Thing is, I enjoy watching England lose on the field, but that doesn’t translate to wishing ill of everyone involved with the team. In fact, a rather weird thing happens: because I know all of the players and I am familiar with the manager, I tend to develop pretty strong opinions about the England team that are by no means all unfavourable. For example, one of my pet peeves is the manner in which the English press insists on constantly deriding their national team’s level of skill. Do they have any idea? Have they seen Ireland’s midfield recently?

I also can’t stand how the exact same people who write in detail about how bad England are will simultaneously take as Gospel the fact that players like Rio Ferdinand and John Terry should start no matter what. There’s this whole system of talking certain players up while essentially mocking the team as a whole. It’s frustrating: really, the only thing English journalists care about is pumping up the personnel on the England team to increase the hype surrounding them so that when the team ultimately fails the press can round on them as a whole, perhaps occasionally calling out some poor bugger that isn’t friends with that many journalists. Or the ‘keeper. The fact of the matter is, if the England players could find a spot somewhere between rampant tabloid-fuelled insecurity and rampant tabloid-fuelled overconfidence, they could win some tournaments. Should win some tournaments, in fact.

It’s a joke. The whole thing’s a joke. Now they’ve lost a competent manager.

Before I go on, I should clarify a little. I don’t have any issue with Capello leaving. It’s pretty interesting that the reaction of the Italian press is that Capello deliberately fell on his sword, or at least came somewhere close to that. His defence of Terry was bizarre and at the very least insensitive. It is by no means a stretch, in my view, to claim that he was looking for a way out. I think that’s because Capello was crushed by the 2010 World Cup. He hasn’t cared about the England job since and it had long become a pay cheque. I don’t blame him. Not even a little bit. The fact is, England lost a competent manager in 2010 and it’s about time they sorted things out.

Capello was betrayed, betrayed utterly in 2010. That England team had bulldozed its way to the World Cup. They had looked magnificent in qualification. The team had a solid shape, nice and solid at the back, a decent amount of talent up front and a midfield that was genuinely competitive at a world class level. Not at the level of a World Cup; a world class level. They got to the World Cup, various morons otherwise identified as England players started talking about winning the tournament, and then John Terry decided he was allowed to give judgements on managerial decisions in public. All of that was trouble enough, except then the team went on to completely embarrass themselves on the field. David Beckham, for some confusing reason was walking around and acting like he was managing the team while expertly avoiding any degree of blame at all. Capello ended up coming under fire after the Germans made the accident waiting to happen a reality and made England’s humiliation completely inescapable.

It was completely unfair. I remember Capello during that tournament. I don’t think he was able to believe it. This team that he had taken together and had gotten playing as a unit arrived at a major tournament, decided they had already won it and focused on playing politics with the media and playing like crap. What was he supposed to do? Well, it turns out he decided the solution was to keep taking the FA’s money but to stop caring. I think the decision was pretty clear: they (the players) clearly don’t respect me enough to perform at a tournament and are happy to let me twist in the wind, so I don’t have any incentive to really care about them.

And now he’s gone. More power to him. Harry Redknapp will come along and everything will be hunky dory, apparently. Until they turn on him.

Here’s the thing: the media loves Harry Redknapp. Players love him. If he can’t get an England team firing, well… you did the right thing, Fabio.

Some points, before I get started:

I’m not actually a massive Spiderman fan or anything. I never read the comics, though I loved the cartoons when I was small. Otherwise, yeah... not really that hugely into the character outside of my experiences watching cartoons so I can easily be shouted down, and that’s fine.

It turns out I’m sick of Emma Stone. This is completely unfair. She seems pretty nice. I’m sure she’s lovely. Thing is, I didn’t really like the movies that made people like her, as I see it: Easy A, Superbad and Zombieland.*

*The Oxford comma is for suckers.

Right. Now that I think of it, this is more of a blog post about Ms. Stone, but I’ll get on to that in a second.

The new trailer for the new Spiderman movie with the not terribly new plot is out!

It’s pretty cool, right? Well... it’s mostly cool. Partly cool. There are cool elements in this trailer.

