Bryce Moore's Blog, page 62

When Your Prius Won’t Start

I’ve had my Prius for about 4 years now, and I’ve been very happy with it for the most part. The gas mileage is great, and with winter tires (a must around here for it), it handles snowy roads without too much complaint. Sure, it gets some jabs at it from time to time. I know what the word on the street about Prius owners is, but for the most part, I just don’t care. The car has given me no trouble to speak of.

Until recently.

A week and a half ago, when I went to start my Prius, it turned on the electrical system in the car, but didn’t actually start the car. The engine didn’t even turn over. Confused, I pressed the power button again, and the engine came to life. I dismissed it as a random strange thing, but the next time I tried to start the car, it did it again. This time, simply pressing the power button again did nothing. The electrical would come on, but the dashboard was nothing but warning lights.

Typically in a situation like this, my experience with cars says that if the electrical isn’t having any issues, then it can’t be the battery. And everything in car seemed fine as far as the electrical system went. Not knowing what else to do, I sat there turning it on and off again, hoping it would somehow roar back to life.

It did after about five minutes of this.

From then on, the car became more and more temperamental. I took it to my mechanic, who seemed to be at sea when it came to working on anything electrical with a Prius. He tested the battery and looked for warning messages, but the battery seemed fine, and the car wasn’t reporting anything was wrong. He had no idea what I should do. However, it was getting worse, and I had visions of me being stranded who-knows-where, with no idea how to get the car someplace it be fixed.

I googled the problem extensively, and I got conflicting answers. Certainly nothing conclusive. So I buckled down and made an appointment at the nearest Toyota dealership, 45 minutes away. I took the car in on Monday, and the verdict was the battery had gone bad. (Not the hybrid battery. The regular battery.)

It turns out, Priuses start up differently than most cars. In a regular car, you turn it on and it cranks the engine and you’re off and running. In a Prius, pressing the power button turns on the electrical system, which runs through a couple quick system checks and then sends a message to the battery to turn the car on. My battery had enough juice to run the electrical system, but not enough to get the car itself going. And Prius batteries are special snowflakes. They’re different than your typical car battery, for battery reasons I don’t care enough to figure out. They’re supposed to last about 4-5 years. Mine was going on 7.

All I know is that it cost me $385 to have the battery replaced, and the people at the dealership weren’t 100% sure it would fix it. “Probably” and “Almost definitely” were used a couple of times. Enough to make me skittish about paying, but what else was I going to do? I paid the money, they gave me a new battery, and off I drove. The car started right away without a hiccup, and it’s been steady ever since.

If only all problems in life could be so easily fixed.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Billionaire Spaceflight

I watched Jeff Bezos go to space this morning. An eleven minute ride that cost a purported $28 million to buy a seat at auction. After they landed, the people covering the event (which was being broadcast by Bezos’ company) called the four people who had gone up “the latest American astronauts,” or something like that, which struck me as an ill-fitting description. What, exactly, had these people done?

Bezos had paid to fund the whole thing, true, but the entire Apollo program cost around $100 billion in today’s dollars. Bezos has twice that, so he’s got the wherewithal to fund things better than NASA did back then. He also has the benefit of doing it all fifty years later, with technology that’s much more advanced than anything that was around back then. Does that make him an astronaut, or a passenger?

The flight was guided completely by artificial intelligence. The vehicle is totally autonomous, from what I gathered. It rockets up more than 60 miles into the air, then jettisons the rocket that got them there. It guides itself back to land on the ground, and the capsule floats down later on. I don’t believe the people in the capsule did anything other than look out the window. Does that make them astronauts? Was Laika an astronaut?

I don’t mean to dismiss the feat. These sort of trips (like the other one Branson did a week or so ago) mark an important turning point in the way we interact with space. If a bunch of millionaires want to use their money to buy tickets on rockets, thereby funding more efforts to develop more things in space, then that seems like a pretty good way to get it done. As these trips become more commonplace and more accessible, it brings other things more into reach as well.

The Space Race was funded by fear. Fear that the United States would fall behind the USSR, both militarily and technologically. But once that competition was over, with the US coming out “victorious,” the public goodwill behind the program just wasn’t enough to sustain it. There hasn’t been money to support it from government coffers, so (realistically) if we’re going to keep expanding our reach and exploring, it appears ventures by companies is the way to go. How will that affect the ultimate end product? No idea.

