Month: July 2022

Movie Review: Operation Mincemeat (2021)

On By Norbert HauptIn Movies, One and a Half StarsLeave a comment

In World War II, the British need to deceive the Germans that they are about to attack Greece, turning German attention away from Sicily, their actual target.

To do that, they float a corpse of a British officer in the ocean to be found by the Germans. The officer holds a briefcase of classified material, fabricated to support the story. The problem is, how to make it convincing and foolproof. The Germans are smart and the whole plot turns into a game of “do they know that we know that they know that we know?” Thousands of lives of the soldiers attacking Sicily on the fateful day depend on the Germans falling for the ruse. If they don’t, it will be a bloodbath on the beaches of Sicily.

Operation Mincemeat shows the shadow warriors behind the scenes, who do their work from desks. It’s a spy thriller, based on a true story.

Right Time, Right Place – but Wrong Man

On By Norbert HauptIn Cool People, Crack-Ups2 Comments

Last week I was driving the rural roads of upstate New York, going from Albany west on Route 20. My destination was the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, which had a special exhibition of Wyeth family figure drawings that I wanted to see.

I was scheduled for a work meeting at noon local time, and I planned to be in town by then and catch it on my computer using my Verizon hot spot for network access. Once I entered town about 20 minutes before my call, I drove down the main street and got lucky: In the middle of town, busy with people and cars all around, I found an empty parking space on the right side of the road that I was able to parallel-park into.

I left my engine running, since it was really hot outside, and got set up for my meeting with my laptop leaning against the steering wheel.

Then I looked up and out my side window, and this is what I saw:

This is the main entrance to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. People save their money to take their kids on vacation to come here as a destination. And here I was parked across the street from it for a prosaic business meeting.

I have to explain here that I do not know anything about baseball. I have been to exactly one game in my life and I was bored. I do not know any names of any baseball players, except Babe Ruth, oh, and maybe Joe DiMaggio – that was another baseball player, right? Oh, and I also have to add that in 1982, I once got a private tour of their home stadium and facilities by the chief financial officer of the Chicago White Sox; I was working on the season billing program for the White Sox when I was working for Ticketmaster.

I didn’t go into the Hall of Fame after my meeting. Rather, I tried to find some lunch down the street at a diner, but the diner was closed, so I stopped at the sushi place next door. I was reading and eating my myself. At the table next to me there were a couple of old Italian-looking guys in their late 70ies, one of them with a cane, having their lunch. While I am sitting there, a family man with his teenage son comes up to the old guy with the cane and asks him for an autograph for his son. They are chatting it up for a while, the boy awestruck, quiet and just smiling.

So I was at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and didn’t go in, and I sat next to an old legend whose name I don’t know.

I was definitely at the right time, at the right place – but I was the wrong man.

Book Review: Sea of Tranquility – by Emily St. John Mandel

On By Norbert HauptIn Books, Pandemic, Time Travel, Two StarsLeave a comment

Sea of Tranquility is a misleading title for this book. This is a book about a pandemic (which came out just in April of 2022) which is meaningful as we all have learned a thing or two about pandemics in the last few years. It’s a book about time travel with an unusual twist, and of course it was the time travel part that got my attention first. It has very little to do with what we associate with the Sea of Tranquility, the location of the Apollo 11 moon landing, other than there are several moon bases near that location by the year 2200, two of which play a major role in the plot.

It’s also about the idea or concept that our entire world is just a simulation, an elaborate video game that someone or something else is playing.

The story starts in 1912 with the hapless son of a British aristocrat who has been sent to exile in British Columbia, and plays in part in the late 20th century, and then again in early 2200 and 2400.

There really is not one single protagonist to follow. It’s a group of people and it takes some time for the tale’s threads to get woven together into a consistent tapestry, but in the end it all makes sense.

It made me marvel about what it would be like to live on the moon and it provides some good and descriptive passages. It’s a quick read, and I enjoyed the book.

 

Book Review – Kaiju Preservation Society – by John Scalzi

On By Norbert HauptIn Books (not finished reading)Leave a comment

A co-worker suggested this book, so I picked it up. I had read several other books by John Scalzi which I had enjoyed. Even though the description of this one hadn’t drawn me in before, I went for it now.

It’s basically an alternate universe story, where, on another earth, evolution took a very different course, mammals never happened, and huge massive Godzilla like creatures ruled the earth. The creatures are the Kaiju. A group of scientists in an international foundation study them.

I found myself very disinterested in the story, not engaged by the characters, and the science just made no sense. By the time I was 20% into the book I noticed that I was only reading it so I would eventually get done with it and move on. This went on until 39%, when I could not stand it any more and I closed it – as another “book not finished reading.”

As is my policy, I do not rate books I don’t finish. I just explain what’s in it, and why I could not read it. Kaiju Preservation Society was just utterly uninteresting. When I don’t care about what happens next, I just can’t go on.

Book Review: Dylan and Me – by Louie Kemp

On By Norbert HauptIn Books, Four StarsLeave a comment

Louie Kemp was 11 years old when he was at summer camp in northern Wisconsin. There was another 12 year old boy with a guitar by the name of Bobby Zimmerman from Hibbing, Minnesota. Along with a third boy, Larry Kegan, the three became best friends, for life.

Louie Kemp had unparalleled access to Bob Dylan, starting in their youth when Bobby already knew that one day he’d be a rock ‘n roll star. They were best friends throughout their lives. Louie tells anecdotes from their childhood on through Bob Dylan’s early years that bring the musician’s elusive and almost reclusive life to light. Most of the substance of the book focuses on the years of the Rolling Thunder Review, which Louie produced for Dylan at his request. He tells some backstories of the makings of Blood on the Tracks and Desire. Much of the narrative focuses on the 1970ies, when Dylan did some of his best work, went through his Christian transformation and then back to his Jewish roots.

I have read other Dylan biographies over the years, but this one was the most enjoyable. It’s not a biography, it’s a best friend telling the story of his youth and younger years, providing insight into the formation of a music legend, and doing it simply by telling little stories and vignettes that shed some light on the person we all know as Bob Dylan, but just Bobby to Louie Kemp.

Movie Review: Where the Crawdads Sing (2022)

On By Norbert HauptIn Movies, Three Stars1 Comment

I read the book when it first came out in 2019 and I gave it four stars in my review.

Having read the book gave me a much better understanding of the movie, and I believe I benefitted from that. I don’t know how much a viewer would understand only from the content of the movie alone.

Kya is a little girl when the story starts in 1953. The family lives in a ramshackle house in the coastal swamps of North Carolina. The father is a drunk and he regularly beats his children and his wife for minor reasons. One morning, Kya’s mother walks out and never comes back. In the coming months, all her older siblings disappear, until only she is left living with her father. Then one day, he too does not return. Kya is left fending for herself. She avoids interaction with people, dodges Social Services and maintains herself by selling fresh mussels early in the morning to a friendly local storekeeper. She grows up illiterate, but has an intense love of nature and great artistic ability. She catalogues the ecosystem of the swamp world around her.

Two local boys attract her attention. Tate is a true friend, teaches her to read and write and eventually love. When Tate goes off to college, Chase, another boy from town, courts her. His motives are not as pure as Tate’s and soon Kya’s trust is broken.

Where the Crawdads sing is a wonderful movie that stays quite true to the book, but of course leaves out a lot of detail. As I said above, I think viewers who read the book first will get more out of the experience. The characters and the feeling of the location the movie portrays matched very closely those in my head and rounded out my view of the story.