second watch.

The CGI is glaringly obvious (shocked to see in the credits that any dalmations were involved in the making of this film) but plot details and character work are at least as good second time ‘round. Holds up to rewatch. Music still terrific if perhaps A LOT of tracks. Daughter really wanted to show it to her mom, which is how we find ourselves here. She also wants a sleepover with a friend to show her.

We may be running a real risk of this becoming...a personality.


THEATER
Grand Lake Theatre

Sinners (2025)

When the Oscar noms dropped, Lady Steed felt she had to see Sinners. Happily, the Grand Lake was playing it on their biggest screen on 70mm. So...perfect scenario, really. The sound was a bit fuzzy which made some of the dialogue hard to understand, but otherwise, pretty much ideal viewing circumstances.

Sinners is now added to my seen-in-theaters-more-than-once list. And what did Lady Steed think? We discussed the four BIG prestige pictures we’ve watched recently and she ranks them Ann Lee, Hamnet, Sinners, One Battle, but with Ann Lee waaaay out in front, although all four, she insists, are great. Just Ann Lee—untouchable.

(Incidentally, this is a funny joke.)


ELSEWHERE
Kanopy

Donkey Skin (1970)

On the one hand, a lovely charming child-friendly whimsical confectionary delight, a fairy tale like Disney specializes in.

On the two hand, a disturbing strange grotesque whose plot engine is the possibility incest.

On the three hand, some people are blue and some people are red and some people are people-colored and some horses are blue and some horses are red and some horses are horse colored.

On the four hand, a woman v****s frogs and a donkey s***s jewels.

On the five hand, the fairy godmother has a telephone.

I loved this film and was disturbed by this film and really have no idea who to recommend it to.

Only comparison I can come up with is La belle et la bête.

THEATER
Century Cinemark Hilltop 16

Wuthering Heights (2026)

First, this is deliciously weird and perverse, which I think is a requirement for anything Wuthering Heights.

Also, this is the second movie in a row I’ve watched that makes very clear and deliberate references to La belle et la bête, this time with the wallhands holding candles. But that’s not half so weird as the skin wall pillows.

It’s been almost twenty years since I read Wuthering Heights so don’t come to me for opinions on it’s “accuracy,” but I felt like it captured the mad vibes of the novel well, moving much of the subtext (eg, sex) to text. Plus, the moors look great. Love the moors.

Like most movies (apparently), it ignores the second generation and Cathy’s ghost which honestly I kinda missed, but in two hours, maybe all you can really do is Catherine and Heathcliff as kids and their disastrous romantic adventures.

Anyway, the production design and cinematography and leads are beautiful and moody and everything turns to crap, so what else can you ask for, really?

THEATER
Century Cinemark Hilltop 16

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die (2026)

===SPOILERS GALORE===

What if you didn’t have to die to have an afterlife? And what if your afterlife was determined entirely by the whims of a Trumplike deity who revels in his pettiness as he assigns your fate?

Look: for anyone who reads the ending as happy, mother and son off on a quest to save the world, I’m glad for you, but that rat opened its eyes. They’ve been in the simulation all along. It’s like Neo took the red pill only to wake up in a Matrix sidequest.

It’s great to have Gore Verbinski back. I haven’t seen one of his movies since the ending of Pirates 2 pissed me off, but prior to that, I considered him one of our greatest filmmakers.

(Actually, I guess that’s not true. I’ve seen Rango more than once and love it), but I didn’t see the third Pirates movie or The Lone Ranger or The Cure for Wellness (even though it looked terrific) and largely because I was so mad after Pirates 2 my love for Pirates 1, The Mexican, and The Ring wasn’t enough to overcome bad reviews.

Anyway, this one’s great. It well written, visually witty, and it doesn’t force us to recognize that this is hell until the very end. Even then, you could just brush it off and just be happy in the adventure.

The big questions I have left are:

1) How many people are real, living in pods, experiencing this stuff? It has to be more than one, right? But certainly not everyeone. So is everyone slowly getting segregated into separate realities? Finally, will everyone end up in their own reality? And what is the AI’s motivation? Simply to be worshiped?

2) How petty is the AI ultimately? It seems like Ingrid gets put into hell, but The Man seems trapped in a perverse hell that gives him purpose and pleasure, as awful as it may be. And in the end, Ingrid is with him, up for it. Is that her? Was it ever her? Has it always been her? And always will be?

3) How do teenagers feel about this movie. Much of its satire punches down, aimed squarely at the Gen Z / Gen α border—sort of like the easy anti-Millennial humor of, what 2010? Do teenagers laugh to see this and say its so true? Do they latch on to the take down of their parents’ generation? Are they offended and rather pissed off at the unfairness? I’d love to know.

This seems like the perfect movie for this moment. I hope people watch it. I hope it gets us talking. I don’t know if that’ll make any difference.

Oh: One last thing. You can tell the time-loop genre has reached full maturity because now you can make a time-loop movie with only one loop.

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THEATER
Elmood Cinemas Rialto

A Private Life (2026)

This has a couple over-obvious zooms and some cuts that project too much and some plot elements that seem like they belong to a different movie and one very silly music cue, but there are a couple things that keep it from being just elevated television.