I’ve seen a number of comments about people mad at Bezos, or disparaging him for doing something that wasn’t a big deal. Wasting his money where there are so many other immediate problems that need solving. But I don’t see it that way. The remarkable thing about these feats isn’t that someone successfully went up to space and back in a short 10 minute journey. It’s that multiple companies are far enough along now that voyages like this are possible. I’m very excited to see where things head from here, and I can think of many worse ways for Bezos to spend a chunk of change. In the long run, I think these efforts might well pay off in ways we can only dream of for now.

Of course, I’ve also seen plenty of comments saying they think the whole thing was a hoax, and that Bezos never really went up at all. To me, those comments are a constant reminder of how much we need science in our lives. Logic. Reason. Some people appear to have given up on it entirely, preferring to believe anything that’s more convenient for them. (Why it’s more comfortable to believe the earth is flat and we’ve never been to space is beyond me, but stressful times cause different people to react in very different ways.)

Would *I* go to space right now? I don’t think so. I certainly wouldn’t want to spend that sort of money (if I had it available.) I’m just super comfortable with other people spending it. In a way, it’s like the lottery, except I don’t have to worry that people who don’t have sufficient funds are being essentially taxed to line the pockets of the few (and pay for some local needs of the many). I am mindful of the potential impact these sort of flights will have on the environment, but I also believe they’ll lead to potential solutions to the those same problems. The fact that they aren’t carbon neutral right at the beginning seems to me to be a poor reason not to do it.

But maybe I’m just way too much into space exploration.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

How to Handle Facebook

More and more, it’s becoming clear to me that the free social media platforms we use ubiquitously come with a much higher cost than we initially realize. On the one hand, they do a great job of keeping me connected with people I don’t see that often. I have used Facebook and Twitter heavily for years. It’s the place where most people come across my blog articles, and I check it multiple times a day. But Facebook and Twitter are constantly making changes to the services they provide and what they choose to show you (or keep back from you). I’m more of a Facebook user than a Twitter-phile, so I’m going to focus on Facebook today.

Back in the day, Facebook seemed much simpler. You friended people you knew, and then you got to see their status updates throughout the day. Facebook, it seemed, existed primarily to connect people. These days, Facebook exists to make money, plain and simple. Judging simply from my blog statistics, the number of people seeing my blog each day has, on the whole, gone down on average, despite the fact that my friends have gone up on my primary delivery mechanism.

Granted, there are many different potential reasons for that. People could just not like what I write anymore. I’ve written my share of posts that have rubbed some people the wrong way, and it’s inevitable some readers finally decided enough was enough. It’s also possible that more people are just walking away from Facebook. I know I’ve seen a number of friends say this, so that’s definitely a number greater than zero.

But I also know a significant reason for this dip in readers is that Facebook makes sure people can’t just reach their friends easily. If someone could garner a following of loyal readers for free on Facebook, then why in the world would companies want to pay Facebook for ads? Instead, the company has a tendency to just limit the number of people who get exposed to your content, plain and simple. How do I know this? By talking to friends and family who want to stay up to date on my blog, and get frustrated that Facebook just doesn’t show them the entries. They’ve tried to favorite me. It just doesn’t work. I imagine this is because I share things so regularly.

By itself, this is annoying. What Facebook professes to do is the same as what I want it to do: let me see what my friends are saying. But what it actually does is show me stuff it thinks I’m going to like, which also happen to be stuff that’s in its best interest to show me. If that were the only problem, it would be more of an irritation than anything else. But it isn’t.

Where Facebook makes its real money is in developing profiles of its users. Hyper-targeted profiles it can then turn around and use to market things directly to you. If it knows you’ve got a thing for Magic the Gathering, then if another vendor comes along who wants to target Magic players, then Facebook can guarantee that. Add that to the ability to sell political “ads” that turn out to be nothing more than political gasoline designed to make people angry or afraid, and this place that’s supposed to be about friendship not only doesn’t deliver on showing you your friends, it has a tendency to make your friends your enemies.

So what to do about it?

