Dad would have liked it: My review of INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY

I was seven years old when Raiders of the Lost Ark first came out.  That film more than any other impacted and steered the direction of my life.  The day after seeing it I had volumes of encyclopedias opened up on the floor and the family Bible along with them.  I wanted to learn all about the Ark of the Covenant and ancient Egypt and World War II and the Nazis.  All heady stuff for a kid in second grade!  What can I say though: my childhood interests were pretty atypical.

I think Dad was pretty impressed though, that a movie could stoke a youngster's intellect like that.  And I know that Dad was impressed with the movie too.  When we see Jones board the seaplane that is going to take him west to Nepal, Dad leaned toward me and told me what kind of plane it was and that he had flown on one years earlier.

It was a magic moment that I don't think I've ever shared before, until now.  It was so weird, being with my father and discovering that he and I were enjoying this movie together.  That for all my weirdness and then his practicality, we had some things in common after all.

Every time an Indiana Jones movie came out after that, Dad and I made sure to catch it as soon as we could make it to the theater.  The next opportunity came in 1984 with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.  And once again Dad and I had a shared experience.  Actually, I think everybody in that screening had the same experience: almost puking all over the floor at how gross that movie was!  But still we endured.  Dad still thought of that five years later when it was opening weekend of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: "This isn't going to be as sick as the LAST one was, is it?" he asked before we left for the cinema.

And then fifteen years ago came Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.  Dad and I saw that on its opening day.  Dad admitted that he was confused by it.  I think a lot of people probably were.  It's a film with numerous faults.  But even so I think George Lucas and Steven Spielberg achieved their goal.  Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was a big-budget homage to the hokey sci-fi "B-movies" of the Nineteen Fifties.  Just as Raiders of the Lost Ark owed its spirit to the Saturday afternoon serials at the movie theaters.  Bear that in mind and the film is spot-on entertaining.

There had been discussions about a fifth Indiana Jones movie after that.  As was often the case, those were produced during those fleeting times when the stars were right and Lucas and Spielberg agreed on a new "MacGuffin" to propel the movie.  And if things had hastened, Dad and I could have seen that movie in the theater too.

Except that never got to be.  Dad passed away a few days before Thanksgiving, almost nine years ago.

So it's like this: I wasn't actually sure if I wanted to see a new Indiana Jones film, at least not when it first debuted.  It... didn't seem right.  Like I wouldn't be honoring Dad's memory, or something.  And then gradually it hit me: Dad would have wanted me to see a new Indy movie if one was ever made.  That I would actually be honoring the fun that he and I had together.

That's what I've borne in mind all these long months leading up to Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.  A film that I went in absolutely cold about, except for the trailers and the posters.

A short while ago I came back from a day-early showing of this latest chapter in the life of Dr. Henry "Indiana" Jones.  My expectations were high... but they were also prepared to be crushed.  I braced myself for whatever the next two and a half hours were going to bring.

And now that I have seen it?

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny isn't a perfect film for the franchise: that will always and forever be the place taken by Raiders of the Lost Ark.  But it is not the disappointment that some have been ready for.  I actually enjoyed this movie quite a bit.  I will say that it is by a great measure much better than Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, if that gives any indication for you.

The film opens in 1945: the final days of Nazi Germany.  And if it was at all possible I would absolutely love to see this period of Indy's life developed further.  We know what he was doing before World War II began and the fourth movie implied that Jones was quite active against the Axis powers during the conflict.  But until now we've never seen WHAT the heck he was up to.  Dial of Destiny gives us a good peek at that, and it involves a historical artifact that was at one time the original prize in the first few drafts of Raiders.  When I saw this my face broke out into a huge grin, because I have always wanted to see Indy go after that particular item.

That probably won't happen.  Harrison Ford is eighty and has been quite adamant that this is his final film as Indiana Jones.  But I'm still thankful for this little morsel.  And the Lucasfilm boffins did a beautiful job digitally de-aging Ford by four decades.

Well, it turns out that there is another item that the Nazis are interested in.  One that Indy and fellow historian Basil Shaw are keen on keeping out of German hands.  A thrilling sequence aboard - and atop - a high-speed train later, the two have succeeded in recovering the artifact.

Forward almost a quarter century to 1969.  Jones is still teaching archaeology, but the days when his female students flirted with him are long past.  Time has moved beyond the days of high adventure, and Indy is feeling very much like an anachronism.  The Apollo 11 astronauts have returned from the Moon and it hangs over Indy's head: what is his purpose in a world where man is now landing on other worlds?  Which is something that Indy isn't all that crazy about, given that the United States ended up recruiting many former Nazi scientists in its bid to get ahead of the Soviets in the race to space.  It's a sentiment that is having Indy graciously retired by the administration of his school.

And then Indy gets approached by Helena Shaw: Basil's daughter and Indy's godchild.  She has kinda, sort-of followed in the family tradition.  And her main interest is in that strange object that Indy and Basil heisted from the Nazis.

