Saturday Night

This past Sunday night, I sat alone in a small movie theater and watched this movie, depicting the 90 chaotic minutes leading up to the first broadcast of Saturday Night Live. It's directed and co-written by Jason Reitman, the director of Juno, Up in the Air and Thank You for Smoking. His co-writer, Gil Kenan, also worked with him on Ghostbusters: Afterlife. Its cast features Gabriel LaBelle of The Fabelmans as SNL creator Lorne Michaels; Cory Michael Smith, whom I recall playing the Riddler in Gotham, as Chevy Chase; Dylan O'Brien of Teen Wolf fame as Dan Aykroyd; Ella Hunt of Anna and the Apocalypse as Gilda Radner; Rachel Sennott of TV's The Idol as Michaels' sometime wife and writer Rosie Shuster; Lamorne Morris of TV's Fargo as Garrett Morris; soap opera maven Kim Matula as Jane Curtin; Finn Wolfhard of Stranger Things as a page; Nicholas Braun of Succession in a dual role as Jim Henson and Andy Kaufman; Willem Dafoe as the NBC talent executive who held the power to make or break SNL up to the moment it went on air; Matthew Rhys of the Perry Mason reboot in a very unflattering portrayal of George Carlin; J.K. Simmons in an even more unflattering portrayal of Milton Berle; Robert Wuhl as the show's director; Catherine Curtin of Orange Is the New Black as a network censor; Paul Rust of I Love You, Beth Cooper as Paul Shaffer; Brad Garrett in a throw-away role as a bad night club comedian; and lots more people in roles that might make their careers.

It's a tour de force of the kind of suspense you can't really take seriously, if you take time to think about it, because we all know that SNL went on the air and has been on the air for almost 50 years. But the movie doesn't give you much time to think about it. It's a chaotic look behind the scenes at an everything-that-can-go-wrong-does moment, focusing mainly on Michaels as he (seemingly calmly) puts out one small fire after another without ever, until the crucial moment, appearing to be in control of the general conflagration. It puts the unknown 20-somethings who became instant stars on SNL into context, without sugar-coating the quirks that made them difficult to work with. It delivers spot-on impersonations of young Billy Crystal, Gilda Radner, Andy Kaufman and more. It sometimes made my flesh crawl (cue Uncle Milty). It frequently made me laugh. There's some hard drug use in it. There's some great music in it. And there are a lot of people in it whose heads you want to knock together, many of them on the crew side of the production. It doesn't break down into a three-act structure; it just flows and evolves, building up to a tense moment followed by just the first on-air sketch of SNL. Whatever it is, and however you feel about it, it just might be a perfectly executed piece of film.

Let's head straight into Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) The Dafoe character's unexpected pep talk to encourage Michaels, early in the movie. He doesn't mean it; by the end of the movie he's singing an entirely different tune. This was a big surprise but there was also an underlying layer of menace in it, lingering in the back of your mind when, later, another producer belts Michaels across the chops with the news that the network wanted SNL to fail. (2) Michaels' answer, when he finally spits it out, to the question of what his show is. (3) Andy Kaufman's Mighty Mouse gag. Always wonderful to see, and his impersonator in this movie nails the character, dead center.

Robbie's 8-, 9- and 10-Cube Tutorial

My collection has grown a bit since I last showed it off. In addition to 3-D puzzles of different shapes, or that turn along different axes, I've also sized up to the 8x8x8, 9x9x9 and 10x10x10 cube – leaving only the 11x11x11 before I reach the limit of mass-produced Rubik's Cube-type puzzles that are sanctioned for official competition, and for which scrambles are provided by the online puzzle scrambler that I consult. I'm not so much concerned about the official competition bit; as I've said many times, I'm no speed cuber. But I do like the help of a scrambler to set up a random state of each puzzle for me to solve.

This isn't going to be as much of a tutorial as the previous ones in this series, for the 2- through 7-cubes. There are no new parity errors to work your way through; just lots of cases of edge, OLL and PLL parity, for which the solutions are the same algorithms as ever, only applied to deeper and/or wider slices of the cube. The last time I solved the 10-cube, for example, I had one case each of edge parity that affected single, double and triple layers. If you've gotten down those parity algorithms and have the flexibility to apply them in a variety of situations, and if you've fully absorbed the strategy for solving last two centers and last two edges on any cube sized 5x5x5 and up, and if you know your method for solving a 3x3x3 cube, you're golden.

