Termination Shock
Set in the near-ish future, Neal Stephenson’s latest novel (Termination Shock) charts a world gone haywire with the aftereffects of human-driven climate calamity. Like the last couple of novels I’ve read, it incorporated COVID into the storyline as well as the January 6th insurrection.
“…before you knew it there was a white guy in red-white-and blue war paint sacking the U.S. Capitol in what the media described as some kind of Viking getup but Rufus knew perfectly well was a Plains Indian-style bison headdress. And just like Comanches with their raids, those people didn’t stick around and try to plant their yellow rattlesnake flags on the Capitol dome. They just wandered off, having counted coup on democracy and taken a few cop scalps, and melted back into their nomadic trailer park encampments.
This excerpt reminded me of some of his descriptions in Snow Crash.
Another good Trump impression
I assume this was scripted and not ad libbed. But the impressionist (J-L Cauvin is a stand up comedian and sketch writer) doesn’t appear to be reading from a prompter screen. The clip above has >8,000 views in less than 24 hours. Hard to remember a time before YouTube.
The Beatles: Get Back
“What’s startling about “Get Back” is that as you watch it, drinking in the moment-to-moment reality of what it was like for the Beatles as they toiled away on their second-to-last studio album, the film’s accumulation of quirks and delights and boredom and exhilaration becomes more than fascinating; it becomes addictive. We’re there in the studio, right alongside the Beatles, seeing — living — what they do. There are moments when “Get Back” meanders (at a certain point in Part 3, you may feel like you never want to hear “Don’t Let Me Down” or “Let It Be” again). Yet even the repetition is part of the documentary’s experiential quality. As you soak up the film in its totality, it become moving and momentous. “Get Back” is a long-form portrait of the dissolution of the Beatles and the togetherness of the Beatles.” — Variety review of Peter Jackson’s 8 hour documentary.
If you weren’t a fan I doubt you’d enjoy this. The Beatles exploded in 1962 and flamed out in the late sixties, neatly covering my high school and college years. A big musical influence in my golden years. (Good article on which US radio stations played The Beatles first)
Thankful
