Sauce Quest
I finish five books in one day and read twelve books the next day. I watch a picture.
Read and Stride Strides Again
I finished the library-walking project with a fifteen-miler visiting the remaining eight branches of the San Francisco Public Library all by foot and reading a book inside of each branch, plus reading books en route from Little Free Libraries and putting them in other Little Free Libraries.
On the day before I had a false start, reading and shuffling books from LFLs (and finishing the short Kerouac book I’d been reading after finding it on the previous walk). I thought I was gonna do the long walk that day but it didn’t work out because of my poor time-planning, so this was just longitudinal literary lagniappe:
My Teacher Is a Monster! by Peter Brown
Who’s Who At the Zoo
What Can I See? by Deborah Schecter
The Scripture of the Golden Eternity by Jack Kerouac, with introductions by Anne Waldman and Eric Mottram
Workitu's Passover: A Story from Ethiopia, written by Zahava Workitu Goshen & Maayan Ben Hagai with illustrations by Eden Spivak
On the next day the long walk transpired as hoped. I dropped off Workitu's Passover: A Story from Ethiopia in one of the LFLs I hit the day before and took Good Night Little Turtle with story by David Cunliffe and illustrated by Tiffany Cunliffe. I read it as I walked.
At Excelsior branch I read Little White Rabbit by Kevin Henkes, of whose books the complete reading list shows I’ve read two others. I can’t remember if they are also illustrated in the lush, charming pastel style Henkes uses in the rabbit book, or if they display his flair for opulent page layouts, but Little White Rabbit is a great children’s book.
I dropped off Good Night Little Turtle in the same LFL where I’d found Workitu's Passover: A Story from Ethiopia the day before and took The Night Sky, written by Alice Pernick and illustrated by Lisa Desimini, reading it as I walked through the Glen Park area.
The longest walk between branches was between the first two, from Excelsior up around the rim of Glen Canyon Park and out to the Sunset branch, where I read Uh-Oh! Rabbit by Jo Ham.
I dropped off The Night Sky in an LFL near 29th and Cabrillo. On Cabrillo between 36th and 37th I found a board book called San Francisco baby by Tess Shea and Jerome Pohlen with art by Violet Lemay. Read it as I finished walking to the Anza branch, where I then read Don't Think of Tigers by Alex Latimer.
I deposited San Francisco baby in an LFL near 19th and Balboa, where I took and read a book called Milk by Lynn Maslen Kertell, illustrated by Sue Hendra. I rehoused Milk in an LFL on 17th between Balboa and Cabrillo, a rare occasion of a completely empty LFL (until I Milked it).
At the Park branch I read Storybots: Velociraptors by Scott Emmons, illustrated by Nikolas Ilic. Apparently this is adapted from a kids’ Netflix show. I read it because I love dinosaurs.
In the open-air alcove at the Richmond branch I read We Are Expecting YOU! by Barney Saltzberg. At the Presidio branch I read Ten Little Rabbits by Maurice Sendak.
At the Western Addition branch I read Soy Sauce! by Laura G. Lee, which taught me a bunch of stuff I didn’t know about soy sauce production. And made me hungry.
At the Eureka Valley branch I read another seasonally appropriate book, Is It Passover Yet? by Chris Barash with pictures by Alessandra Psacharopulo. I also knew I was gonna end up walking some miles more and nursing my dogs with a drink, so on a whim I grabbed from this last branch a copy of Death of a Salesmen by Arthur Miller. After I was seated with drink in hand, in precisely the same spot where I started reading Waldman and Mottram’s introductions to The Scripture of the Golden Eternity days before, I began reading Miller’s legendary 1949 play for the first time.
As Shea and Pohlen wrote, “It’s been a long day. The golden sun has set at last. Maybe, baby, it’s time to go to bed!” And as Kerouac wrote: “There’s no need to deny that evil thing called GOOGOO, which doesn’t exist.” Good advice.
Film Selection: A Quest of One’s Own
The Quest, directed by Jean-Claude Van Damme, 1996. I really like Van Damme as a movie star. I like his handsome face, I like his incomparable physique, I like his thrilling martial arts technique, I like how he tries so earnestly to be a good actor when he clearly doesn’t have a natural facility for it.
The Quest marks Van Damme’s directorial debut, and it’s also the only non-007 Roger Moore movie I can recall seeing. Who knows why Moore selected in particular this fun, stupid, trashy retro action/adventure flick for which to come out of pseudo-retirement. But on screen he seems to be having a sufficiently good time playing a mischievous, unreliable and charismatic mentor figure to Van Damme’s warrior-naif protagonist.
The premise is another version of the same picture Van Damme kept making and remaking throughout his career, the secret-international-martial-arts-tournament-in-a-remote-locale movie. The Quest was even written from a story concept developed Van Damme and Frank Dux, who worked with Van Damme on Bloodsport and Lionheart, JCVD’s two other most salient contributions to his signature subgenre. Moore’s character is a direct stand-in for the wily and self-interested manager archetype played by Harrison Page in Lionheart. The Moore character Dobbs wants to assist the goodhearted fighting-prodigy protagonist Chris to whatever extent it will lead him (Dobbs) on an adventure and help him acquire the tournament prize MacGuffin of a golden dragon.
The fresh spin on this trite premise in The Quest is to place this reused story in the year 1925, where it combines fight tournament/action movie tropes with old-timey adventure material cribbed from A-list sources like the Indy films. The results aren’t all bad; what starts out as a so-bad-it’s-good guffaw evolves into a diverting, if wholly unoriginal, good-faith B-movie effort from Van Damme and a decent supporting cast led by marquee-name Moore and including serviceable efforts from working actors James Remar, Janet Gunn and Jack McGee. Recommended if you dig Van Damme or otherwise have any passing interest in popcorn action movies marketed towards the PG-13 set in the Nineties. It’s cartoonish and unselfconsciously dumb with some good fight stunts and locations, an even mix between qualities that are so-bad-they’re-good and others that are just good.