That's probably all I should say about the plot.  If you're reading this, I want you to go in cold too.  Don't be prepared to stack this Indiana Jones movie against the others in the franchise.  Dial of Destiny does a magnificent job in portraying an Indiana Jones whose age has caught up with him but also might have a spark of fight still in him.  This is not Indy age forty and when the calendar hits 1969 it doesn't pretend to be.  It might be pretty sobering just how much mileage Jones has accrued since we first saw him.

But Indy is not "along for the ride".  And he keeps up with the much younger Helena (played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge) as well as he's ever done in these movies  Let's have no more jokes about "Indiana Bones".  Nobody is phoning it in with this movie, least of whom Ford.  It is in every way a fit and proper Indiana Jones motion picture, with its scope forwarded a few more decades.  It also hit on all the right elements of the Indy movies, like the red line showing where our hero is en route to next.

Dial of Destiny is cast well.  It also seems that the digital effects were kept to a minimum. This doesn't look like an overly-CGI'ed movie anyway.  James Mangold did a terrific job in directing this film (he also co-wrote the script).  And for what may well be his swan song, John Williams has achieved a mighty accomplishment with the film's music.  You'll be certain to hear a number of familiar motifs that have had a presence in previous Indy movies.  If this really is Williams' last movie before hanging up the baton, he has done so magnificently.

I really don't know what else to say without tipping my hand too much.  Except, that Dad would have liked it.  I feel like I got to enjoy Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny for him, in his memory.  It was time well spent on a summer afternoon and I think if we're going to be honest, many other people are going to leave the theater feeling much the same, too.

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"Zathras warn": The trailer for BABYLON 5: THE ROAD HOME

It was released earlier today.  I've watched this trailer for Babylon 5: The Road Home at least five times now... and I am stoked.  It looks beautiful.  And it seems that they've done an excellent job at casting the voice actors for the characters whose original portrayers have "gone beyond the Rim" over the years.

(I'm hoping that we get at least one look inside Garibaldi's quarters aboard Babylon 5.  Just to see if the painting of Daffy Duck is still there.)

Anyhoo... enjoy!

Babylon 5: The Road Home hits digital download, 4K, and Blu-ray on August 15th, 2023.

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My solemn word that anything you see posted here is genuine

You might have noticed a slight addition to this blog.  It's on the header, toward the right of the screen.  There now appears the following label:

 

 

I have heard all kinds of insane stories about people using ChatGPT and other "artificial intelligences" as something more than a curiosity.  Students have begun having AI write papers for classes.  Some ministers have admitted that they have used ChatGPT to compose sermons for Sunday morning.  In at least one situation a lawyer had AI create his legal paperwork for a court case: the judge was not impressed.

To be truthful, I'm not impressed by any so-called "artificial intelligence" thus far.  Their enthusiasts are claiming that AI is now able to pass the Turing Test (in which a living person can or cannot differentiate verbal responses from a human being or a computer).  It's not something I'm particularly jazzed about, not yet anyway.

But the horse is out of the barn.  And AI is going to start being used for a lot of things from here on out: some with benefit in mind, some not.

I just felt led to let the readers of this blog know, that I am absolutely committed to producing content that comes from my own mind, or from the rare occasion when The Knight Shift has welcomed a guest writer.  It is my vow to you, that there will be no posts or articles that you see here which will have been generated by a machine.  From the very start I've wanted this blog to be my own little online presence.  It's been that for nearly twenty years now.  I won't "take the easy way" and farm out the writing to a computer, no matter how stylish it is at the moment.

That doesn't mean that I may not experiment with AI some and report about what transpires.  Several weeks ago a good friend caused ChatGPT to lock up and get stuck after he convinced the AI that he too was an artificial intelligence.  It was like something you'd see on any number of episodes of the classic Star Trek.  My friend proved how ill-prepared AI currently is to handle complex concepts. I've an idea for my own experiment that I may carry out soon.  If so, I'll be posting screenshots of the AI's responses, rather than copy and paste it into the article.

Okay, well, there you go.  The Knight Shift will completely be a product of my own mind and heart and soul.  I promise.

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Good deals on Indiana Jones computer games

I'm hearing very mixed word about the upcoming motion picture Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.  I seriously want this to be a good movie.  Raiders of the Lost Ark is my all time most favorite film and I found something good in each entry of the franchise.  I even thought that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was pretty good: all you need do is keep in mind that Lucas and Spielberg wanted to make a homage to the "flying saucer B-movies" of the Fifties, that they fondly remembered from adolescence.  Do that and it's a perfectly fine movie.

But I want Dial of Destiny to be good because seeing an Indiana Jones movie in the theater together was something Dad and I did with every chapter of the series.  This will be my first time seeing a new Indy movie without him. I want to enjoy this movie in Dad's memory as much as for my own sake.  We'll find out later this month.  I hope there will be some pleasure in writing that review.

Anyhoo, while we're waiting for that next Indiana Jones movie to be released, you might consider immersing yourself in the role with some of the saga's computer games that have been released over the years.  I've played and completed each of these (including all three of Fate of Atlantis's paths) and can vouch for their entertainment value.  And I just checked: there are some very solid deals going on right now if you purchase them from an online vendor.  Over at GOG.com they're each currently selling for a little over two bucks, while Steam's store has them for $5.99.  So you might wanna jump at the opportunity to add one or all of these to your game library while the iron's hot right now.