I'll just use this space to alert you to the very few, relatively minor ways in which solving an 8-cube and up is harder than 7-cube on down. First and foremost, moving the layers is more difficult. They're tiny. They catch on each other and lock up, unless they're perfectly aligned. A few minutes ago (while setting up for the photo above, in fact), I dropped my 10 cube and for a hot minute, I wasn't sure it was ever going to work again, there were so many pieces pushed out of alignment and locked up amongst each other. Then I pushed something just the right way and everything snapped back into place again, thank God.

Second, scrambling the cube takes a lot more steps, and if you're striving toward competition, that exposes you to a lot more chances of missing a step, or losing your place in the scramble, and not arriving at the state depicted at the end of the scramble ... which would be bad, in the context of competition, but doesn't really matter if you're just puzzling for fun. Still, it's a longer-lasting chore and any lapse of concentration can lead to that frustrating moment where you find yourself asking, "Where was I in this list of steps?"

Third, while solving the centers and edges is the same job as ever (from 4- or 5-cube on up), it's a helluva lot more work, so you'd better enjoy the process before you invest in the cube. The puzzle isn't any harder, and it's actually kind of relaxing if you ask me, when you know exactly what it's going to take to solve each side and each edge. But it will take longer, for sure. And when you add this on top of issue no. 1 – I blush to admit how many times I found myself swearing at these larger cubes, when they wouldn't let me make the turns I wanted – let's just say, enjoyment of a toy like this will be proportional to the Sitzfleisch you possess. Which is to say, this is a pursuit best enjoyed by highly focused, task-orient(at)ed people; not, I should think, for the amusement of someone with ADHD.

The 8x8x8 version of Rubik's Cube is shown above in its solved state in the front row of toys ahead of the smaller-scale cubes. Known as V-Cube 8, its invention is credited to Panagiotis Verdes in 2007, but it's made by a number of different manufacturers and I guess there might be smoother-moving versions than the budget cube I bought. Verdes Innovations makes the V-Cube 8 with rounded sides; Chinese-made versions have flat sides, like the copy I own. Like the 4-, 6- and 10-cube, it has no fixed centers, so it's on you, as the puzzle solver, to assemble the 6x6 centers in the correct order. There are 296 pieces, including 216 single-color center pieces, 72 two-color edge pieces and the usual eight three-color corner cubies. The number of possible permutations of these pieces has been calculated at 3.52x10^217. You understand that that's a 218-digit number, right? Nevertheless, the unofficial speed record for solving the 8-cube, at this writing, is alleged to be 3 minutes, 19.87 seconds.

The 9x9x9 or V-Cube 9, like the 3-, 5- and 7-cubes, does have a fixed center on each side, plus 288 center pieces that can move anywhere and that you have to assemble into 7-by-7 centers; 84 edge pieces and, of course, eight corners. There are about 1.42x10^277 possible ways to scramble it. I'm told it's been solved in as little as 6 minutes 58.33 seconds.

About the 10x10x10 or V-Cube 10, I can't tell you much. Despite the center pieces getting smaller in cubes 8 and up, the overall sizes of the cubes have also grown to the point where this massive toy is actually tricky to hold in the hands, and at times you have to think about how you're going to make the next move. I don't have any data about record solves or possible permutations, I'm afraid. But the latter statistic is already way beyond the number of particles in the observable universe, going back a few cubes, so there's little doubt that that number, for the 10-cube, is just stupidly big, on a scale that has no meaning to the human mind. And probably, there's somebody in China or Korea who knows how to solve a well-scrambled 10 in, like, 10 minutes or less. Believe it or not, I've solved it (and the 9-cube as well), as recently as yesterday. But I've reached the point where "scrambling all my cubes and solving them" is no longer something I can do within the duration of a Hallmark Channel movie.