Personally, I don’t think I can completely drop it. As I said, I’ve still been able to hash out some real relationships on Facebook, and I’m not interested in giving those up. Not to mention the communities I’m involved in on there. I’ll continue to post blog entries there, because I don’t think it’s realistic of me to expect people to just abandon their social media of choice in order to keep track of what I’m doing. (Though there’s a lovely technology out there that I highly recommend: feed readers. The one I use is Feedly, and basically what you do is tell it what sites you want to follow. They can be news sites, blogs you like, or anything else. You subscribe to those by entering in their website, and then it funnels all new stories to you as they come up. (For example, to subscribe to my blog, you’d enter this: http://brycemoore.com/blog/ ) With Feedly, I’m able to stay caught up on library news, tech news, movies news, my writing friends, personal friends and more. There are occasional ads stuck in there, but they’re identified as such, and they’re easy to ignore. And it pulls everything. It’s then up to me what I read and what I don’t. It’s lovely, and I highly recommend it over even simply subscribing for email deliveries of blogs.)

So there are ways out there to stay up to date on people and news in your life, as long as they actively post stuff to an independent page. For cases where you know people who don’t, then you can still use some Facebook for that. But as I’ve said before on my blog, I am quite selective about who I actually end up following on Facebook. I’ll friend anyone I know, especially if they’ve asked to be my friend. But I unfollow most people, based on a couple of criteria:

Do I know this person well enough that I really want to know their thoughts and feelings about everything under the sun? Often I’ll give people the benefit of the doubt at first, but if after a while I find them posting a lot, and it’s content that’s just not relevant to me? Unfollow.Do the interactions I’m having on Facebook with this person help or hinder my relationship with them? If all the contact I have with an old friend is Facebook, and they’re constantly writing about things that do nothing but make me start to get judgey, then I unfollow them. I’d rather maintain what relationship I have with them off Facebook than let it devolve into a failed friendship. In other words, if what I see from them on Facebook is hurting our relationship, I unfollow. Yes, I suppose that means I’m still friends with people in real life who very much disagree with me on a bunch of issues. But . . . isn’t that a good thing?

And my final Facebook approach is to try to fact check anything I see on there, and not to rely on it as my one source of news. The reality you see on Facebook is a cultivated one, fed to you by a company who’s much more interested in making money off you than in actually informing you. Stay too long in Facebook, and you start to believe anyone either believes exactly what you do, or else they’re a blithering idiot. Neither one of those is true in most cases. If you see a news story that really gets your goat, consider the source, fact check it, and look into it on a different news site.

Anyway. For those of you leaving Facebook, I totally understand. I hope you still swing by now and then to see what I’m up to, but I wish you well in your future endeavors!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Sea Glass Hunting on Monhegan Island

It’s interesting that sometimes it takes someone coming from hours away to get you to do the touristy things people do when they come to your state. Denisa and I have lived here for 14 years now, and we had yet to venture to any of the islands off the coast of Maine, despite the fact that many people come here to do just that. For the first while, it was because of the expense ($38 for a ferry ticket?), and then it was because we had kids of ages that didn’t really line up right to do the outing, and then it was because we were busy, and then . . .

There comes a point when you begin to convince yourself that if you haven’t done something all this time, then there must be a good reason you haven’t done it, and you stop even considering doing it anymore.

Thankfully, a friend from high school came up to visit for the weekend, and one of the things he was planning on doing was taking the ferry out to Monhegan Island, famous for its artist colony and beautiful landscape. If that had been all it was, maybe I might not have decided to go, but he also likes to go looking for sea glass, and that’s been something I’ve been curious about enough that I decided it would be fun to tag along and see how it was done. Denisa and MC came on the journey as well. (Tomas had to work, and Daniela had drama camp.)

To get out to the island, we first had to get to the ferry. We took the one out of Port Clyde, which was about a two hour drive for us. Once we arrived, I was surprised to see the range of car license plates arrayed on the dock: Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and more. People were coming from all around to go to this place I’d just ignored the whole time. It took an hour to get out to the island on the ferry, though the company did fill some of that time talking about the history of the island and the surrounding area, and the lobster industry. The ride was choppy enough that by the time we arrived, my stomach was very glad we were about to get off. I had expected a large ferry without too many people on it. Instead, it was a small ferry that was pretty packed, leading me to wonder just how busy the island would be.

Monhegan is only 1.75 miles long and .75 miles wide. In my head, this was a place we’d pretty much be able to completely explore in a couple of hours. No cars are allowed over onto the island, though some of the people there do have trucks they use for transportation. There’s a small village there, with quite a few houses, though many of them seemed like they were probably rentals for people coming out to stay. Cell coverage was spotty, but existent. Restaurants were few and far between, and prices were what you’d expect on a remote island. If you’re looking to come and check out stores, this is not the place to go.

