American Godz on Starz

When it was announced that Neil Gaiman's American Gods was being made into a television show and a good portion of my Twitter went wild, I decided I should read the book (before watching the show, of course, like a good doobie).  When Tom + Lorenzo started posting their reviews and I would catch a glimpse of a costume in their thumbnails, I thought, Now I really need to read this.  And then, eventually, I really need to finish this book.

~Spoilers Follow;  You've Been Warned~

It was a beast of a book to read.  And I'm still not entirely sure why.  Yes, it's 600-some pages long, but I've read longer.  Yes, it deals with a lot of mythology, but hello, Tolkien nerd here.  If I had to try to verbalize (in bullet-point fashion, of course), why getting through this book sometimes seemed onerous, I'd say:

• Non-linear timelines
• Non-tangential tangents/storylines
• A lot of dusty, back road travelling
• Some tough visualizations (mostly with the coin tricks, but I eventually had to accept that my spatial recognition is sub-part at best and just move on)

Some of those may seem odd (especially the travelling bit), so let me explain.  American Gods the novel is very interior; it is almost entirely Shadow's story with a lot of important pieces taking place entirely in Shadow's memory and/or subconscious.  American Gods the novel is also a literal journey (not just the figurative hero's quest, which it also is); Gaiman does a good job conveying the sense of wandering and sometimes isolation/desolation when traveling the dirt roads of the Midwest and other places.  For someone who doesn't enjoy that sensation (one too many road trips in Midwest growing up), that can be a bit headache-inducing.

There were some points that left me hanging and some things that I just didn't "get."  Many of the "non-tangential tangents" are simply there to show how the old gods came to America.  And that's it.  They are part of a larger tapestry, but on their own, they're sometimes just loose threads.

But I finished it nonetheless and wasn't entirely dissatisfied with the process.  And then my Unit and I started to watch the first season of the television adaptation via Starz.  And damn.

Shit just got real, as they say.

I could write an entire paper on the opening credit sequence alone.  The visualization and symbols used are amazing and intense and I have yet to get tired of watching it.  It's even been nominated for an Emmy (did you know there's a category for opening credits?  I didn't.).

I had read on Twitter from Gaiman himself that:

• Season 1 ends at House on the Rock
• Some things happen out of order

I remembered getting to House on the Rock in the book, and I thought Wow, it takes an entire season to get there?

And then shit got even real-ER.  As in there is a veritable shit-ton of stuff happening in this series that simply does not exist in the book.  A friend said, "Oh, so they're expanding the shit out of it?" but I'm still not convinced "expand" is even the right word.  More like "created mythologies to go along with the other mythologies [that Gaiman invented to go with existing mythologies]."  Are you confused yet?  Good.  

First and foremost, Gillian Anderson is a goddess.  Watching her as Media in these different representations is a fucking master class on acting.  She's amazing.  She's never quite doing an "impression" of the famous person/character, but she is unmistakably them and also herself as Media.  And here's where we differ from the books.  Media talks to Shadow as Lucy ("Hey, you wanna see Lucy's tits?") from I Love Lucy, that's there (and awesome).  But then, THEN, THEN Media shows up as:

• David Bowie (in his blue "Life on Mars" suit)
• Marilyn Monroe (white dress from Seven Year Itch, complete with wind effects;skirt-blowing)
• Judy Garland (in her final costume from Easter Parade, complete with a dancing Fred Astaire, of sorts)

It's brilliant and makes me think, Why didn't Gaiman do that?  In fact, I find myself asking that a lot whilst watching.  But more on that later.  Watching Anderson in American Gods is worth the price admission, period.  Any other faults, supposed or real, are washed away.

Another major difference is the treatment of Laura (a.k.a. "dead wife"), as in, she actually gets one.  There's little background to Laura in the book, and I was fine with that.  In fact, I am strongly disliking this extra treatment of her in the series.  I'm not sure if it's the actress or the character, but I am so over her.  Shadow could do so much better than her.  Her initial boredom with life, her treatment of him -- she has few redeeming qualities.  I think I'd rather know nothing about her than know that she really is a horrible human being (dead or alive).  The book offers a small bit of redemption for her, and that was all we needed.  I also appreciated the fact that in the novel she only sporadically showed up to Shadow; we have way too much Laura in this visual version.  It also doesn't help that they cast an actress whose nude body looks like a 12-year-old child, therefore making all of her nude work and sexual interactions really, really uncomfortable.  Eww.

On the positive side, in this incarnation, more Laura means more Mad Sweeney!  Yay!  I am really enjoying Pablo Schreiber's performance; you could have fooled me that he's not actually Irish.  And his IMDb.com headshot makes him look like a psychopath; I think I prefer his Mad Sweeney look.  But I often wondered about Mad Sweeney and the coin (with regards to the book); maybe I just wanted things spelled out for me more.  At any rate, him saying, "She's a lepre-cunt" made me LOL.