The 9- and 10-cubes are unsolved in the picture above. It so happens that I scrambled all nine cubes, from 2x2x2 up, last night and solved 2 through 7 while watching YouTube videos before bedtime. I had solved the 8-cube's centers too, leaving the rest of the puzzle for me to finish over lunchtime today. I'm saving the 9- and 10-cubes for tonight after work. I just haven't had the time yet and I didn't feature spending the time solving them to shoot pictures of a process I've shown in my previous tutorials, give or take an extra few pieces per row of center facets or edge pieces. Like I said, same puzzle, same solution, only bigger and requiring more time and work; not actually any harder, except in the three ways noted above.

What is the effect of all this leveling-up? I can only speak for myself. I'm still engaged in the puzzles. I'm a little frustrated with the amount of effort it takes – not the steps of solving the puzzle as such, but struggling with layers that catch on each other and lock up. I might have been happier if I had invested in a "speed cuber" grade product instead of the cheapo cubes I got. But the fun of puzzling is still there, and with each center solved, each edge, each parity case sorted, each step taken toward the final solution, that endorphin payoff keeps me hooked. I was talking, a few installments back, about the "comfort cube" needle on my dashboard edging from the 4-cube to the 5-cube. Honestly, today, I'd say my "comfort cube" is somewhere between the 6 and the 7 – in that sweet spot between not too easy and not too hard – and I think that needle will continue to move, despite these minor annoyances.

The Wild Robot

I have a copy of the book by Peter Brown on which this DreamWorks animated feature is based, and I'm sorry to say, I haven't read it yet. But I went to see the movie anyway, about a week ago, and I love it. It's really just another example of the excellent, creative work Dreamworks Animation can do. A movie that shows you things you didn't expect to see, but better and more memorable and emotionally gripping things, The Wild Robot tells the story of a household servant robot that wakes up after a shipwreck on the shore of a wild, wooded island populated only by various animals. Known by a string of characters that she eventually shortens to Roz, the robot gets off to a rough start, offering to accomplish tasks for the wild creatures but only scaring them away, or ticking them off, or getting picked on, etc. She eventually learns how to communicate with them, just in time to rescue a newly-hatched gosling from the total destrcution of its hest. The runt of a gosling, later known as Brightbill, imprints on Roz, meaning she's the first thing he sees and therefore becomes his mummy. So, with the reluctant aid of a fox named Fink, Roz takes on the task of preparing Brightbill for the geese's fall migration.

It's a found-family story on steroids. By degrees, the whole island – including predators and prey – becomes one big family, united first against a once-in-a-century harsh winter and then against the return of the robots to collect Roz. I don't want to spoil any more of the story except to hint that it has glorious art, terrific animation, silliness, tenderness, thrilling action, and an overall story arc that moved me deeply. Though, at the same time, I was skeptical about how a truce between meat eaters and, um, meat would work, I saw so much beauty in this story that I got a bit teary-eyed.

The voice-acting cast has some notable names in it. Playing Roz is Lupita Nyong'o, who won an Oscar for her supporting role in 12 Years a Slave. Fink is voiced by Pedro Pascal, known for his roles in Game of Thrones, The Mandalorian, The Last of Us and Wonder Woman 1984. Kit Connor, as Brightbill, stars in the TV series based on the Heartstopper books. Catherine O'Hara, Bill Nighy, Stephanie Hsu, Mark Hamill and Ving Rames also contributed their voice talents. You'll know them when you hear them.

Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) The momma opossum (O'Hara) tells Roz the unvarnished truth about motherhood in a speech hilariously short on sugar coating, during which she mentions having seven (horrible scream), I mean six kids. The possum family is hysterical all around, though it's funny how the baby possums are still babies after enough time has passed for Brightbill to grow up. (2) Caught in a storm, the goose migration seeks shelter in a gigantic, robot-managed greenhouse. Oops. The sacrifice it will take to get out of there will pierce you to the heart. (3) The animals fight back against a robot apocalypse – and I really have to include in this sequence the bit where Brightbill rescues Roz even after it seems she must be gone forever. Gripping, heart-touching, beautiful stuff.

