528. An 'Un-Twelve Days of Christmas' Hymn

I indulged in a bit of "graded numerical sequence" versification in this Advent/Christmas hymn, which is also (not-so lowkey) a spoof of "The Twelve Days of Christmas." It's a theme I've touched on before (maybe with a little less grace). I have no particular tune in mind at this time, as usual.

Word from all ages, Gift of truth,
Begotten ere creation's root,
You came to draw the serpent's tooth
That charged with death the garden's fruit.
See what my true Love gives to me:
The God-Man offered on a tree!

Two Testaments, both Old and New,
Direct my eyes of faith to You,
Igniting that thrice-holy fire—
Faith, hope, and love—which they require.
Four gospel witnesses proclaim,
With Moses' five, Your holy name.

Now let me join my hymn of praise
With everything that in six days
You named—from life, its kinds unmixed,
To cosmic spheres, their courses fixed—
That I, with graces seven blest,
May sing to You, my Sabbath Rest.

Nursed on eight blessings from Your lips,
I taste the life that from You drips.
T'ward one who hungers for the nine
Fruits of the Spirit, oh! incline,
That nourished on Your ten commands
I find free pardon at Your hands!

I with the twelve-less-one subscribe,
And with the ancient twelvefold tribe,
And all the saints before and since,
Whose countless tongues one truth evince:
Christ is the Gift, the Root, the Key,
The Life for all—yea, even me!

ART: A poster by Xavier Romero-Frias, via Wikimedia Commons under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

527. Leap, John!

This hymn doesn't name Mary, Elizabeth or even John, but they're all there. So is Herod, for that matter. But it does name Christ. Funnily enough, I was thinking about writing an "Un-12 Days of Christmas" hymn but instead, this is what came out. So, I guess it's an Advent hymn. Or maybe a Martyrdom of John the Baptist hymn. Again, I haven't given any thought to a tune pairing for it. Suggestions are welcome.

Leap, prophet yet unborn,
Upon the maiden's greeting
Whose babe, the age completing,
Its dragon-lord defeating,
Will die to pull death's thorn!

Discern from womb to womb:
In her is tabernacled
He who sin's bond has crackled,
By whom man comes unshackled
From death and Hades' gloom.

Prepare to run ahead:
Soft fare and garb rejecting,
Men to repent directing,
A King and Lamb expecting
To smite the serpent's head.

Prepare to run and pour
On heads abased, lamenting,
God's grace, from wrath relenting,
On even Christ consenting
To place this seal once more.

Prepare to run and point
To Him, your role disowning:
Whose head for His enthroning,
For all the world atoning,
'Tis strangely yours t'anoint.

Prepare to run and die,
To wane as He is waxing;
A tyrant's temper taxing,
Your trial ne'er relaxing
Till you awake on high.

Prepare to leap again
With all the resurrected,
To greet the Lamb perfected,
And with all saints elected
Join in the angels' strain!

ART: The Meeting of Mary and Elisabeth by Carl Heinrich Bloch, 1866, Frederiksborg Castle. Public domain.

526. No Fear of Heaven

This hymn takes its departure from a pastor's anecdote about a girl in his catechism class who said she didn't want to go to heaven because she couldn't imagine anything more boring then spending eternity sitting on a cloud and strumming a harp. If I felt an impulse to harangue this hypothetical brat about the foolishness of being guided by the imagery of Tom & Jerry cartoons, I wisely trampled it underfoot in order to arrive at this hymn. With no particular tune in mind, but knowing many that could fit the text, I give you:

How glad a consummation
That Day of days shall bring,
When every tongue and nation
The praise of Christ shall sing!
Then borne on many waters,
True joy and love will thrive
And Zion's sons and daughters
Through floods come forth alive.

The floods indeed have drowned us,
Have buried us with Him
Who in transgression found us,
Who bore our sentence grim.
His blood has washed our garment
And made the scarlet white,
Has lifted the debarment
That came 'twixt us and Light.

Let no one dread dull hours
On harp-strung wing and cloud,
When all creation's powers
With one voice shout aloud!
What joyful tasks await us—
What distances we'll go—
Ought rather to elate us,
Though little yet we know.

Now may we live with vigor
And die with sweetest peace,
Since from th' accuser's snigger
Our cause has sure release.
Now may we mourn rejoicing,
Now rest our searching eyes:
For soon, Christ's praises voicing,
We shall to life arise.

ART: Lincoln (U.K.) Cathedral angel with harp, photograph by Jules & Jenny, shared under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Two Non-Reviews

Love at First Fright
by Nadia El-Fassi
Recommended Ages: 16+

This is not a review of this book. I'm not qualified to write one, because I didn't finish it. But since I put it down, I've slowly gathered resolve not to pick it up again. So in lieu of a review, informed by a complete read-through of the book, I'm just going to explain from my own personal perspective why I'm not going to review it. Maybe, if this concept seems to work, I'll try it out on a number of other books whose spines have been staring me out of countenance, with a bookmark sticking out of them, in some cases for years.

I picked up this attractive-looking novel at my small town's independent bookstore. I was intrigued by the concept of a "cozy paranormal romance," featuring a novelist who can see dead people (and pets), riding herd on the film adaptation of her horror novel, who at first objects to the dashing leading man who doesn't fit her mental picture of the character she created but with whom, against her will, she soon becomes infatuated. It had the hallmarks of a Hallmark Channel movie, with an added touch of ghostliness. I should have read a little more into the word "cozy" in the genre description, however. I'm a noob when it comes to "cozy" fiction and it's only slowly dawning on me that an essential part of the coziness apparatus is a tendency to prioritize representing fringe communities and identities over just telling a great story.

In short, apart from a certain steamy eroticism that overdelivered on my romantic expectations, this book (so far as I read into it) didn't deliver much at all on the spooky front. Meanwhile, it was so on-the-nose about its characters' lifestyle choices that I felt like I was being hectored at by the catechist of a sect whose morality is a retrograde-inversion of the moral code packaged with my faith. If you like, you can read this as the type of criticism that amounts to admitting the critic's blindness. But I'm not known for hurling books away from me on account of a non-heterosexual character or two. I do, however, think "cozy" should mean something better than badly structured, underpowered, and loaded with propaganda for cutting-edge gender ideology. Also, with a cast of characters as large as this book, my willing suspension of disbelief can only weather a certain percentage of individuals each representing his, her, or (choke) their unique shade of the kink rainbow.

It would have served me well if I had read the author's trigger warning in the foreparts of this book. Had I noticed there was a trigger warning at all, I might have hesitated to buy. But she did disclose that overcoming stigma, sextortion and homophobia were themes, as well as the whole dom-sub polarity that I find, after dipping my toe in, really makes my flesh crawl. Put that on me. No, I take that back; keep that off me and don't bother telling me where you do put it.

A couple weeks ago, I drove on impulse to the cineplex at the next larger city to the west of where I live, about an hour each way, just to see this movie, Roofman starring Channing Tatum, Kirsten Dunst and Peter Dinklage. It's based on a true story that I heard about at the time it was in the news – about an escaped serial robber of McDonald's restaurants who hid out in a Toys'R'Us for, like, six months before being recaptured. Nobody happened to look inside the hiding place that he turned into a micro-apartment, despite a number of items disappearing from stock – including a steady shrinkage of Peanut M&Ms.

I can't exactly blame the movie for it, but at a certain point during the run-time – the scene where Tatum, dining out with members of a church group he has gotten involved with, faces a police officer who is skeptical of his claim to be an undercover agent – I decided I had seen as much of it as I cared to, and went home. Give or take a stop at Taco John's.

I can't put my finger on the reason I dropped out of watching the movie, despite paying full price to see it in a theater. It wasn't terrible. Channing Tatum and Kirsten Dunst are still looking nice after all these years. They have some good chemistry together. Peter Dinklage was adorably hateable. The situation had a certain pathos to it.

I guess it just made me squirm. The nervousness that ran through me as I watched Tatum's character floundering through his extended prison break started to vibrate at the precise frequency of the sensation that there must be something at home that I needed to take care of. I tried to talk myself out of it, but I finally caved in and left.

Previously, when I've done that, it was because I really hated the movie. That wasn't the case with Roofman. But I didn't love it enough to keep watching it, even when all it would have cost me to stay (over and above what it cost me to be there in the first place) was maybe another 45 minutes sat in a reasonably comfortable seat. It's mysterious. But if I were to assess this movie, based on my incomplete viewing, I guess the final verdict would be, "I just couldn't sit still through it."

