Back in All Its Pink Glory

Last night, my husband and I won the Colorado Lottery. No, not the one with big money involved. (Wouldn't that be nice?) Rather, the random chance to have dinner at the new, remodeled Casa Bonita.

Assuming you've heard of Casa Bonita, basically everything you've ever heard about it is true. When the restaurant was featured on South Park in 2003, most of my Virginia co-workers assumed it was just a wild fiction by the show. No, those of us who'd lived in Colorado had to persuade everyone: it's a real place, and South Park really didn't exaggerate anything about it. Yes, it's a Mexican restaurant with a magic show, a funhouse "cave," and a waterfall with divers somehow all crammed inside its seemingly Tardis-like structure.

Everything you may have heard about it since then is true as well. With each passing year, the place fell more into decline, and the food (never that good to start with) became increasingly inedible. But not even a visit to what Casa Bonita had become could erode the nostalgia felt by anyone who'd visited the place in its prime as a kid. When South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone announced they were buying the place and remodeling it, that nostalgia fueled a fever to attend that has continued a full year now after the reopening. You can't just show up to Casa Bonita; you have to put your name on an email list, then wait to be randomly selected for your chance to go.

After watching a few friends have their turn come up over the past months (and being surprised at the hints of jealousy I felt about that), our turn finally arrived. As it turns out, everything you've probably heard about the new Casa Bonita is also true. Everything is better.

The food is improved. I guarantee you that your favorite Mexican restaurant, whatever it is, serves better. But also, I can't remember ever feeling "full" when leaving Casa Bonita, as I actually did last night. At the very least, the food is at a level where it's no longer a thing worth talking about. Which, given the rest of the experience that is Casa Bonita, is exactly what it should be. Yes, it's pricey. But that price tag isn't about the food itself; it's paying for everything else.

And because Casa Bonita is now so backlogged with reservations that it can count on being completely full every hour it's open, that means it can be in full swing all the time. Yes, Casa Bonita has always had a theater inside... but I think I was in junior high the last time I remember there actually being a magic show on that stage when I visited. Now, the "insanely mysterious Sorcero" is regularly performing quick, comedic magic shows multiple times a night. Yes, there was always a waterfall at Casa Bonita... but your odds of actually seeing a "cliff diver" there after 2010 were slim to none. Now, a quick two-minute dive show occurs every 20 minutes. Yes, there had always been a puppet show stage near Black Bart's cave... and I don't recall ever seeing a performance there, even back in the 1980s. Now, every half hour, you get amusing Dad jokes delivered by puppet tacos and burritos, every half hour. (Though I do feel a bit badly for the person who has to deliver those jokes again and again, all night long.)

So yeah, Casa Bonita really is back to fulfilling the promise of being what Eric Cartman called "Mexican Disneyland" in that one episode. At least, it's enough so to deliver one fun evening. Maybe you have to come like I did, loaded with nostalgia for what the place used to be. But however it came together, I had a fun time.

Fun on the Bayou

My reviews of Star Trek: Discovery have given me occasions to praise the dry humor of Tig Notaro. Now I get to do so again, for a television series she made years before Star Trek came calling -- One Mississippi.

Notaro made this series based on her own life, playing the character "Tig Bavaro," a radio host who returns home to Mississippi to deal with the death of her mother -- while still recovering from a recent bout with cancer. In Mississippi, she butts heads with her persnickety stepfather, continues her strange music-meets-confessional radio show, and develops feelings for a producer at the local radio station.

Tig Notaro has always put her life into her stand-up act -- and anyone who has seen her recorded specials will be familiar with the details. Still, it feels fresh to see that material packaged here into a half-hour sitcom-like format. I say "like" because it's not entirely clear whether comedy is the main objective of the show. It certainly has funny moments, many of them being Notaro tossing off a dry one-liner. But it isn't packing jokes in like many modern comedies.