Like I said, I can attest to how good these games are.  Especially 1992's Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis.  This classic "point and click" adventure set in 1938 finds Indy and former protege Sophia Hapgood traveling from the streets of New York City to Iceland to Monte Carlo and everywhere in between seeking the lost continent, trying to keep the Nazis from obtaining a mystical metal that could power everything from cars and airplanes to atomic-grade munitions.  One of the things I like about this game is that it has great replay value because of its multiple paths feature.  At a certain point in the game the player chooses from three ways forward: Team (having Hapgood along for the entire ride), Fists (where Indy resolves a lot of conflict with knuckle-baring action) or Wits (encouraging Jones to use his noggin to solve various puzzles).  The version on GOG and Steam is the 1993 "talkie" edition that was released on CD-ROM, taking advantage of multimedia technology that was just coming to market.  Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis is still wildly acclaimed now more than thirty years after its release.  I would highly recommend this one if you're at all interested in the world of Indiana Jones.

Some years later - in real life as well as in the Indy universe - Doctor Jones is enjoying the relative post-war calm of 1947 as he looks for Native American artifacts in the Utah desert.  That is where he is found by Sophia Hapgood, who wants to recruit Indy on behalf of the newly-formed Central Intelligence Agency.  Seems that the Soviets have had scientists scouring the Mid-East looking for the remains of the Tower of Babel.  The goal: locate a mechanism of extraordinary - some would say un-earthly- power.  So begins Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine from 1999.  This game was LucasArts's answer to the popular Tomb Raider games that had been a hit for a few years already.  Admittedly the visuals when compared to the graphics of nearly a quarter-century later leave MUCH to be desired.  But if you can overlook that Infernal Machine is still a rip-roaring adventure around the globe.

And finally, we have 2003's Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb.  Set in 1935, this game is something of a prequel to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (which itself was a prequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark, pretty meta aye?).  The game opens with Indy in Ceylon (what will later become known as Sri Lanka) and there is a positively enormous crocodile that once encountered you will never forget it.  Afterward our archeologist hero is approached by officials with the Chinese government, asking for his aid in recovering the Heart of the Dragon: a black pearl of reputed power that had been secreted away in the resting place of the country's first ruler.  Emperor's Tomb features far better graphics than its predecessor, and also provides a much more action-oriented experience, especially when using Indiana's signature bullwhip.  Emperor's Tomb is a rather hidden gem of the Indyverse: it was kind of overlooked upon first release. Maybe now, twenty years after it was published, it can be discovered anew and better appreciated.

Just in case you're wondering: no, nobody is paying me to hawk these games.  I'm simply doing it because I'm an Indiana Jones nut (hey, I watched every episode of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles) and have always found the world through his eyes to be a fascinating one.  If you dig (ha-ha, "dig", get it?  Yes ladies and gentlemen I'll be here all week!) a good quest rife with solid story, great action, perplexing puzzles and terrific characterization, and if you just want to experience a bit of what it's like to be cinema's most famous globe-trotting archaeologist, any of these three games will satisfy you.

Come to think of it, I may play one of these also while we're waiting for the next movie to drop.

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Thirty years later: JURASSIC PARK the motion picture

Thirty years ago today, I drove to Brassfield Cinema in Greensboro to catch the film adaptation of Jurassic Park on its opening day. A year and a half earlier during fall break of my high school senior year I bought a paperback copy of the novel by Michael Crichton at what used to be KC Books on Freeway Drive in Reidsville. Between getting the book and the release of the movie I read Jurassic Park six times. It was THAT good.

The cinema was packed. Lots of small children excited about seeing the dinosaurs. Some people said they were going back in to see it again after just getting out from watching it the first time.

 

I can still tell you which screen I sat down to watch it on. After nineteen months of build up, my patience was about to be rewarded.

 

The lights went down. The trailers began. And then the movie started...

 

 

Two hours later I left the theater... and I was possibly the ONE person who was disappointed!!

 

The book was soooo much better. Yes, the effects were magnificent. Pioneering, groundbreaking. But I had an image in my mind of what it would be like and the finished movie didn't meet the bar.

 

In years since I've come to be more forgiving. It was the first time a film had been so dependent on computer generated imagery. The crew of the movie had been faced with a seemingly impossible task. In the end, they stuck the landing and more. I can also better appreciate how such deep characters in the novel - like Ian Malcolm - did wind up translating as good enough to the screen as they were likely to get.

 

At the time I would have given Jurassic Park the movie 2 and 1/2 stars out of 5. There was just so much more from the book - like the pterodactyls - that I wanted to see. Thirty years later, I'd give the movie a solid 4 out of 5 stars.

 

An example of five star motion picture would also come from Steven Spielberg later that same year: Schindler's List. It was good that Spielberg made Jurassic Park first. Had the two movies switched places he wouldn't have been able to produce Jurassic Park at all. But that's a topic for another time.