Two Uplifting Movies

About a week ago, I went to see The Senior, not my first movie out of Angel Studios. Previous ones I've checked out included Sound of Freedom – that Jim Caviezel vehicle about child trafficking; The Last Rodeo – the Neal McDonough flick about the washed-up bull rider who goes back to the mad and hairy to raise money for his grandson's operation; and Sketch, the Tony Hale picture about a kid whose drawings came to monstrous life. Others that I did not see included Cabrini, Sight and Bonhoeffer, all screened in my local small-town movie theater, which I think has something to do with the owners' Christian faith commitments. Other evidence of this passion is their showing of such faith-friendly flicks as Father Stu, Light of the World and Ordinary Angels and, I guess, the second movie in this twofer reviewfer.

Something many, but not necessarily all, of these films have in common is their success at tugging at the heart strings, bringing tears to my cheeks, without actually beating me over the head with a sectarian message. In fact, you could actually look pretty hard for anything specifically Christian in many of these films, apart from the fact that ministers and churchgoers in general are depicted as OK folks. This movie's foray into Christian evangelism goes as deep as showing the main character discovering his late father's Bible (not having known the old man even had one) and having a personal epiphany connected with the prayer for forgiveness handwritten in it. Mention is made of faith being restored and becoming important in the main character's life (a real-life person named Mike Flynt who, at age 59, became the oldest college football player to actually play in an official game).

This movie features Michael Chiklis as Flynt, a scrappy fellow who got kicked out of college football during his senior year for fighting. Not just off the football team, of which he was the captain; out of college altogether. One day he realizes he could go back to complete his senior year and be eligible to play one last season, and he decides that's what he needs to do to lay his personal demons, etc. Other cast members include Mary Stuart Masterson as Flynt's longsuffering wife, Rob Corddry as the head coach who could be described with the same adjective and up and coming TV star Brandon Flynn as his estranged son.

A bit of the movie focuses on the problematic way fathers (try to) pass fisty tendencies onto their sons, and the various ways that screws things up between generations and for their lives in general. Then there's a bit of fighting your way back against tremendous odds (including an almost season-ending injury during the preseason). And finally, actually spoken out loud in the movie, there's the scent of "a 59-year-old Rudy" to it, complete with a season-long struggle for Flynt to earn his spot on the field, only to save the last game of the season at the last moment. And miraculously heal the schism between him and his son. You know. Some moving, inspirational stuff. And also, plenty of football.

Don't get me wrong. I didn't come out of the theater dry-eyed. But you know what? That's usually how sports movies take me. Field of Dreams? Remember the Titans? Hoosiers? You name it. I cried during it, exactly when called upon. It wasn't the Christian message that did it for me. And I think Mike Flynt wanted to say something more specifically Christian than the movie actually did. See the advertisy bit at the end. So I can say with a clear conscience that the Three Scenes That Made It For Me were not the result of a theological bias. This is pure cinephile stuff. (1) Masterson goes to bat (to risk mixing sports metaphors) for her husband with Corddry, telling him to put her husband in the game. A moment later, by chance, Chiklis crosses her so hard that it almost ends their marriage – leading to a moment of truth between them. (2) Corddry puts Chiklis in charge of the locker room at halftime of their last game of the season – opening the way for a pep talk that turns the tide of the game. (3) Well, that last play, right? I don't want to spoil it for you. It's pretty awesome.

Not an Angel film, but also a piece of vaguely faith-related inspiration, Soul on Fire features Joel Courtney (remember the hero kid from Super 8?) as the grown-up version of a kid who, at age 9, burned down his family home and suffered burns over 100 percent of his body, many of them third-degree. After barely surviving, he fights through a long, agonizing rehab process, learning to walk, feed himself and, despite having all his fingers amputated, play the piano a little. His spiritual journey continues to have ups and downs, but he eventually becomes an again real-life motivational speaker and author. You might know him as John O'Leary, author of On Fire: The 7 Choices to Ignite a Radically Inspired Life, on which the movie was based.

Also featured in the movie are John Corbett as John's dad, whose promise, "I love you and there's nothing you can do about it," has a profound effect on the son. And also William H. Macy as St. Louis Cardinals commentator Jack Buck, who heard about John's predicament and decided to take on encouraging the kid as a personal project. As a longtime resident of St. Louis, I of course appreciated the city's role as a character in the movie. Whoever I didn't mention in the cast, you can look up for yourself.

Without going into spoiler, or even non-spoiler, detail about the storyline, let me just say parts of this movie did legitimately get me in the feels. Nevertheless, I didn't think it was a particularly well structured film. The ending came across as weak, in my opinion. But it does dramatize the moving conclusion Courtney's character himself draws – that had it not been for his horrible accident, he might not have enjoyed the greatest blessings in his life. Such as, for starters, marrying his best friend and starting a big family with her. So let's close straight in on the Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) Courtney acknowledges all the people to whom he owes his life, from the big brother who smothered the flames on his poor little body (suffering burns of his own) to the little sister who ran back into the burning house three times to fill glasses of water to dash in his face, all the way to the janitor who kept his hospital room clean so he wouldn't develop an infection. It's a bit repetitive of previously established material, but it shows his maturity as he puts it together. (2) The scene in which boy and girl decisively exit the Friend Zone. You'll know it if and when you see it. (3) Everything Corbett does, but perhaps especially his line, "You've been running from that gas can for 25 years. When are you going to realize it isn't chasing you?"

Dead to Me

Dead to Me
by Anton Strout
Recommended Ages: 14+

Simon Canderous used to use his weird power of psychometry – the ability to read the history of objects by touching them – to leverage a lucrative life of crime. Now he mostly uses it for good, working for New York City's Department of Extraordinary Affairs, Other Division. To be sure, he still cruises swap meets, looking for items charged with sentimental value so he can sell them back to their original owners – it helps pay the rent. He isn't really looking to mix with the restless dead or the brain-munching undead. But sometimes, duty calls.

Duty calls when Simon and his DEA mentor, Connor, are faced by an aggressive ghost in a back alley. The plot darkens when an attractive female ghost shows up at their workplace, strangely lifelike despite being dead. The trail of clues leads to a group of cultists (a.k.a. the Forces of Darkness) who have somehow managed to achieve government recognition as an alternative lifestyle. Something they're doing is keeping Irene, the ghost, tethered to the physical plane, and is driving other ghosts insane. Something that soon costs Simon's ex-girlfriend her life and puts another beautiful (but perhaps evil) woman in mortal danger. And even though Simon is only starting to understand how to control his powers, they will become crucial in the coming showdown with evil, as well as some hilarious scenes of paranormal action and danger.

The nearest comparison I can make with this book is Jim Butcher's Dresden Files. Simon Canderous is a young, hot-headed everydude who happens to have a rare magical talent, a roguish streak, a goofy sense of humor and tastes that range from knee-length leather jackets to Count Chocula action figures. He works on the side of Good but sometimes lets himself get too close to the forces of darkness, perhaps because his own unsavory background gives him an insight into what's up with them. He has a certain sex appeal, but he somehow isn't very successful with the ladies. He has power, vulnerability, dorkiness and cool all wrapped up in a self-deprecating package. He's honest but he also guards some heavy secrets. His appeal as a lead character and narrator would draw me into a long, open ended series. Alas, it isn't a long one, and again alas, it's now firmly closed.

This is the first book in the four-book Simon Canderous series by Anton Strout, an urban fantasy author, podcaster and blogger who, sadly, died in 2020 at age 50. Other titles in the series include Deader Still, Dead Matter and Dead Waters. He also wrote the Spellmason Chronicle trilogy of Alchemystic, Stonecast and Incarnate and a baker's dozen of short stories, including several Simon Canderous tales. Alas, his personal website now redirects to a Korean massage site. He left behind a wife, two kids and seven novels. Bookwise, not much. I'm sorry I encountered him too late to look forward to more. But through Simon (sniffle) he's alive to me.

