Jason McKinney's Blog

I'm now on day eight of my challenge and I'm still right on schedule, although I am feeling the strain a bit more. It's rewarding, but also tricky to read a book EVERYDAY. 
Since my last posting, I have read Boxer, Beetle by Ned Beauman and Fortunately, The Milk by Neil Gaiman. I love Gaiman and this was no different from his previous works in terms of being incredibly entertaining. The real surprise was Boxer, Beetle. I read Beauman's second novel, The Teleportation Accident last year and it had a great premise, but the execution was merely good, not great. This, however, which was his debut, is near perfect. I can't really describe it very well other than to say that involves beetles, Nazis, Jewish boxers and a dual narrative. It's fantastic, so just trust me on this one and read it.
I have had an interesting realization in the past few days. I have had a Kindle for 3 1/2 years now and I absolutely love it; I have still read physical books off-and-on, from time to time, but not nearly as many as I used to read. Since starting this challenge, I have read six physical books and I've come to realize that I miss them and have really enjoyed reading the "old" format. I'm certainly not going to give up my Kindle anytime soon, but I'm beginning to understand why people still prefer the paper copies instead of the electronic ones. 

So, we're now on Day 5 of the Reading Challenge and I'm keeping up with it.

Day 3 was the very readable, entertaining YA novel, Liar and Spy.

Day 4 was the dreadful French graphic novel, Barrel of Monkeys, which I would advise avoiding at all costs. I love sick humor and I'm even saying that...

Today, I'm reading the up until recently out-of-print Speedboat, from the 1970's, which is quite the wild ride. It's very reminiscent of the New York style of writing of that period. It reminds me of Updike and others of his ilk. It even reads a bit like Bob Dylan lyrics in parts...

Yesterday, I read the first volume of Y: The Last Man by Brian Vaughn and Pia Guerra, which is considered to be one of the finest graphic novels of the last 25 years, possibly even ever. I would have to agree. I don't read a lot of graphic novels, but when I do, I typically enjoy them. That's an understatement with this one. I can't wait to continue reading this series. Part of what's great about this reading project is that I'm reading things I'm not sure I would have otherwise.

Oh, and things are going smoothly, so far... It's a bit daunting to know that I'm going to read a book everyday when I get up, but it's going really well at this point.

I kicked things off yesterday by reading, "Hyperbole and a Half" by Allie Brosh, which was good, but not quite the height of perfection that it has been purported to be.



As of right now, things are moving right on schedule.

I have changed one aspect of the challenge: all books must now be at least 100 pages, not 60 anymore.

Yep, you read correctly. My New Year's Resolution will be to read a book a day for one year. That's 365 books in 365 days. Personally, I'm not a big fan of New Year's resolutions; I mean, why arbitrarily pick a new year to do something new when you could pick any day to do that?
The books that I read in the next year will only be limited by the following criteria:
1) Each one must be at least 60 pages.
2) Graphic novels and other visually oriented books are permitted. (Just no children's picture books; those typically wouldn't be 60 pages anyway...)
3) I won't necessarily read a book EACH DAY. It will be 365 books over the course of 365 days. A small distinction, but an important one.
I will be blogging off and on about my project. Stay tuned for further updates in the upcoming weeks...

I had high hopes for the third and final movie in the Simon Pegg/Nick Frost/Edgar Wright so-called "Cornetto Trilogy". The World's End is the final installment in the very loosely linked trilogy, which includes Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. I thoroughly enjoyed the other two and it wasn't that I disliked this one...it's just that it was a little less satisfying than what I was hoping for.

(HERE BE SPOILERS!!!)

I wasn't really expecting to be disappointed. I was convinced that this would be a home run -- outta the park. The problem isn't that it's a bad film, it's more that it takes a large helping of Shaun of the Dead (aliens this time instead of zombies), a mild dash of Hot Fuzz (the whole town ends up being in on the "conspiracy") and a certain amount of the dreadful 2011 Paul (the only film of the Pegg/Frost collaboration that I've actually disliked). The film also reminded me of another Frost film, Attack the Block, which concerned aliens landing in a poor London neighborhood, but was also a much better film. That being said, World's End itself is still entertaining because of the goodwill that I have towards the wonderful cast (it's been years since I've seen such a great cast in a British comedy), the fact that the dialogue is well written for the most part, and the surprising pathos to be found here in terms of the character's relationships with each other.