The Fairy Swarm

The Fairy Swarm
by Suzanne Selfors
Recommended Ages: 10+

In this sixth and last book of the Imaginary Veterinary series, Ben and Pearl's adventures as apprentices to Dr. Emerald Woo come to a thrilling and satisfying, if regrettable, conclusion. I mean, who really wanted this series to end?

The tiny, economically depressed town of Buttonville is visited with a swarm of what the locals believe to be killer bees. But actually, they're sugar-crazed fairies on the loose from Dr. Woo's hospital. Meanwhile, the doc's nemesis, imaginary creature poacher Maximus Steele, is on his way, and it's time for the hospital to move again before local busybodies find out exactly what's going on. Also, someone called an exterminator. With all these signs of impending disaster, a lot rides on the creativity of tall tale teller Ben, the mischief-making expertise of Pearl and some plain sasquatch sense. But the only solution may mean an end to the two kids' all-too-brief summer of magical adventures.

Ben and Pearl are fun young heroes to follow. Their hijinks are hilarious. Their widely different personalities play off each other wonderfully. They both grow and overcome personal limits. And both of them, especially Ben, are bravely battling personal issues that will go right to the reader's heart. Their adventures with Dr. Woo and her anthropomorphic feline friend Mr. Tabby are loaded with magic, danger, puzzles and challenges. There is a healing aspect to these books, and a gentleness that I hope will rub off on many young readers – with catchy ethical concepts such as "every creature deserves veterinary care." And as always, the after-parts of the book about in teaching material that goes down easily, with creative writing prompts, what-would-you-do scenarios, and hints at where you can find the book's imaginary creatures elsewhere. I'm not just recommending these books. I'm giving them to my niece, and I hope she enjoys them at least us much as I did.

The Griffin's Riddle

The Griffin's Riddle
by Suzanne Selfors
Recommended Ages: 10+

For their own reasons, Ben and Pearl, apprentices to Imaginary Veterinary Dr. Emerald Woo, are having a bad mood day. It's frankly not a good look for them. But wait till they meet the Griffin, the giant half-eagle, half-lion who's the king of the Imaginary World. His moods actually affect the weather. And if he doesn't like them, he could keep them from going back to Buttonville forever.

Failure is not an option on this mission. Almost everybody in town, including Dr. Woo, has come down with a case of troll tonsillitis. It's extremely contagious and it makes your face swell up like, well, a troll's. Luckily, both Ben and Pearl have already had their tonsils taken out, so they're immune. That leaves only them to travel to the king's, er, palace. Them and Dr. Woo's quirky assistant, Mr. Tabby, who (you may not be surprised to learn) turns into a cat whenever he goes to the Imaginary World. His feline behavior is really unhelpful when they've got to persuade a temperamental Griffin to give them one of his feathers, which is the only cure to troll tonsillitis. Even less helpful is the nefarious Maximus Steele, an evil imaginary creatures poacher who menaces the kids during their urgent mission.

With this fifth book in the "Imaginary Veterinary" series, I'm only one book away from being completely caught up on the series; and that book is The Fairy Swarm. The fact that all six of these books were written about a decade ago puts me in a bit of a bad mood (to continue the theme), since it means it's unlikely the series will continue past the next book, and I'm really enjoying it. The hero kids have flaws and feelings that I can sympathize with. They're growing and achieving bigger things than they would expect of themselves, than most people they know would expect of them. They're fun to hang around with, and each of their adventures is loaded with magic, danger and hilarity. I'll be sorry to take leave of them. But Suzanne Selfors has other books to explore, such as a "Smells Like" trilogy featuring a dog, a bunch of "Ever After High" books including "Fairy's Got Talent, a trilogy about a dog and a guinea pig named Wedgie and Gizmo, multiple stand-alone books and a couple of upcoming "Willow's Woods" stories, due for release in 2025.

The Lonely Lake Monster

The Lonely Lake Monster
by Suzanne Selfors
Recommended Ages: 10+

In this second book of "The Imaginary Veterinary" series, city boy Ben and small-town girl Pearl, aged 10, begin their apprenticeship at Dr. Woo's Worm Hospital with a simple but icky assignment: trimming the Sasquatch's toenails. Pretty soon, Pearl gets distracted, as she does. You can't blame her, because the distraction takes the form of a lake monster, like the Loch Ness Monster except in sharper focus. She's another creature from the Imaginary World, crossed over into the Known World to seek treatment by Dr. Woo. But she isn't harmless. When the kids run down to the lake shore for a closer look, she kidnaps Ben and tries to keep him as a pet on an island in the middle of the lake.