BONUS NONSENSE: From the "not to be confused with" department, here are some other books titled Dead to Me or close to it, according to Fantastic Fiction: Dead to Me, a 2025 mystery by Gytha Lodge; You're So Dead to Me, a 2023 Grimdale Graveyard mystery by Steffanie Holmes; Dead to Me, a 2020 Grave Talker novel by Annie Anderson; a 2026 mystery of the same name by Jessie Keane; a 2023 Hidden Norfolk murder mystery by J.M. Dalgliesh; a 2024 Kelsey Hawk mystery by Kate Bold; a 2012 Scott & Bailey mystery by Cath Staincliffe; a 2021 urban fantasy by Rachel Morton and Mason Sabre; a 2023 Thornwood Academy young adult fantasy by LJ Swallow; a 2017 Kate Matthews mystery by Stephen Edger; a 2026 Gulf Coast Reaper urban fantasy by Tegan Maher; a 2024 Mountain Shadow cozy mystery by Tarah Benner; a 2016 historical mystery by Lesley Pearse; a 2015 young adult novel by Mary McCoy; a 2016 young adult novel by Cristy Watson; a 2017 mystery collection by Dean Wesley Smith; Jack Kerouac Is Dead to Me, a 2020 young adult romance by Gae Polisner; Dead to Me, a 2018 Cold Case Psychic gay romance by Pandora Pine; a 2018 Harry Russo Diaries urban fantasy by Lisa Emme; You're Dead to Me, a 2024 young adult fantasy by Amy Christine Parker; Dead to Me, a 2025 paranormal romance by Jeanette Clarke; and possibly a 2022 Burton and Fielding mystery by Pamela Murray called Signs, for which Dead to Me seems to be either a subtitle or an alternate title. This book is well down the list, so perhaps you'll recognize one or more of these titles. Comment if you dare.

Two Indie Films

A couple weekends ago, I was comped a ticket to this independent documentary about the American Basketball Association – a small-market competitor of the NBA that disappeared in 1976 after the NBA took in four of its teams in a league expansion – easily confused for a merger, but importantly not a merger. The result, this film argues, was decades of economic injustice against players who pioneered a style of play that made the NBA much more entertaining to watch. Director/narrator Michael Husain follows an Indianpolis mergers and acquisitions lawyer named Scott Tarter as he fights a years-long, pro bono battle to convince the NBA to give those players their due, culminating after many frustrating delays in a settlement described as recognition payments – not a pension – and only a faint, partial semblance of justice for the now elderly, physically and financially ailing players.

IMDB only lists one cast member: sportscaster Bob Costas, who covered the ABA in the early days of his career. But it features a lot of basketball greats and near-greats, some of them struggling toward the end of their life. The screening I attended was followed by a Zoom Q&A with Husain and ABA player Ron Perry. It was interesting to hear about the process of putting the film together, and how the story evolved from what was expected to be a feel-good short about sports history to an emotionally gripping, personal journey. But it's been weeks since I saw it, so I'll move on lightly to the Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) Tarter photographs Sam Smith on his deathbed, lying next to a replica ABA basketball (you'd know it by its red, white and blue segments), and that pic's publication prompts the NBA players' union to press for change. (2) Tarter, left cooling his heels for hours while the NBA team owners haggle out a settlement with the surviving ABA players, picks up the phone saying, "It's either the NBA or it's pizza." Of course, it's pizza. (3) An NBA bureaucrat explains why the resolution was so long coming – an explanation that made the audience with me that night audibly angry.

This is definitely a movie that will get you in the feels, even if you're not particularly into basketball. The idea, forcefully driven home, that ABA players agreed to the "merger" (sic) based on a false understanding that their pensions would survive the extinction of their league, will definitely make you mad and the cheapness of the league that left them in the cold will charge that anger up to a whole new energy level. My big takeaway from this movie is that the documentary is definitely a category of film that I haven't properly appreciated.

Last weekend's concluding installment in the local movie house's month-long independent film festival was this Minnesota-made crime thriller, in which a small-town police chief realizes that his best friend, the local dentist, is a serial killer. Paul, the dentist, has a dark past related to clergy sexual abuse and an older brother's suicide. The victims include the priest who abused him and his brother and other reverends implicated in the tragedy. None of this is a spoiler; the film reveals this all along. The interesting bit is how the trail of evidence leads Paul's buddy, the cop, to become convinced he's the guy.

The movie builds a lot of dark tension, with some Minnesota local color woven in – always fun for Greater Minnesota audiences, who might suspect the fictional town of Scandia to be right around the corner. The grim theme of child sex abuse is lightened (a bit) by some wholesome family drama, the razor wit of a Bureau of Criminal Apprehension detective grown moody while trying to quit smoking, a cute dog (who in a lowkey way is also a witness to murder) and a side plot about a police secretary with a violently jealous husband. While the cast doesn't have any familiar names in it, save Vincent Kartheiser of 1990s child star fame (and later TV's Mad Men and Angel), one standout, in my opinion, is the third, elderly priest, who defies his killer. That was one tough guy, for a hospice patient with a death sentence looming over him regardless; his refusal to "take, eat" of the blasphemous communion that Paul offered left me kind of admiring him.

Three Scenes That Made It For Me, besides the one just described: (1) "I'm a monster." Paul actually says this in two scenes, but I'll let it count as one. (2) The cop and his kids discover Mrs. Cop cuddling the dog in the middle of the night, after she had put her foot down about adopting him. (3) The dog growls at the sound of Paul's voice on the cop's voicemail. All right, so some scenes made it for me. But full disclosure: The movie left me a little disappointed. I thought the ending was weak. Don't want to spoil it, but I think it let Paul off easy and resulted in less of a denoument and more of a limp, petering out. Cop guy keeps saying Paul was his friend, and an ambiguous trans-woman says something about people surprising you, but I felt like with more circumstantial detail and dramatic punch, those last couple of scenes could have been better written. Just sayin'.

A Quiche Before Dying

A Quiche Before Dying
by Jill Churchill
Recommended Ages: 15+

Jane Jeffry is a widowed mother of three in a Chicago suburb who has an on-and-off romance with a police detective named Mel, with whom she has already solved a couple of crimes. One summer week while two of her kids are away from home and her too-perfect mother has dropped in for a visit, Jane decides to take a neighborhood writing class focusing on autobiographies. But instead of writing her own life story, she starts the memoir of a fictional character. Also, she gets sidetracked when a horrid woman gets murdered on the second night of the class.

Mrs. General Pryce – I don't know how she's styled to her friends, because she doesn't have any – is as battle-axy as they come, but even she isn't equal to a stiff snort of poison. It apparently got into her system through a quiche that Jane brought to the dinner party, attended only by members of the writing class. Difficult as it is her for her to suspect her friends and neighbors, Jane must wrestle with the fact that someone in that class is a murderer – and having killed once, they may kill again. And with the police making little apparent progress, Jane feels responsible to solve the crime before the week is up, and the class ends, and the suspect gets away.

This is a quick-paced, cheerful murder mystery with vivid characters, crisp dialogue, a bright streak of humor and some romance as well. Despite her self-image as a domestic frump, Jane proves to be a dangerous opponent for a killer to tangle with. It's a warm, cozy, down-to-earth mystery populated by suburban moms, teenagers, pets, appetizing dishes – and I'm not just talking about Detective Mel here – all livened up by one dastardly character and a murder that you almost don't feel bad about, except that it means there's a murderer about.

This 1993 novel, not to be confused with a mystery of the same name by Joanne Pence, is the third of 16 books in the "Jane Jeffry" series by Jill Churchill (1943-2023), an award-winning, Kansas City-based mystery author. It feels weird to say this about an era I lived through (I was in college in 1993), but these days this book reads like a period piece. Some other titles in the series include Grime and Punishment, The Class Menagerie, Silence of the Hams, War and Peas, Fear of Frying, Mulch Ado About Nothing and The Accidental Florist. From the 1970s to 2013, Churchill also wrote three "Lady of Fire" novels under the pen name Valerie Vayle, seven "Grace and Favor" novels," and around 15 other novels, often under the pen names of Vayle, Amanda Singer and Janice Young Brooks.

Adventure Tom

Let's call this a diary entry in my career as a movie-goer. If I reviewed this movie, even under what protection critical comment provides, I'd probably end up sued or slapped with a cease-and-desist. So, this was week 2 of a month-long independent film showcase at the local movie theater, and I'm planning to hit all four shows. But Adventure Tom did not meet the expectations I imagined from, like, the title of the movie.

It was not thrilling or even particularly fun. It had a few scenes featuring animation akin to early sketches for a comic book, and a little excitement like when the main characters inadvertently picked a bar fight. It had a cross-country trek during which the hero and heroine stopped to look at a variety of scenic attractions, from Devil's Tower to a life-sized model of the Town of Bedrock, yabba dabba doo and whatnot. Otherwise it was pretty much a road trip in which a guy and a gal talk amongst themselves. And talk and talk and talk some more. Their relationship goes through a bout of Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome. The boy looks for places to scatter portions of his mother's ashes. (The road trip is partly about disposing of a portion of the hero guy's mom's ashes.) A persistent pall of unhappiness drapes over it all.

