1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 65: Mission: Impossible

Brian De Palma likes to begin with a “movie within a movie”; see, for example, Sisters, Blow Out, and Body Double. (Well, Sisters begins with a game show broadcast, but same diff.)

He’s signalling that the movie is going to be about other movies. Hitchcock movies, usually.

Indeed, this is how Mission: Impossible begins, with a spy watching other spies on a monitor as they perform a macabre deception upon another spy.

One of the performers is Emmanuelle Béart. She looks glamorously bloody and dead. Another is Tom Cruise, in a grotesque old-man disguise. If we didn’t already know this was a spy​/​gadget /​action flick, we’d think it was about vampires. Thematically, it is a vampire movie, kind of.

De Palma isn’t alluding so much to old Mission: Impossible TV episodes as to other De Palma, and, by extension, to classic cinema of the darkly comical, foreboding sort. That’s how you’re supposed to watch this.

There are six other Mission: Impossibles after this one. A seventh is forthcoming. All are Tom Cruise “vehicles.” De Palma’s, the series opener, is the oddball, the parody of the whole series. Talk about prescience.

I suppose, if you take the vampire suggestion seriously, you could interpret the whole series as a vampire story: Tom Cruise is a decent young guy who catches the vampire disease in the first movie and then must avoid transmitting it as he ages. But that’s hardly a necessary interpretation.

Most theatergoers probably went to see the helicopter in the Chunnel. That sort of thing is fine. It’s done better in the later Mission: Impossibles. I love it when Cruise climbs the Burj Khalifa in a sandstorm (movie no. 4) and when he skydives onto Paris in a lightning storm (movie no. 6). I have near-zero desire to see either of this summer’s dueling blockbusters, Oppenheimer and Barbie, but I’ll be sure not to miss Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.

I have inordinate affection for Cruise. I expect him to’ve further perfected action-movie-elder-statesmanship, just as late-career Cristiano Ronaldo refined the tap-in goal.

That’s why it’s so funny to see Cruise in 1996 shuffling about in old man’s wrinkles and a prosthetic nose and mustache in the series’s first scene. People talk about Cruise’s self-mocking mask in Vanilla Sky, but Mission: Impossible did that gag first.

A perfunctory update

Our air conditioner does seem to have died. Our furnace, too. The company that sold us our home warranty is figuring out what to do, or not do, for us.

It’s been a hot week. The temperature in the house was 89 degrees F for a long time.

Karin’s health improved. She worked the last two days.

Daniel has fallen ill with coughing and fever.

I also am ill now, with congestion and fever – and with the usual bleak thoughts about life, death, and trivia. What’s the best way to put mayonnaise in a sandwich? My fever-addled mind has been returning to this tedious question again and again.

During a semi-lucid spell, I read some chapters of The Dain Curse by Dashiell Hammett. The detective goes into a dark room. He breathes in a poisonous gas. He sees what appears to be a supernatural being hovering in a jet of colored steam. He tries to fight the supernatural being.

Happily, I never became as confused as that detective.

Samuel has been healthy, quiet, and considerate. Well done, Samuel!

Here is a photo of Daniel taken after he rocked himself to sleep on Moby the Whale.

Hop on pop

Every day, Daniel clamors for a half-dozen dozen or so readings of Dr. Seuss’s Hop on Pop in addition to the other readings that I have been trying to impose upon him.

Not only does he like to hop on his real-life pop, his taste is for frantic literature. I am partly to blame for this. Some people read slowly to their children; I tear through a book once I’ve figured out which syllables to emphasize. What with all the practicing I’m compelled to do, I eventually knit together a seamless and rapid cadence for each page.

It’s like practicing a level of Super Mario Bros. – run, run, jump! run, jump! duck! … repeat.

I imagine it’s also like rehearsing for the theatre.

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Every day, also, Daniel knocks my books off the top shelf of a particular basement bookcase. (He can reach that shelf from the stairs.)