However, the island is criss-crossed with plenty of hiking trails. We set off right away into the middle of the island. I had been expecting wide trails with plenty of visibility, like most of Maine’s hiking. These trails were very narrow, and the forest in places was incredibly thick. It reminded us more of the rain forest at times than of most of the other places we’ve explored in Maine. The trails were generally easy to see, though markings were few and far between. In most places, the trail was maybe a foot wide. Some mud, because it had just rained, but the real obstacles were tree roots and rocks. It wasn’t easy hiking, by any means, but it was absolutely gorgeous.

In our three hour hike around the island, we probably saw about 5 other groups total. It was a much bigger place than I expected, and it generally felt like we were alone. If you want peaceful, secluded beauty, this is definitely a good place to go.

The sea glass hunting was less than overwhelming. We headed to Pebble Beach, which we’d heard had the best offerings on the island. We got there as the tide was coming in, which wasn’t ideal, so perhaps there was better hunting farther out, but where we were, to find any sea glass took an awful lot of combing through the boulders and pebbles. The pieces we did find were generally small: tinier than the tip of my pinky. On the other hand, we had a great time doing it. MC loved the sense of exploration, and it was fun to have something to do together. The beach was nothing like a place where I’d want to go swim. Far too rocky. (And it was only 65 degrees that day, anyway.)

(We did try one other spot I’d heard had sea glass: Fish Beach. It was very small, but it had quite a lot more glass. Unfortunately, almost all of it was pretty new. New enough that it was another place I don’t think I’d want to swim, even though it was sandier. There was just too much glass. Go figure.)

We had lunch at a small cafe. Nothing extravagant: some pizza ($3.50/slice) and wraps ($8.00/each). The food was fine. We might have gone to some of the other restaurants, but finding out where they were was a struggle. (Remember: bad internet), and the prices seemed like more than we were really up for at the moment. One of the best things I bought the whole time was the $1 map of the island that included all the hiking trails. We used that a ton, and I’m sure we would have gotten hopelessly lost without it. (We’d also considered bringing Ferris on the trip, but I’m very glad we didn’t. He would have been far too hyper on the ferry, and he would have gone crazy on the island. We’d tried taking him on a short hike a few days before. It was sensory overload for the puppers.)

In the end, we stayed five hours, and I think that was about right. I’d considered coming out to stay with the family on the island at some point, but I don’t know that I will, having been there. I loved the outing, but I think I’d likely get bored if I were there for too long. (Though maybe some boredom and internet-free time would be just the thing. I’ll keep thinking about that.) I’m sure it would have gorgeous night skies if we were to stay over, though it was foggy and overcast the entire time we were there. (Luck of the draw.)

Overall, it was a terrific outing, and a great change of pace. If you haven’t been, I’d definitely recommend it, and it’s got me thinking about other outings we might do in the future . . .

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Hurray for Second Chances: Return of the Bundt Cake

Last Sunday, Daniela and I made another foray into co-baking, and it ended with a pretty spectacular fail. (I should have taken a picture of it, in hindsight. Just imagine a half-baked bundt cake plopped upside down into another pan, and then baked again. It was bad.) I’d say it left a bad taste in our mouth, but that would be a lie, since we ate it the rest of the week, and it tasted incredible. This week, Daniela wanted to give it another go. Not with a new recipe. With the same one we’d messed up the week before.

I’m all about learning from my mistakes, so I readily agreed. For as bad as last week went, it wouldn’t have taken much for this week to go better, but it went pretty much perfectly. For one thing, we both knew what we were doing when we were making the cake. Last week was tricky, but this time, we already had it down to a process. The peanut butter filling also went off without a hitch. (We used chunky peanut butter this time, and these days we’re almost only buying the natural kind (the one you have to stir). I imagine smooth Skippy would make it even easier, though I did like the crunch of the natural after all was said and done.)

This time, we only filled the Bundt pan 2/3 of the way, and we used the leftover batter (of which there was a TON) to make 12 peanut butter-filled chocolate cupcakes. The cake was done in an hour, and the cupcakes were done in 20 minutes. When the cake was finished, we were both a little apprehensive. We used a wooden skewer to check it this time (much longer than a toothpick, to ensure we weren’t missing any pockets of raw batter), and we checked it about five times in five different places. Each time it came out clean. Picturing another mess, we steeled ourselves, flipped the cake out . . . and it was perfectly done. It cracked a little on the way out, but Daniela made a ganache to cover that up.