 

It does not seem like it was thirty years ago. But it was. Wow.

 

So to end this little look back at Jurassic Park the motion picture, here's the song that "Weird Al" Yankovic released a few months later, his parody of "MacArthur Park"...

 

 

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May it never be forgot

Seventy-nine years ago today.

That's a still from the animated special What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown?  It was the follow-up to the film Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown.  Charlie Brown Linus, Peppermint Patty, Marcy, and Snoopy are on their way back to America.  They stop and camp for the night and Linus thinks they're something familiar about the place.

Wow.  That premiered forty years ago last week.  It's well worth tracking down and watching.

Remembering all who came ashore at Normandy on this day nearly eighty years ago.

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Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun: Carnage-filled fun for gamers of a certain age (and other people too!)

This coming December will mark thirty years since the original computer game Doom was released by id Software.  Gadzooks!!  Where did all that time go to?!?  Well, Doom sucked me in hard and refused to release its grip.  There had been a few first-person shooters before, notably id's own Wolfenstein 3-D.  But it was Doom that showed off the REAL potential of the genre.  And it broke the ground for other high-drama atmospheric entries in the category, like Star Wars: Dark Forces, Duke Nukem 3-D, and Quake.  Those in turn showed the way for more advanced games in the forthcoming generations, such as Halo and Call of Duty.

But no matter how advanced home computers and gaming consoles have become, my heart belongs to 1993's Doom and its contemporaries.  Especially for how editable it was, and it seemed like everyone and their brother was creating WAD files containing new graphics (my favorite is still the one that turned the Baron of Hell into Barney the Dinosaur), or sounds and music, right on up to new maps to play in.  Yes, the music was MIDI and the graphics were REALLY pixelated when you got up close to an element like scenery or an attacking monster... but that was just part of the charm.  Part of why I and many others came to love those games.

Well, a few weeks ago I heard about Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun, from Auroch Digital.  And what grabbed my attention was that it was created in the very same style of the Nineties-era first person shooters like Doom.  The game came out a few days ago and lo and behold a friend gifted it to me on Steam (where it's currently priced around twenty bucks).  So I installed Boltgun and played around with it.

Friends, that evening I felt what it was like to have played Doom for the very first time all those decades ago.  Auroch took the Warhammer 40,000 franchise and gave it a game it didn't know it needed.  If you're a "gamer of a certain age" who was among the first to play classic shooters, you will LOVE Boltgun.

The game has you playing a member of the Ultramarines chapter of the Adeptus Astartes (faux Imperial lingua franca for Space Marines).  If you ever played the Space Marine third-person game, you'll be especially delighted to learn that Boltgun takes place following that tale (and before the upcoming Space Marine II).  Your well-enhanced warrior, Malum Caedo, finds himself on the forge world of Graia.  Just like those Union Aerospace scientists did in Doom, it seems that the local techpriests got to messin' around with stuff they shouldn't have and opened a portal to Hel... I mean, the Warp.  Demons and mutant heretics and traitor marines have come through and are threatening the planet and all around it.  So as Caedo, you set out to make things right... by shootin', explodin', and chainsawin' every thing that's in your way.

Boltgun is an intense game, and the blocky pixelated blood and gore that splatters across your screen is all the more like enjoying a classic again.  Befitting a Warhammer 40,000 product, it is unfettered chaos and wreckage that will have you attacking anything and everything that moves.  I've gotten pretty good at taking aim with the selected firearm (mostly the boltgun) at relatively far targets, then rushing in to chainsword the baddie and any surrounding renegades.  It was like when I was playing Doom for the first time and came upon the chainsaw: Dad was walking past my room and had to see what I was giggling about.  I got the sense that he thought it was pretty gruesome (but also kind of funny).  Lord only knows what he would think of modern gaming.

I'm only three levels into the game, but felt it was already worth recommending to all two of this blog's readers.  I've been pretty well entertained by Boltgun so far.  What I would VERY much like to see however is for Auroch (provided that Games Workshop approves the concept) to open the game up for editing, just like we could do with many of the more popular first-person shooters of that epoch.  At the very least the studio could produce some add-on campaigns.  I would DEFINITELY pay to have Boltgun pitting the player against the Orks, or Tyranids (which reminds me of that legendary megaWAD that transformed Doom into the movie Aliens).

If you have fond memories of the gaming of thirty-some years ago, I think you'll like Boltgun.  It may also entice younger gamers to look around at the titles we had back then and give them a try also.

Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun can be found for purchase on Steam, again for about twenty bucks.  Not a bad deal if you're looking for something to vent a little angst and tension without having to shoot at the wall like Sherlock did.

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The Visitors came forty years ago this month

I was reminded of something earlier today, and I can't believe that this somehow slipped past the radar screen...

Last week, May 1st, was the fortieth anniversary of the premiere of the NBC television miniseries V.

That doesn't seem possible.  It's like it was only yesterday that creator Kenneth Johnson unleashed his nightmarish vision of fascism on a global scale.  The Visitors came to major cities across the planet, in fifty ships each three miles in diameter.  They looked like us.  They came from a dying planet and they needed humanity's help.  They came in peace.