Come on. Rhys Ifans would be all over this character.

First, the things I like about this trailer. The action looks good. I like Denis Leary. The costume looks decent. The Lizard seems like an interesting bad guy. Lacking any comic book experience with the character and his rogues’ gallery I was rather unimpressed with the idea of a bad guy being a giant anthropomorphic lizard when clearly it should be either Doc Ock, the Hobgoblin or Mysterio, but hey. I’m no expert. This lizard dude looks pretty good. Plus, it’s Rhys Ifans, and Rhys Ifans is fantastic in almost everything he does. The guy is fantastic.

Garfield seems to be a solid lead... the kind of actor who’s going to stick around, who I’m never really going to grow particularly fond of but will probably always be good. And to be fair, that is by no means an easy thing to do. Garfield seems decent and convincing. I loved Raimi’s second Spiderman film but I never really came around to Tobey Maguire. I get that they were pushing for us to see Peter Parker as a teenager, as was always intended, but I honestly didn’t care a lot about Peter Parker in those films. That’s why Spiderman 3 is so utterly broken, apart from the fact it’s trying to be about three films at the same time: we’re supposed to believe in a major journey being taken by a character very few people care about. That, and the fact that the whole “I HAVE GEL IN MY HAIR AND NOW I AM EVEEEEEL. ALSO, I DANCE” thing was pretty weird.

Even without the emo hair, that look is just... ugh.

Anyway... I digress. Easily my favourite thing about the new Spiderman trailer is that Garfield is utterly and completely convincing as a smart alec superhero. It’s that one moment in the trailer, he is sitting in the back of the car and makes a wise crack. It’s not exactly first Beverly Hills Cop movie stuff, but it’s pretty funny. And Garfield nails the delivery. For the first time since I was a kid watching the cartoons in my parents’ living room, I find Spiderman funny. Sam Raimi spent three movies telling me that Spiderman was funny, a loveable wise-ass but a wise-ass all the same. I never got it. For the first time in a film, I get it. Hopefully this is going to be a major element of the movie, because I really don’t want to see Peter Parker discussing the morality of vigilantism with Denis Leary while Emma Stone gives her biggest “RUH ROH” face for any longer than we’ve already seen. In fact, cut that. Just get rid of it.

Which brings me on to the things I don’t like.* I really like Denis Leary, which to be fair, is a fairly major achievement. I feel like a lot of people have been “over” him since about a year after the commercials he did with all the singing profanity and whatnot. Or maybe lots of people just never liked him. I like him. I think he reminds me of a slightly angry but pretty funny relative. Maybe it’s a transatlantic Irish metaphysical connection that transcends genetic ties. Or maybe I just like Denis Leary. I also think he can act. I’m just not buying him as the police chief nemesis of Spiderman. Well... that’s not fair. I buy him as that character, I’m just not really interested in that character existing.

*I was going to use the word segue there but I get annoyed about how it should be pronounced. Americans seem to pronounce it “seg-way” which seems utterly ridiculous to me. I have also heard people say “seg” which is also clearly wrong and furthermore, gross. It’s French, right? Shouldn’t it be pronounced “say-ge” with a very soft ending? I know I’m being ridiculous. I could definitely be wrong. I just don’t want to use a word with a stupid pronunciation, even if the stupid pronunciation is the correct one. I KNOW I COULD GOOGLE IT. Where’s the fun in that?

I know that the dynamic with Spiderman that pits him as the good guy against people in authority who aren’t bad but disapprove is an important one. I get that it speaks to a lot of what Spiderman is and what the character means. I just prefer when the character is Jonah Jameson. Again, I’m going off cartoons here. I also know why they didn’t go down that route. JK Simmons nailed the Jonah Jameson character.

I’m going to say that again. JK Simmons nailed the Jonah Jameson character. He did it so perfectly it defies belief now, a decade later. I will never forget how excited I was watching the first movie when Simmons came onscreen. He was fantastic. This new Spiderman film already feels a little bit soon after the last trilogy, there’s no need to push their luck. Unless they brought Simmons back, a decision that would have been extremely weird, they were correct to go a different way in my opinion. So really, I’m being really difficult and unfair. I’m going to complain and refuse to offer a solution. Because the solution I want isn’t feasible and ultimately just wouldn’t work. Internet jerk alert.