One of my coworkers, who actually had to sit through this movie for work reasons, is calling it the worst movie she's ever seen. I don't think it was that bad. But it did nothing to lighten my mood after a week full of bad news. Cancer in the family. Both sets of parents fixing to move (in one case, much farther away). A stern coaching at work, etc., etc. My response when a theater employee asked what I thought was, "Meh. It's a bit of a downer." On further reflection, I recall having some mean thoughts during it – like wondering how the supposedly successful main characters could actually function in the adult world, wired as they are.

The ending may be intended to uplift, but for me it didn't. In the rear-view mirror, it all fades into a haze of a way-too-long and not particularly eventful road trip, stuck in an SUV with two bland characters who really should probably live with their (surviving) parents, rather than half a continent away. They even manage to have sex without making it look fun.

The writer and director responsible for this, um, low-key film is Miguel Duran, who has a short list of credits none of which I know anything about. The male lead is played by Graham Patrick Martin, whose face rings a bell; I've apparently seen him in the TV miniseries version of Catch-22 (2019), but none of his other credits are things I've seen. I've looked up other cast members to see if I've seen them in something before, and the answer is a firm no. So, look them up for yourselves if you're interested. I've never measured up as a prophet when it comes to predicting, based on a movie role, whether actors are going places, but I frankly don't think this movie is going to launch anyone into stardom. I recommend it in case you want to study a use case for taking the scenic, South Dakota-Wyoming route from Minneapolis to Phoenix, before most likely flipping a coin between the Nebraska or the Kansas route.

If I were to bother with Three Scenes That Made It For Me, I'd probably mention the one where the flight attendant makes the hero girl wet her pants. It made me angry on her behalf, a strong reaction that came early in the movie but wasn't the sign one might expect of an impending deep connection to the characters. That's about it for scenes that made it for me, and the rest of the movie just didn't do it for me. Oh, well. You can't love them all.

Project Hail Mary

Project Hail Mary
by Andy Weir
Recommended Ages: 13+

Ryland Grace wakes up in a weird, mechanized hospital with no memory of how he got there. In the neighboring beds are two dead bodies. To start, he can't even remember his name. He applies a little science and math – things he's evidently good at – to figure out that he's on a spaceship traveling at high speed, far from Earth. And he's been put in a medically induced coma to pass the time before arriving ... where? And for sake's sake, why?

The pieces slowly fall into place. Grace is a sometime middle school science teacher who, before he was that, wrote a major paper in which he rudely told off the entire scientific community and declared that alien life didn't have to be water-based. Then a threat to all life on earth pops up – little alien microbes that are stealing energy from the sun. Given enough time, their effect on the sun will cool the earth to the point where crops will fail and billions of people will die. Because of the strangeness of these bitty bugs, which Grace dubs Astrophage, that rude paper of his suddenly becomes very relevant, and – well, to make a long story short, he finds himself second in command of a mission to save the planet that has a blank check from every country on Earth. A mission from which there can be no return.

They've spotted similar issues of stars going dim all over the galaxy – and exactly one star, Tau Ceti, that should be dimming but isn't. So that's where the starship Hail Mary has to go, powered by brand-new technology (such as a propulsion system that uses Astrophage for fuel – I don't know, read the book for more details). But only a tiny minority of would-be astronauts can survive the trip, thanks to a rare gene that gives them a better-than-even chance of surviving years in a medical coma. And though he wasn't supposed to be one of those astronauts – how he got on the ship at all is the very last memory to come back – Grace is, fortunately or otherwise, the only crew member who actually woke up. The fate of humanity depends entirely on him. He isn't alone for long, however. Almost as soon as he arrives in Tau Ceti orbit, he encounters a ship from Epsilon Eridani that has come for the same reason. Like (gulp) first contact with aliens and whatnot.

So much for the blow-by-blow synopsis. It's generalities from here, so you don't get bored and go read something else, or so I don't spoil the whole book for you. Grace and Rocky, the sole Eridian to survive his planet's mission to discover what makes Tau Ceti special and how to use it to save his world, hit it off and quickly form a touching friendship, despite Rocky being the least anthropomorphic alien you've ever met in sci-fi. What sets him apart from humankind? A better question would be, what doesn't? Despite the challenges of communicating and working together – such as mutually unpronounceable languages and life-support environments that would almost instantly kill each other if they went over for a visit – they form a highly productive partnership and get right to work cracking the problem of how to save their worlds from the Astrophage. Whenever everything seems to be going well for a moment, a disastrous setback almost destroys all hope. And then, like the STEM heroes they are, they fight back with science, tech, engineering and math. Big time.

It's a novel teeming with thought-provoking speculative concepts, mind-expanding scientific facts, heartstring-tugging emotions, excitement, humor and suspense. It's written like a science fiction twist on Raymond Chandler's recipe for a hardboiled detective story: whenever the plot stalls, bring in a guy with a gun. Only in this genre, the "guy with a gun" is just space with its endlessly creative ways to kill you, your whole family, and the planet you rode in on. It has some characters, most of them only seen in flashbacks, whom you won't quickly forget, such as the all-powerful Ms. Stratt (Project H.M.'s first-in-command), and a devastating twist toward the end ... and another ... and another ... some of which you'll start to anticipate (I remember counting the paragraphs until one particular penny dropped) while some will keep you guessing until the end. It's good stuff. It definitely makes me keen to see what Hollywood does with it.

I went in search of this book after I saw a trailer for the (at this writing) upcoming film adaptation, featuring Ryan Gosling as Ryland Grace. It may be unwise to judge such things from a film trailer, but it looks like the movie might preserve some of the non-sequential narrative structure of the book. Andy Weir is also the author of the fantastic novel The Martian, previously made into a terrific movie starring Matt Damon, and a heist-on-the-moon novel titled Artemis, which I haven't read. Yet. His short stories/novellas include The Egg and James Moriarty, Consulting Criminal. From the two works of his that I've read, I gather that he's a highly intelligent guy who does tons of research and, at the same time, doesn't lack a popular touch. These are, bottom line, fun books to read.

525. Hymn in a Time of Public Unrest

Shelter, Lord! Give shelter!
Be Your doors unclosed
When to storm and welter
Your lambs lie exposed:

When the hateful neighbor
Thirsts for blameless blood;
When with cries of labor
Evil bears her brood:

When our faithful actions
Men but count as crime;
When fanatic factions
Seize and rule our time:

When the world surrenders
Reason, rule and right;
When deceitful splendors
Squelch Your truth and light:

Let Your cross stand o'er us,
Nerving us to stand,
As the martyr chorus
Bravely bore its brand.

Let Your blood-bought pardon
And the hope of life
With steadfastness harden
All who face this strife.

Feed us the Passover
Of Your flesh and blood,
Promiser and Prover
That all works for good.

Through the bath You bathed in,
Cup whereof You drank,
Raise us up, unscathed in
Saints' and angels' flank.

Even as we suffer
Threat or pain or loss,
We as shield and buffer
Will hold up Your cross.

Why should death appal us,
Bringing us to You?
Christ, what may befall us,
Be our Shelter true!

While writing this, I had in mind not only a certain Christian's vile political assassination in the recent news, but the disgusting rhetoric flooding social media right now. But no tune in particular. That can come later. Art: the Stoning of St. Stephen by Carlo Crivelli, Demidoff Altarpiece, public domain.

Light of the World

On Saturday night, I attended a local screening of this new, 2D-animated film, co-directed and animated by former Disney Animation mavens Tom Bancroft, John Schafer and Tom's twin brother, Tony. It's the result of something called The Salvation Poem Project, which is going to feed into my criticism of the movie – but that's a theological matter. As an animated film, I think it stands up well against the cell-animated output of Disney's golden era. It has charm, humor, dramatic shape, lively characters with touching relationships. It doesn't shrink from the harsh facts of Jesus' death for the sins of the world. It condenses the story and reorganizes the material around what Tony Bancroft, in a "live" Q&A session (via Zoom) following the movie, called a buddy movie focusing on Jesus and the youthful apostle John. It has some parables. It has some miracles. It depicts doubt and faith. It goes to some pretty emotionally gripping places. And it does it without glib song-and-dance numbers, one thing that sets it apart from a Disney animated feature.