And it was all a damnable lie.  Their intent was to rape the Earth, seizing every precious natural resource.  And the fate of mankind?  Something truly horrifying.  Four decades later and the scene of all those humans in cold storage still sends a shiver up my spine.

It was a grand endeavor.  What if Nazism had conquered the planet?  V was about that.  Every aspect of true-life fascism was portrayed, magnified through the lens of science-fiction.  But it was also about hope, and taking a stand and fighting back.  More than it frightened us, V inspired us.  The film was dedicated to the resistance fighters, wherever they have been found, past present and future.

This franchise deserved better!  Johnson's original plan as he presented it to NBC was that after the original miniseries, there would be three or four television movies each season, depicting the Visitors' occupation of Earth in various places.  But the executives didn't want that.  They wanted a second miniseries and using that to launch a weekly series.  They got that, but the follow-ups lost a lot of the spirit of the original.  V wasn't something like Star Wars, it was about a much deeper notion.  And then around 2009 ABC tried to reboot the franchise, but it failed for various reasons (I thought it was quite an admirable effort though).

It was an awe-some television experience.  So many moments from it that no doubt still stick out in the minds of many.

But here is my favorite moment.  Not just of the miniseries, but one of my most favorite moments in television, ever.  The final scene of Part One of V, the original miniseries.  Abraham, the elderly Holocaust survivor and his friend Ruby, find a group of teenagers who are vandalizing Visitor propaganda posters.  He stops them.

No, I won't say anything else.  Let the scene speak for itself:

 

 

And from that moment, humanity has a symbol of resistance.

It's a little dated now, but what do you expect from a television miniseries forty years old?  Don't let that stop you from watching it.  And you'll probably be like the rest of us were at the time: wondering how the HECK did any major broadcast network get away with all the stuff that they showed in this movie?

You'll see what I mean when you watch it.

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"Faith manages": Babylon 5 returning with animated movie!

I'm feeling some geeky gears in my gray matter starting to rotate like they haven't in a VERY long time.

Babylon 5 - the single greatest television series that the Nineties ever spawned - is coming back as an animated film.

The show's creator J. Michael Straczynski unloaded the news on Twitter earlier this afternoon.  More details are coming soon, including the movie's title and release date.

I cannot emphasize enough how stoked I am about this.  Babylon 5 was like an extra few years of education on top of what I got in college.  The five-season story about that miles-long space station all alone in the night, the "last best hope for peace" in a galaxy rife with plotting and intrigue, shattered the ceiling both as a broadcast series and for what the medium was capable of giving viewers.  Had it not been for Babylon 5 paving the way, there may have never been a rebooted Battlestar Galactica, or Lost.  Or The Walking Dead for that matter, along with an armful of other shows.

I'm really looking forward to seeing how this goes.  One thing that popped into mind: wouldn't it be really sweet if we saw an animated Garibaldi watching Daffy Duck cartoons?  That would be soooo meta.

If this show has always been just off your radar screen and you want to "get a feel" for it, I wracked my brain trying to think of a clip from the show to put in this post, just a little iota of what it's about.  Someone on Facebook found one and it's perfect.  From the third season episode "Passing Through Gethsemane", Brad Dourif as Brother Edward, telling Delenn (the late Mira Furlan) and Lennier (Bill Mumy) about the last night that Christ spent before His death:

 

Yes, a science-fiction series that is respectful toward the concept of religion.  Just one of many such moments that Babylon 5 came to be renowned for.

This would be something that would compel me to get HBO Max, just to watch this.  I've always loved this show, its universe and this amazing cast of characters.  Ever since first reading about it in Starlog several months before it premiered in the winter of 1993, I've been enchanted by what this series was attempting.  And it pulled it off beautifully.

And now, more is coming.  Thing I'll celebrate by making some bagna cauda.  Hey, it's easier to find than Zima...

 

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Gordon Lightfoot died yesterday

The man is responsible for a lot of well known songs.  One of the local stations played "Sundown" around lunch today.  There are a few others he did too.

But the main subject of this post is about one that's especially dear to me.

I was almost two and a half years old when Gordon Lightfoot released his haunting ballad "The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald".  The song came out several months after the loss of the largest ship on the Great Lakes in a fierce November storm.  It was featured on Lightfoot's album Summertime Dream as well as getting a single release.

Dad bought the 8-track of Summertime Dream.  And his favorite song from it must have been "The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald".  I know this because I heard it so many times that it got impressed in my young memory.  That song is the earliest one I can recall knowing the sound and words of.  I very clearly and distinctly remember the sound of it, listening to it as I played with my toys in the living room.

The runner-up has to be The Chipmunks Christmas Volume 2.  And there were a few others that come to mind.  But "The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald" was my first "grown-ups" song.  And Lightfoot himself was the first musical artist that I remember the name of.  I know because I asked Dad what was he listening to and he told me "Gordon Lightfoot".

Don't know much else what to say with this post.  Except that I tweeted this last night, and it seemed right that I put it on my blog too.