It all feels a little... well... underwhelming. I am not reaching the level of whelm that I would like. Personally, I’m starting to feel comic book fatigue. I mean, we live in a golden age for nerds as far as mainstream films go. They are making an Avengers movie. It looks like it might be good. We are all hoping it will be good. Some of us – say it softly – are actually EXPECTING it to be good. This is major. We had two good Iron Man films!!!!! Ok, one that everyone thought was good and a second that I liked. People discuss the latest X-Men film by comparing it to an earlier series of X-Men films that were good, except for the third one that they let that creepy guy direct. I mean... this is ridiculous! I am loving this, I really am. Thing is, this new trailer for the Spiderman movie really makes me wonder how much longer it can last. Are comic books movies really going to stay with us, as a genre, forever? Or will they go the way of the Western? That’s probably a whole other blog post.

Finally, there’s Miss Stone. I don’t GET why I’m supposed to think she’s awesome. Now, to clarify: I’m sure she’s very nice. She’s clearly talented. I am an anonymous dude on the Internet writing a blog. I don’t think for a second she will ever see this, but if she did, I can only assume she would brush it off as “a guy I don’t know and will never meet doesn’t enjoy my performances in film, while millions of others do” and go back to what she was doing earlier. I just don’t find her interesting on screen.

I didn’t really like Easy A. It was a nice movie but it didn’t really get me going in any real way. I don’t know why; it was a clever story, it was really well done, Stone’s character’s family was very funny, Stone herself was great, and Thomas Haden Church was in it. The whole thing just felt like a straight-to-DVD movie that you watch and go “huh. That was pretty good” and move on from. I’m not saying that the only movies I like are big blockbusters, not at all. Easy A just reminded me of going to the video store in college and grabbing a movie I heard was decent but hadn’t been too bothered about seeing. Easy A has some very compelling arguments in favour of it by people I like to read. I just never quite got there.

That’s the ridiculous thing about my issue with Emma Stone. It’s not even an issue, not really. She was good in Easy A. I just don’t feel any draw to watch her in things. She was good in Zombieland, but that was another weird DVD on a quiet college night movie for me. The opening credits were awesome, but otherwise it just kind of... happened. The whole celebrity surprise scene was also a bit weird and just felt like ass-kissing. As for Superbad... well maybe I’ll write about that someday. I have serious problems with that film. But anyway, yeah, she seems great. I just don’t really care.

Don’t get me wrong, I find her a hell of a lot more entertaining than someone like January Jones. In X-Men: First Class that woman was some kind of bizarre dialogue vacuum. I mean, really. Some people can’t act, but she’s about as good at acting as I am. Have you ever tried to deliver lines in front of a camera? It’s hard, and if you’re not able to do it you come off looking and sounding really weird and a bit dead inside. Like January Jones. So yeah, I don’t dislike Emma Stone at all. I just don’t really care about her one way or the other, and that means I already don’t give a crap about the love story. To be fair, I could say that about a lot of films, but it definitely contributes to my overall feeling of ambivalence about the film.

I had a lot to say about a film trailer. Yes, I will obviously go and watch it. It’s Spiderman.

I never thought I would say that about another Resident Evil game. Resident Evil 5 was utter garbage. I didn’t even bother with it after a couple of hours. I realized I was just bored and clinging on in desperation. This trailer though… if this game can live up to it at all…

Things I like:

• It looks like a genuine sequel to Resident Evil 4. Resident Evil 4 was amazing.
• It takes all the Resident Evil 4 goodness and pumps it back into an urban setting, while deliberately referring to Raccoon City. This is all gold so far.
• Some cheesy hardbit burnt out mercenary dude (I initially thought might be Wesker) as a playable character, and it looks like his blood is the antidote. He wants money. Money for his blood.
• There is cheesy looking parcourt stuff going on.
• Characters walk around woodenly in cut scenes and scream things about vendettas at each other.
• Leon and Ashley.
• The president is a zombie, apparently. Probably a dream sequence or some crap, but here’s hoping.
• It looks NUTS.