I have a few issues with the movie. The first thing that all but knocked the breath out of me, like a punch in the gut, was putting the words (more or less) "Baptism is just a symbol" in the mouth of John the Baptizer. That does not represent what the John of New Testament record said or would say. Second, the movie gives a rushed account of Jesus' Last Supper – so rushed that, I noticed, nobody actually eats or drinks the bread and wine that Jesus holds up when he says "my body and my blood." And whether he means "This is" when he holds them up is rather left to the audience's pious, or impious, imagination. Third, when Zebedee comes to John at the end of the movie and asks him how he can start being a believer, John's answer is (to paraphrase) "You just have to say this prayer," and then leads Zeb through the Salvation Poem – basically, an abbreviated, rhyming form of the Sinner's Prayer. Fourth, young John (in the movie) defines faith as the result of your decision – a position, known as decision theology, that runs at a 180-degree angle to the John who wrote John 1:12-13, and John 15:16, and 1 John 3:1-2, etc. It would have been a more Johannine story if John's answer to Zebedee had been, say, "Be baptized and receive forgiveness of your sins." But enough.

Here's Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) We find Pontius Pilate reading the charges against Barabbas, the murderer. I happen to know enough Greek to recognize that the lettering on the scroll in Pilate's hand spelled out the first few lines of John's gospel: "In the beginning was the Word," etc. To a Bible scholar it's as much an "Easter egg" as when Andrew, observing a miraculous catch of fish, exclaims, "You're going to need a bigger boat!" (2) The earthquake that ripples through Jerusalem at the moment of Jesus' death. The whole crucifixion scene is powerful, if condensed. (3) When John (the Baptist) baptizes Jesus – a beautiful depiction of that scene. A bonus scene, perhaps more in hindsight than from the impression it made on me at the time, is when young John gives a coin to a sick little boy named Josiah. According to Tony, this character was named after Schafer's son, who was critically ill during the making of the movie; and apparently, Schafer experienced a series of devastating personal losses during the two years it took to make this movie.

I also learned, from Tony Bancroft's chat with the owner of our local theater, that this movie was made in half the time, with about one-tenth of the money and by a very small percentage of the people-power of a typical Disney animated feature. But it's still of very high quality and an entertaining and moving film. With the doctrinal reservations stated above – for the faithful to bear in mind and discuss after seeing it – I recommend it highly. Much can be gleaned from it without drinking the "Salvation Poem" kool-aid to its dregs. It may even be for the better that there are reservations to think and talk about. It's barely made it on Rotten Tomatoes – I heard that as of Saturday, it had just received enough reviews to register on that aggregator, with a score of 91 percent freshness – but give it time. It's at least faithful enough that it doesn't insult Christianity or turn God into a villain, like some movies that I won't mention by name ...

Lasagna Means I Love You

Lasagna Means I Love You
by Kate O'Shaughnessy
Recommended Ages: 10+

Mo's mom is long gone. Her dad is out of the picture. Her beloved grandmother just died, and her only other known relative – Uncle Billy – is too busy being a soldier to take care of her. So, into New York's foster care system she goes. And honestly, she probably has a better time of it than the average kid. But it's still a rocky adjustment, moving from one family to another, meeting with case workers and a therapist, looking for a home where she feels she belongs. Mo clings to her grandma's memory, writing a diary in the form of letters to her and begging for a little heavenly help. She insists on going back to her old school, even though it means traveling to another borough of the city. She starts a hobby – cooking – inspired by a cookbook she temporarily liberates from the case management office. And then she starts a website, gathering other people's family recipes in search of a connection to her own family. If they're out there.

Mo is an exceptional kid, and her search for a Gallagher family recipe takes her to some interesting places and exposes her to a variety of cultures and family shapes. She starts to feel like she might have found a real family to be a part of, but even after that, things don't go in a straight line for her. There's a distant cousin whose blandness is strangely alarming. There's a Chinese-American family where she'd feel at home if they had room for her. There's a well-to-do couple who want to give back to society. And there's a salt-of-the-earth couple whose family greeting, "Lasagna!" means – well, you know.

This bright, articulate 11-year-old makes some mistakes, doesn't always have a good attitude and isn't completely sympathetic. Nevertheless, your heart will go out to her as she navigates anxiety issues, grief, feelings of rejection, anger, joy, success, failure, apathy and hope, cycling around and enveloping her in unexpected ways. Mo's a girl who loves the Jets despite knowing what to expect from them; who roots for them to win even while watching a recording of a game they already lost. She brings together a diverse group of helpers to pull off an extraordinary event, even while the bottom is dropping out of her heart. She's a wise-for-her-years youngster with a wit that'll make you smile and a heart you'll ache for. What becomes of her will hold you to the last page.

California-based Kate O'Shaughnessy is also the author of middle-grades children's novels The Lonely Heart of Maybelle Lane and Newbery Honor Book The Wrong Way Home. From the descriptions I've read of them, both books have in common with this book a hero girl who is searching for where she truly belongs.

The Strawberry Patch Pancake House

The Strawberry Patch Pancake House
by Laurie Gilmore
Recommended Ages: 15+

Michelin-star chef Archer just found out that a sometime kitchen colleague with whom he had a brief fling has died, leaving behind a daughter he didn't know he had. Now he has to move to the quaint small town of Dream Harbor to take care of a tiny girl named Olive. To pass time while they get to know each other, he takes over the kitchen of a diner that specializes in pancakes. It's a humbling experience, from being a high-powered gourmet to being unable to reproduce the pancake recipe the locals swear by. And also, not knowing what to do with a kid.

Archer hires Iris to serve as a nanny, to bridge the gap between his shifts at the diner and when Olive gets home from kindergarten. You know Iris, right? A highly sexed young lady who has never held down a relationship, or a job, for very long. And now she's partly responsible for the happiness of a precious little girl. And also, things are steaming up between her and the sexy chef she works for.

It's a hot romance – we're talking Adult Content Advisory here – set in a twee little village that would riddle the Hallmark Channel with tooth decay. Somehow, everyone in town seems to be either an attractive young adult or their adorable little kid, and the older lot are pairing off like Twix bars. But at the heart of it, there's Archer, who is surprised to find himself losing his heart to a child he just met, and Iris, who is terrified by the feelings she's having for both of them and her certainty that she's going to hurt them. It's a plot you can set your watch by – but executed with charm, humor and a steaminess that belies the family-friendly production design.

This is the fourth and (currently) latest of the "Dream Harbor" novels written by Melissa McTernan under the pen name Laurie Gilmore. The other titles include The Pumpkin Spice Cafe, The Cinnamon Bun Book Store and The Christmas Tree Farm. Plus, a fifth book, The Gingerbread Bakery, is slated to come out a little over a week from now (Sept. 16, 2025), and a sixth, The Daisy Chain Flower Shop, is supposed to follow in May 2026. Fantastic Fiction describes McTernan as an author of "sweet and steamy romantasy," as you could probably guess from these titles. Based in upstate New York, she is also the author of A Curse of Blood and Wolves (soon to be part of a trilogy), Marked for Each Other: The Princess and the Barbarian, some shorter erotic fairy tales, and Secret Family Recipes for Love and Butter Cookies.

What's It Called In Your State?

This has been building up for a while. Watching a lot of true crime videos, I've noticed that different U.S. states call their criminal investigation agencies different things, and I thought it would be interesting to see how many different variants there are. And that led to other ideas ... there will probably be more installments of this kind of thing.

