GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #425: MY THOUGHTS ON DUNE

Dune and I go way back. I'm a big fan of the series. Eh, let me walk that back a little. I'm a fan of the first four books. After that, I lost interest really fast. I gave the first prequel book a try, but I didn't dig it. My favorite is God Emperor of Dune because it's so batshit crazy. I liked the David Lynch version but found it lacking. The Syfy version(s) are pretty good. When I heard there would be another version I thought maybe we didn't need it.

It turns out we did. I saw it yesterday, and while I enjoyed it I found a lot to not like about it, too. It's a good movie, but it's not as great as everyone seems to think it is.

Here's what I liked. The 'thopters. I had a bit of a hard time getting my mind around the concept when I first read the book, but seeing it here explained a lot. I liked what they did with the Voice and made it seem more menacing than before. I loved what they did with the personal shields. And the sandworms look fucking majestic, and seeing them filled me with awe. I never felt awe when watching the Lynch version, for example. They are forces of nature, and they are not to be fucked with.

In fact, it's a beautiful looking movie. You can't not say that about it, no matter what your problems might be. But you know how I feel about style over content. While I can dig some of that stuff, I don't think that kind of thing is capable of being great.

And that's where my complaints begin because the content does not match up with the style. It doesn't come close. While the concept is high and excellent, the execution leaves a lot to be desired. The only characters who come off as people are in the Atreides group. We spend time with them. We get to know them. The dynamics between them are explored. But once you start to wander from that group things fall apart. What is Bautista doing? He's a big dude who kicks ass and yells a lot. And that's it. And while I appreciate the dread in every scene involving Baron Harkonnen, he's not doing much either. At least when Lynch did it, these characters had personalities.

I'm not going to talk about the Fremen much because they're in all likelihood going to be the focus of part 2. We don't get to spend much time with them, but we will, I'm sure.

So for the most part this movie is cool looking. Beautiful. Full of sound and fury. But, well, you know the rest of that phrase. I'm hoping this will turn out to be like Kill Bill. That first movie was Tarantino jerking off, but that second movie was where the truly good stuff was. Fingers crossed.

Oh! Here's another thing I enjoyed about the movie: the filmmakers don't feel the need to explain much. Like the scene where Kynes is making her escape and puts down the thumpers and takes out the hooks. I wonder what that must have been like to people who haven't had any Dune experience before. Those of us who have know exactly what she's doing. Too bad it didn't come to fruition. But it will in part 2. I can't see how it wouldn't.

But on the opposite side of that point, they *did* explain a bit too much when we get the narration in the beginning. I'm not a big fan of that sort of thing. There are exceptions (like the Star Wars crawl, as it was an imitation, like the rest of that first movie, of chapter plays), but I wish they'd started with the Atreides family preparing to leave home. They're arriving at this planet cold, knowing very little about what's in store for them. The audience should have been dropped in cold, too.

Don't worry. I liked it a lot. I will see part 2. But there are a few things that just irritated me about this first one.

I mean, could you imagine how much more interesting the Harkonnens would be with this guy around?

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #413: TM

Words to live by

 

When I first heard of Transcendental Meditation it was as a kid because my parents loved the Beatles. It seemed kind of silly to me, so I forgot the whole thing. And then I saw Twin Peaks when I was a bit older, and it interested me a little more, but not enough to try it. And then I read David Lynch's Catching the Big Fish, and I figured, why not?

First of all, and this is very important, the way I use TM is *not* to transcend or do anything spiritual. That still sounds very silly to me. As far as I can tell, Lynch doesn't use it for that, either. From my interpretation, it helps him think a lot clearer, and it does the same thing for me. It clears my head, and it helps me think about things from different angles.

Remember a while back when I talked about teaching myself to cook? TM is how I did it.

So this might help you, too. This is what I do.

I mediate twice a day (if I'm lucky). Once in the morning before work, once in the evening after work. I set twenty minutes aside for each session. You're supposed to find somewhere quiet with no distractions, but I don't have that luxury. I live close to the expressway and the train tracks, which are constantly noisy. Birds nest just outside my bedroom window, and the neighbor has a dog that barks constantly. To say nothing of screaming children walking through the alley behind my house.

But I do the best with what I've got. I sit comfortably. I cross my legs, but that's not important. Just so long as I'm comfortable, I can meditate. I close my eyes, and for the next twenty minutes I say my mantra over and over again in my head.