Things I do not like, so much:

• There is cheesy looking parcourt stuff going on.
• My excitement for this trailer allows me to overlook the blatantly bad cut scenes, but will I still be okay with that when this game actually comes out?
• The urban setting looks cool but there are still very Japanese-y design tics showing up here. The big example for me is the little example of Chris Redfield pushing aside a photographer. Seconds later, he clearly stops running to do another canned animation on a guy who happens to be in the way. Not very convincing.
• I loved RE:4. Absolutely loved it. But that game is seven years old now. Hopefully they’ve taken the gameplay on a bit. It looks from this trailer like they have, but I don’t know…
• Resident Evil 5 was absolute garbage. I’m just worried. What if you need a friend to call over and play as Ashley the entire time just so the game makes sense?

So, yeah… the things that I am excited about already outnumber the things I am worried about, and I had to stretch a little for that short list of negatives. This looks fantastic. I thought I was done with the Resident Evil games, but it seems Capcom still knows how to make a Resident Evil game. That in and of itself is exciting.

Say it with me…. Resident… Evil….

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SIX!

They have been for a while of course, as they pointed out this morning while discussing iTunes U. Now they’re in for the long haul, getting more invested, becoming more involved.

Is it a good thing?

Yes, it is. It definitely is. There’s something exciting about a company of Apple’s stature becoming so assertive in finding a role in education. Perhaps even, and for certain if you believe the chaps from Cupertino, making education better. There. I am down with iBooks 2, I think it's a positive thing. Now time to air some of my reservations.

Here’s the thing. As an educator myself, I balk a little at complaints like “students don’t read” or “the textbook is out of date as soon as it’s printed” or “the book is heavy and cumbersome, they won’t take it to class.” Trust me, these statements are all accurate. Students don’t read. They don’t bother bringing books to class. Thing is, at what point do we stop coddling people? I mean, it’s this simple:

Bring. Your. Damn. Book. To. Class.

Read. The. Assignments. On. The. Syllabus.

Not rocket science. At some point when you’re teaching people you have to set standards and stick by them. Now, at the same time, you don’t want to leave people behind. In universities in particular, there can be a tendency to do that, to leave the majority behind to tailor content or even advice to the top level students. A large part of that derives from a noble goal: to keep standards high so that students have something at which to aim. Lowering the bar does a disservice both to students already at or above the bar and those below it. It helps no one. You just find yourself frequently looking back at the bottom half of the class and trying to think up ways to motivate them or at the very least make it clear that their time and their work is just as valuable to you as that of the student regularly handing in A material.

So, how are we looking to improve the education experience? In an ideal world, we want the better students to have opportunities to stretch their limits and to reach the fullness of their potential. We want students with less ability (or, more frequently, less ambition or intellectual self-confidence) to be encouraged and to become more engaged with the material and with the learning experience. Apple purports to be the harbinger of a world of magic, the expeditor of our ideal world, so it makes sense that they would aim high. I am happy. I am all for aiming high. I want my students to aim high.

For me, there’s so much more to any given class room than the small number of A and A- students. I wonder about the low Bs and Cs, I really do. Many of them are following the dictum that Cs will get you degrees. They turn up, they hand in work that took just enough time to get a C, and they’re out. That’s fine. Not everyone has to want an A, and it’s a free country. I’m particularly loathe to harbor a grudge against that approach in a system where I end up with Graphic Design majors and Finance majors and Theatre majors who need to fulfill History requirements to get their degree but need to focus their time on core classes in their field of interest. Thanks to the field I teach, I usually get non-History majors who are at least vaguely interested in the content. That doesn’t mean that they have any interest in putting in the time required for high B or A work.