Tonight was the last straw. I hauled all those books over to a corner of the laundry room. This made Jasper very happy. Now he can lie on that shelf, just underneath a vent.

Alas, for the second straight summer, our air conditioner is failing to cool the house.

A technician fixed last year’s leak. But he said the machine was about to die.

Has it died? We’ll find out soon.

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Samuel, too, likes to unshelve my books – especially if they belong to a set. Then he arranges them in patterns. (I discussed this once before; tonight Samuel took those same books and laid them out on the staircase, two to a step.)

In this photo he has made a grid of some black Penguin Classics and my set of Lord Peter Wimsey paperbacks.

Karin came home from work early today. She has a fever.

I report on a matter of personal taste

Samuel stayed over at his (maternal) grandpa’s house last night. Karin & I took Daniel out on the town. Or, rather, to some cornfields – specifically, to Prairie Camp, the denomination’s local church camp. It was the first time I’d attended a service there. Readers will recall that earlier in our marriage, Karin & I made a few trips to Brown City Camp – in the “thumb” of Michigan – a larger, slightly more rustic version of Prairie Camp. And of course, I’d grown up visiting the campamento in Same, near Esmeraldas.

Anyway, at Prairie Camp, we left Daniel in the nursery, and then it dawned on me that this would be the first time in years that I’d be around Youth Group Christianity. (My own church doesn’t have more than one or two teens.) The high schoolers occupied the first few rows of the packed tabernacle. They waved their arms. The music was very loud; apart from that, it was pleasantly non-bombastic. A youth pastor preached the sermon. He told a story of a youth group game gone wrong. The game resulted in high schoolers trampling hundreds of marshmallows into a church’s carpet. The youth pastor had to clean the church by himself until five in the morning. This was a prelude to his message about the Parable of the Prodigal Son. (The prodigal son makes a mess of his life.) It was a good sermon.

Nothing about Prairie Camp was very objectionable, except, perhaps, the spiritual arm-twisting at fundraising time.

But man oh man, am I glad not to have to go to youth group meetings anymore.

But this is why it’s good to have institutions like Prairie Camp, where the old and the young mingle, because otherwise I doubt the different Christian groups would mingle at all.

More groups oughta mingle. Not just old and young white Hoosier Low Protestants, but other groups, too. There oughta be a camp where all the Christians meet together.

It would be a logistical nightmare, of course. Feeding would either have to be subsidized by some Christians or else managed on a “loaves and fishes” basis.

I leave mass transit (to the cornfield) and lodging (in the cornfield) as exercises for the reader. …

P.S. J.K. Rowling addresses these two problems in Harry Potter, book 4, in her discussion of the Quidditch World Cup. Spectators camp out in tents. That seems workable. Transit is trickier. It involves something called a “portkey.” That seems a little too mystical for traveling to church camp.

R.I.P. Harry Frankfurt; July’s poem

The outstanding philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt has died. He’s one of just a few philosophers of my lifetime whom I would unreservedly recommend to the general reader.

Here are his two most important books – collections of short- and medium-length essays. “Jewel-like,” these pieces often are said to be.

• The Importance of What We Care About (which includes his most famous work, “On Bullshit”; my favorite piece in this collection is “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person”)
• Necessity, Volition, and Love (my favorite chapter of which is “Equality and Self-Respect”)

I spent a lot of time reading and discussing these books during my fifth semester of grad school.

See also this book about Frankfurt. But read the two other books first!

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This month’s poem is “The Windhover” by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

To Christ our Lord

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-

dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding

Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding

High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing

In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,

As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding

Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding

Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here

Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion

Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion

Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,

Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

The metaphor of investment

Matthew 25:24–27 (English Standard Version):

He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, “Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.” But his master answered him, “You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest.”

What is it to “invest with the bankers” so as to generate “interest”? This extension of the parable’s financial metaphor has always puzzled me.