Of course, this wouldn’t be a real baking experience if we didn’t make a goof here or there. This time, it was that we forgot to get extra butter, so we didn’t have enough for the ganache recipe we usually use. Daniela decided to pull an audible, mixing oil and chocolate chips and milk in amounts that felt generally good to her. It seemed to have turned out fine at first, but it was done well before the cake was cool enough to put it on. Once the cake had cooled, it had solidified, and when she went to reheat it, the oil separated. It looked very (very) gloppy.

I tasted it, and it was super dark as well. We were also out of powdered sugar, and we only had about a half cup of white sugar left in the house. I threw caution to the wind and added all the white sugar we had left, and Daniela added some more milk, hoping that would fix it.

It did not. It tasted good, but there was no way it was going to turn out as a ganache. After some reflection, we decided to try whipping the heck out of it in the stand mixer, thinking that might be enough to mix the oil back in. A few minutes later, that turned out to be successful. We ended up with a (very) dark, smooth ganache that went perfectly over the cake. I’m chalking that up to divine intervention.

In any case, I was happy to have such a great object lesson to talk to Daniela about how to respond when things go wrong. Take some time away, think about what you could have done differently, and then try again, incorporating those changes. We still had to improvise, but the end result was delicious.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

TV Review: The Goes Wrong Show

When I find a British show that I love, my biggest complaint is always (inevitably) that it’s just too short. Seasons across the Atlantic are like five episodes long. Six, if you’re lucky. Thankfully with The Goes Wrong Show, it’s a “long” season of 6 whopping episodes, available on Amazon Prime even as we speak. And if I were you (which I realize I’m not), I would stop whatever you’re doing this instant and go watch this show instead.

Oh wait. That would mean you’d stop reading my blog, wouldn’t it? Well, whatever you planning to do after you finished reading my blog, I would watch this show instead. Someone had recommended it to me (I’ve sadly forgotten who), and I decided to watch it when I got around to it. Don’t be like me. This is some of the funniest stuff I watched in a good long while.

The premise is straightforward: a fairly amateur acting troupe in England prepares a weekly live play that they film in front of audience and then broadcast to the nation. Except their entire production is just plain awful. They’ve got set design folks who make an absolute mess of things, their actors are all highly unprofessional, the writing is a mess, and pretty much everything you can imagine ends up going wrong. (It couldn’t have taken them long to come up with the title for the show.)

A lot of the time I have trouble really laughing at people in painful situations. I can’t typically last too much of The Office for that reason. It’s so uncomfortable for me to watch people making such poor life choices, and then laugh at them. However, with this show, I don’t have to worry about that. I’m not laughing at real people’s lives (even if they’re fictional), I’m laughing at people who are just flat out bad at what they do professionally. For some reason, that makes all the difference.

It also helps that a lot of the humor from the show comes from things other than just “these people can’t act” over and over. The set design crew makes tons of errors, like building a court room where they thought the measurements were in inches, not feet. Or building a dining room vertically, so the table’s on the wall. Not every single episode is a grand slam, but they’re all a lot of fun, and I was often laughing so hard I had to pause it.

Fair warning: the humor does get a bit ribald now and then. We watched it with the whole family, and there was a time or two when I felt like it crossed the line for MC (though it likely just sailed right past her), but I don’t like wholeheartedly recommending something and then risking it being too much for some people. I’d still say it’s squarely in PG range, and it is indeed rated TV-PG, so maybe I’m being too fussy.

In any cast, I gave it a 10/10, and I can’t wait until I can watch season 2.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Movie Review: The Little Mermaid

I first watched The Little Mermaid in the theaters when it came out. It was a very big deal at the time. A return to form for Disney, and it launched the string of successful animated movies that Disney would create next: Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, and The Lion King. I was a huge Disney fan growing up, and I still am. However, I was only 11 when it first came out, and while I’d definitely watched it multiple times since then, it has probably been 15-20 years since I last saw it. A lot can change with a person in that amount of time. Would the movie still hold up?

In my memory, it was this fast-paced comedy musical romance thing. The romance wasn’t that important to me as an 11 year old, but the music and comedy were. “Under the Sea” was so much fun, and so was “Les Poisson.” Ursula was a great villain. And rewatching it last night, all of that was definitely still the same. The music and animation were still fantastic. The plot . . . ?

That let me down quite a bit.

