Tis the season of father-son dreams

Yes, tis the season all fathers and sons look forward to: Pinewood Derby season.

Boys join Cub Scouts and Indian Guides for any number of reasons, camping, hiking, to learn something new or to spend quality one-on-one time with a parent. But highest on every boy’s list, except for camping, has to be the Pinewood Derby races. That event when a father and son (and more father than son for the younger boys) has the opportunity to turn a block of wood into an awesome, silly, or bizarre-looking race car.

Last year my son said, "Daddy, I want a Batman car."

I looked at the rectangular-shaped block of pine, scratched my head and said, "How about if I paint a Batman symbol on it?" He said okay.

This year he said, "Daddy, I want Speed Racer."

Again I looked at the rectangular block of wood, scratched my head and said, "What if I paint an "M" on the front?"

"Okay," he said "but it has to have curves, fives here and here, a steering wheel, jumpers on the bottom, and a trunk."

"A trunk?" I asked.

"Yes, right here." He proceeded to show me his Matchbox Speed Racer and the line that symbolized the car's trunk. Needless to say this car took me the longest to do in the three years I have been "helping" my sons with their cars.




The Indian Guides’ big race was last Saturday. There are few times more exciting than when your son’s car is placed at the starting gate for its first race. That car you spent countless hours cutting, sanding, and painting to make it look just right. And the other hours you spent on the internet researching techniques to give your son's car that extra little edge that will keep him from ending up in last place at which time you will have to staunch your son’s tears by explaining that it’s not if you win or lose, but how you play the game, even though your stomach tightens when that obnoxious father bellows how great his son is because he won or when the other fathers start giving you advice on what you can do better next year. (Not that this ever happened to me mind you...)

So as I was saying, there are few times as exciting as that first race, when you have no idea how well your car will do. If that fire truck in lane one is really as slow as it looks; if that low-profile car shaped like a domino that is almost nothing but wheels and weights is really as fast as it looks; if the arrow car’s unique strategy of putting the weights on top the car will pay off; or if you added too much or too little graphite to the wheels of your son’s Speed Racer car.



To give you an idea of the intensity of the race, cars are raced multiple times against each other in various lanes to ensure, god forbid, one car doesn't have an advantage over another because one lane is faster than the other. (Lane 3 was the fastest this year.)

Another way to ensure fairness, the Indian Guides have instituted an electronic finish line which lights up the winner’s lane. But don’t think this clears up any controversy about who the winner is. When one car clearly lost a heat, but its lane light didn’t go off, the loser’s father insisted the heat be run again. And in the Cub Scouts, the finish line is computerized. Good thing too. Last year,the difference between the first and third place winning car times for the Tiger Cub races was a tenth of a second. Some individual races ended up as dead heats even though the computer could calculate a difference of a hundredth of a second.

Which brings us to the end of the race. Always in any race room I’ve been in – Guide or Scout -, you’ll always hear intense discussions amongst the fathers about why this car did well, or didn’t, what’s more important - weight placement or aerodynamics, and always the dreaded advice about what you should do next year.

In the end, my son in the Indian Guides reached the quarter finals making him extremely happy. The domino car was indeed as fast as it looked, never losing a heat. And my son received two third place awards: “fastest looking” and the People’s Choice Award for the “best overall car”.



Next week: the Cub Scout races.

Book Review: City of Thieves

My favorite book so far this year. Yes, it even tops John Scalzi’s The Lost Colony which had been my favorite book this year until now. Why did it beat out Scalzi? Because Scalzi’s was the third book in a series, and City of Thieves introduced me to a whole new world and new set of characters. Now if I had to compare it to Scalzi’s Old Man’s War, the first book in that series…but I digress, this is a review about City of Thieves.

So, why did I enjoy City of Thieves so much?

Great characters. Great writing.

It reconfirmed my love of military historical fiction: put two well-written characters that play well off each other in a historical, war-time setting, and that time period comes alive better than it ever could in a history book.
There are two things I wanted to mention about Benioff’s style that put this book so high on my list.