Story is supreme here -- which you might expect more if you know the work of the writer who Notaro developed the show with: Diablo Cody. And so the show has a lot to say about grieving, coming out, child abuse, and more. No, it doesn't sound like a comedy. Yet the show does manage to give serious time to all these ideas without ever being dragged down long into seriousness by them. This is what you get in Notaro starring in a show about her own life -- there's plenty of light mingled with the dark.

The supporting cast is strong, particularly John Rothman as stepfather Bill, who manages to generate empathy despite playing a character determined to bottle up emotion. Noah Harpster plays Tig's brother Remy, and the two have an authentic-feeling sibling rapport/rivalry. Notaro's real-life wife Stephanie Allynne plays her prospective love interest in the series, perhaps spoiling the ultimate direction of that story, but also bringing some real-world chemistry to the relationship that is truly enjoyable.

The show ran just two seasons of six episodes each. While it does feel in the end as though it could have kept going perhaps one more, it also reaches a satisfying enough conclusion. Both seasons feel distinct, with the first focused much more on Tig herself, and the second opening up more interesting story lines for her brother and stepfather.

One Mississippi was never really on the top of my television viewing agenda -- I think I'd grade the series overall a B. (Which is plenty good; but we're in a time where it feels like even better shows abound.) Yet now that I've finished it, I feel its absence since there's really nothing else quite like it. Half-hour shows that are somewhat serious are rare enough. Comedies with the bravery to take on such heavy topics are more rare still. If you have an Amazon Prime subscription, perhaps One Mississippi is something you'd like to check out.

Discovery: Whistlespeak

The final season of Star Trek: Discovery continues with "Whistlespeak."

The latest clue to the Progenitor technology is tough to crack, but eventually leads to a pre-warp planet where the extreme drought conditions have been mitigated by a series of advanced rain-making towers hidden in the environment. The towers have become central in the native spirituality... but now are failing after years of neglect. Burnham and Tilly go undercover on the planet in search of the clue. Meanwhile, Culber's uncertain journey of self-revelation continues, and Adira has to "sink or swim" when assigned to bridge duty.

While I liked the tone of this episode overall, and several moments in it, there was a lot about "Whistlespeak" that didn't quite line up right to me. The title itself is emblematic of this: after setting up the intriguingly alien concept of whistling supplementing language... the episode doesn't pay it off at all. And that's despite having a clear moment to do so in the climax, when one of the locals hums a tune that's passed to their father through Tilly and Burnham. Hums? Not whistles?!

There was also something off about the episode's "lesson." The Prime Directive was put front and center this week, and Burnham even summarizes the moral for the audience: we're going to have to be wise with this advanced technology once we get our hands on it. But then what to make of the fact that Burnham violated the Prime Directive to resolve the story here? And what to make of the alien scientist who set up this lesson... by inadvertently introducing the concept of sacrificing to the gods into a primitive society? "I'm going to teach you that it's irresponsible to meddle using advanced technology by meddling on this planet using advanced technology." Real "do as I say, not as I do" energy here.

And I'm also not sure what to make of the Stamets/Culber story line right now -- though, obviously, there are still more episodes to come. Culber sure seems to be steering toward a place where he's not sure he and Stamets can be together anymore... and that seems absolutely wild to me. Stamets just said, point blank, in this episode, that "I don't understand what you're going through, but I love you and I want you to be happy." What more can he say? It's possible that Discovery is trying to tell a story here that's quite difficult to pull off in a Star Trek setting: is this the story of one spouse deciding they want to "start going to church" and the other spouse remaining agnostic/atheist? Religion is tricky on Star Trek. (Even Deep Space Nine, which handled it best, didn't always do it well.) I'm also having a bit of a hard time believing that Culber is having such a profound "crisis" of self after a Trill joining ceremony after he's already returned from the dead. I suppose we must assume that the first experience left him particularly susceptible to be shaken by the second.