Who, exactly, are we supposed to root for in this movie? The obvious answer is Ariel, but what does she do that’s actually worth rooting for? She’s duped by a sea witch into giving up her voice (for a man she’s never talked to and has interacted with for a total of about 5 seconds). But I suppose you can at least argue up to that point she’s doing something. She has a goal (beautifully stated in “Part of Your World”), and she’s working toward that goal. Except the goal changes. It stops being about living her dream of living on land, and turns instead into somehow getting random prince boy to marry her.

Once she’s on land, she does absolutely nothing to advance her goal. Well, she stares lovingly into Eric’s eyes, but assuming you don’t count that as an active protagonist, she’s pretty much useless after she’s got legs. Sebastian does a fair attempt of helping her out, using his ninja composing skills to inspire a bunch of strange aquatic creatures into an impromptu serenade, but Sebastian is most definitely not the main character of the movie. True, he does change (going from being self-centered to actually risking his life so Ariel can get Eric), but . . . to say he’s anything more than a sidekick would be a stretch. (Though it makes me wonder how cool it could be if when Disney did the live action remake, they instead focused it all on Sebastian . . .)

In the end, who kills Ursula? Eric does. And what has he done to earn that? Not a whole lot. I realize this is far from a problem unique to The Little Mermaid, and that it’s long been lobbed as a critique of Disney movies, but I tend to hold movies that were made in the 80s to a higher standard of enlightenment than those made decades before then. And I get it: it’s a kids movie. It presents a simplified version of falling in love and living happily ever after. But I went into the movie knowing all the complaints people have made about Disney princesses of yore, and the counterarguments people have made that “it’s just a kids movie,” and I was curious what I would think about it.

The thing that really sealed the deal for me was talking to Daniela about it after the movie. She had no real patience for the plot either. Would I boycott this movie and refuse to let my kids watch it? Of course not. But I can’t watch it today without seeing the weaknesses of the movie, regardless of how I once watched it. Comparing it to Moana or Frozen or Tangled or any number of more recent Disney movies, and I for one am grateful they stopped with the damsel in distress plot and went with something people can really admire.

In the end, this one’s just a 7/10 for me. Still love the art and music. Wish the plot were better.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Adventures in Bundt Baking

Sunday, Daniela and I decided we wanted to make a cake for our Fourth of July dinner later that day. After debating the merits and proper “Americanness” of various cake and frosting combinations, we settled on a bundt cake (because we hadn’t made one before) that would be chocolate with a peanut butter filling. How hard could it be?

(Note: When you’re setting out to try something new in baking, the phrase “how hard could it be?” should usually tip you off that it will, in fact, be much harder than you think. Because “how hard could it be?” doesn’t actually set a limit, you know.)

Since it was Sunday, we were limited to using only the ingredients that were in our house already. We weren’t going to make a special trip to the store for anything. This made some problems for us, since the recipe we found that we really wanted to use was this one in the New York Times. However, that one called for cream cheese for the peanut butter filling, and heavy cream for the glaze, neither of which were in our fridge. So I called an audible and used the chocolate cake recipe from the NYT, and swapped out the peanut butter filling for this one (that I didn’t want to use the chocolate cake recipe for, since it was just a box cake, and who needs that?)

We got to work on baking. Everything went off without a hitch. It was complicated, sure, but nothing the two of us couldn’t handle. It came time to fill the bundt pan, and we hit a slight snag: we had too much cake batter. So much, that it filled the pan right to the top. I knew from experience that cakes typically rise, so for a moment, I was concerned this was too much batter.

“Maybe it just doesn’t rise that much,” Daniela pointed out. That seemed like a good enough answer for me. Into the oven it went!

An hour later, and the cake had not, in fact, flowed all over the oven. It had risen a little, but mostly it had puffed up in a ring around the middle. We took it out and tested it with a toothpick. The recipe called for baking at least an hour, so I was skeptical that it would have been done already. However, no matter how many times we put the toothpick in, it always came out clean.

“I guess we should just dump it out and see what happens,” I said. Daniela concurred. (Note: “Dump it out and see what happens” might not be the best approach for baking, but we’d been baking for a while by then. We were tired.)

We got out a cooling rack, I paused for a moment, and then turned the bundt pan over in one fell swoop.

Reader, the top two or three inches of that cake (the bottom of it, once it was turned out) was done to perfection. The peanut butter filling was great. But the part that was beneath the peanut butter filling? That was still molten cake batter. It oozed right through the cooling rack and spread out in a puddle all over the counter.