So… are they learning? I often wonder this. How many of my students who turn in a paper about Confucius or the Chinese Civil War actually know more than they could be bothered to put on paper? Trust me, some of them have missed the point completely, and it’s my first duty as an educator to look at my own approach and see how I can tweak it to avoid such issues. But for others… I do wonder. Particularly when you’re teaching history to somebody who is developing an entirely different skill set, what is the aim here? First and foremost, you want to teach students how to examine sources, how to read a book and maintain their own opinion, not simply to accept whatever the author has said as Gospel. That’s the big aim, and frankly it is by far the most useful skill you can teach in a History classroom, particularly to people who may never take a History class again. After that, though… Are there students who take a Chinese History class because they want to know more about China, and submit just enough work to get a C, but walk away knowing more about Chinese history and culture, and are glad for it? Can they talk about the Cultural Revolution in the pub? Will they think of historical examples of the abuse of power or the vibrancy of a truly popular revolution while they’re watching CNN? Or, you know, a good news program on a channel that doesn’t suck?*

*Sorry, CNN is terrible. I have a brief and highly effective argument in support of this point. Piers Morgan. Argument concluded.

In that respect, I am utterly bewitched by iBooks 2 and the whole concept. But here’s the rub: how do I actually use this? I don’t have an iPad myself. I intend to get a tablet in 2012 but it may not be manufactured by Apple. Hey, that’s fine: if iBooks 2 was compelling enough maybe I would get an iPad rather than an Android tablet. That makes sense to me. What do I do next term, however, assuming there’s even a decent book on modern Chinese history available on iBooks? Tell my students they have to get an iPad? It just doesn’t make sense.

I understand that Apple already has an entire business strategy for this and they will get universities and high school systems to buy in and basically install iPad support systems for their students, but many institutions already use Desire 2 Learn or Blackboard, and have very little incentive to suddenly subsidize iPads. I love this picture of the brave new world that Apple wants us all to advance towards, but I am increasingly upset by the blatantly high price of entry. The monopoly of one company isn’t encouraging either but that’s a whole other argument. There’s a brave new world out there in education, if you have the money for an iPad. If you don’t, screw you. I can’t get on board with that. Surely we need to be trying harder than ever to make education accessible to those in difficult economic situations, not merely improving the lot of that wealthy tier of society that take a university education as a given? There’s a tendency in the United States to completely ignore everyone below the tier known as the “middle class”, a stunningly arbitrary label given to a large section of society that don’t want to admit that they are extremely wealthy and privileged. There are enough issues of disparity in wealth and affordability in education as it is, I’m not thrilled about introducing more and more barriers, and I have no interest in bringing them into the classroom. 

Incidentally, this is what I love about twitter. I really enjoy Posnanski’s work, and I actually prefer to go through his personal blog, even though the exact same articles are often reposted on the Sports Illustrated website. He uses his twitter account well. Asking people to vote on a poll he is running that will inform a future article? This is exactly how twitter is supposed to work, and I love it. More of this type of usage of twitter, please. Contrary to the beliefs of some, it is far from over.

Anyway, I meandered over there and had a look, and immediately noticed something that, to be honest, I was half expecting. Lionel Messi and Ronaldo are on the list. I’m going to go ahead and assume that Cristiano Ronaldo is the player being mentioned and not the original Ronaldo. Personally, I prefer the Brazilian as a player but I don’t feel he could credibly be discussed as a potential nominee for the top five footballers of all time. So I’ll assume the poll is referencing the Portuguese genius cheat whiner winger centre forward.*

*Hey, this post started with a reference to Joe Posnanski so I get to use an asterisk and have a little note in italics. Cristiano Ronaldo is clearly a centre forward and has been for years. In fact, he’s a very good centre forward. Observe the crazy amount of goals that he scores. He was never a particularly good winger. His crossing was generally sub-par and his poor decision making crippled him at that position. Other than to make him seem even more amazing by assigning his already astonishing goals-per-game ratio to a position on the field that doesn’t necessarily score that many goals, there is no reason in 2012 to talk about Cristiano Ronaldo as a winger.

So, here’s my problem. Let’s take my issues with C. Ronaldo aside for a moment. Ok, let’s not. A quick summary: he has amazing physical gifts and a high level of skill on the ball but his complete failure to play as a member of a team coupled with his laughable failure to turn up in important games gives me considerable pause when looking to talk about him as a “great” player. Cruyff, Beckenbauer, Maradona, Pele, Charlton, all of these players have given us timeless moments of unapproachable quality on the field. C. Ronaldo scored a sweet goal against North Korea once. Ok, and Fulham.