So, here are the names of state police agencies, by U.S. state:

• Alabama: State Bureau of Investigations (SBI) and the Highway Patrol (AHP)
• Alaska: Bureau of Investigation (ABI) and Alaska State Troopers (AST)
• Arizona: Highway Patrol (AHP) and Criminal Investigations Division (CID)
• Arkansas: Arkansas State Police (ASP) and the Arkansas Highway Police (AHP) (under two separate departments!)
• California: Bureau of Investigation (CBI), among other agencies.
• Colorado: Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Connecticut: Bureau of Criminal Investigations (BCI) Delaware: State Police (DSP) Florida: Bureau of Criminal Investigations and Intelligence (BCII) and Highway Patrol (FHP)
• Georgia: Bureau of Investigation (GBI)
• Hawaii: Department of Law Enforcement, which has a Criminal Investigation Division (CID)
• Idaho: State Police (ISP)
• Illinois: Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI)
• Indiana: Criminal Investigation Division (CID)
• Iowa: Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI)
• Kentucky: Department of Criminal Investigation (DCI)
• Louisiana: State Police (LSP), a.k.a. Police d’Etat de Louisiane
• Maine: State Police (MSP)
• Maryland: State Police (MSP)
• Massachusetts: State Police (MSP)
• Michigan: State Police (MSP)
• Minnesota: Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCI) and State Patrol (MSP)
• Mississippi: Bureau of Investigation (MBI)
• Missouri: State Highway Patrol (MSHP), which has a CID
• Montana: Division of Criminal Investigations (DCI)
• Nebraska: State Patrol (NSP), also with an Investigative Services division
• Nevada: Investigation Division (NID)
• New Hampshire: Investigative Services Bureau (ISB)
• New Jersey: Criminal Investigations Bureau (CIB) and State Detectives (NJSD)
• New Mexico: State Police (NMSP) Investigations Bureau (IB)
• New York: State Police (NYSP) Bureau of Criminal Investigations (BCI)
• North Carolina: State Bureau of Investigation (SBI)
• North Dakota: Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI)
• Ohio: Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI)
• Oklahoma: State Bureau of Investigation (SBI)
• Oregon: Criminal Justice Division (under the Department of Justice)
• Pennsylvania: State Police (PSP) Bureau of Criminal Investigation
• Puerto Rico: Special Investigations Bureau (SIB, or Negociado de Investigaciones Especiales, NIE)
• Rhode Island: State Police (RHSP) Detective Bureau
• South Carolina: Law Enforcement Division (SLED) and Highway Patrol (SCHP)
• South Dakota: Division of Criminal Investigation (SDCI)
• Tennessee: Bureau of Investigation (TBI)
• Texas: Rangers and Criminal Investigations Division (CID)
• Utah: State Bureau of Investigation (SBI)
• Vermont: Bureau of Criminal Investigations (BCI)
• Virginia: Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI)
• Washington: State Patrol (WSP) Criminal Investigations Division (CID)
• West Virginia: State Police (WVSP) Bureau of Criminal Investigations (BCI)
• Wisconsin: Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI)
• Wyoming: Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI)

That's a lot of SBIs, CDIs, CIDs and BCIs, and (I'm proud to say, as a Minnesotan) only one BCA!

I was also thinking about "What do they call the Department of Motor Vehicles in all 50 states?" Is it called the DMV or something else? So here's that run-down:

• Alabama: Driver License Division and Division of Motor Vehicles (under two separate departments!)
• Alaska: Division of MVs
• Arizona: MV Division
• Arkansas: Office of Motor Vehicle (singular!)
• California: Department of MVs
• Colorado: Division of MVs
• Connecticut: Department of MVs
• Delaware: Division of MVs
• D.C.: Department of MVs
• Florida: Department of Highway Safety and MVs
• Georgia: Department of Driver Services and Motor Vehicle Division (same story, one's public safety and the other is revenue)
• Hawaii: Driver License Division and Motor Vehicle Division (same story)
• Idaho: Division of MVs
• Illinois: Driver Services Department and Vehicle Services Department (same story)
• Indiana: Bureau of Motor Vehicles
• Iowa: MV Division
• Kansas: Division of Vehicles
• Kentucky: Division of Driver Licensing and MV Licensing System
• Louisiana: Office of MVs
• Maine: Bureau of MVs
• Maryland: MV Administration
• Massachusetts: Registry of MVs
• Minnesota: Driver and Vehicle Services
• Mississippi: MV Licensing Division
• Missouri: Department of Revenue
• Montana: MV Division
• Nebraska: Department of MVs
• Nevada: Department of MVs
• New Hampshire: Division of MVs
• New Jersey: MV Commission
• New Mexico: MV Division
• New York: Department of MVs
• North Carolina: Division of MVs
• North Dakota: Driver License Division and MV Division
• Ohio: Bureau of MVs
• Oklahoma: Department of Public Safety and Tax Commission (the same driver license vs. vehicle records split)
• Oregon: Driver and MV Services
• Pennsylvania: Driver and Vehicle Services
• Rhode Island: Division of MVs
• South Carolina: Department of MVs
• South Dakota: Department of Public Safety and Department of Revenue
• Tennessee: Driver License Services and Vehicle Services Division
• Texas: Driver License Division and Department of MVs
• Utah: Driver License Services and Division of MVs
• Vermont: Department of MVs
• Virginia: Department of MVs
• Washington: Department of Licensing
• West Virginia: Division of MVs
• Wisconsin: Division of MVs
• Wyoming: Driver Services Program

... So, a lot of them are DMVs but with some alternation between Departments and Divisions, with a few Offices and Bureaus thrown in. And some MVDs. And a bunch of lousy states where you have to apply to different departments for your driver's license and your car's tags. Washingtonians have the best deal, with a licensing bureau that also handles boat, business and professional licenses. I've personally written checks to several variants of this alphabet soup. It's nice to see at a glance which ones are which!

Nobody 2

About a week ago, I chose to see Nobody 2 at the local movie theater instead of whatever else was on offer. Sequels aren't usually my thing, but I enjoyed the original Nobody and I didn't mind if the sequel was basically the same movie all over again. So, I'm happy to report that the second movie is basically the same as the first, give or take a change of scenery to the most depressing theme park ever, and Bob Odenkirk's nice, middle-class family being right in the middle of – well, to be accurate, a few yards away from – the extremely violent action. It has a flamboyant villain, played with unbelievable malevolence by Sharon flippin' Stone. The fam turns out to be made of pretty stern stuff. Christopher Lloyd shows that he can still play a sociopath and make him fun. And if nothing else beckons you to see it, the film does a wonderful job of making your most disastrous family vacation look like a dream trip.

Odenkirk plays "Hutch," a hitman who owes a colossal amount of money to some bad people, and who is kept so busy paying off his debt that he senses he's about to lose his suburban family. So, he talks them into retracing his childhood steps to a place that holds happy memories for him – only to discover that Plummerville isn't really as nice as he remembers. Maybe it never was. But behind the bad cops and a theme park owner who is into some seriously shady business, there's an even bigger baddie whose flamboyant evil is blended with what seems like florid psychosis. A truly spooky person. Fulfilling the prophecy of the guy he owes bigtime ("Wherever you go, there you are"), Hutch stumbles into a volatile situation and blows it all the way up, all while seemingly inescapable doom closes in on him and his family. And he does it all with a put-upon, "I'm just trying to make memories with my family" attitude – viscerally incapable of backing down.

This sequel hits a lot of the same beats as the original movie, including the framing device in which a couple of police interrogators demand to know who the hell Hutch is, moments before getting a phone call where an indistinct voice yells at them to let him go and forget all about it. It also features Connie Nielsen (Gladiator, Wonder Woman) as Hutch's wife, who is surprisingly aware and accepting of his violent lifestyle; Lloyd as Hutch's dad, a retired hitman who lets loose a little in the climactic battle; RZA of hip hop's Wu-Tang Clan as Hutch's unlikely brother; Colin Hanks (Tom's son, known for TV's Fargo and Roswell) as a crooked sheriff whose demise is a gory pleasure to witness; veteran action movie heavy Daniel Bernhardt as (cough) a heavy; Colin Salmon (of the Bond franchise, Krypton and Arrow) as the crime boss who holds a huge debt over Hutch (a consequence of the trouble he stirred up in the first movie); and a 26-year-old guy named Gage Munroe, mostly known as a voice actor, as Hutch's teenaged son – just something I thought I'd mention because it struck me as weird.

The action is wonderfully ridiculous. So, so, so over-the-top. The hero, if he is that, takes a licking and, like the time bomb he is, keeps on ticking. Gives as good as he gets, as they say. When survival seems beyond hope, the insanity goes up another notch. When you think it's run out of notches to go up, it finds another one. It doesn't lack much that the first movie had, except maybe a certain indescribable edge of cool irony and black humor. Then again, it doesn't add anything that the first movie lacked. Not a disappointment if you saw the first movie and know what to expect. But not a surprise, either.

Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) Hutch realizes that the bully who antagonized his son is about to be murdered, just as he's making a tactical withdrawal from an enemy stronghold ... and for a breathless moment, you're not sure he isn't going to leave the kid to his fate. (2) As the bully's father describes Lendina (Stone's character) to Hutch, and warns that by now she's already on her way there, a scene of Lendina acting absolutely bonkers plays out over his off-screen voice. I'm watching it and thinking, as if I hadn't seen enough by now to know it, "There's something seriously wrong with this woman." (3) The four-on-one knife, fist and blunt-object fight on board a touristy "duck" boat. Not the military transport kind. A pontoon boat with an enormous rubber duckie on its roof. Maybe the closest this movie comes to that absurdist, darkly funny tone the first movie hit so much more often.

