13/ ...and more in the human and humane community that underlies any such radicalism, the utopian horizon that, however far away and seemingly unreachable, tends to motivate later Pynchon novels.

12/ So: the flavors of the book and movie are rather different. The movie is a more straightforward political thriller, with some nicely done action scenes, and Chase Infiniti is fabulous as Willa. But the book is less interested in political violence as a tool of radicalism...

11/ The opening flashback scene has Pat and Perfidia freeing a group of detained immigrants. While the younger Pat is more focused and competent, he still seems a bit prickly. Leo DiCaprio portrays this character well...but he lacks the sad-clown pathos of Zoyd Wheeler from the novel.

10/ But we see more than really feel that sense of community, and more emphasis is given to its ability to mobilize in protection of one of its own (Bob), no matter how lost and pathetic. Which is another issue: Bob (real name Pat Calhoun) is not all that sympathetic a character.

9/ The exception in the movie that comes closest, although only briefly sketched, is the community led by Sergio St. Carlos (fka DL Chastain), which is highly organized to protect immigrants and presents a more functional chosen family compared to the (rather pathetic) radicals in Bob's past.

8/ ...the way such "idiosyncratic sodalities" are unified by their love of a vivified language that refuses the "debilitating calcification of our view of the world, a terrible stifling of emergences and possibilities." (Yes, "emergences" not "emergencies.")

7/...language which resists what Emerson calls a decline into mere "municipal speech," language denuded of everything but brute instrumental functionality. Against such decline, nerds (Coviello doesn't use the term but could have) revel in "the unsung affordances of articulacy" (beautiful phrase)...

6/ ...who says that one reason he loves 'Vineland' is that it was among the works that unified a group of his friends in college and grad school. Coviello refers to "idiosyncratic sodalities," communities formed around and unified by a playful yet serious approach to culture and language...

5/ What the movie misses (I mean, what I miss in the movie compared to Pynchon's novel) is much of its humor and, more importantly, the sense of longing and community unifying and driving the old (and younger) radicals in 'Vineland'. I recently read Peter Coviello's 'Vineland Reread'...

4/ ...with whom he's sexually obsessed after what he imagines was an affair with Perfidia. By making Perfidia Black, Anderson is able to focus the right-wing grotesquerie of Lockjaw on race (which IMO is a correct read of the current Right).

3/ But: taken on its own terms, the movie works well, focusing on its three main characters (Bob fka Zoyd, Willa fka Prairie, and Col. Lockjaw fka Brock Vond) and motivating Lockjaw's government action against Bob and Willa in his obsession with Willa's off-the-grid mother (Perfidia fka Frenesi)...

2/ Anderson moves the time setting forward, creating some cognitive dissonance (right-wing fantasies notwithstanding, there really were no violent left revolutionary groups operating in the '00s...) but allowing the present-day action to have sharper resonance with our sadly besaddled reality.

cover has curiously Scully & Mulder vibe...

If we judge music by the character of its creators (dubious enterprise), then only the material by Jack Bruce on this record passes muster. Fortunately, as someone else noted, the studio half of this one's dominated by Bruce's work. And this track "As You Said" is just freaky acid-folk cool.

(if anyone's doing the math: we also decided full-rack plays would be worth 25 rather than 50. Makes other plays plausible rather than clearing the just a no-brainer default.

2) Rose played PERI/G/ON/OGEE/NAB (all 7) for 49.

And then TORULAE/TE (all 7) for 38.

I rallied with ZEN/YEZ/ODE (Z on double-letter)...but not enough (52).

Rose ended up winning, with me being the BUTT (final move) of the joke!

1) Weird board this game. I played SUASIVE with its S pluralizing GRIEF (all 7 tiles plus triple word) for 68.

Rose @highplainstallcat.bsky.social played TAX/MA/AX with the X on triple-letter: 55.

Then she played /E/NDERMIC (all 7, 2x): 53.

2) Rose played PERI/G/ON/OGEE/NAB (all 7): 49.

And then TORULAE/TE (all 7): 38

I closed the gap, nearly, with ZEN/YEZ/ODE (Z on 2x for 52).

But it wasn't enough. Rose won, and I was (final move) the BUTT of the joke.