If I had been left to my own devices, I think I would have given up then. The beautiful bundt cake we’d worked so hard on was more of an amorphous cake-like mass. There was no way it was getting back in the oven in anything remotely bundt shaped. Denisa, quick thinker that she is, sprang into action. “Just put it back in a regular cake pan and finish baking it,” she said. “It’s still hot.”

That seemed like a ridiculous idea. Keep baking it? How do you bake what’s rapidly turning into a raw pancake with some chocolate and peanut butter cake heaped in the middle of it? But it was better than my idea of just giving up, so we let Denisa give it a try. We scooped up pieces of the cake, stuck them in a new pan, and then she used a spoon to get as much of the batter in as she could.

Back in the oven it went.

Twenty minutes later or so, the cake was finished. It looked about how you’d expect it would. Spots of it still had ridges from the bundt pan, and other parts looked like someone had just sort of thrown cake batter around and hoped for the best. In short, it looked like a disaster.

The taste, however . . . The taste was just right. Chocolate and peanut buttery goodness we’ve been enjoying since. When it’s dark and you’re watching a movie, it’s not like you need to look at your cake to enjoy it, you know?

In hindsight, we should have filled the pan only two thirds of the way, and cooked the rest of the batter in cupcake form. We think there was just too much batter for the heat to really get everywhere it needed to. But despite how big of a pain it all was, I think Daniela and I might give it another go at some point.

It really is a good tasting cake . . .

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

A Tribute to Richard Donner

Richard Donner passed away yesterday. I realize there are many who won’t recognize his name, but he did a whole lot for fantasy in film, and I wanted to take a minute to appreciate that. When the Christopher Reeve Superman came out in 1978, it was the first time a studio had really thrown money at a superhero film. As we all know (or should know, at any rate), simply throwing money at film isn’t a formula for guaranteed success. (Waterworld, anyone?) It would have been very easy to have this first superhero effort go seriously wrong.

Warner Bros. picked Richard Donner to helm the film. What had he done before that? He’d directed The Omen, a small budget ($3 million) horror movie that grossed $60 million. He’d also directed a whole slew of television episodes, ranging from Perry Mason to Get Smart to The Twilight Zone. Superman had a budget of $55 million, so much bigger expectations. Donner took the movie and made it a huge success. ($300 million. That might not seem too impressive, until you realize that would be $1.2 billion today.)

In many ways, Donner set the stage for the future superhero movies to come. The mixture of comedy and action. Special effects but retaining a focus on character as well. (Though of course, the biggest contribution was proving a superhero movie could make a whole lot of money. That’s the biggest thing a movie can do to ensure other movies like it will be made.) I loved that movie, and spent many hours pretending I was Superman, even though I’d never cracked open a page of the comics.

If Superman were the only movie Donner had done, he would have still been very influential on the genre. But he went on to direct a slew of great films: Ladyhawke (straight up fantasy with Matthew Broderick and Michelle Pfeiffer), The Goonies(!), Lethal Weapon, Scrooged (one of the cooler (and more bizarre) Christmas Carol adaptations, with Bill Murray), and Maverick (comic Western with Mel Gibson and Jodie Foster).

The Goonies is flat out incredible, and I’d argue it played a role in the development of YA as a genre. Entirely kid-centric, with no parents barging in to solve the problems. Fast paced and snappy, but still recognizing the kids as real people with real wants and concerns. I’m not saying the whole genre stems from the movie (that’s clearly wrong), but rather that its acceptance and growth were helped along by the success of The Goonies. At least for yours truly, that movie defined in many ways what I want to get out of a YA adventure. (Plus, the movie gave us Sean Astin . . .)

These are all movies I grew up with, and which I’ve watched multiple times. To have them all come from the same director speaks to his ability to really make films that resonated with me. Were all his movies great? Well, no. Let’s not talk about The Toy or Timeline. But still, he had a great track record of success. If you haven’t seen some of these, I encourage you go and check them out. I just might have to fire up The Goonies tonight in his honor.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

One Eileen to Rule Them All: 30 Different Versions of Come On Eileen

A friend posted about a polka version of Come On Eileen yesterday on Facebook, and suddenly it reminded me of my personal favorite version (the ska cover by Save Ferris.) And so of course I had to look it up on YouTube, which led me to poke around to see what other covers of the song were done. A different friend does a yearly Christmas carol bracket challenge, where she posts about 30-40 different versions of the same carol. They’re paired up one by one, and people vote to determine which is the best version. She’s done it for years, and I always am entertained to see the sheer variety of versions out there.