The biggest one is Jodie Foster, who is great. She raises the level of the entire movie. It takes real actorly skill to make some of this character development believable.

Bu this is also one of the film’s biggest disappointments. There’s vanishingly little in the film that requires this character to be an American. You could have Jodie Foster and Irène Jacob switch roles and it really wouldn’t matter. What a wasted opportunity. Related, there’s not much funny in this movie but Jodie Foster kills those bits. Someone put her as an American-expat-in-Paris straight-up comedy. (It’s what the people who paid to see this movie will pay more money to see!)

Another thing that was great was the relationship between her protagonist and her ex-husband. That was lovely to watch.

Anyway, spoilers from here on out.

What really made the movie work though was that it wasn’t what it seemed to be. It wasn’t, in fact, a murder-mystery thriller. And it wasn’t an expose on how psychoanalysis is a scam. Instead, it was a story of one woman’s collapse and rebuild, and, thus, the lack of actual murder and the nondebunking of psychoanalysis / nonboosting of hypnotism are all fine. These were steps on the path, not the destination.

So in the end I quite liked it. But the Elmwood is waaay too expensive.

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Go Theodore (2026)

I love it when students make movies. The ambition and dedication required to see a film all the way from conception to completion is incredible and for a high-school student to pull that off is amazing.

This one seems like a nice warning against internet face, growing up to be a boy, and the development of modern American gambling culture.

All very timely.

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My Cousin Vinny (1992)

Thanks to the Olympics, we have a month of Peacock and when I saw My Cousin Vinny on offer, I knew I had to show it to the son that just got into cars. I have to imagine, if you’re into cars, Marisa Tomei is the best thing going.

She’s definitely the best thing about the film. Sure, Peschi’s great, Gwynn and Macchio are great, but it’s Tomei who lifts the film above what is, in most respects, a pretty pedestrian movie. The dutch angles are predictable. Most of the cuts are just doing the job of cuts. Very few jokes occur with the camera or the blocking. Don’t get me wrong—it’s a good movie—but Marisa Tomei singlehandedly raises it into greatness. She deserved that Oscar.

But she couldn’t have done it without a script that has plenty moments of brilliance and only a couple moments of miss. Teamwork!

ELSEWHERE
Peacock

American Fiction (2023)

Just spent a long time scrolling up and down IMDb trying to figure out when I first became a devout Jeffrey Wright fan but I genuinely have no idea. Perhaps it’s an eternal feeling.

Anyway, this is one of those movies I was desperate to see and then it took a couple years. You know the type.

But I’m kind of glad to watch it after reading James and The Sellout

I was thinking about American Fiction the entire time I was reading The Sellout, actually. It seemed to be playing the same game—a well educated and bleeding brilliant Black man put into conflict with the Black stereotypes that overrun our media. In The Sellout our protag is separate from while completely ensconced within that world and things get out of control—I mean, he ends up owning a slave. Here, our protag writes a work of parody he never expects to get published that becomes “THE RUNAWAY BESTSELLER BY THE RUNAWAY FUGITIVE.” And in its (spoilers in the rest of this sentence) Clue-like multiple endings, capitalism wins out.

Anyway, the Black cast is amazing here and the white cast is, shall we say, appropriate. And Jeffrey Wright can do no wrong.

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Fifteen years ago, I invented the puckerdoodle, a variation on the snickerdoodle that has a fun sour coating rather than a cinnamon one. Bit hit. Very popular. Much beloved.

I just discovered that five years ago, the L.A. Times presented puckerdoodles to the world themselves. Is it possibly they were invented on their own rather than ripping me off? Sure. It’s possible. It’s also possible they did not. Let’s compare.

First, I make no special claims for the cookie itself. I just picked what seemed to be the internet’s favorite snickerdoodle dough back in 2010 and used it. That’s all. The Times’s recipe is intriguing. I don’t love the sound of “white chocolate morsels” but masa harina seems worth trying!

In other words, I don’t care what dough you use. The thing that makes a puckerdoodle a puckerdoodle is what you roll the balls in. So that’s the real thing at issue here.

I genuinely hope that some of you will take up this challenge then return and report. Me and Rose Wilde, of course, have our biases.

Make your prefered cookie dough, roll in to balls, refridgerate, then, when ready to bake, roll in one of these:

THERIC’s WOOWOO PUCKERDOODLE HERBS AND SPICES

Combine two or three tablespoons of sugar with two or three teaspoons of amchoor powder and one teaspoon of sour salt (aka crystallized citric acid). Fiddle with proportions to match your palate.

Fiddle with the proportions to taste. For every 2 or 3 teaspoons of amchoor, add in one more t. And every 3 or 3Ts of sugar, throw in a t of sour salt (crystallized citric acid).

ROSE’s SCIENTIFIC PUCKERDOODLE HERBS AND SPICES

Mix one cup sugar with three tablespoons sumac.

Now roll those doughs and bake them up and let us know.

Perhaps the Times will be brave enough to publish your results.

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