Amid all those elements that I'm mixed to negative on, you might wonder -- did I actually like this episode? Well, I haven't talked about how much I enjoyed seeing a Burnham/Tilly team-up. It feels like it's been a long time since those characters have been the focal point of an episode together, and I really enjoy their dynamic. The power balance has shifted so much between them since they were roommates back in season one, but the way they interact together has survived that change intact. I find it light and fun. Burnham seems to be having at least one adventure with every main character this season, and I'm glad we finally reached the Tilly adventure.

I also thought the series once again did a good job showing us an alien planet and culture. That's not always easy when the decision is made for the aliens of the week to just be "humans with face paint." But the communal ethos of this culture was well realized, as was the planetary environment. (Subtle and carefully applied color timing can go a long way.)

Roll it all up, and I give "Whistlespeak" a B-. Though not the strongest episode of this season so far, neither was it the weakest.

Voyager Flashback: Repentance

Among the more progressive stances "baked in" to Star Trek are its attitudes towards incarceration. It's pretty much always been part of the franchise fabric that everyone deserves a second chance, rehabilitation is the goal, and capital punishment is anathema. In the episode "Repentance," Star Trek: Voyager takes some of that background and brings it to the foreground.

Voyager finds itself transporting alien prisoners due to be executed. When one of them requires an emergency surgery, with the unexpected consequence of repairing his "broken conscience," the prisoner truly reforms and repents for the first time. But that may mean nothing in the alien justice system -- a fact that causes Seven of Nine in particular to rethink her views.

This episode really tries to pack in a lot. (In part, it does this by beginning with the action underway: just as the prisoners are first coming aboard Voyager.) It grafts real-life details about the U.S. prison system onto this alien society, such as the fact that one demographic in its population accounts for a dramatically larger portion of the prison population. It questions how humanely prisoners should be treated (and whose humanity it actually comments on when they aren't). It pays lip service to the Prime Directive. (Even though I think it shouldn't; again, Star Trek can't remember from one episode to the next whether that's supposed to apply to warp-capable species.) It presents an intriguingly alien notion of justice: that victims, as the people who know how to "value" what's been taken from them, should be the ones passing judgments.

Because of all this background, there isn't enough time to really check-in on how many of the main characters really feel about the situation. (I think Harry Kim isn't even on-screen in this episode? But he does have one off-screen line I noted.) Tuvok has to run security in accordance with alien values without compromising his own. Tom Paris is made to recall his own time in incarceration (as the pilot episode began). The Doctor, of course, gets to be the most forceful voice against capital punishment. But all these moments are almost "in passing," even though any would be worthy of a more developed subplot.

Two characters in particular do get extra screen time, and it mostly works. Neelix is a good choice for this story, as no doubt his old life as a scavenger saw him committing crimes of various severity. He is the perfect person to hear the prisoner Joleg's story about being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and feels more empathetic than naive to believe it.

Meanwhile, Seven is the right person to center in a story about someone who has done the most horrible things in their past now expressing true remorse. She's forced to confront her time in the Borg collective in a far more personal and emotional way than most past episodes have demanded. She reckons with whether she's been sufficiently punished for what she has done. And she gets the chance to give out a second chance as she was given one by Janeway.

And the story is helped by two excellent guest stars, each on opposing character arcs. F.J. Rio plays an apparently sympathic Joleg who in the end is revealed to be a psychopath, while Jeff Kober is excellent as the "irredeemable" Iko who actually does seem redeemable in the end. Tim de Zarn is strong too as the alien warden Yediq, who himself has a journey of forgiveness. In fact, the story arcs of these three guest characters might be a little too compelling, threatening to overwhelm the focus on Voyager crew.

Other observation:

• One prisoner is shocked when offered more than one meal a day. But it's Neelix's cooking, so which is really the greater punishment?