That being said, the third act is absolutely ridiculous and made me want to run screaming from the theater. It does relate back to the title and the ending of the world, but to me, it felt like so many other apocalyptic films and not in the typically fun Pegg/Frost skewering sense, but more like Paul, which was absolutely fucking exhausting.

I love these guys and I liked this movie (for the most part), it was just a letdown after the quality of the first two movies.

On the surface, there isn't much similarity between Amir "Questlove" Thompson's new memoir, Mo' Meta Blues and Dodie Smith's 1948 novel, I Capture the Castle. If you look a little more closely, you'll see that they both illuminate a fundamental truth about the nature of art though: Any piece of art that is truly groundbreaking will typically be initially resisted and maybe even criticized.

You might not even like it at all. But if you have that reaction, it might be worth taking a second look. A comedian once said that jazz music "defies you to like it". That's because it's not "easy"...you can't just sit down and listen to it with your brain turned off. You have to give it some thought. All truly transformative art might defy you to like it, but if you put the time in, you might be surprised.

Questlove talks about how his positive reaction to new records typically comes through in one of two ways. 1)  He loves it right away and is immediately into it... or 2) He resists it and isn't quite sure that he likes it. It's challenging for him. He says that he finds the records that fall into the second category always end up being the ones that really last for him and become something truly memorable and possibly even influential on his music.

I had that same experience with PJ Harvey's 2000 album, Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea. I initially resisted it and disliked it so much that I even returned it to the store. Something made me give it another chance though and I bought it a second time and couldn't get enough of it. It has gone on to become one of my favorite albums.

There have been a number of films that have had this effect on me as well (to name a couple: Wes Anderson's Bottle Rocket, Powell and Pressburger's The Red Shoes). I didn't like these movies at all (I could even sit through The Red Shoes) the first time that I saw them. On second look, they amazed me. I would much rather watch a shitty, conventionally "weird" movie than a good, mainstream film any day of the week. For my money, the weirder, the better.

Dodie Smith expressed a sentiment similar to Questlove's in I Capture the Castle. Her characters, Simon and Cassandra, discuss how true beauty in nature can't really be put into words, in the same way that you can't really "explain" something artistic to someone. Cassandra doesn't really understand her father's novel that he is working on and she wants Simon to explain it to her. He says that in the same way that she can't put the beauty of the English countryside or the brilliant effect that her antiquated home has on her into words, he can't really describe what the brilliance of her father's novel is all about. She must discover it and feel it for herself. Not to sound like a Luddite, but in the age of instant gratification and constant electronic presence, I think we're losing a bit of that DIY appreciation of art. We need someone to tell us if something is good and then immediately make up our mind about whether we want to experience it or not versus finding out for ourselves.

Something truly meaningful shouldn't be able to be expressed and understood so easily, whether it's art or any of the other beautiful, yet inexplicable things in life.

Here is what my bald-ass head looked like in the beginning...

It's been awhile since my last post and since then, the following things have occurred in my life...

1) I tried to cut my own hair. Not the best of ideas; especially since, according to my wife, I looked like "a mental patient that had escaped from the Ozarks". She was able to help me fix it, but that involved shaving my head and I really miss my hair. It's growing back...but way too slowly for my tastes.

2) My family and I went on a three city tour of Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver. It was great fun and it was definitely the break that we needed from being in Colorado for the last two years with no trips out of the state.

3) I got my first column in the Broomfield Enterprise, our town's newspaper, published. You can read that here... http://www.broomfieldenterprise.com/broomfield-opinion/ci_23854539/mckinney-controversial-materials-can-teach-much-our-children?IADID=Search-www.broomfieldenterprise.com-www.broomfieldenterprise.com

4) My son, Aden, and my daughter, Maggie, turned three and one, respectively. Two parties within two weeks of each other is pretty exhausting.

5) Finally, our portion of the country has been under water for most of the past three days and there have been many people who have been evacuated or stuck in their homes. The sun has just come out, so hopefully, this is the beginning of the end for the bad weather. I guess one of the advantages to living in Broomfield is that we're on a hill. And we have good pizza, too.

if you don't stop yourself, you have to ride it all of the way down. And it feels like forever. And you'll probably end up with a huge bruise on your ass. Which your wife will then tell everyone about...