Running Ascended

I have come to truly loathe my driveway – it’s become a war of wills. I expect and can deal with the snow, even the constant series of storms over the past two weeks. My issue is having to clear the driveway repeatedly because the snow is so light and the winds seem to delight in putting the snow back after I dutifully clear the damned thing. Yesterday we only got four inches which is a minor inconvenience compared to the past couple weeks. I cleaned the first three inches before heading to work. I left work a little early in order to get Buddy his annual town license to be awesome and since for the second time in two weeks I forgot my wallet I had to swing by the house, expecting the last inch of snow to be coating the driveway. This is what I found (see photo). The winds had moved the light snow and filled the driveway up to the level of the snowbanks – from two to four feet high. Can a driveway be haunted? Maybe there’s an ancient Indian burial ground under the thing.

Luckily the snow remained light and was easily moved (downwind). I think I’ve fallen in love with my snow blower (again). Morale maintenance did take a fairly hard hit when I spoke with my son last night. He’s got a bad case of the flu and probably won’t be joining me this weekend, as planned. When I dutifully reported this illness to my wife I was subjected to a biting rebuke on my failures as a father. I posted a photo of my son last week which showed him in a short sleeved shirt. She knows how cold it’s been and immediately connected the dots to blame his attire for his illness. I was repeatedly asked why I allowed my nearly thirty year old son go about so lightly dressed. Things that make you go “huh?”

The Photo That Got Me Into Trouble - Somehow

Once I did get the driveway clear I snuck out for another movie – going to see Jupiter Ascending. This hasn’t received a lot of love from the critics but it was a true attempt at science fiction on a colossal scale. Mila Kunis plays a contemporary Chicago cleaning woman who’s unwittingly heir to one of the great family fortunes in a galaxy spanning empire. She’s unaware of this until Channing Tatum, sporting elven ears as a disgraced genetically enhanced soldier, shows up to rescue her from a series of alien assassination attempts. (I know most of the ladies are now wondering how Tatum could possibly be “enhanced” any further)

Since I’m a certified sci fi nerd I really liked the movie which focused, maybe a little too much on the technology of the hidden civilization which is several million years in advance of ours. The criticisms are valid as there’s a lot of stop and go and jumping around without fully fleshing out who all the players are. It’s a little bit of a mess but it’s a gloriously beautiful and textured mess. In a huge plot twist, Sean Bean is in the movie but doesn’t get killed.

I wandered away from fiction in my latest book, reading The Run of His Life, The People Versus O.J. Simpson, by Jeffrey Toobin. The title tells you all you need to know about the content. I stayed away from all OJ related media following the trial as I was as disgusted as most of America was by the verdict. I chose Toobin’s book because I heard it was the most balanced and provides a lawyer’s take on the antics of both the prosecution and defense. It related pretty much what I thought had happened but did offer some fascinating and downright scathing assessments of the people involved, especially Robert Shapiro as well as O.J. of course. He’s no less forthright in pointing out the arrogant ineptitude of the prosecution as well.

The verdict was also more understandable given the background Toobin provides on the history of racial injustice perpetrated by the LAPD upon the generation of black jurors who easily believed an astoundingly farfetched police conspiracy to frame OJ. This allowed them to ignore the literal mountain of scientific evidence that clearly established OJ as the killer. Before reading this book I might have harbored some small doubts about his guilt. They evaporated upon reading this.

Some of Toobin’s words, concerning the defense team:  “Their dilemma then, was the oldest, as well as the most common, quandary of the criminal defense attorney: What to do about a guilty client.  The answer, they decided, was race. Because of the overwhelming evidence of Simpson’s guilt, his lawyers could not undertake a defense aimed at proving his innocence-one that sought to establish, say, that some other person had committed the murders. Instead in an astonishing act of legal bravado, they sought to create for the client-a man they believed to be a killer-the mantle of victimhood.”