So here is "The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald".

 

 

 

Thanks for the good memories Mr. Lightfoot.

 

 

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Preview: The Knight Shift's very last blog post

Am looking at making a few edits and additions to this blog.  Nothing too drastic though.  I used to change up The Knight Shift's appearance about once a year or so.  But it's had this template for five years now and it really does seem to be the best it's looked.

And I'm going to make sure it stays looking good, up until the very end.

A long time ago I heard about something that, it was kind of a legend.  That somewhere in the bowels of the CNN headquarters in Atlanta, there was a videotape.  And it was explicitly noted that it would not be used until the end of the world had been confirmed.  CNN founder Ted Turner had declared when the channel first started up that it would be on the air until the absolutely final moments of Planet Earth.  There would be no signing-off of CNN until then.

It turned out that this was not a myth.  Turner did make a "hold until end of the world" video.  Here it is on YouTube.  Depicting a military band playing "Nearer My God To Thee".  To be followed by CNN going out into darkness eternal.

When the tale turned out to be real, an idea hit me.  That I should also have a final post to be made on this blog.  There are actually two posts for the occasion: one to be made when my own passing away happens (hopefully a LONG time from now), and one to also hold for publishing until the apocalypse truly is upon us.

So if you are wondering what the very final words will be on The Knight Shift, after all this time and more, here's what is "in the vault" ready to be used at the closing of human history.  Please ignore the January 2050 timestamp.  That's just a placeholder for the actual date of Armageddon.

Anyhoo, here it is:

---

---

 

I want to be well into my eighties before I leave this earth, however it happens.  I was a kid when Halley's Comet visited in 1986 and it really was a letdown unless you lived in more southerly latitudes.  Hoping I'll get to see it during its next appearance and praying it will be much better.

Well, there it is.  When you all see that post, you will know to step away from the computer or put down your smart phone and embrace your loved ones as destruction rains down upon us.

I just like being prepared, is all :-)

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Dr. Charles Stanley has gone Home

"Well done, My good and faithful servant."

 

Let us be thankful for the very long time that God let him be among us.  A lot of people came to Christ... and drew closer to Him... because of this man's seemingly tireless efforts.  Dr. Charles Stanley truly had a servant's heart.  I for one learned quite a lot from watching his In Touch weekly series on television.

I got to meet him once.  It was January 2001, some friends and I went to a service at First Baptist Church of Atlanta.  Stanley struck me as one of the kindest people I've ever encountered.  He asked where was I from and I told him Reidsville, North Carolina.

"Oh I know where Reidsville is!" he replied.  "That's right down the road from Danville!", where he grew up.

I asked him if he could sign my Bible and he did on the inside front page.  Below his name he wrote "Isaiah 64:4".  It reads as thus, from the New International Version:

 

Since ancient times no one has heard,
    no ear has perceived,
no eye has seen any God besides you,
    who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.

In hindsight, I should have taken that verse more to heart.  I am thankful now though, that I get to appreciate it anew.

See you later Dr. Stanley.

EDIT 04/19/2023: my best friend since forever, Chad Austin, is managing editor of Biblical Recorder.  He just published an excellent article about Dr. Stanley's early years, from his first devoting his life to Christ on through serving as pastor of several churches and becoming a teacher.  It's a very inspiring read and I felt truly moved by it.  Click here to read "Stanley's global ministry has deep, formative roots in NC".

 

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Anyone else feeling this way too? (Spoilers for Stranger Things)

The very last shot from "The Piggyback", the finale of Stranger Things season four:

Click to enlarge

That's the overwhelming sense of things that I've had for much of this past year and I imagine it has been for a lot of other people too.  The visual metaphor is a most fitting one.  Many of our heroes, who have just gone through an incredibly exhaustive tribulation that spanned the width of America, enjoying a brief moment of joy and reunion.

And then they see the particles floating downward, not just them but everyone else in Hawkins.  It builds up to the final scene as Hopper and Joyce lead the others out of the woods... and toward the inescapable reality that for all their effort they have failed after all.  All they can do is stand from afar and look on as the Upside Down begins its invasion of the world.

Here's the sequence in its entirety, from the goosebumps on the back of Will's neck on through the devastating conclusion:

 

That, for me, is the thematic encapsulation of what I've had to watch unfold around us these past couple of years especially.  Growing darkness.  For each apparent win it becomes apparent that it hasn't been good enough.  That the battles may be won but the war is far from over.

I feel like I'm in that field, standing at a distance away from the chaos and turmoil that's threatening to engulf everything.  Looking onward toward the encroaching darkness and the world really is being turned upside-down and inside-out.

It's a powerful sense to be hit with.

But that's not all that scene conveys.

Joyce and Hopper are holding hands, bracing themselves for what is to come.  They've gone through so much for each other and they're going to be together now, too.  They aren't giving up.

Neither is Eleven.  The very last closeup of her shows her face in grim determination that this is not the end.  That the fight isn't over.  That she's going to do whatever it takes to face the threat of the Upside Down.  Eleven is going to finish this.  She's standing between her friends and evil unleashed: literally as well as figuratively.