Messi is another kettle of fish entirely. He’s genuinely transcendent, a rare example of a player that can justifiably be discussed as one of the greatest ever while he is still in his prime. This is truly amazing. The Ballon D’Or has become his personal property, and is a legitimate award for the first time in years simply by being awarded to Messi consistently. Barring something terrible, there is nothing stopping Messi becoming one of the greatest players of all time. The only question mark remaining on his CV is the World Cup, and that will come with time. Our standards for the man are so high that he was widely criticized after his performance at the 2010 World Cup, for being merely human on a team that struggled to find its way under the direction of a mad genius. Unfortunately for Argentina, Maradona is a genius on the pitch, but simply mad in the dugout.

Thing is, and here’s the kicker (yuk yuk): I have to admit I’m being completely unfair. What if C. Ronaldo wises up with age, stops being a petulant fool and learns to pass the ball? What if a C. Ronaldo in his early 30s matured and learned to use his technical gifts more intelligently, rather than (as I am assuming will happen) become an also-ran with occasional moments at a mid-level team in Spain or Italy, having failed to cope with the decline of his physical gifts? What if an aging C. Ronaldo, playing in central midfield, leads a young Portugal side to a stirring showing in the 2018 World Cup? I’d have no choice but to reconsider.

I don’t think any of those things will happen, and as things stand I think C. Ronaldo will end up as an anomaly. More talented than the hype-driven Beckham, whose accomplishments in football already seem rather sparse after years of being hailed as one of the greatest midfielders in football, C. Ronaldo will still go down as a supremely talented athlete who scored an absolute ton of goals for a strong Real Madrid side but could never emerge from the diminutive shadow of Lionel Messi. Frankly, I would not even rate C. Ronaldo as the best player on his own team right now. Still, his career has a long way to go yet.

Messi is the exception then. For years now, these polls have been dominated by recent players. John Aldridge recently described Steven Gerrard as the greatest player in Liverpool’s history. Yeah... I love John Aldridge, but no. Eric Cantona has regularly appeared a little higher than he should on polls of greatest ever Manchester United players for over a decade. I know that we all have short memories and that this is even more true in professional sport, but come on. Can’t we just have a Baseball Hall of Fame style moratorium? I propose that we give players about five years after they retire from the game before we start mentioning them in “Best Of” polls. Get to it, Internet.

It's terribly important of course, these informal polls voted on by anonymous fans. But hey, these are the things that bother me. Incidentally, my top five football players of all time?*

1. Maradona

2. Pele

3. Best

4. Beckenbauer

5. Dalglish

*The list is obviously extremely subjective. Names that I agonized over: Charlton, Gerd Muller, Roberto Baggio, Paolo Maldini, Paul McGrath, Franco Baresi, John Barnes, Cruyff, Keane, Rush, Shearer, Batistuta, and many many more. 

I kind of want it to become that, though. Anyway.

Happy New Year, Internet!!! I’m back, and the excuses fall away like the layers of insulation I have built around myself in preparation for the Chicago cold. I miss good chocolate and decent breakfasts already.

But enough of that. Travelling from the US to Ireland involves being on a plane for a fairly long time. I have this weakness, while on planes:  I watch terrible films. My own internal logic dictates that when stuck in a seat on a plane with nowhere else to go, I am allowed to give more time to films that I would otherwise ignore. This isn’t just something I’ve pulled out of the ether; I’ve learned the hard way. I once sat through Catch and Release, laughing several times. I was even moved, at one point. Admittedly, I may or may not have had a man crush on Kevin Smith at the time.

So, I watched two films that I otherwise would ignore: Transformers 3 and Cowboys and Aliens. I hated the first Transformers film with a passion. I’m that rare brand of weirdo who had something invested in the Transformers fiction. I actually felt betrayed by Michael Bay’s monstrosity. I’ve ignored the series so far but I decided to give it a shot.