The Naked Gun

I'm having a nostalgic moment right now, thinking about my three high school buddies who went with me to see the original, Leslie Nielsen-era Naked Gun movie in a theater when it came out in 1988. I was just 16 years old! We had a blast. We sat in the back row and laughed so hard, we were falling out of our seats. I can't think of many times when I had so much fun.

Well, that's a tough act for this year's Naked Gun reboot to follow, I suppose. But I'm not holding any hard feelings against it. Liam Neeson turns out to have the chops to pull off the deadpan comedy act, loaded with sight gags and ridiculous non sequiturs and a paradoxically mature-yet-immature brand of humor. Pamela Anderson seems to have it, too. And although the villain's nefarious plan is perhaps a bit too derivative (I also saw Kingsman, you know), it's all in the execution. And like all the best executions do, this one kills.

Frank Drebbin Jr., played by Neeson as the son of Nielsen's character (who makes a cameo appearance as, um, an owl), is an ethically challenged representative of Police Squad. Pulled off a bank robbery case because of his slapstick brutality, he finds himself on crash detail ... only to recognize that the victim of a fatal crash is connected with the heist. And the link between them is a tech mogul who plans to unleash The Purge on mankind, in order to cash in on the ruins. Anderson plays the crash victim's sister, who is equally determined to solve the guy's murder and who, by the way, is a mean scatter. By "scatter," I mean that jazzy gibberish that Mel Tormé specialized in. By "mean" I mean bloodcurdling. It's one (1) of the Three Scenes That Made It For Me, of which the other two (since I mention them) are (2) the romantic montage involving a psychotic snowman animated by black magic, and (3) when the villain (played by Danny Huston of Yellowstone) goes "Ow" after taking the first punch in his climactic fistfight with Neeson.

There, I haven't given away too many of the gags. Go and fall out of your seat with laughter, and my blessing.

Sketch

Last Friday, I drove all the way to Detroit ... Lakes, Minnesota ... to see the movie Sketch, which was playing at the multiplex movie theater there. It's a family movie, marketed for kids, about a girl who deals with her negative emotions by drawing violent images in a notebook, and her brother who discovers a pond that restores broken things ... and what happens when the notebook accidentally falls into the pond. No, actually, it's about how it takes a rampage of scribbly monsters to get a widowed dad and two "m'orphan" kids to grieve properly. And also how a dad and a brother unsuccessfully try to help a troubled girl only to discover that they, not she, need help. And also how a "b-hole" of a tomboy uses aggression to try to tell the girl she likes how she feels ... and stuff.

It plays more like a horror movie than you'd expect from the pre-release marketing. You might be a little surprised by the tone of the movie, considering that it's aimed at kids. And in case you doubt that it's aimed at kids, wait for the mid-credits ad blitz about an app that turns kids' sketches into 3-D animated monsters. Which is maybe, after all, what this movie is about. I'm a past master at not spotting what a movie is about. Remember Healer? I thought it was trying at some kind of inspirational, Christian message, and it turned out to be a commercial for a line of camps for kids with cancer. But despite the mercenary aspect of this movie's apparent mission, there's definitely something in it about facing grief as a family.

It has some heartstring-pulling emotional bits, with relatable kids experiencing some tough feelings. It has thought-provoking bits, like how the brother sincerely wants to help his sister but ends up blowing up at her (because she resents being treated like she needs help) and immediately feeling ashamed. I think the actors, particularly including the hero kids, do a great job. I think the writers did a great job, writing dialogue that snaps with tension and character conflict and leaves enough unsaid that you have to figure out, at times, what the characters are trying to say. Like the line where the realtor aunt/sister says to the dad/brother whose house she's trying to sell, "I noticed something interesting about the family pictures on the wall. Something was ... Was that intentional?" I forget exactly how she said it, but I remember that there was an element of "extrapolating from incomplete information" and "hitting very close to the heart of the whole thing" in that line. It's a script that goes from hilariously funny to heartbreaking to spooky to downright disturbing in a few heartbeats, and circles back again.

The sketchy monsters are a unique visual spectacle, too. There's a tragic sensibility about them – the girl drew them in her notebook after being assured that once put there, her bad feelings could never hurt anyone; but now that her brother's magic pond has touched them, they totally can hurt people, and lowkey probably do. (We are spared the gore and death, however. One more thing uncomfortable, squirming parents can take comfort in.)

Like I said, the cast does well, though I don't know from any of them except perhaps Tony Hale, as the dad. I'd drop names to watch out for in the future if I hadn't learned that my doing so is almost a curse on young actors' future careers. So here, without further palaver, are the Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) The son tries to warn his father that he thinks his sister's drawings are coming to life. The father is like, "I don't know what you're dealing with, but when you're ready to really talk about it, I'm here." The kid's look of mixed incredulity and betrayal is priceless. (2) The kids fight off a swarm of piders – or are they eyeders? – in a battle that pretty well trashes their house. (3) The girl brings her kind-of-terrifying, drawn-on arm tentacles to life. She's a trooper in an unapologetically scary way. Honorable mention: The father realizes what his kid is trying to do with his mother's ashes, just when the kid realizes he can't do it. The result is kind of the emotional catharsis of the whole "dudes need to mourn" storyline, with acting worthy of it.

The Bad Guys 2

Last weekend, somehow, sometime, I managed to squeeze in a viewing of the DreamWorks Animation film, The Bad Guys 2, because it was either that or The Naked Gun and, well, I flipped a mental coin. I liked(ish) the first movie, and had read one or two of Aaron Blabey's kid-sized books on which this series is loosely based, and so there I was. And it was OK.

The movie features a wolf, a shark, a piranha, a tarantula and a snake who are trying to go on the straight and narrow after a career in crime, but not doing particularly well. The wolf wants to prove himself to a foxy fox, who happens to be both the governor and a crook-gone-straight herself, but these guys can't catch a break. Then they get framed for the heist of a Lucha libre championship belt and are basically blackmailed into joining a nefarious plot by an all-female criminal gang to steal, um, a space shuttle and then, um ... It's an animated movie, so I could say anything at this point and you'd have to believe me, but I don't want to say it because then there wouldn't be anything left for you to find out if you decide to watch this completely OK, not great, sometimes funny and often exciting animated adventure.

I do have a reservation about this movie before I get to the bit about scenes that made it for me. In the middle of the movie, I grew a little concerned by the sense that the storyline and character dialogue were making a persuasive case for choosing robbery and theft as a path to self-empowerment. And I guess I should mention the voice cast here, which includes Sam Rockwell, Craig Robinson (The Masked Dancer, The Office), Anthony Ramos (In the Heights), Awkwafina (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Renfield), Alex Borstein (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Family Guy), Zazie Beetz (Atlanta, Invincible), Danielle Brooks (Orange Is the New Black, The Color Purple), Natasha Lyonne (Orange Is the New Black, Poker Face) and Maria Bakalova (who played Ivana Trump in The Apprentice).

So, here are the Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) Mr. Snake realizes that his girlfriend has betrayed him ... and is completely turned on. This joke actually came around for a second try and got a laugh both times. (2) Diane, the fox, goes to visit Prof. Marmalade, the guinea pig villain from the first movie (voiced by British comic Richard Ayoade), in a scene cleverly patterned on Clarice Starling's initial encounter with Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs ... up until he challenges her to a game. (3) Snake is trapped in a space suit with piranha, who becomes hideously flatulent when nervous ... and that suggests a hilarious form of propulsion when the pair get separated from their spacecraft.

524. Penitence & Sanctification Hymn

I've been over the Seven Deadly Sins at least once before, but I was feeling a penitence/sanctification hymn coming on (the line "Amend my heart" came to mind in a flash) and it seemed like a convenient structure for the thought. Also, my thoughts were stirred by this past Sunday's Epistle lesson, Col. 3:1-11, and mental association with Matthew 15:16-20. As usual, and despite my record as a hymn-tune maven, I have no particular tune in mind, but this meter (7676 D) is lousy with choices.

Amend my heart, O Savior,
From whence comes every sin;
For all my misbehavior
Stems from misrule within.
Since You have paid to free me
When once for all You died,
Reshape me as You see me:
Both just and sanctified.