More thoughts, Leonard's patented (not really) bullet-point style:

• Ricky Whittle is a STUNNING man and does very solid work as Shadow Moon
• Ian McShane does some darn good work as Mr. Wednesday, too.  Not quite the casting coup as Gillian Anderson, in my opinion, but a close runner-up.
• Hey look, it's Cloris Leachman!
• "Vulcan."  I see what you did there.  (That entire episode is not in the book, nor are any swords, but I enjoy Corbin Bernsen, so I'll let it slide.  Plus the gun commentary is timely, appropriate, and terrifying.  P.S.  Did you know a Psych movie is coming??)

Unfortunately, I call bullshit on the casting of Kristin Chenoweth as Easter/Aostara.  Yes, she's adorable and should probably always dress in pastels and be surrounded by bunnies.  But in the novel, Shadow specifically uses the word voluptuous to describe Easter.  Despite her many other qualities, wee Chenoweth is decidedly not voluptuous.  It's important because Easter represents life, fertility, the bountiful plenitude of spring and harvests.  She should practically be bursting with womanhood.  They should have cast Christina Hendricks (a.k.a. Joan from Mad Men) as Easter.  Or, y'know, me.  But whatever.

I can see a bit why Hendricks may have scared them off; she plays a lot of strong characters.  They would have missed the adorable "cuteness" of Chenoweth's candy-colored extravaganza.  They would have missed the (cheap?) joke of her getting upset at her own swearing.  I know Hendricks can play sweet and girlie because I've seen Firefly, but I can see that thought process against using her.  Nonetheless, her body type (not to mention her acting chops!) is what Easter requires.

Other changes (really without commentary):

• Laura interacting with Audrey post-death
• Ibis and Jacquel sewing Laura back up
• Mr. Nancy sewing Easter suits for Shadow and Wednesday
• More of Salim (who is still looking for his Ifrit-lover).
• Bilquis' back story.
• Bilquis interacting with Technology Boy
• Wednesday and Shadow getting caught, arrested, and then an entire police station of workers murdered.
• Easter joining "the fight."
• Taking back the Spring.

Continually comparing the show to the book is not necessarily an exercise in futility but not always helpful either.  Sometimes it is just comparison for comparison's sake with no real purpose (English teacher habits die hard).  Having read the book helps point me in the right direction, but (and my English teacher self cringes typing this) I don't think it's all that necessary in order to watch and enjoy the television adaptation.

I've read this far; where the fuck are the pics, Leonard?

I couldn't possibly do them justice, friends.  Do yourself a favor and go read TLo's breakdown and costume analyses of each episode (which is what I'm going to do in a hot second).  They go episode by episode and are therefore much more in-depth than Leonard is here.

Armada (Book Review)

Armada by Ernest Cline
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

First things first: is it as good as Ready Player One? That's kind of a loaded question. I can answer it by saying this is different from Ready Player One. While still definitely science fiction, Armada is firmly rooted in the present (well, 2015, when it was published), whereas Ready Player One exists in a mythical near-future. If you like your sci-fi farther away than the here and now, then no, you probably won't enjoy Armada as much as you enjoyed Ready Player One.

Putting Armada in the "real world" (so to speak) does allow for some great additional pop culture references that wouldn't have otherwise made it in. Pop culture and geeky stuff is one of the things Ernest Cline excels at, so he's doing us all a favor by adding some more. Where Ready Player One had a heavy 80s nostalgia going on, Armada gives us that, some mid-70s nostalgia like Star Wars, and then some more contemporary stuff like Firefly and Battlestar Galactica, plus some additional genres -- meaning, we're not just dealing with video game-type nostalgia here, we're dealing with science fiction across movies and games, alien invasions like Close Encounters, Contact, and (of course) Independence Day.

Armada is pretty action-oriented; indeed, most of the major plot events take place over the course of just a few hours, rather days or months. Additionally, if it's hard for you to visualize some things like spaceship cockpits, aerial maneuvers, and fighting techniques (like it is for me), you may start to glaze over (like I did) when Cline's text gets weighed down by his own technical prowess. Even so, I didn't stop reading (finished it in 3 days).

Other possible "cons" -- yes, it is a coming of age story of sorts. So if you don't like reading about teenage white boys attempting to figure out life, you won't like this; thankfully, that aspect is neither forced nor the focus of the story, otherwise my patience would have been spent. And it's definitely a story with some "daddy issues," which Cline's protagonist calls out right away. In fact, he acknowledges a couple of tropes right out of the gate, and some of them even get subverted a bit, which I always appreciate. But "daddy issues" also have their place of honor in most sci-fi canons, so it's not out of place in Armada either.

Last but not least, these are teenage boys, and they speak like teenage boys, most of which I found both realistic and pretty amusing. And possibly indicative that I might also speak like a teenage boy.