First, his ability to bring forth moments of levity during the siege of Leningrad with all of its associated horrors still has me wondering how he did it so effectively. To show that people still joke or worry about the most inane things when the bloodiest struggle in history is raging all around them brought a sense of verisimilitude to the story. But don’t let me lead you on the incorrect assumption that this is a comedy. It’s a tragedy, as all wars are. Benioff doesn’t shy away from or gloss over the horrors of the siege or the war. It’s there, we see it, but Benioff relates it in a way that is told as though it is a story and not real. I don’t know else to explain it. There is something about Benioff’s writing that keeps us that half-inch away from what is happening, as though we are an up close observer, not a participant, even though we’re seeing it through the protagonist’s POV.

An example is the heart-wrenching story of Zoya versus the murder of a woman in The Dresden File.. Both were scenes were detailed in their description, but there was no space or filter between me and what I saw in The Dresden Files. The scene in The Dresden Files gave me a real nightmare. City of Thieves somehow gave the reader a respite, a bit of space. Like at a funeral for a distant cousin, you’re sad it happened and sad for everyone’s loss, but there is a sense of relief that you are a step removed from the grief of those closest to the departed.

The second comment on style I wanted to make was how well the sentences in City of Thieves flowed. How after a long paragraph, or short, or exchange of dialogue, I’d go wow that was really good. And then I’d have to go back and see how he did it. Part of it was Benioff’s expertise in constructing long sentences and stacking short ones.

For example:

“A few people had theories on where they could be found: high-ranking army officers had them flown in from Moscow; farmers outside the city gave them to the Germans, along with butter and fresh milk, in exchange for their lives; an old man who lived near the Narva Gate kept chickens in a rooftop coop.”

and

“It only took them a few hours. She hadn’t gotten far. She was so weak…She’d been little to begin with, and she ‘d barely eaten a thing since she’d been here. They brought her back.”

If you want to read a fun, slightly bizarre, adventure story about two soldiers during World War II who were ordered to find a dozen eggs in a starving city for a wedding cake, this is your book.

I highly recommend it.

Book Review: The Lost Army of Cambyses

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I picked up The Lost Army of Cambyses from my mother’s bookshelf. Being an aficionado of ancient history, I knew Cambyses was an ancient Persian King who died not long after he conquered Egypt. But I wondered why my mother didn’t initially offer this novel to me after she read it. She explained that it was a mystery novel set in modern times and she knew that I wasn’t a big mystery fan. (If you check my list of “Books Read” section , you’ll see most are historical fiction, historical non-fiction, science fiction, and action adventure.)

Standing in the hallway with the book in my hand, I decided to look at Chapter 1. Wouldn’t you know it, Chapter 1 started off in 523 B.C. with the lost army. I was hooked. Unfortunately, Chapter 1 was the only chapter set in that time period, but the novel kept me going with Sussman’s academic and detailed style. I say academic, because his use of grammar marks such as commas, semicolons and colons were placed so perfectly. It stood out in the way one of his characters mentioned you could tell the difference between hieroglyphic forgeries and the real thing: the forgeries were always perfect. I started to wonder if Sussman’s work had been translated. There seemed to be a simplicity to his style, yet it worked well with the novel’s setting, especially when we were in the Egyptian police officer’s perspective.

Sussman’s details created a great sense of place. From “the clutter of cement bags and paint pots” in the officers’ apartment for his fountain to the “towering wall of sand stretching right across his line of sight in a single, unbroken curve, with other higher dunes ranged behind it, like waves freeze-framed in the act of crashing down onto a beach. The outlying ranges of the Great Sand Sea.”

Sussman almost lost me when we he used his great attention to detail to dive into Tara’s emotional issues about her father and lover in chapter 3, but once I slogged through those 9 pages (out of 576), the novel really took off.

A good read.

The Sarah Connor Chronicles and a Pointless Killing.

