Sunday Sundries, 168

1. AOTW: Another winner at the health club! Finished with my workout (such as it is), I come into the locker room. Near my locker is a long bench, designed to be shared by the others with lockers in the area. Some guy has spread his gym bag and toiletries along about half of it. Okay. I strip (I know: who wants to imagine that?!!?), head to the shower, return: The bag et al. are still there. So ... I work around it. Then, just before I finish dressing, here comes the AOTW; he sees me there, sitting on the bench, pulling on my boots; he sighs with deep umbrage and impatience until I finish (about 10 seconds later). AOTW!

2. This week, Joyce and I finished streaming the first season of Line of Duty, a British cop show. Talk about intense. (I've become such a wuss that I could watch only about fifteen minutes at a time.) We'll start the second season one of these days ... after I grow up?

3. We've also begun streaming the final season of Longmire (as I mentioned last week) and Broadchurch, with David Tennant as a troubled detective (is there any other kind these days?). A strange, strange 1st episode in the latter.

4. I finished two books this week.

     - The first was the penultimate novel in Sue Grafton's alphabetical series about P. I. Kinsey Millhone--Y Is for Yesterday. It's a long book (and it is one I read in 10-page segments in bed--along with about a half-dozen others each night). It's not my favorite of the series. It involves an incident from about a decade earlier--conflict among teens--the making of a "sex tape" (yes, tape: we're in the late 70s for that part of it)--some consequent violence. A secondary plot involves a Bad Guy from a previous book, a guy who reappears in order to kill Kinsey and get even with some others, if he can.

Well, it goes on and on and on, and the motives for people didn't seem all that interesting to me. Also, because the narration is first person, readers know that Kinsey is going to, you know, make it. (Though there are devices, I well know, that a writer can use to deal with that. We'll see what happens in Z Is for ...?)

I've not read them all. The first I read was G Is for Gumshoe, and I've generally enjoyed them all (I've read from G on). When it's all over, I'll probably go back and read A-F. We'll see. I like, by the way, how Grafton (whom Joyce met on some sort of panel years ago--signed a bunch of books for us!) keeps the stories in sequence--we haven't reached 1990 in the novels, and that lets her keep her character fresh--and not have to come up with weird ways to get her into new decades--the problem that Robert B. Parker faced with Spenser (a Korean War vet in the early books), that Michael Connelly faces with Harry Bosch (a Vietnam War vet).

     - The second was The Keep (2006) a really fine novel by Jennifer Egan, whose novels I've begun reading in the order that she wrote them. (This is the 3rd I've read. Previously: The Invisible Circus, 1995; Look at Me, 2001).

There are a few narrative threads to follow: Thread 1 is a story about a guy who goes to work for his cousin in a mountainous eastern European region (no one's even really too sure what country!), a place where the cousin has bought an old castle that he is planning to convert to a resort. Near the castle is its keep--a tower--the place where, centuries ago, castle-dwellers would hole up when they were under siege. Okay, some weird stuff is going on there, including the last surviving member of the original family that owned the castle for centuries, a woman who has some Rapunzel aspects about her--but who also ... ah, read it.

Thread 2: We're in a prison where a guy is taking a writing class from a teacher (Holly)--there's a mutual attraction. Pretty soon we figure out the connection between the castle story and the class story.

Thread 3: Near the end, we find out who had told the castle story--and why--and when.

And I was dazzled, I'll tell you. In one paragraph near the end, the narration suddenly shifts to first person, and you realize who's been talking ... and it's a surprise.

Loved this book. Admired it. Recommend it!


5. Last night (Saturday) Joyce and I drove over to Solon to see Lady Bird, a film I first avoided because (not having read anything about it), I assumed it was a bio-pic about Lardy Bird Johnson. Which did not interest me. But ... we saw the filmmaker on The Daily Show last week (Greta Gerwig--who both wrote and directed), and she was amiable, and the clips she showed were funny. Also, Joyce and I had both read some good things about it from various FB friends. So ... off we went ... (Link to film trailer.)

Okay, it's a story about a young woman--a senior in a Catholic high school in Sacramento (2002?); she's debating about where to go to college (the debate is principally with her mom--and there is, to say the least, tension between them). Dad (played so well by playwright/actor Tracy Letts) has lost his job, is depressed, but sides with the young woman to an extent I found a little troublesome, to tell truth.

Okay 2: I am not a mother; I have not had a daughter; I did not have sisters. So ... I cannot speak about the mother-daughter relationship all that much because, well, I don't really know what I'm talking about, do I?

But now, let's say that I was surprised by the film because it never surprised me. Predictable. Cliche after cliche. And--to me--finally ... boring. There was a silly scene about a football coach trying to direct a school production of The Tempest--but I found that more fitting for an SNL skit than for a key scene in what purports to be a Serious/Important Film.

I was very disappointed in it--perhaps expectations too high?


6. A Final Word: A word I liked this week from one of my various online word-of-the-day providers:

     - from wordsmith.org--I'd never heard this used as a verb ... love it! I'm a-gonna Newgate you, Dude!

Newgate

MEANING:

verb tr.: To imprison.

noun: A prison or a prison-like place or situation.

ETYMOLOGY:

After Newgate, an infamous prison in London, in use since the 13th century, rebuilt many times, and torn down in 1902. The prison is so-named because originally it was located on the site of Newgate (a gate in the Roman London Wall). Earliest documented use: 1592.

NOTES:

Some notable guests of the Newgate prison and their serious crimes:

* William Penn, the founder of the state of Pennsylvania, for criticism of religion. While in prison, given paper to write a retraction, he instead wrote his treatise No Cross, No Crown

* Daniel Defoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe for his satirical pamphlet about religion The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters

* John Walter, the founder of The Times for libel on the Duke of York

The prison also had people come in for minor crimes, such as murder. For example, Ben Jonson, playwright and poet, got in for killing a man in a duel, but was released after reciting a Bible verse.

Newgate was a private prison, so inmates had to pay for everything: room, board, getting shackled and getting unshackled, and so on. Often, they were double-billed, but that may have been due to computer errors. Software was not as reliable in the 13th century.

Because running prisons for profit is such a humane thing to do, we have private prisons, even in the 21st century. Check out this report of anundercover investigation of a private prison.

USAGE:

“One fair contunding* of that whelp .. would be reward enough for being Newgated by the Speaker.”

Alan S. Bell (ed.); Lord Cockburn: Selected Letters; Birlinn; 2005.

* contund: to bruise by beating