This is one of those books that seem to present a main character as an idealized version of the author, thus allowing the author to offer the reader all sorts of opinions and observations on a platter and always be right. Heinlein did this in Stranger in a Strange Land, thus making it, for me, at least, a silly and embarrassing book to read, adult words telling a small child's simplistic and self-aggrandizing story.

Hamilton doesn't take himself so seriously and the book hops from event to event, whisking the reader through an amusing tour of action, sex, drinking, politics, Cold War paraonia, philosophy, driving and various manly activities involving hunting, camping, snow, desert, axes, hypothermia, knives, brawls and whatever else I've forgotten.

This is definitely a case of the journey being more substantial than the destination. The build up never stops and so the ending is almost guaranteed too be anti-climactic, which it is. But it's a short, breezy read and a lot more amusing and less mawkish than Heinlein.

The Lucky Dragon reference is here: 2024 November 25 • Monday

An unusual recent development in the soundtrack world has been this Japanese a capella group calledd Bukimisha. They've released several recordings of voice-only interpretations of soundtrack music and they're quite impressive.

The 832nd Soundtrack of the Week is the Bukimisha treatment of Akira Ifukube's music for both Godzilla and Godzilla vs. Rodan.

First up is the famous Godzilla march and Bukimisha adds some lyrics to it, replacing the incessant three-note motif with the singing of "Gojira".

They take advantage of other opportunities to use "Gojira" as their sung notes, such as in "Fury of Godzilla" and "Attack Godzilla!". These are some of Ifukube's best-known cues and hearing it in this very different way is not only rewarding to the listener but a tribute to how powerful Ifukube's writing was.

They're also quite good at the dreamy side of Ifukube ("Eiko-maru Ship Music") as well as the suspensful "Uneasiness on Odo Island"), the weird ("Horror in the Water Tank", which will extend the range of what you think a capella can do) and the moving ("The Large Underground Cave").

As unusual as this endeavor is, what's most striking about it is how good it is. Strange, yes, but also essential.

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2024 November 20 • Wednesday

Godzilla's latest comic-book appearance is one of the strangest. Godzilla in Hell wasn't actually that weird Monsterpiece Theatre: Godzilla vs. Gatsby is quite bizarre and agreeably whimsical.

Probably the best part is the mutation of the novel's original front cover.

That's really good.

The comic then starts as a surprisingly decent adaptation of the book for the comics medium. And then of course Godzilla shows up and just starts wrecking everything.

An amusing touch is that Gatsby uses his enormous wealth to assemble an anti-Godzilla operation. And it makes perfect sense to call it G-Force!

The art is especially good but when the action opens up to include Thomas Edison, Sherlock Holmes, Jules Verne and Dracula, the story loses too much in this diffusion. Sherlock Holmes doesn't have a Holmesian voice and is unpersuasive. Dracula has an extremelty brief cameo and a cybernetic Jules Verne shows up just so we can see a cyborg Jules Verne.

Perhaps these characters will have better reasons for inclusion in future issues. I'll definitely find out!

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2024 November 18 • Monday

Continuing our celebration of Godzilla, the 831st Soundtrack of the Week is Kan Sawada's music for the Godzilla Singular Point anime.

It starts and ends with a lovely waltz called "Alapu Upala" with vocals by Annette Philip. There's also a choir version.

The suspenseful and somewhat John Barryish "Ashihara", which features an instrument that sounds like a cymbalom/harpsichord hybrid (and that you hear elsewhere as well), is a highlight.

"Guess" is a gentle but insistent groove with a dreamy piano line, "I'm Pelops II!" is goofy comedy music and "Otaki's Sortie" a rousing march.

On the second of the four sides is a terrific recasting of Akira Ifukube's original Godzilla march, first on solo cello and then with full orchestra, but more smooth an restrained than big and brassy.

The third side has more comic relief cues as well as some stirring and soaring adventure music that would be right at home in a Steven Spielberg movie.

Side four brings back more of Ifukube's original score, this time with Godzilla's signature roar for company as well as a choir version with Japanese lyrics!

It's excellent music and makes me want to watch the anime.

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2024 November 11 • Monday

The 830th Soundtrack of the Week is video game music: Michiharu Hasutani and Junko Yokoyama's score for Super Godzilla, a Super Nintendo game that came out in 1993.

The story of the game picks up from where Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah, one of my favorite movies, leaves off.

Hasutani and Yokoyama do a great job creating effective and stirring cues in a very low-bit audio format. Some of reminded me of old Doctor Who music.

There's also the novelty of hearing some of Akira Ifukube's classic Godzilla cues, which are very heavy, transferred into this tiny video game sound. It's actually kind of wonderful and is a tribute to how fundamentally powerful the music is.