I look at that final shot and see a battle that has been lost.  Things look bad now.  Very horribly wrong.

But there is still hope.

I don't think this present darkness around us is insurmountable, unconquerable.  I think it can be held at bay, if only for a little while.  Maybe that's all it will take for things to begin to be set right.  We look at how circumstances are now and we're going to acknowledge that the situation is dire.  But that's the furthest we'll allow it to get.

What comes next will be difficult.  The darkness will not give quarter to us.  Many people are going to be hurt in some capacity.

I think of scripture, and the promises of God.  We just had the Easter season.  Remembering a time when things seemed beyond all hope... and then God intervened and turned grief into immeasurable triumph and victory.

That's what we have to cling to, as we stand in our own field looking out upon the world that's being engulfed in evil.

We don't have to win.  We only have to stand.

If there is strength to do just that much, it will be enough.

 

 

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The April Fools prank I helped a friend with

The other week my very good friend Eric Smith (yes, the same one who also made a campaign commercial during that VERY wacky school board race years ago) approached me with a project.  Could I help him pull off an April Fools stunt this year?  I said absolutely, that it would be an honor and a pleasure to work with him.

Along with being an expert welder, Eric is also a professional Santa Claus (the reason his beard is so big and bushy).  And he's a certified beer expert (no really, you can get certifications for that) who regularly posts videos on YouTube as "Beer Santa".  So he came up with the idea for Duke's Mayonnaise Beer.

Here's the video he published two days ago.  Looks and sounds pretty convincing aye? :-)

Maybe next year I'll come up with another prank.  It's been too long since I've pulled off something.  I think my favorite was when I got everyone thinking that I was joining the Amish and turned this site into "Plain Blog by Brother Christopher Knight".  And then there was that other year's prank that got the Vatican's attention... but we won't go there.

So on your way home this evening, stop by your local grocer and pick up some all-natural Duke's Mayonnaise Beer.  Made by Sloof Brewing in Piedmont, Georgia.

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49

 Well, I'm feeling pretty good, here on the home stretch to the half century mark.  Tonight at 6:09 PM EST I officially turned forty-nine years old.

I had come to dread having a birthday.  They used to be something that I looked forward to.  But at least since 2000 it has come with pain preceded by the notion that I really haven't done much with my life.  It probably has something to do with my 26th birthday.  That was spent at my grandmother's funeral.  I was one of the pallbearers.  It also happened to take place a few months after the symptoms of manic depression first manifested and at that moment I was having a depressive episode.

But in the past few months and weeks it's been... different.  There has been no dread at all.  In fact, I've been feeling pretty good about things.  I like to believe it's because I'm finally at long last able to manage having bipolar disorder.  I'll never fully conquer it, but the episodes are getting further and further apart.  I had a manic episode this past fall, and I was able to tell that it was coming.  I got to act accordingly.  Fifteen or twenty years ago that wasn't possible.

I'm still hoping that God might let me have family.  Call me a hopeless romantic or a daydreamer or a fool like Don Quixote.  If He does, I will be able to take care of them in ways that I hadn't before.  Speaking of which, I'm finally coming to forgive myself for some of the things that I did during my lesser moments.

So, I've some reasons to be hopeful, and am eager to embrace life, however it is that I find it.  Getting older isn't a bad thing at all.  I wouldn't want to go back to when I was younger, and I likely wouldn't do anything to make all the pain that happened be as if it hadn't.  Like John Locke said on Lost: "I needed that pain to get to where I am now."

Better days are ahead.  I know they are.  I wasn't able to sit at Microsoft Word for the past month and a half because of some things that arose in real life, but I have been "sussing it out" in my head.  I'm also considering a new job: one that would be entirely different from anything that I have done before in my life.  The people I would be working with very much want to bring me aboard, they have said that my experiences with mental illness and my training as a mental health professional would make me a unique member of their force.  I'm thinking about it, praying about it especially.  Should I take this job you will DEFINITELY be reading about it here.  I'll give you a hint: as part of the training I will be hit in the face with pepper spray.  I doubt my love of Tabasco Sauce is going to make me immune to that.

So, my orbit around the Sun has made it's 49th circuit.  Now on to fifty.  Ever closer to what I've asked God for all these years: to please let me live long enough to see the return of Halley's Comet in 2062.  I'll be 88 years old then.  And hopefully my eyesight will be good enough to view it.  The appearance in 1986 was kind of a letdown.

Maybe it will be better next time.

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The Storm of the Century: Thirty years later...

It was this day, March the 12^th, thirty years ago.

I was eighteen, taking first year classes at the local community college.  I worked part time at Subway, but I didn’t have to go in that night.  About 4 that Friday afternoon Dad asked if I wanted to ride with him to Ridgeway, across the state line in Virginia.  There was this little convenience store there that EVERYONE in Rockingham County seemed to go to when they played the lottery.  I said sure, I’d come along.  It was a cold and cloudy day for mid March.

