a hiker, a Slayer, a boxer, and a spy...

...all walk into a bar

The Man Who Walked Through Time, by Colin Fletcher. I got this as a Christmas present from what I can only describe as an ornery old grandpa who works on the second floor of the warehouse in assembly. In other words, a pretty cool guy. He apparently read it many years ago, and was enthralled; I'm not sure I was enthralled, per se, but it was certainly very good. It's basically a journalistic account of the author's walk through the entire length of the Grand Canyon; I read it as a convergent evolution, as it were, to the yoga texts I read. That is, the author didn't seem inclined towards the latter in an overt way at all, but he was saying and, even more interestingly, demonstrating the same things. So, two main thoughts - this kind of writing is the kind that can change how one looks at the world, and so, is worth reading. Secondly, and almost unimportantly, people should be reading this, real as real, experiential kind of work, rather than pop culture-coated wannabe variants of the same, like The Celestine Prophecy and The Peaceful Warrior. Those latter bits have their good points, but ain't got nothing on this hiking journal from the late sixties.
--from the author, but from a different book of his: "God is light, we are told, and Hell is outer darkness. But look at a desert mountain stripped bare by the sun, and you learn only geography. Watch darkness claim it, and for a moment you may grasp why God had to create Satan--or man to create both. "

Fray, by Joss Whedon. Thanks Abby, good read! Buffy, but in a science fiction setting, and with the Slayer ten times closer to the kind of character I always argued she should be. I thought the art was nice, the writing pleasantly Whedon, and the twists were kindly twisty. The only thing I was really disappointed with was that there wasn't really room within Fray to expand the setting, but of course by nature of the story the aspects of the setting that relate to the Slayer keep it somewhat cloistered, I suppose. Ah well. It would still make an okay movie (and the art for Fray herself was modeled upon Natalie Portman...eh? eh?).

Rocky Balboa, with Sylvester Stallone, Geraldine Hughes, and Milo Ventimiglia. If anyone who goes to see this is not immediately inspired to workout after seeing it, I will look very suspiciously at them. Yes, it was formulaic. Yes, there was a children's book moral around any corner. But since I went into it expecting nothing less than such, I found those aspects ok. Heartstrings are tugged (though that's a gruesome image, in reflection), feelings are inspired, and skulls are bashed. All 'good things.' Maybe I would've gotten more out of it had I actually seen another Rocky movie, but, all told, I think I was fine without such. Now I just need to remember the theme music every time I go to workout.

The Good Shepherd, with a whole slew of people, though that didn't save it. No, a good shepherd is an Aussie. Like, when Mattie adeptly took down the goat that had headbutted her, and rounded up the entire herd entirely on instinct - that's a good shepherd. But anyway, in the end we decided this film was like a framework, or a scaffolding, for a story that it never quite built. I struggled to find Damon's main character as superbly skilled (in, say, a Bene Gesserit manner) in self-control and self, but could only see him as something of a slight sociopath with a vaguely interesting, laid-out background for being such. On one side it's kind of a quality film, and on another side to me it's mostly just smug and contrived, and mostly plotless, but not really a character study, either (for Damon's character or the CIA). I suppose if I looked at the whole thing as a tangent from Camus' The Stranger and that kind of sociopathic existentialism it might be more interesting, in a similar if similarly unpleasant manner.

-an interesting travel article on Nepal