Kelson Reviews Stuff - Page 11

To my shock and surprise, this D&D movie was actually good! (I still remember the…let’s just say “disappointing” 2000 film.) The characters are engaging. There’s a reason for them to be working together beyond “the plot requires it.” The story is more than just collecting plot tokens (and even tries to say something about the nature of found families). It focuses more on the “role” aspect and using the game world than on adapting game mechanics to the screen, and doesn’t assume you already know the setting inside-out and backwards. Heck, I wouldn’t have minded paying to see it in a movie theater, if I was still going to movie theaters these days.

Entradero Park is a flood control basin hidden away in a residential part of Torrance, but for the 99% of the time that it doesn’t need to keep storm drains working, facilities include:

1. Restored wetlands habitat in the middle.
2. Shaded picnic area in one corner.
3. City park with field, playground, basketball courts and a dog run along one edge.
4. Baseball fields wrapping around the center (used by the local Little League, among others).
5. Walking path through the scrub habitat around the edge of the basin.
6. Parking.

The loop trail itself is a relaxing walk. Depending on time of year, you may be able to spot wildflowers, birds, rabbits, etc. There’s not much in the way of shade - it’s almost all scrub - but it has a couple of scenic viewpoints, and part of it runs close to the wetlands. The pond usually has water in it, and often has ducks, geese, and other waterfowl.

The combinations can sometimes be amusing: I once watched a flock of geese trying to share the baseball outfield with a riding lawnmower. The lawnmower would approach them, they’d all take wing, and then they’d settle somewhere nearby where the grass hadn’t been cut yet…and then repeat the cycle when the lawnmower turned around for the next pass!

It’s imitation wilderness, but a good place to bring your kids or just take a shady walk in something that feels like nature. Lightly wooded, trees, some hills, trails, a stream and a duck pond, plus areas for picnics and overnight camping. You can almost forget you’re in the middle of suburbia, but it’s too small to get lost. (Also too small to recommend as a destination if you’re not already in the area.)

Over the last few years, a local conservation group (South Bay Parkland Conservancy) has been slowly re-introducing native plants to rewild the landscape. This works out well ecologically, makes it a touch more authentic, and adds another educational layer for field trips.

Restrooms and water are available at the front and at each campsite, plus a few more drinking fountains scattered around the park.

You can see more of my photos in this Flickr album.

Think of it as an iterated monkey’s paw wish.

The Lathe of Heaven takes us through multiple possible versions of Portland as George Orr, a man whose dreams can change reality, is directed by his therapist to solve the world’s problems.

It doesn’t go very well.

• George has no control over how his dreams accomplish the specific change.
• Everything is connected. Pull one strand and another comes along with it.
• It’s all tied to Dr. Haber’s idea of which problems to tackle, what solutions are acceptable…and which people are expendable.

But while the stakes are global, the story stays laser-focused on three people: George Orr himself, increasingly desperate to take control of his life and his dreams. Dr. Haber, who keeps pushing for more control over the world. And Heather Lelache, a biracial lawyer who becomes aware of some of the changes to reality, but faces more drastic changes than either of the two men at the center of the maelstrom.

Perspective

It’s interesting to read this now, roughly 20 years after it was set and 50 years after it was written. What global problems were people worried about at the time? The eternal ones like war and racism, of course. But they were already starting to worry about the greenhouse effect. Future Portland is hotter than it used to be, and there are massive farms east of the Cascades, and there are droughts in new places… This isn’t a lucky guess, this was just following the data. And I couldn’t help but think about people I know in the area and their experiences with heat waves and wildfire smoke.

On the other end of things, the real world hit the 7-billion mark without the Malthusian catastrophe predicted by The Population Bomb.

And then there’s the chilling moment when George reveals the real first time he dreamed effectively.

Spoilers

Lelache is literally erased when Dr. Haber decides to eliminate racism, and George dreams a world where everyone’s gray. And when Orr tries to re-write her into reality, he’s only able to define her in terms of her relationship to him, leaving her a shadow of her former self. It’s not until he finally gets Haber to stop meddling and the universe resettles into a form with actual diversity that she’s able to be herself again. Two white men “solving” a problem without consulting the people it affects the most.

Dr. Haber spends a lot of time insisting that the story is contrasting active and passive philosophies, Western vs. Eastern, fix the problems vs. let them be. But the story itself pushes back against this as a misunderstanding of Eastern philosophy and a much narrower vision of what it means to be active. While the solutions George dreams sometimes come with terrible costs, his dreams are at least working within possibilities. Some of the simple solutions, like retroactively creating a lottery for access to cabins in national forests, or changing the alien invasion to an alien first-contact gone wrong, show this more clearly. When Dr. Haber tries to dream a new world himself, it’s a disaster, because he’s not looking at the connections between things. He still thinks he can swap out exactly what traits he wants, and the side effects are just the results of from George’s “inferior,” “passive” personality.

While it’s true that George tends to go with the flow, that’s in part because things have changed so much around him. And because he wants to understand the possible consequences before he acts. He seeks out a lawyer before he tries just avoiding Dr. Haber. He keeps seeing Haber afterward because he knows if he refused, he’ll just be forced to anyway. He seeks out a way to bring Heather back, even if he isn’t able to do so fully. And in the end, when reality starts splintering, he’s suddenly decisive, because there’s no choice he can make that would be worse than letting the universe fall apart around him.

That’s what Dr. Haber doesn’t understand about George, and the Aldebaranians, and philosophy: It’s not just passively accepting what is. It’s about accepting what is, and acting within that.

Notes

I’m vaguely amused that all the timelines have Mt. St. Helens intact, but Mt. Hood has erupted in several. It’s not like there was any indication in 1971 that a specific volcano would go off in the area, and Hood being closer to the Portland setting is a more dramatic choice.

In other news, now I want to watch Dark City again. Not remotely the same story, but there are a few moments that made me think of it, and I’m sure the writer and director had to have been familiar with this story.

A fun collection of short cartoons about nature (not just birds!) collected from the cartoonist’s website, Bird and Moon. Most of them are funny, riffing on oddities of various animals and plants, or on misconceptions people often have, but there are a few serious ones in there about climate change. Some of the longer ones are easier to read online because they’ve been shrunk down to fit on the small page size.

Some of my favorites from this collection include:

• Red-Tail Blues - I’ve seen crows trying to hassle a less-than-impressed hawk on several occasions!
• Attenborough - Ironically, I read this one in David Attenborough’s voice.
• When I Grow Up - It’s good to have goals.
• Versus - Monarch vs Milkweed!
• Northern Pygmy Owl