I haven’t read any commentaries on this passage. I should. (I shall.)

What I record here is just a brainstorm, a feeble speculation.

The next parable – that of the Sheep and Goats – clears up the puzzle, as follows.

Verses 37–39:

Then the righteous will answer him, saying, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?”

Put differently (in the language of the Parable of the Talents):

Master, while you were away we didn’t do anything for you. We didn’t add to your store. We may as well have buried our wealth – that is, your wealth, entrusted to us – in the ground.

The Master replies (verse 40):

Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.

Put differently:

See these guys? My brothers? The people in your church? They’re my wealth. You served them. You improved their value. And some of them, thanks to your help, enlisted more brothers for me or enriched me in other ways. By aiding them, you helped to enrich me further.

Most of the Sheep will accept this response, but some especially hapless one might feel compelled to press the issue:

Yes, Master, I served your brothers, all right, but none of them did much for you, either. Their efforts were sterile. (Or, in some cases, they died before they could devote themselves to your service.) My investment came to nothing.

It does happen.

The Master, however, could reply:

Whether the investment paid off or not wasn’t up to you, though, was it? When a steward deposits a little money into the bank, the bank doesn’t always augment it. That’s not the steward’s fault.

By putting money into the bank, you have done a sensible and responsible thing. …

My family – the church – the bank – is generally a fruitful place for investing; as such, it is an appropriate taker for a person with but little to give.

Those entrusted with more will be able to make some riskier investments for me. Some of those investments will pay off handsomely. Then I’ll reap out of proportion to what I have sowed.

But not all of my stewards are in a position to make this sort of investment.

What my stewards must do is to invest what they’ve been given. That might just amount to feeding, clothing, welcoming, or comforting other Christians, who don’t always pay it forward but nevertheless can best be expected to do so. Because I will be helping them. Because, ultimately, I run the bank.

Parenting, round 2; “Bluebeard”

Daniel hasn’t been a great one for sitting still and being read to, but yesterday he badgered me into reading Dr. Seuss’s ABC five times in one hour. Like Samuel before him, he laughed and laughed at the page with the Zizzer-Zazzer-Zuzz.

The rest of the morning, he followed me from one piece of furniture to the next, around and around the house, committing violence against me (and against the house). That, too, reminded me of how Samuel used to behave at that age.

I had to lock Samuel away from Daniel, in the basement, for his own safety.

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Today I am watching Daniel walk down the stairs feet first (which Samuel only started doing a few weeks ago). He isn’t quite tall enough. Wherever a step doesn’t provide him a bannister to hold onto, he slides down on his bottom.

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Are you the right man for me?

Are you safe, are you my friend?

Or are you toxic for me?

Will you betray my confidence?

This is from the Cocteau Twins’ “Bluebeard” …

I post this song as a tribute to Cho Chang.

Body-text fonts, pt. 17: Robert Slimbach’s fonts: Adobe Garamond, Minion, and, especially, ITC Slimbach

We live during Robert Slimbach’s benevolent reign, or Adobe’s. It’s stale. Good as Slimbach’s Adobe Garamond and Minion have been, it’s tedious to see them still used so often.

Slimbach has created other fine typefaces for Adobe – Adobe Ten Oldstyle, Adobe Text (see Elizabeth Anderson’s Private Government), etc. – but, for whatever reason, book designers haven’t warmed to them. Arno and Warnock are good, too, but only on certain days of the week.

What I really like by Slimbach is his early, Zapf-inspired eponymous font for ITC. I first noticed it in NIV Study Bibles from the 1990s and early 2000s. It’s also in Bruce Cumings’s history, Korea’s Place in the Sun, and in the anthology Latin American Philosophy for the 21st Century; lately, it’s been shared all over the Internet in the body text of Ross McCammon’s book, Works Well with Others: An Outsider’s Guide to Shaking Hands, Shutting Up, Handling Jerks, and Other Crucial Skills in Business That No One Ever Teaches You.