Yeah. That’s a whole other blog post.

Cowboys and Aliens then, that deserves a post too, though it won’t be as furious as the Transformers 3 post. Ultimately, it was crap. Disappointing really. I was genuinely hoping that the negative reaction might have been a bit harsh. It wasn’t. Cowboys and Aliens isn’t good.

Interestingly, I seem to have shed my airplane-based ability to endure bad films for now. Then again, maybe I wouldn’t have gotten to the end of Cowboys and Aliens in my room at home. I am genuinely concerned. I need to get a tablet so I can watch ripped versions of David Lynch’s Dune on long flights.

I drank perhaps a little bit less than I could have gotten away with.

I installed Ice Cream Sandwich on my phone (Samsung Galaxy S).

My reading slowed down substantially.

I yearned for, but did not play, Skyrim.

I saw many people that I care about.

I watched Law and Order, but not as much as I really should have.

I did not watch much sports, at all.

I received many fine sweaters as gifts. And some hats.

Well. That might be pushing it a little. This series is nuts though. I finished Dune Messiah this morning, and decided not to start on Children of Dune until I knew what I wanted to write about the end of the first book and the entirety of the second. However, I find myself completely unprepared to write about the books. I’m here because I don’t want to see my blog fade into oblivion yet again and I really want to start Children of Dune.

Let’s start there actually, with my feeling of anticipation for the third book in the series. Dune Messiah ends ridiculously well, a complete contrast with my feelings at the end of Dune. Not for the first time, I find myself grateful that I’m a latecomer to these series. Much like with the Dark Tower series, I have absolutely no idea how I would have coped sitting around waiting for a sequel that I knew was coming but about which I knew very little. Then again, the first two Dune books did come out in the second half of the 1960s. If I had been alive, I can only assume I would have been doing something awesome.

I didn’t like the ending to Dune, at all. The biggest problem, really, was that around about the time of Paul’s reunion with Gurney Halleck I was getting used to Herbert’s storytelling decisions. The continuing and competing internal monologues had by this stage woven a fascinating story centred on all the characters at once. The protagonist in this case led affairs and did not define them, which is interesting really when the protagonist is hailed as a God by most of the other characters. Most appealing of all, the action had gathered pace at last, after page upon page of Paul experiencing or at least alluding to detailed oracular visions of the future. Halleck gets on board, the emperor shows up with all of the Great Houses, the Fremen have been busy killing all manner of bad guy for several years, and we’re on to a huge showdown.

Then the showdown happens, and Paul says he’s marrying the woman who apparently wrote a bunch of books about him according to the block quotes at the start of most of the book’s chapters, and then I’m reading an appendix on Liet Kynes’ approach to the ecology of Arrakis. I was on the second page before I realized it was an appendix and the story was, in fact, over. All in all, I was a little underwhelmed and slightly annoyed. Herbert did such a wonderful job illustrating this fantastic world and this cast of characters, and then it just… ends. But not before Paul gets naked and fights a dude.

I always thought that the fight between Feyd-Rautha and Paul in David Lynch’s film was an odd concession to cheesy cinematic conventions. It gave Sting something to do, as well as yet another excuse for him to be topless and oddly pre-Fields of Gold intense. Except, for reasons that elude me, they keep him clothed having apparently decided that they’d done enough weird Sting-ogling at the beginning of the film. Wouldn’t you have all the Sting nakedness during the part of the film where the book advocates for Sting nakedness, and not in some arbitrary scene at the start? Why am I talking so much about Sting being naked?

Moving on. Well, actually, wait: did you know that Michael Bolton was in David Lynch’s Dune? Because I didn’t.

Anyway. It was a genuine surprise when I got near the end of Dune and, sure enough, Paul whips his top off and challenges Feyd-Rautha to a fight. It was kind of sad, really. I never developed any feelings for Feyd-Rautha nor invested any energy in him whatsoever outside of my interest in the weird Bene Gesserit breeding plans. It also tied into my biggest problem with the series so far, one that would come to completely dominate Dune Messiah: I have a serious issue with everything being preordained, and the author telling us a lot of what’s going to happen but leaving key issues out, while clearly stating that the protagonist knows what’s going to happen. Dune Messiah became incredibly frustrating because of this. Then, however, it became glorious. I love the ending. I think it was fantastic. It was payback after hours of frustration with Paul as a figure completely trapped by time and fate. In a way, the reader imitates the protagonist’s sudden sense of release. I felt freed, finally. Unfortunately I had to get through an entire novel to reach that one moment.