I don't exactly want a two-part episode here -- I don't feel like there's that much story (or a logical cliffhanger point). Though I do think this episode would have benefited a lot had it been made in the age of streaming, able to have as long a runtime as it needed. Another 10 to 15 minutes I think would have really helped dig into the Voyager characters' role in this story more fully. I give "Repentance" a B.

A Long Look Back

The Long Goodbye is a movie I perhaps shouldn't have carved out time to watch. The 1973 film is directed by Robert Altman (whose work I've never especially liked), and it's based on a Raymond Chandler novel (though "film noir" is not a genre I'm generally enthusiastic about). Still, the movie had managed to pop up several times over the past year in various contexts -- enough to convince me that this was a foundational movie I'd probably do well to have seen. And while indeed, I did not love it, there were enough elements I responded to that I was glad after all that I'd made the time.

Chandler's famed detective Philip Marlowe becomes embroiled in a mystery when he gives a friend a ride to Mexico, and the wife of that friend is found dead the next day. Marlowe is held for questioning... but ultimately released when the friend turns up dead in Mexico. From there, the plot only thickens, as a seemingly unrelated case of a missing husband may have unexpected connections, and a gangster puts Marlowe on the hook for money his late friend owed.

One major point of interest for me in watching the film was learning, as the credits rolled, who wrote the screenplay. Leigh Brackett is known for the scripts of several classic movies, though geeks like me will know that one of her last projects before her death was an early draft of The Empire Strikes Back. If you can't help but notice how sharp the characters are in Empire, how sparkling the dialogue is compared to literally every other Star Wars movie to date? The conventional wisdom is you're seeing the work of Leigh Brackett shining through.

It's fascinating to see how a she, writing in 1973, negotiates all the cliches of the traditionally male-driven film noir format. The Long Goodbye hardly codes as "feminist," though I daresay I detect a greater interest in this movie's characters as characters rather than archetypes, as film noir usually reads to me. And certainly, the dialogue here is notably snappy; people have a way of saying things that feels perfectly heightened without being unnaturally "over-written."

Outside of these touches that I like to think are Brackett, I can't say I'm otherwise thrilled by the script. The story simultaneously feels stale and rather convoluted -- though that presumably all comes from Raymond Chandler's original book (which was already 20 years old at the time this movie was made; it has only aged more since). It also unfolds at the glacial pace typical of 1970s movies. The Long Goodbye is less than two hours and yet still manages to feel about 20 minutes too long. This has a lot to do with just how much time is spent setting up the world; we're almost 14 minutes in before it feels like the story really starts to heat up (and most of that opening 14 minutes involves the main character dealing with his cat).

Still, I was drawn into even the slower parts of the movie to some extent, thanks to the actor playing the main character. I've seen Elliott Gould in all kinds of roles over the years... though he has felt to me like an actor who was somehow always "old." Now, of course, I'm aging myself and that's surely affecting my perceptions. Yet still, I'd never seen a movie with a younger Elliott Gould like this. And he gives a good performance too. This version of Philip Marlowe talks to himself all the time, making quips only for "himself" and the audience, and Gould somehow manages to make all that feel plausible. (And that first 14 minutes that's mostly Gould and a cat? Well, it may have nothing to do with the plot, yet it still somehow is oddly compelling. And however it may have been found in the editing room, this cat gives an extraordinary performance.)

Gould is only the most notable (to me) of several interesting performances in the film. There's Henry Gibson, fresh off Laugh-In and playing massively against type. Nina van Pallandt gives good "femme fatale." And, uncredited, blink and you'll miss both David Carradine and, in a non-speaking role, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Another noteworthy "performance" in the film comes from the composer, a name you'll surely recognize: John Williams. This comes rather early in Williams' career, and the score sounds nothing like what you'd think of as a John Williams score. He's still very much "Johnny Williams," hired here to do what many movies of the era did: have one song, remixed a half-dozen ways to sprinkle throughout the film. It's an interesting bit of film archaeology.