Head over heels I've tumbled,
Tripped up by selfish pride:
Now let my heart be humbled,
O Lord who meekly died!
My greedy heart refashion,
Now fixed on gain and fraud;
For You are all compassion,
My freely giving God.

Let envy not pervert me
My neighbor's good to hate,
Nor gluttony subvert me
To gorge and never sate.
From out my body banish
Foul lust, on pleasure bent,
Who when in wilds You famished
With God's word were content.

Of wrathful temper cure me,
Whose grudges never die;
With pardon reassure me,
That I the same apply.
My idle, cold devotion,
My slothful ways correct:
My footsteps set in motion,
In tireless love direct.

O Christ, lest I should harden
Against Your saving word,
Pour out Your blood-bought pardon
Till faith and love are stirred.
From sin my soul unshackle;
With favor full and free,
Rebuild the tabernacle
You set aside in me.

ART: Peter Paul Rubens, Christ's charge to Peter. Public domain.

523. Wedding Anniversary Hymn

I've been thinking a lot about the fact that my parents' (dad and stepmom's) 40th wedding anniversary is coming up in a year or so. And 40 is the number my grandparents (on my mom's side) got to, before my grandma's cancer took center stage. I've known people to pass bigger milestones. I actually interviewed a couple, once, who had been married for over 70 years. Wedding annivesaries are pretty cool, even when the number before the "-th" isn't very high. Something so delicate enduring is to be celebrated. And here is a small attempt to do that in the form of a hymn. In the Common Metre. So, lots of possibilities for tunes; I'm not attached to any of them at the moment.

Rejoice, give thanks, and praise the Lord,
So well disposed to bless,
For joining two in one accord,
In wedded faithfulness!

Through all their years of toil and care,
Shared hours whose memories shine,
Such bracing testaments they bear
As age like choicest wine:

That two were made from thenceforth one;
And giving all in love,
They show the marriage of God's Son,
His blood the cup thereof:

Two made one flesh, each giving all
To serve the other's good;
God's throne of grace their wedding hall,
Their honor servanthood.

Forgiveness is the air they breathe
And patient love their bread;
The blade of pride they meekly sheathe
And cut vainglory dead.

Let all who see their union know
The impress of Christ's love,
And shape their footsteps here below
Toward festal joys above.

ART: The Marriage Feast at Cana by Juan de Flandes (1450–1519), deeded to the public domain via Creative Commons CCO 1.0 license.

Fantastic Four: First Steps

The local movie house gave a preview screening of this movie last night, along with a sneak preview of Disney's trailer for the upcoming Avatar: Fire and Ash. Regarding the trailer, meh. I've still never seen the original Avatar and I continue to hold myself to the challenge of never seeing it in the future. There was a time, not too many years ago, when it was actually difficult to avoid seeing it because it was EVERYWHERE. But I digress.

This Fantastic 4 flick is approximately the fourth attempt to turn this team of Marvel superheroes into a blockbuster movie franchise. I say "approximately" because the first Fan4 film I know of was really made just to keep the film rights and wasn't really commercially released, and the next reboot (the one with Jessica Alba, Michael Chiklis, Chris Evans and Ioan Gruffudd) actually managed to get two movies deep in what was supposed to be a trilogy before it was quietly canceled. And nobody, but nobody, wants to talk about the most recent, tonally inappropriate, disastrous outing featuring Miles Teller, Michael B. Johnson and I'm not going to look up the other two because I frankly don't care. Though the Gruffudd-Alba foursome made some fairly decent movies that were relatively successful at the box office, I've noticed a growing consensus among fans and critics that there just hasn't been a good movie adaptation of the Fantastic 4 comics, and maybe there can never be one. Well, never say never. I think this movie was pretty darn good.

First of all, F4FS is set on an alternate earth, Earth-828, part of Marvel's cinematic multiverse (I guess), which has a 1960s-ish, retro-futuristic look – kind of like the Jetsons, or more to the point, like the original comics – in contrast to the Alba-Gruffudd era's cutting-edge modernism and the gritty expressionism of the Teller-Johnson, um, instant. Despite the dark threat looming over all life on earth, and the earth itself, it has a cheerier, more color-saturated look. It has visual character. It has exciting special-effects sequences, big sci-fi spectacle, action, thrills, property destruction on a massive scale (you actually see a whole planet, 13 percent larger than earth, go through what's essentially a gigantic rock grinder) ... but it also offers sharp dialogue, a thought-provoking storyline, relatable characters with real chemistry and touching relationships, and the rather weird experience of being able to see exactly what's going on instead of motion blur and mud, like you get in (say) Zack Snyder's type of movie, cross myself and spit on the ground. It also skips, thank God, the otherwise seemingly inevitable rehash of the superhero origin story, other than in a sort of bullet-point summary to bring the audience up to speed.

As Mr. Fantastic (Reed Richards), it stars the current face of movies right now, Pedro Pascal (Game of Thrones, The Mandalorian, The Last of Us and Gladiator II) portrayed as a ruthlessly logical scientific savant who is so heartbreakingly aware of his shortcomings as a relatable, sympathetic human being that he goes full circle and becomes relatable and sympathetic. There's Vanessa Kirby of The Crown and Pieces of a Woman as the Invisible Woman (Sue Storm), his wife, who is already pregnant with their first child as the story begins, and whose fierce protectiveness of their child brings out both her immense strength (my goodness) and her vulnerability. Ebon Moss-Bachrach, a guy I've seen in other things but whose face never sticks in my memory, gets the motion-capture CGI treatment as The Thing (Ben Grimm), a lifelong friend of Reed's who has become as good as family, and whose ability to emote (or grow a beard) isn't much hampered by his transformation into an anthropomorphic boulder. Finally, in the role of the Human Torch (Johnny Storm), there's an up and coming young heartthrob as usual – in this case, Joseph Quinn, late of Gladiator II and Warfare – as less of a womanizing hotshot than as played by Chris Evans and more of a tragically eligible bachelor (he finally meets a girl who interests him and she's, like, the Silver Surfer) who's always proving himself to be smarter than he looks. But yeah, still good for comic relief.

Also in the flick are Sarah Niles (Ted Lasso), Paul Walter Hauser (Cobra Kai), Mark Gatiss (Sherlock), Julia Garner (Ozark), Ralph Ineson (Nosferatu, The Office) and the voice of Matthew Wood ("General Grievous" in the Star Wars franchise) as HERBIE the robot. It features gorgeous, emotionally stirring music by Michael Giacchino (The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Star Trek 2009, Up, etc.) And its director, former child actor Matt Shakman (Just the Ten of Us), also directed MCU's WandaVision.

So, before I forget to drop a bit of synopsis in this review, here's the idea of this movie. The F4 are already established superheroes when the tale begins, a family unit entrusted with a glitzy skyscraper, lots of technology (such as a reusable rocket that can pair up with an orbiting faster-than-light drive), and the responsibility of protecting the world. So, it falls on them to answer back when a shapely alien on a silver surfboard drops in from outer space to announce that the earth has been marked for destruction by a devourer-of-worlds named Galactus. They stand no chance of stopping him, but they try to reason with him. The only offer he's willing to make, in exchange for sparing Earth-828, is for Sue and Reed to give up their not-quite-born-yet son, Franklin, who is apparently the only being of sufficiently godlike powers to take Galactus' place in a personal hell of world-devouring, eternal hunger.

"Hard no" is the obvious answer, from the Fan-4's point of view, but not everyone on earth sees it that way. At first, the planet kind of turns against them. But then Sue makes a really terrific speech, and folks pull together again on a plan to stop Galactus from devouring Earth. But as the saying goes, no plan ever survives contact with the enemy, and a lot more stuff happens but at the risk of spoiling the ending, the Richards-Storm-Grimm family will be back again, at least for an upcoming Avengers movie – or so the card at the top of the end credits claims. Who knows? Marvel has promised many things that it didn't deliver. But if the promised Avengers flick never materializes, I don't think it will be due to this movie. It's too good and, I trust, the viewing public will recognize it and reward it as such.

Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) Franklin Richards becomes the first human being born in faster-than-light space flight. My, what a thrilling scene, with so many moving parts and emotional beats that all hit their target! (2) The Silver Surfer interrupts whatever Johnny Storm is doing as he yells, "Tell Franklin his Uncle Johnny loves him!" (3) The look Ben Grimm gives Sue Storm before he says, "You're pregnant, aren't you?" For a heap of rocks, that dude has an expressive face.