Let me start by saying I really enjoy watching the Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. It’s one of only two shows I watch weekly. But what is up with killing off all of the characters in the Sarah Connor Chronicles? I know the season finale is next week, but what kind of finale can it be when you’ve already killed off three critical secondary characters and what I’d consider to be one of the main characters.
(A brief synopsis of the series is at the end of this post.)
Five weeks ago, John Connor’s girlfriend was killed.
Three weeks ago, Jessie, the traitorous woman who killed John’s girlfriend, was killed.
Two weeks ago, Charlie, an individual who we have not seen in months, but was an important part of John’s and Sarah’s life was killed.
And then last week, Derrick, John’s uncle, was killed.
Sarah Connor was arrested as well, but that’s no big deal. She’s escaped from jail before, but the killing of Derrick was huge. Let me be clear, what shocked me was not that he died – well, yes it did shock me – but how he was killed: quickly, in a situation totally unrealistic based on his military training and experience, and with his death serving no purpose but to remove him from the show.
He must’ve pissed off someone in real life.
Stay with me here and see how pointless his death was, especially compared to the demise of the minor characters.
John’s girlfriend was killed after having a bare-knuckle fight against Jessie the Traitor, because she figured out Jessie’s plan and wanted to protect John.
Jessie the Traitor was shot dead by her former lover, Derrick, even though John had told him to let her go. A surprise, but it made sense based on Derrick’s character.
Charlie being killed was a surprise as well, mainly because we hadn’t seen him in a long time. But he was killed protecting John in a hail of gunfire, sacrificing himself for the son he never had and it showed on his face when he made that decision.
Then Derrick was killed: the uncle who ate terminators for breakfast in the future and was integral to John’s survival in the present; the Rambo of the future, always cautious in his planning and movements and always carrying an insane amount of artillery. How does he die?
A lone terminator enters a house to kill a child. John, Sarah, Cameron, and Derrick (the four main characters) arrive on the scene and try to rescue the child. They know very little about her. But our heroes have put their lives on the line before for people we care little about, so I have no issue on why they go to the house.
John rescues the girl and Cameron takes on the terminator. Meanwhile, Sarah’s outside and Derrick is still in the house doing a sweep. He’s not running to save anyone, just doing a methodical search of the house for assailants. (Remember, this is Mr. Rambo.) So, he comes around a corner at the same time as the terminator. A look of surprise comes over his face, the terminator raises its gun, and shoots Derrick through the head. And that’s it. Main character gone. Mr. Rambo never got a shot off. The terminator goes outside, lines up John in his sights. Sarah comes out from cover blasting away to distract the terminator. Cameron comes out and throws the terminator off a cliff. We go back inside and see Derrick dead--bullet hole in the head with unstaring eyes and blood pooling underneath him. He definitely won’t be coming back.
What?!
Again, the entire scene at the house seemed very routine. Like another quick exchange of gunfire and then the heroes would be on their way. After all, it was only one terminator against the four heroes. And let me just add that with all the terminators running around in this series, terminators have gotten a whole lot less menacing. They’re not the invincible terminators of Schwarzenegger’s day.
Now, if Derek died at climatic moment in the story I’d be okay with him dying. For example, the good guys find out the girl’s mother’s company is hiding a terminator and they go to take the company and terminator down. Then the girl’s mom surprises Derrick. He realizes that she is yet another terminator and takes her on to save John, even though he knows it’s suicide.
But don’t kill Derrick with some lowly no-named terminator during a routine snatch and grab mission.
Perhaps it was the whole, anyone can die at any minute, or the injustice of war, but when someone watches a character for years, you’d hope their death would be a bit nobler or serve a higher purpose. They should have put Derrick on the pier sacrificing his life for John to redeem his mistake with Jessie, rather than Charlie (the guy we haven’t seen in months) if they were just going to kill him off anyway.
Perhaps the season’s final episode next week is also the series’ finale and that’s why everyone is dying off. Fine. But I’d kindly ask the producers, screenwriters, directors or whoever is calling the shots that when you kill off a principal character, their deaths should have a purpose, higher meaning, or be more significant than the deaths of the minor characters.
Very disappointing.

(Synopsis: In the future the machines take over the world. The champion of the humans is John Connor. The machines send a terminator back in time to kill John Connor before the big take over. John Connor sends back people and good terminators to help himself survive. Let the fun begin.)