It important to choose a mantra that doesn't get said in regular conversation. It's like training an attack dog. The attack word should not be something someone might say accidentally around your dog. The mantra itself means nothing. It's just a thing for you to concentrate on. For example, I use a made up word. You're not supposed to say what it is to anyone else. That's probably bullshit, but I won't mention it here.

There are risks. Sometimes your thoughts will intrude on your mantra. That's natural. Get back to your mantra as soon as you can. You might start getting itches all over your body. Some will say to ignore it, but I find that if I do, all I can think about are the itches, so just scratch 'em and get back to the mantra as soon as possible. And the mantra might start morphing on you into another word. Try to stay focused.

By the time twenty minutes are up, you won't even think it was twenty. Today I thought I was meditating for ten minutes when my alarm went off and brought me out of it.

It refreshes the mind and promotes deeper thought. I recommend it.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #266: THE RETURN

For the first time in a long time, I had this weekend to myself. No outings, no duties, nothing. So I did what any other sane human being would do: I got the Showtime add-on for Hulu and watched the entirety of the new Twin Peaks. I don't have Showtime, so I had to take advantage of that free trial.

Don't worry. The universe was kind enough to me for not spoiling the series for me, so I will return the favor and not talk about anything that happens on the show. I'm just going to talk about the show.

I didn't watch Twin Peaks when it first aired way back when. I discovered it roughly ten years later while in college. My brothers and I were hooked on it, and that final episode? Holy shit! It was the best thing ever on TV. And we all agreed: David Lynch is going to return in 25 years with more Twin Peaks. We were certain of it.

Imagine my joy when I saw David Lynch and Mark Frost put out the same tweet 25 years later.

Take all the insanity of Twin Peaks back in the day. Multiply it by 15 billion, and you're not even halfway close to the lunacy of The Return.

This is a direct message to everyone who is bringing shit from the past back to the present: If you are unwilling to match Lynch's creative power (dare I say even to exceed it?), don't bother. The Return is not nostalgic bullshit. It's something else entirely. I'm not sure if I understand it all just yet. The final episode for me just ended 15 minutes ago. I still have to process it.

This is what all good art does. It asks questions and sometimes doesn't answer them. I think I'm going to puzzle over this one for quite some time. I urge you to experience it for yourself.

My Goodreads Review of THE SECRET HISTORY OF TWIN PEAKS

My Goodreads review:


I've forgotten how to obsess over something. When I was younger I went all in on a lot of stuff. If I found myself attracted to something, I had to find out everything there was to know about it. Like when I discovered books by Joe R. Lansdale. Or when I found the music of Nick Cave. Or when I saw my first film by David Lynch. I don't do that anymore. I don't know why that is. Have I reached a point where I just don't care enough to obsess over something?


The Secret History of Twin Peaks brought it all back to me. I figured it was going to be just another ho-hum media tie-in for the new season in 2017. Just something to reintroduce you to beloved characters and maybe let you know what some of them have been up to in the last 25 years. But no, this book is vastly different from what I expected.


From page one, I knew I was hooked. It opened up a whole new way of looking at the series. It goes all the way back to when Lewis and Clark first discovered Twin Peaks, and it gets into some serious esoteric American history. Some of it was just so crazy that I had to look it up. There was no way that there was documentation of this in real life.


Surprise! Nearly everything in this book has been documented, regardless of truth or falsity, in real life. Real life conspiracies that I've never even heard of, and I go deep with conspiracies. Author Mark Frost has merely bent them to suit his purposes.


My favorite of the bunch is Jack Parsons, though. I've never even heard of the guy before, and it turns out that he was one of the most important innovators of the 20th century. It also turns out that he was a real life version of a Lovecraft character. He genuinely thought he could summon entities if he put his mind to it. Take the occult side away from him, and he's Howard Stark. He even looked like the Dominic Cooper portrayal of the character.


Another thing that surprised me was how incredibly important minor characters on the show are to the secret history, in particular the aged mayor and his brother, Doug Milford. Without Milford this book would fall apart. We also get to learn a lot more about Big Ed and his love life and his military service, and we get a peek at Dr. Jacoby's studies before he came back to Twin Peaks. I love the cover blurbs he gets from Jerry Garcia and Timothy Leary. And the entry on Josie is pretty crazy. We all knew she was a swindler, but it goes deeper than we ever suspected. I was surprised to find that Hawk doesn't like his nickname and considers it to be racist. It turns out his first name is Tommy, so . . .