Pearl doesn't want to lose the boy who just might prove to be her best friend. She doesn't want to lose her job. But getting Ben back from the lake monster without getting caught will require her to break all the rules laid down at the beginning of their internship. She'll have to leave the building, obviously. She'll have to take a magical being out into the Known World. And she'll have to risk revealing Dr. Woo's secrets to the nosiest busybody in town, the horrid Welcome Wagon lady who keeps pounding on the locked gate, demanding to be shown around the place. Also, the magical creature she calls upon for help is one that hates humans and, to force him to help her, she must do the thing that'll definitely make him mad. Like stealing a leprechaun's gold. Exactly like that.

This is part 2 of a series of which I've already read books 1, 3 and 4. Like the other installments, it's effervesces with laughter, magic and a compassion for all kinds of people (except, perhaps, nosy busybodies). It throws a girl with a talent for trouble together with a boy who's known to worry, hesitate and, when backed into a corner, make up whoppers. They make a great team and play off of each other wonderfully, growing as characters as a result. And the cast of zany characters inhabiting the tiny, depressed town of Buttonville only adds to the fun.

For those of you reading the books in order, the next installment will be The Rain Dragon Rescue. For me, it'll be (or rather, already was) book 5, The Griffin's Riddle. Selfors' other titles include Smells Like Dog and its two sequels, a bunch of "Ever After High" books including A Semi-Charming Kind of Life and Hero Training and several other books, including Fortune's Magic Farm and The Sweetest Spell.

A Nose for Adventure

A Nose for Adventure
by Richard Scrimger
Recommended Ages: 11+

In The Nose from Jupiter, a Canadian boy named Alan Dingwall faced loneliness, alienation, bullying and intramural sports with the help of a tiny, wisecracking alien named Norbert who, for a while, parked his spaceship in Alan's nose. A year later, Alan is a nervous flyer coming in for a landing at LaGuardia Airport, worrying that his dad (who now lives in New York) will forget to meet him at the airport. Well, he's right about that, but what's even worse is that someone immediately tries to kidnap the snotty, wheelchair-bound girl who sat next to him on the flight, and before he knows it, the two of them plus a stray dog are on a perilous adventure across Manhattan. And that makes four of them, because (as I may have forgotten to mention), Norbert is back.

It's an adventure involving scary goons, stolen goods, a charlatan, gullible rich people, public transit, a friendly street kid who seems happy all by himself, and a couple of unhappy kids – one rich, one not so much – who desperately want to feel their parents' love. And also, the always hilarious voice of Norbert, which now seems to be coming out of the nose of a dog named Sally. You can never predict what he'll say next, except that it will be funny on some level. And there are a lot of levels to this beautifully, intelligently written book.

Alan, at times, seems to be an extremely smart kid. His internal musings are vivid, colorful, keenly insightful, and emotionally compelling – not to mention loaded with historical and literary references that you'd be surprised to find occupying the mind of a 15-year-old kid from a small city in Canada who (apparently) doesn't know anything about Abraham Lincoln or George Washington. At other times, he's amazingly obtuse and unobservant, failing (for instance) to remember what a car looked like that was involved in his own kidnapping. Sometimes it's as if the author's intellect runs away with his average-kid narrator. But it's an inconsistency that you're willing to live with because it enables you to enjoy this as, again, a beautifully and intelligently written book that both touches your heart and tickles your funny bone.

This is the second book of the "Nose" trilogy, which continues with Noses Are Red. Scrimger is also the author or co-author of something like 18 other books, including The Way to Schenectady, Of Mice and Nutrcackers, Me & Death, Zomboy, Downside Up and At the Speed of Gus, as well as a companion book to this series, titled The Boy from Earth, in which Alan travels to Jupiter. The more Alan and Norbert, the better.