Overall, I didn't love The Long Goodbye. Indeed, these days, I tend not to even bother blogging about things that I have a generally mixed-to-negative opinion about. (As for why? Well, you could argue there's no point in me reaching out to swat down a 50-year-old movie that's on no one's radar.) And yet, there was just enough here that I don't want to fully swat this movie down. I give The Long Goodbye a C-. If you're a fan of noir, or Leigh Brackett (whether you knew her by name or not), or hell -- cat actors -- there might be something here worthy of your time.

Discovery: Mirrors

The final season of Star Trek: Discovery has now reached the halfway point with the latest episode, "Mirrors."

Discovery pursues Moll and L'ak, sending a shuttle inside a pocket subspace dimension. There, Burnham and Booker find a centuries-old, abandoned I.S.S. Enterprise from the mirror universe, learning something of its history. We also learn something of Moll and L'ak's history, through flashbacks that unfold as they clash with Burnham and Booker. Meanwhile, Rayner takes command of Discovery and must rally the crew to save the away team.

Unfortunately, I didn't feel that "Mirrors" was a very satisfying episode. It teased interesting story threads it chose not to actually pursue, while the story lines it did follow weren't especially compelling.

This is the last season, of course. (Though I hear the writers didn't know that when they were crafting it?) There is a certain logic toward circling back to the mirror universe themes of the first season to bring the story full circle. But this encounter with the I.S.S. Enterprise didn't feel like it amounted to anything. The entire appeal of the mirror universe is seeing the alternate versions of the characters -- watching the actors play against type in a story where anything could happen to them. An empty ship gives us none of that, only serving as a weak bridge between the original "Mirror, Mirror" and the Mirror universe as we saw it in Deep Space Nine.

Indeed, the scenario posed more questions than it answered. If this pocket dimension only exists because of the Burn (they did say that, right?), then how did the scientists get inside to plant a clue there centuries before the Burn happened? If hundreds of refugees from the Mirror universe -- including Saru -- crossed over and settled in the Prime universe, what happened to them? How many people were there two of wandering around? And how can you take us aboard the Mirror Enterprise and not give us a Mirror Spock, Kirk, Pike, or Uhura played by the actors of Strange New Worlds?!

Instead, the episode served to give us a back story I feel like we didn't really need or "ask for," that of Moll and L'ak. It is somewhat interesting to learn that L'ak is a Breen -- to see those aliens rendered on modern Star Trek and see underneath a Breen helmet. (Even if the whole "two faces" aspect was itself somewhat confusing.) But Moll and L'ak have been a mostly off-screen adversary so far -- not even actually appearing in the previous episode, and one of them only appearing in the final seconds of the episode before that. I haven't really become invested in them as bad guys who matter, and so I'm not yet ready to be invested in empathizing with "their side" of the story.

One character who should feel empathy -- it's kind of his thing -- is Booker. But the connection that both he and the writers are trying to force with Moll really isn't working for me. Discovery is usually so "of the moment" when it comes to matters of emotion and representation, that it kind of stuns me that they seem to be unaware of the #MeToo vibes of the dialogue they gave Moll and Booker in this episode. Booker is insisting that his mentor, whose name he took, was a great guy who never did anything bad to him. Moll is saying her experience is that the guy was a thorough villain who treated her horribly -- an experience that Booker just steamrolls over, telling her how she really just has to see the good in the guy. I feel like either this story must be leading toward Booker learning his mentor was not the man he thought, or the writers have shockingly missed the "not very sub" subtext of the story they set up here.

Amid an episode of missed opportunities and uncompelling flashbacks, you just have to subsist on the few moments that did work. Burnham and Booker do make a good team, and the bits of dialogue about them remembering/realizing that played well. The action sequences in Sickbay were pretty fun. And there was nicely subtle writing for Rayner in command -- he could have gone full ham and insisted on doing everything his way, but he really has internalized the lesson of the "time bug" experience to some extent, and tries to meet the crew halfway.