Looking back, I now recall the sound of the air around us before we hopped into the truck.  It had a very muffled characteristic.  I hadn’t heard air like that in a long time.  That should have been the first clue, about what had already begun to transpire.

We got back home a little over an hour later.  And as I got out of Dad’s truck I saw it: the first flakes of snow.  Something we had not seen fall in three years.

Well, two nights earlier at Boy Scout leadership training, the scoutmaster of my troop made a halfway-joking reference to the weather for the next few days.  How there may be snow.  I didn’t really take him seriously.

But here it was.  Snow.  And more flakes were starting to come down.

It didn’t stop.  It was only falling harder.  By 6:30 the ground was almost completely covered.  We drove to Short Sugar’s in Reidsville a little while later to pick up my sister, who was working there.  She drove cautiously behind our car.  By that point it was undeniably the harshest snowfall that we had seen in quite some time.  I don’t know how Mom drove through that as she did.  We could barely see the highway at all.  But we got back home, a little after 9.

The snow was still falling when I looked out the kitchen door about midnight.

It hadn’t stopped falling when we woke up.  And it continued on and on throughout the day.  No one was driving on our road.  There was nowhere to go.  I had to call my manager and tell her I couldn’t get to Subway tonight.  Saturday afternoon brought the wind.  It sounded like a hurricane.  And it blew the flakes hard against the side of the house.  There was zero visibility if anyone was so daring as to try to get out in that mess.

The power stayed on at our house.  The same could not be said for several hundred thousands of others throughout the area, including one television station in Greensboro that went off the air.  The ABC station was hardly functioning, which I remember because there was something coming on that night that I had been looking forward to catching and the signal barely penetrated the storm.

It was weather on an almost apocalyptic scale.  I finally fell asleep probably around 2 a.m., the wind still howling and barraging the house with frozen precipitation.

Finally, Sunday morning dawned.  The wind had ceased.  The first real sunlight in two days revealed our home, the fields around it, our cars, the trees… everything covered by a pure unspoiled brilliant
blinding white sheet of snow nearly two feet deep.  I got out of the house for a little while to get some fresh air and behold it all.  Our cocker spaniel puppy, Bridget, went out also.  I don’t know how she kept from sinking into the snow.  She looked like a miniature polar bear, she was walking across it so easily.

That was how I experienced the Storm of the Century.  The 1993 Super Storm.  The Great Blizzard of '93.  Whatever you want to call it.  It was a convergence of several weather systems that produced a meteorological monstrosity.  At its height it stretched all the way from Central America to Canada up and across the Eastern Seaboard.  Roughly half the population of the United States was impacted one way or another by the event.  No storm since then has approached it in size and ferocity.

Things had been brought to a standstill for the next few days.  But the weather turned warmer and by Friday all roads were completely passable.  There was only the barest vestige of the blizzard to be found in shady spots as I drove back from the Boy Scout camp the following Sunday morning, at the conclusion of leadership training.

The Storm of the Century was thirty years ago.  But I still think of it, whenever it snows.  I’ve no doubt that many who are reading this will also remember where they were during those several days in March of 1993, when winter showed us that it wasn’t finished yet.

 

 

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The closest person I had to a grandfather

 A few nights ago I was propped up in bed, just randomly looking up things with my iPad.  And I came upon something truly, truly special.  It is for me anyway...

It's on the website for the Order of the Arrow lodge of the Boy Scout council that I was in.  This photo dates to 1954.  The man on the right, in the light uniform shirt, is Allan "Doc" Lewis.  He was a lifelong educator and advocate for Scouting.  In the photo he and the other man (C. Lin Adams) are wearing their Order of the Arrow sashes, which indicate that they were Vigil rank.  The OA was especially near and dear to Doc's heart, as it symbolized true brotherhood and service.

I know these things about Doc, and much more, because he was the grandfather that I never got to have.  I suspect a lot of young men felt the same way about him.

I first wrote about Doc fifteen years ago, on the occasion of what would have been his one hundredth birthday.  Doc was born in January 1908, so he would have been about 46 in this picture.  That was thirty-one years before he and I met for the first time.  I was eleven and a half and a newly minted real Boy Scout.

I'll never understand why Doc took a shine to me as he did.  How it came to be that he brought me under his wing.  I think we definitely had a "master and apprentice" relationship going on.  Doc would often tell me stories of his interesting younger years (he once took Katherine Hepburn out to dinner, he used to hang out with George Burns and Gracie Allen, and he served on a committee with Norman Rockwell).  Doc was a well traveled man too and I think I inherited some wanderlust from him.  That year-long meandering across America that my dog and I did a few years back?  I was definitely channeling pure Doc for that one.  He often shared his witty sense of humor, and his belief in chivalry toward the opposite sex.

There isn't much to say that hasn't been already.  Doc Lewis really did fill a role in not just my life but the lives of many others.  He was very dear to me.  He still is.  And that's the earliest photo I've come across of him.  Seeing that, it's like I can still hear his voice speaking across the decades.

Well, it was just a neat find and I had to blog about it.  Doing what I can to keep his spirit alive and well in our hearts.  Thanks for reading this :-)

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