I’ve gotten too good at not leaving the house. The question now is, will I be able to motivate myself to leave when social distancing is eased? I hope so. While I have always enjoyed my days at home not getting dressed this is too much of a good thing. I need to see more than these four walls. It’s a bit gray and dreary, a perfect day to go out, I’m much less likely to run into people. We’ll see what happens. I have an online event with a friend I’d like to interact with but perhaps it’s more important to leave the house. I also need to talk to someone. It’s been three days since I had a phone conversation and that was a short one. I would like to talk with a friend every day. Every day I go without talking or going outside the more difficult it is to do the next time. That does it. Today I do both or die in the attempt. I could even do both at once, but I won’t. If I’m out I want to be focused on what’s around me.
Is there any exciting food news? I made pancakes for the first time in years. I don’t know what I did wrong, they came out too think. The batter made 8 pancakes instead of the usual dozen. As I intend on making them regularly now I’ll try using little more water next time. Perhaps the powdered mix settled to much and was denser. Why do Americans bake by volume not mass? We would all need kitchen scales, but it works in Europe. No matter they tasted great and there is nothing better than good coffee paired with pancakes or French toast. Fresh ground artisan coffee is something I’d have trouble giving up. Good thing I’m not hooked on expensive fresh ground artisan coffee. I spend $8/lbs and it’s better than the more expensive coffee you get at Fairway. I’ve tried that a few times, buying what was on sale.
I tried and failed watching two movies. The first was The Little Mermaid. I know everyone loves it and I can’t deny the artistry, but the result is too treacly for me. I prefer the bittersweet version by Hans Christian Anderson. Then I tried another Disney film, John Carter. It’s based on a book I love, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess on Mars. John Carter is a hero in a series of Mars books that were influential even if you never heard of them. People ranging from Carl Sagan to George Lucas were deeply affected by it. Carl Sagan had a license plate, PHOBOS or was that DEIMOS, those are the two moons of Mars. He said he would have preferred BARSOOM, but it was too many letters for a plate. Barsoom is the Martian name for their planet in the Burroughs’ books. He loved the phrase, “the hurtling moons of Barsoom. I’ve read almost all the books in the series. I missed one that had some sort of awkward origin. It might have been finished by someone else and published posthumously. Whatever it was I didn’t feel the need to read it. The books are pulp fiction. They are not seriously science fiction. They are brilliant captivating adventure stories. When Star Wars started the science fiction/fantasy epic craze I wanted them to film the Mars series. Then they did; why didn’t I see it in the theater? It got terrible reviews. My understanding that it was a reward to a special effects wiz who was given a toy to play with as a reward. Then the other day I read a piece that said to catch it before it leaves Netflix because it’s a neglected great film. The article said that it got bad press because there were production problems and went over budget, similar as happened to Apocalypse Now. That was not received as a classic when it was released. The piece said that the reason John Carter was a financial failure was marketing. Nobody knew who John Carter was. There was no built-in audience. They didn’t call it A Princess of Mars as they didn’t want people to think it’s another Disney princess film.
Here I was ready to see this great movie that was true to a favorite book and then write of the injustice of it being neglected. As soon as the film started I saw that it was not going to follow the story or spirit of the book. It didn’t even make the Red Martians properly read, they looked like they were Latinos, or South Asians, or perhaps Native Americans. I always found it inexplicable that Europeans called American Indians red men. They aren’t red or particularly reddish. I get that whites aren’t white, and blacks aren’t black, but the names work as contrasts. I also had issues with people from the Orient being called yellow. But this is science fantasy, the Red Martians are deep red and as we find out in later books the White Martians are not pale, but white, and the Black Martians are not dark but black. The Green Martians are green in the film, but they don’t have tusks like in the book but bone protruding from their face. The acting was poor, the writing was poor, and the directing poor. I gave up on the film. It deserves to be neglected.
I had no idea what I was going to write today. I didn’t think it was going to be this. That’s what happens when I let my fingers do what they want. You’ll probably enjoy this more than the theological toping I was musing on. I might still write that one. It’s been incubating in one form or another for years.
Wise Madness 