I am in love with the structure of this book. It is a genuine mystery, and we're trying to figure the whole thing out. The dossier is composed by two people, and one of them is the Archivist. We all know it must be a character from the TV show, but we have to figure out who. All the evidence is there, you just have to put the pieces together. He eventually reveals himself, and I'm super excited that I was correct in my guess.


The best part is that we're reading the dossier with the agent assigned to investigate it. The mysterious TP is an interesting filter to read through. For the most part he (or is it she?) is all business, but there are moments when TP gets a little personal. TP is a skeptic, but (s)he gets unsettled with a lot of the information in the dossier. I tried figuring out who TP is, but I was disappointed when TP's identity was revealed on the very last page. It's a character we haven't met before. Maybe we'll get to see him/her in season 3.


I have to wonder how much of this was in Frost's mind from the start. Did he and Lynch plan for this from the very beginning? If so, they play a very good long game. I hope some of this makes its way onto season 3.



What I didn't put into the review:


I didn't mention this in my GR review because I don't post spoilers there. Consider this your warning that beyond this point there will be a ton of spoilers.


















I've always admired Maj. Briggs. He's strictly a military man, but there is a sensitive side to him that makes this character truly blossom. My first guess as to the Archivist was Dale Cooper, but it quickly became obvious that he had no hand in this. I suspected Harold for a little bit. He's the kind of guy who would put this together, but it didn't ring true to me. Remember: he was skeptical about Bob's existence. By the time the Archivist started adding documents that should be locked up under the highest level of security, I knew it had to be Briggs. There was no one else on the show that could have had access to this material. I was very glad when Briggs confessed to being the Archivist.


I'm also glad to have two of my questions from the "series finale" answered: Did Audrey, Pete and Andrew die in the bank explosion? Two of the three did. Audrey survived. Also, did Ben Horne die when he hit his head on the fireplace? No, he did not. It wasn't directly addressed, but given that these two events happen at roughly the same time, and Ben is in Audrey's hospital room after, it stands to reason he was only injured.


I have a few questions, though. The biggest question probably won't be answered until the new season, and it might not even be answered then. I wonder: how does the Black Lodge fit in with the aliens? Nixon says there are six different species of aliens. It is mentioned earlier in the book that there are two in particular who are warring with each other. Could one of these be behind the Black Lodge while the other is behind the White Lodge? If so, why does the Black Lodge manifest itself in the form of Bob & Co.?


Another big question, something that I'm almost certain will be answered by the new season, regards Jack Parsons's jade ring. Doug Milford meets with him twice, and both times he describes Parsons's habit of fiddling around with it. I'm 95% certain that this is the same ring that Chester finds in FIRE WALK WITH ME. How the hell did it get from Parsons to Teresa Banks? There is only one person who possibly knows the both of them: Doug Milford. The Archivist and TP seem to suspect that Milford was actually behind Parsons's death. If so, did he take the ring? If I'm right about this, why did he give it to Teresa? It's revealed late in the book that Milford was quite the cocksman, and he liked them young. Is it possible that he had a relationship with her? What was his purpose in giving her the ring? Was it just a gift? Or did he have nefarious intentions?


That ring fascinates me, especially now that I know that it belonged to Parsons. It also helps shed some light, little as it seems, on why Chester disappeared when he touched the ring. It could be a portal to the Black Lodge. Is it possible that Phillip Jeffries has used the ring--or a similar ring--to travel through time from the Black Lodge in FIRE WALK WITH ME? I looked at every scene Bowie was in, looking for that ring, and I sadly didn't find it. (It's worth noting that Bowie was supposed to return as Phillip Jeffries, but he sadly passed away before filming his scenes.)


So many new questions. It's a delicious mystery. I need the new season immediately. Can we put a rush on this, Lynch and Frost?


[EDIT: There was one thing I left out that disappointed me, considering Frost's otherwise spot-on attention to detail. Some of the documents early in the book are handwritten letters and journal entries from Lewis, Clark and Thomas Jefferson. I looked up actual samples of their handwriting, and it doesn't match. That's the ONLY thing this book got wrong.]