But overall, I feel like "Mirrors" was the most disappointing episode of the season so far. I give it a C+. That said, we've still got two more pieces of puzzle to find, and each of them can come with their own unique adventure that puts things right back on track.

Bloody Thoughts

It has now been 13 years since George R.R. Martin published the fifth novel in his A Song of Ice and Fire series. It seems ever less likely we'll ever get the next book, The Winds of Winter, (much less the one after that, meant to conclude the series). And after the final season of the TV adaptation Game of Thrones, many former fans have simply decided they don't care.

But Martin has been busy this last decade, writings and editing all sorts of things that aren't The Winds of Winter. One of these, his 2018 book Fire & Blood, seemed almost like a challenge to anyone who might count themselves a George R.R. Martin "fan." It was a book set in Westeros -- just not the one everyone was waiting for. It recounted the history of past Targaryen kings, assembled in part from previously existing novellas, and (in its last half) forming the basis for the spin-off TV series House of the Dragon. But also... it was a project that Martin himself jokingly dubbed his "GRRMarillion," in reference to The Silmarillion -- J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth book that's so dry that it wasn't even published in his lifetime, and hasn't been read cover-to-cover by most of his fans. Was Martin implying his book was equally dense?

Well, the coming of House of the Dragon season two later this year inspired me to actually give it a shot; I recently finished Fire & Blood. And mostly, I was entertained. Thankfully, while the book is very much a history, it's not dry at all. It essentially reads like engaging non-fiction, like an author gathering up 150 years of a country's history and trying to lay it all out for you in the most compelling way possible.

There's an extra twist in Martin's approach here, as he writes not as himself, but as a "maester" within the world of Westeros who is himself setting down this history. Part of the conceit here is that the author openly sifts through conflicting accounts written at the time they happened, editorializing on which is more likely true. This allows Martin to lean into one of his greatest strengths as a writer: writing from the entrenched perspective of a specific character. The Ice and Fire series itself famously trades character viewpoints from chapter to chapter; here, Martin takes on one character's viewpoint for an entire book, as the character himself in turn comments on other characters. It may sound like an unnecessary contrivance, but I believe it's a key part of what keeps Fire & Blood from being too dull for all but the most devoted fans.

And it's not like the gimmick gets in the way. The maester character doesn't assert his presence on every page, or anything so overt. Mostly, the narrative just flows naturally. It is more compressed than Martin's more traditional novels, but there are many scenes that feel just as engaging, just as easily conjured in the mind's eye, as anything from the Ice and Fire series proper.

That said, the book purports to be examining the entire Targaryen dynasty from the first King Aegon I all the way to the end of the lineage. There are two problems with that. One is simply that some material is simply not compelling enough that it would have been included absent the narrative conceit. There's a reason why most people have heard of Henry V or VIII, or Victoria, or other monarchs whose tales have been told over and over. But unless you're a student of English monarchs, I'm guessing you've never heard of Cnut? Or Eadwig? My point is, not all of the content in Fire & Blood is as exciting as the chunk seized upon to create House of the Dragon.

And the second issue is that at the conclusion of this 700-page doorstop of a novel, Martin has still not told the complete Targaryen history. In terms of number of years, he's actually a bit less than halfway; so if indeed he ever means to complete this story, he has at least one more volume to write, and maybe two. So yes, you've got that right: George R.R. Martin set aside his epic unfinished series to take up another project and not finish it. If you choose not to reward this behavior by buying the book, I can't say I blame you.

But if George R.R. Martin is not "dead to you," then I have to say that Fire & Blood is at times a quite fun read. It cannot compare favorably to the imagined book we all wished we'd gotten, the sequel to A Dance With Dragons that begins working toward a conclusion we all find more satisfying than the one given to us by the television adaptation. But this book is here, and can actually be read, and I'd give it a B overall.