(I seldom read self-help books. But I read all of this one. It’s painless, and it gives tips about how and when to write curt emails and use curse words and drink after the job and on the job, and how to tell your dining partner you’re not going to drink if you aren’t going to. And how to pronounce the names of alcoholic drinks from Scotland. It’s a very pro-drink book. The author’s dissimulations to the contrary, it’s the douchiest self-help book I’ve read. [I know, there are much worse ones.] After I finished the book, I looked up some of McCammon’s Esquire articles, and wow, that was like landing on a different planet. I shut the computer and fled the room. … By the way, I learned from At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig [Adobe Garamond] that the country that imports by far the most Scotch, or that used to, is tariff-free Paraguay; the booze is then smuggled into Argentina and Brazil.)

As for Minion itself, I like it – but not tiny, and not in lines of interminable length, which is how Oxford University Press uses it.

Wanna see Minion used well? Look at a Vintage paperback of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

I continue to read Harry Potter

I keep chipping away, one book each month, 25–50 pp. most days. I’m now reading book 5 of 7 (The Order of the Phoenix). What I like best is the satire of ambition. Children really could profit from this. Look, kid, don’t do like Guilderoy Lockhart. Don’t do like Lucius Malfoy. Or Cornelius Fudge. Or Percy Weasley. And so on. Voldemort isn’t even cool. Look what a pompous windbag he is at the end of book 4. Too many people reach adulthood not having absorbed these simple lessons.

Also, the books are so obviously Christian in spirit, it’s a mystery to me how anyone who’s read them could think the wizards – the good ones, anyway – were batting for Team Satan.

Although I have no desire to get caught up in the spinoffs, fan theories, fan fiction, etc., I did buy two “Harry Potter and philosophy” anthologies to read after I’ve finished the series. Let’s see if the philosophers get Harry Potter right or if they muck it up. I can’t say I’m looking forward to the chapters on metaphysics. How is it possible to apparate (levitate, time-travel, etc.)? How could someone be a man and a dog? How do potions work? So far, there isn’t much to go on in the texts. The really pressing question, for me, is what the Sorting Hat’s basis is for grouping people into these four character-trait clusters – whether these clusters are bogus like those of the Zodiac or whether they really exist (I suppose they could be stipulated to exist just in the world of the story, but that wouldn’t be very interesting); also, why people who belong to supposedly different trait clusters must inhabit different parts of the castle and ceaselessly compete against one another. The best justification I can come up with is based on the utility of some sort of Millian “experiment in living”; but the danger, here, is that the Slytherins will absorb or destroy the other groups no matter what. Anyway, it’s no surprise that so much has been written about the politics of Harry Potter. (The Wikipedia article I’ve just linked to doesn’t even mention the hilarious number of articles about Harry Potter in the National Review, whose writers seem obsessed with the topic.)

Europe vs. South America; a new phone for Karin; mischief

I just realized: of all the World Cup winners, Argentina has the second-fewest people; only Uruguay is smaller. Spain boasts more souls than Argentina, and so did the old West Germany – even the West Germany of the 1950s.

Contrary to popular belief, Europe vs. South America isn’t mainly a contest of old vs. new, rich vs. poor, sophisticated vs. naïve, scientific vs. intuitive, central vs. peripheral, networked vs. disconnected, etc. (and not all of those dichotomies correctly describe the two regions, anyway). No, it’s mainly just bigger countries vs. littler ones.

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Daniel has been throwing things into the toilet. He clogged it up for a couple of weeks. We had to hire a plumber.

Last week, he threw Karin’s phone into the toilet. Karin bought a new phone.

Tonight, Karin and the children have been taking selfies and filtering them through TikTok. I’ve never heard Samuel laugh so hard for so long.

One more. No, it isn’t Daniel’s face on Samuel’s t-shirt; the filter gave a new face to Thomas the Tank Engine.

I had no idea a phone could do this sort of thing.