And that made me wonder. “Just how many different versions of Come On Eileen are out there?” We’re talking significantly different. People who aren’t just playing the song like a cover, but who really added their own flavor to it. Thankfully, the internet was invented so I could answer this sort of question quickly and easily. And because I personally found it fascinating, I’m here today to share those results with you. I don’t think I’ll set up a whole bracket or anything (because that’s seriously a huge endeavor), but I’d like to do a poll to see which version you like the most. One vote per person. Vote on here, Twitter, or Facebook, but only vote once.

Before we begin, a warning. There are sooooooo many versions of Come On Eileen out there. Seriously. The farther I went, the more versions popped up. This is the tip of the iceberg, folks. It makes me wonder how many covers there are of other quintessential 80s songs out there, but I’m afraid to go looking. For today’s post, we’re just looking at this one, and just the ones I found that stood out to me the most.

Ready?

First off, of course, we have the original. Recorded in 1982 by the Dexys Midnight Runners, it was all over the 80s. It sets the stage for everything that comes after, and I still think it’s one of the best versions out there. How can you go wrong with the original?

The cover song I’d already heard and preferred heading into this deep dive was the one by Save Ferris:

But then I came across this one by Ala’SKA, and it really impressed me as well:

And I’d be remiss to omit the version that started me down this rabbit hole. Polkadelphia’s polka arrangement:

But what if you don’t like 80s music? What if you’re in the mood for something a little more . . . heavy? There’s this version by The Venetia Fair:

BluePearl made a rock version:

Texas decided to take that edge off and add more of . . . something else:

There are also more independent efforts out there, brought to us by the wonders of YouTube. How about this broken down synth/guitar version? I really like the groove it gets into.

Then again, what do a synthesizer and a guitar have when they’re up against two guitars, a snare drum, and . . . an accordion? Schank has this almost unseen version from what appears to be a sports bar in Bonn.

There are also version that jettison instruments completely. Here’s a standard a capella group approach by Streetcorner Symphony:

Then again, maybe you liked that version, but thought what it really needed was skateboards? No problem. The X-Factor has your back.

We can do the reverse, of course. Ditch the singing and focus on just an instrument. Like, say, a guitar:

The only problem is . . . I’ve got a fever. And the only prescription, is more mandolin. (Seriously. Way more.)

Or was it more brass?

No. It was definitely more cellos. (Included for Daniela’s listening pleasure.)

Speaking of banjos, this version was one that actually really impressed me.

This one deserves a mention, because who can’t get behind a sports arena organ?

The more I searched–the deeper I dove–the more convinced I became that there’s pretty much a Come On Eileen version done in any style you could imagine. How about . . . harp?

Chamber quartet?

Then there’s this one, that . . . I have a hard time putting into words. Slow down the song, take out most of the instruments, and add a lot more breathiness:

What about people who are huge Minecraft fans? Isn’t there a place for them in all this Eileen madness? Of course there is!

How about Atari, instead?

Then again, I know there are some people out there who listened to Mambo No. 5 and decided they wanted more Lou Bega. He heard their call:

What about fans of Sugarland and Sara Bareilles? Yup. They’ve covered it too:

But perhaps you heard the original, and you thought it was way too edgy. You wanted to make it something . . . more appropriate. I have a hard time describing what Michael English did to the song . . .

Don’t you love the violin at the beginning of the original? Doesn’t it give you serious Irish music vibes? Well, what if we swapped it with a penny whistle and translated the song into Irish Gaelic? Wish granted!

Or maybe you don’t care for music that much, but what you really like is England soccer? The band 4-4-2 adapted the song into an anthem for England in the European Championships in 2004. It generally follows the original, but has completely new words.

There are other straight up spoofs out there. I mean, what do you do when you realize COVID-19 matches up exactly with “Come On, Eileen”?

But that can’t be the only spoof, can it? Of course not. There are more spoofs out there (so many more). Even the Count gets in on the action:

I’m going to spare you from the rest of them. Instead, let’s bring this full circle. The original band (now named just Dexys) was still performing and touring through the mid-2010’s at least. (They released their fifth album then, even.) And here they are in 2012 performing live.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.