View all my reviews

One Year

My Unit and I enjoyed a nice, relatively quiet 4th of July yesterday.  We worked on the house, going through the pile of items my parents brought with them 3 weeks ago ("you might need it!").  That took a couple of hours, complete with smoke/drink breaks.  We tried (semi-successfully) to use our new charcoal grill (note to self:  I am far too impatient for this charcoal nonsense; I miss my gas grill).

There were loud booms of fireworks, but it was so incredibly different from the city.  Instead of a barrage of sounds for three days straight, at all times of day and night, things mostly started after 8 p.m.  And yes, they were loud -- bigger, more professional grade pyrotechnics -- but also farther away.  No one was shooting them right outside our house or in the dumpster in the alley.  Our dogs didn't like the noises, of course, but it was much more manageable.  Not the 75+ pounds of shaking, panting dogs like before.  That was a nice change.

And now it's July 5th.  I'm back at work.  And it's been one year.  Sometime during this day, one year ago, you went ahead and decided to pull the trigger.  Literally.  I don't know if it was during the morning (those are hardest for me) or during the night (those were hardest for you) or sometime in between, when you crawled into your bathtub, pulled the shower curtain closed, and put a pistol in your mouth.  Pulling the curtain closed was so you; it minimized the mess for those who had to clean up afterward.  Considerate to the very end.  They told me you even left your laptop and cell phone on the office desk, passwords and things all organized and easily accessible.  This was no rash act; you had planned.

I wouldn't find any of this out until late at night on the 6th.  I had gone to bed ridiculously early because I was worn out from a doctor's appointment and blood draw earlier in the day.  My phone kept going off, so finally, by around 10:30 p.m. I said, "What?!??" to my phone and looked at it.  Looked at the flood of messages.  "Do you know yet?"
"Are you okay?"
"Oh my God."

It took some scrolling to get to the heart of the matter, and I went cold with shock.  Then I had to go to the living room, wake my sleeping Unit on the couch, and in a state of half-asleep, tell her that you had killed yourself.  That you were gone.  And she cried out -- literally cried out -- "Noooo!" in a high-pitched tone that she rarely uses because it's completely unfiltered emotion, almost keening.

And I just sat on the bed and stared later while she cried.  "Why aren't you crying??" she asked me.  I couldn't.  Just shock.  I couldn't even mourn until the next afternoon (July 7th).  I made an emergency visit with my therapist and just sobbed on her couch.  "I don't know what to do with this!" I said.
And I didn't.
Sometimes I still don't.

I don't know how to handle the weight of this information, the raw emotional burden of this act of violence, of desperation, of finality.  Do I talk about it?  Do I hold it close?  "What am I supposed to do?" I kept saying over and over again.
I still don't know.

My therapist asked, in terms of "doing something," were there other people who might be affected that I might want to reach out to?  "Are any of your friends a suicide risk?"
"Well, according to the messages I've been getting, it's me," I said with a tearful laugh.  Gallows humor.

Thank you to the handful of people who texted me personally during the aftermath.  "Are you okay?" and "How are you doing?" are code for "checking in on you."  And I greatly appreciate it.  One of the major triggers for suicides is...other suicides.  So I know what you were doing, and I appreciate it more than I can adequately say.  You know who are you.

I am not the spokesperson for depression, mental health, and/or suicide attempts.  Not really.  It's a burden I bear relatively quietly; transparency is all good in theory, but I don't do it a lot of it in real life.  But it's here.  It's me.  Hello, my name is Leonard, and I'm mentally ill.

The evening of the 7th a handful of us closest would gather near, drink wine, and read over the statement to be released about your death.  And I cried reading it aloud, but I was so very grateful that it acknowledged everything that had happened.  It needed to be said aloud.

And then we heard the entire story, the process over three days of what had happened.  No gratuitous, gory details; just the facts, ma'am, hard, cold, horrible facts.  I needed to hear them.  I requested to know the details; I needed to know to make sense of it all, and GFB obliged.

There would be more crying; not quite as much drinking as I would have imagined.  And then, exactly one week later, a tree would destroy my house, nearly kill my Unit, and our lives would be uprooted and changed, again, forever.  Was that you?  I often wonder.  You knew how we felt about living in the city.

And another week after that, six of us would get covered in sweat and dirt and dust while completely cleaning out your apartment.

Sometimes it's like you're not really gone.  You still show up on m "On This Day" on Facebook:  your posts with jokes about grammar and cats and knitting.  I still remember your last text to me ("Fabulous job tonight, as always!  Thanks for all you do," after last year's theatre crawl).  And I swear, I could have rounded the corner into the office next to the dressing room just the other week and found you there, typing away.  But you weren't.

I said hello to you anyway, just in case.

One year.  525,600 minutes (thanks for counting, Rent!).  I don't have anything profound to say.