I would never claim that something is “The Best.” That’s way too subjective. But I did enjoy these things:
Film
First of all, Christopher Nolan is just a total badass. He’s like one of those Benihana guys with the flashing knives. He just makes it look so easy. I would like to spend a weekend with him so he can explain the ending of “Interstellar” to me. Does that top ever stop spinning? No, wait! That’s a different Nolan movie. Does Matthew McConaughey ever find Ann Hathaway in space and time?
I studied all the nuclear stuff in college, but the human aspect of the Manhattan Project is just fascinating.
When my daughter was getting her master’s in engineering at Cornell, I went to visit her. I told her that she and I should try to find Hans Bethe, who had taught at Cornell and still lived in Ithaca at the time (although he was almost 100 years old). Oppenheimer named Bethe the head of the theoretical physics department at Los Alamos during the making of the bomb.
Among many other things, I wanted to ask Bethe about the brilliant Richard Feynman, another Manhattan Project alum who, for a time, also taught at Cornell. (Oddly enough, in the “Oppenheimer” movie, Feynman receives scant attention, being shown only briefly playing his legendary bongos.)
Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” was also excellent, but it could have been shorter. We learn early on what the white men are doing to the Native women. We could have gotten by with fewer examples thereof.
Here’s where I fall into that Pretentiousness Trap by saying that the book (by David Grann) was better than the movie…but it actually was. I highly recommend it.
Books
Speaking of books, I’ve got a doubleheader for Civil War buffs. “Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South” by Elizabeth Varon tells the story of the man who was Robert E. Lee’s right-hand man at Gettysburg, but, after the war, embraced Republican politics and, while serving in several different government positions, fought to keep the Ku Klux Klan from taking over New Orleans.
Then there’s “Silent Cavalry: How Union Soldiers from Alabama Helped Sherman Burn Atlanta and Then Got Written Out of History” by Howell Raines. In it, we learn of the First Alabama Cavalry, U.S.A., a group of a couple thousand Alabama farmers and hill people (including 16 freed slaves) whom William Tecumseh Sherman used as his advance strike force on his March to the sea.
Any record of their exploits was buried under the onslaught of defeated Southerners’ espousing of the Lost Cause nonsense. It’s a thrilling read.
The most heartbreaking book I read was “Built from the Fire: The Epic Story of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, America’s Black Wall Street” by Victor Luckerson. In 1921, it was a glowing example of African American entrepreneurship, business acumen, and financial success, so, not surprisingly, a huge group of white people rioted, killing over 300 Black people and burning Greenwood to the ground. Only now, a century later, is the city of Tulsa acknowledging what happened.
Revisiting the pretentiousness, I almost always have a book with me. I like to read. And, quite honestly, I enjoy it when somebody asks me what I’m reading. I even hold out hope that the girls on my basketball team might someday read a book — any book! — just for fun. There was one exception this year. It came when I was reading a book about the magonistas, an odd collection of migrant rebels that included journalists, farm workers and miners, who, while living in the United States, somehow managed to spark the Mexican Revolution of 1910 against dictator Porfirio Diaz.
The intentionally ironic title of the book is “Bad Mexicans.” No way I’m walking around or, God forbid, getting on a bus with the ethnically diverse members of my team holding a book with the big-ass title of “Bad Mexicans” on the cover. I still recommend the book. Remember the old, old days when a guy would be looking at a Playboy magazine, but he had made a custom book cover out of a grocery bag, on which he had written “Differential Equations?” Yeah, do something like that.
TV
Someone once said that a person’s IQ is in inverse proportion to the amount of TV that they watch. If that is the case, I’m somewhere between a dolt and an imbecile.
I watched the final season of “Succession,” hoping that every single member of the Roy family would eat poisonous sushi while on an airplane that exploded in midair before then crashing into a live volcano. No such luck. They just fought over billions while enabling the election of a Trump clone. I hated it.
I enjoyed the final season of “Ted Lasso.” It was predictable, but pleasant. Same with “Only Murders in the Building.” The final season of “The Crown” was kind of cringe-y, but well made.
If you want something off the beaten path, try “Our Flag Means Death.” It’s an often-hilarious series about a wealthy landowner in the early 1700s who gives up everything to become a pirate, an avocation at which he generally sucks.
I really like it, but you might not. Here’s to a better year next year.