Dune Messiah focuses on court intrigue to an extent that I was never really interested in pursuing. It’s fascinating, it must be heaven for people who like it, but it started to really grate with me. I just didn’t feel that enough was happening. Yes, yes. I am an utter philistine. I kept driving on, however. I needed to see what would happen. Ultimately, Dune Messiah plays a trick on the reader. It’s not about Paul or Alia or even Chani. It’s about the confederacy of uneasy allies seeking to overturn Paul’s rather terrifying fundamentalist regime. Trying to enjoy the book by experiencing the story through Paul’s perspective was my big mistake. This story is about a fictional transposition of the Gang of Four (although the similarities are coincidental) and it’s incredibly exciting when you read it that way. Unfortunately, I realized this with about four pages to go.

What got me there? Well, despite the complaining, I loved both books. Herbert’s writing is fantastic, and if anything I prefer his work in the second book, when a lot of the metaphysical transformations or spiritual/philosophical gymnastics needed to be described just right to be even remotely decipherable. The ghola concept turned me off completely, and yet by the end of the book I accepted the idea and the important role it played in the plot. I’m still not completely at ease with how much of the plot is essentially inevitable, or at least how it’s openly described as inevitable. All fiction is inevitable I suppose, unless you choose to focus solely on Choose Your Own Adventure books, and that’s not a particularly sane choice to make. It’s just so odd that Herbert makes it clear that everything happening at the end of the book could not have happened any other way in this universe… except for one pretty major thing, that he STILL spoils pages and pages ahead of time. It’s nuts. I can’t wait for the third book. Time to go and start reading, I think.

That’s the point though. Why take away that bias? I do wonder how much of my experience looking out that window as the plane comes down is the same kind of ego-driven nostalgia we all have, or that I assume we all have, of the world centered on our own personal narrative. Is Ireland mythical in my mind because it’s part of my own personal myth? It was, after all, the setting for my adolescence. Ireland is home to things that shaped me and things that I have left behind, both in happiness and in sorrow. Ireland has always been particularly a land of myth for me personally because I spent so many of my years growing up away from my native country. Now that I live in the United States and live among Americans, Ireland continues to grow and grow in its mythical power for me. Maybe I’m just becoming an American.

It was the same growing up, though. It’s an easy out, when you’re different. We’re all different as teenagers, struggling to get back in line with where we think everybody else is. When you come from a completely different place, that place becomes the reason you’re different, and you find shelter in it, and it becomes a major part of who you are. Basically, I did what a lot of guys my age were doing with Dungeons & Dragons or maybe video games or science fiction literature. You find refuge in this thing on which you are the ultimate authority. For the guy who had seen every Star Trek: OST episode, this authority was based on knowledge, an investment of time. For me, it was a birthright.

Ireland itself is a land of myth. It helps. Irishness is all about exceptionalism, about differentiation from others (the English, in particular). Irish nationalism is about persecution followed by redemption, thwarted and denied complete national harmony at the very last. All of it helps to create this myth of being Irish, that being Irish is somehow naturally a mark of superiority. The Irish representation of national chauvinism, essentially. It’s rendered so much more powerful by the fact that it’s so utterly futile. There aren’t many people out there with a grievance against aggressive exploitation by an expanding Irish state. Well, there aren’t any. There are many people who like an Irish author, or Irish music, or have bought into this remarkably prevalent idea that Irish people are naturally charming and funny.

So, all of this makes me wonder how much of my fascination with coming home, my own participation in the myth by looking out the window of the plane and experiencing something I experience in no other city, comes from the fact that I’ve been experiencing my Irishness outside of Ireland. It’s just a place like any other, of course. Though we do actually drink more. It makes for a good Christmas.