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2024 November 08 Friday

Godzilla has a lot of other stories going on in comic books. I've ignored most of them. But they got me with a mini-series called Godzilla in Hell.

Godzilla actually does go to hell in this story but not much really happens.

Each issue is written and drawn by different people so there isn't much continuity. Even the location itself is very different from issue to issue.

Godzilla meets other monsters or more anomalous threats and defeats them. But it turns out, in classic after-schoool special fashion, that Godzilla's real enemy was himself. And having acheived a Buddhist level of self-control and self-knowledge, Godzilla really wins.

This is all fine but it wasn't particularly hellish. Of course Godzilla would present a challenge to, say, Virgil, but I was hoping for more demons, more circles, etc.

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2024 November 06 • Wednesday

Shigeru Kayama, the author of the first drafts of the first two Godzilla movies, also wrote two novellas based on his screenplays: Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again. Kayama was a prolific and popular writer whose work was especially successful with younger readers. He is much published and reprinted and apparently still very well known in Japan.

Since Godzilla is so internationally famous and popular, as well as being the longest running film franchise in history, it’s odd that an English translation of these two foundational works has taken so long to appear. But here they are at last, just in time for Godzilla’s 70th birthday, courtesy of Jeffrey Angles, a professor of Japanese at Western Michigan University.

The stories themselves weren’t especially thrilling to read, both because of the distance Japanese language has to travel to arrive in English and because they stick closely enough to the movies to make you miss the amazing photography and music while following a trail you’re already familiar with.

There are some interesting deviations, such as the Tokyo Godzilla Society, presumably a Godzilla-worshiping cult that pops up in the first novella. This idea has potential and could have been explored in its own book, but doesn’t actually amount to much here.

True Godzilla fans already own this book. It does have value beyond completism, though. Angles’s Afterword is very informative in its exploration of Godzillas’s origins and both popular and critical reception. I was especially intrigued to learn that the first Godzilla screenplay had a radio adaptation that was broadcast before the film’s premiere.

The first line is “‘I was totally terrified when the sea down there in Okinawa got so rough’”.

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2024 November 04 • Monday

Yesterday was Godzilla Day and 2024 is Godzilla's 70th birthday! (Remember, whether you're counting years or number of movies, Godzilla) is the longest running film franchise in history, not James Bond.)

So obviously the 829th Soundtrack of the Week has to be for a Godzilla movie. Let's make it for last year's Godzilla Minus One, which was a very good movie and the first Godzilla movie to receive an Academy Award! The music is by Naoki Sato.

The first three tracks are eerie, atmospheric and unsettling and live up to their titles: "Fear", "Portent" and "Confusion". While there are lots of long tones and ambient stretches, these cues are aggressive in creating moods of tension and unease.

One of the great moments in the film itself is when Sato drops Akira Ifukube's classic Godzilla theme. In this rendition it sounds huge and tremendous and made some of us cheer in the theatre. The "Godzilla Suite I" here sounds a bit slower but also lighter, more metallic. You can really appreciate the cymbal work.

"Divine" brings in a choir to broadcast the godlike nature of Godzilla while the next several cues—"Elegy", "Mission", "Hope", "Honor" and "Pride"—provide a solid foundation for the very human drama playing out in the ruins of post-war Tokyo.

The mood sinks for "Pain" and then lifts again for the bright and nimble "Resolution" only for us to get delightfully clobbered by Ifukube's genius again in "Godzilla Suite II".

More intense textures and long tones take the audience through "Unscathed" and "Last" before arriving at the serene and pastoral "Pray".

Finally we get more robust readings of Ifukube's classic score for "Godzilla Suite III", which had us all leaving the theatre excited for the next Godzilla movie. Which, bizarrely, is not here, despite its being Godzilla's 70th anniversary. What the hell, Toho? You put out a movie for the 69th anniversary and it was hugely successful, both commercially and critically, and you had no plans for 70?

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2024 November 01 • Friday

Shocktober is over but the Halloween spirit is not so easily shaken off. A great way to celebrate Day of the Dead is with the one-two punch of this new single from Agent Jay at Old Neighborhood music. The A side is a cover of Donovan's classic "Season of the Witch" while the B side is the original instrumental "Two Ghosts".

The Donovan song is already a terrific, moody number, and it gets a great reading by guest vocalist Claire Liparulo, who brings urgency and power to the lyrics. Agent Jay contributes some very impressive guitar work as well. Next time we play backgammon I have to ask him what distortion or fuzz peddal he used.

The instrumental "Two Ghosts" is my favorite, though. Groovy, slinky, atmospheric, slightly exotic—I'd like a whole album of tunes like this.

Anyway, you should buy this!

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