Twentynine Palms, California, United StatesSpent today up on the northwestern part of Joshua Tree NP.
This is the more developed and vastly more traveled part of the park, and it's Sunday. People everywhere everywhere we went. Took a walk out to Barker Dam, about 1.3 mile loop trail, where we found the dam but no water and, therefore, no wildlife. Apparently there is water here during winter and spring. Here's a photo I found online; you can contrast it with the photos I took there today. By the time we finished, right at 12:00, the place was overrun. All the parking was full, as were all the pullouts along the access road. People were parking in the overflow parking and walking up, adding another 1.1 miles each way to the hike.
Weather, fortunately, was gorgeous--just like yesterday. About 73 degrees at that elevation, though when you are out in the direct sun, it can still feel pretty hot. Hats and sunscreen mandatory, and carry water!
Stopped for lunch at the Hidden Valley picnic area, which was also overrun, but we managed to get a table which had one corner in the shade. (You have to pack in your own food--no services in the park).
Subway day 2. We bolted when a bus disgorged about 60 Japanese tourists who headed straight for us on a determined march. They didn't want our table, as it turned out--not enough of it in the shade. Nevertheless: good idea to beat the bus to our next stop: Key's View overlook.
Today was an exceptionally clear day, and so we could see all the way to Palm Springs (20 miles in a straight line) and San Gorgonio Mountain (highest peak in Southern California at 11,485) to the west, and Indio about 10 miles to the south. We could see part of the Salton Sea, about 30 miles to the southeast. See photos.
Conversation overheard at overlook between mother and two sons, about 6 and 8 years old:
Kid: can we climb down there?
Mom: No
Kid: Why not:
Other kid: Those people did.
Mom: Those people are breaking the rules. We don't do that.
Kid: (Holds water bottle out over edge of wall)
Mom: If you drop that bottle it's gone. We're not going to climb over there and get it.
Kid: Why not?
Mom: Because we don't break rules.
Kids: (running)
Mom: Watch where you're going--there are other people here.
Use your manners.
Give that mom super extra triple double bonus points. Thank you from all your sons' future teachers.
Over the course of the day, we saw a good many birds. Those which I did not get photos of include: Red-Tailed Hawk, Ladderback Woodpecker, California Thrasher, and Gambel's Quail. We did get photos of a yellow-form House Finch, which we do not have at home--red only in our neck of the woods. These yellow ones were part of a huge flock which was mostly the normal red-form birds, but we managed to pick out a few of the different ones. Found a ranger this morning at the Joshua Tree visitor's center who is a big birder, and he helped hunt down some identifications. Ran into him again at the Oasis Visitor Center at the end of the day, and he helped out some more.
We've driven the whole park now; we did not undertake long hikes or climb up to the top of impossibly tall rock piles, as many other park visitors did. We goggled at them, though, while they did it! Here's a park map: you can see yesterday's tour from the Oasis Visitor Center to the Cottonwood Visitor Center, and today's route from the Joshua Tree Visitor Center to the Oasis Visitor Center.
A note I forgot from yesterday: I asked a park ranger about the damage that was done during the government shutdown last winter. I had heard that people came in and cut down some of the Joshua Trees. He concurred, but said that the greater damage was from those people driving off road vehicles through areas which are closed to traffic. The compression of the soil does tremendous damage to the ecosystem, which is fragile, as you might imagine. They also estimate that they lost $1 million in entry fees over the period of the closure--Joshua Tree is one of the fastest growing parks in terms of visitation. I found an article here talking about the damage done by the marauders. I just don't get people.
Headed back to the hotel after that for a rest. This evening, we're going to the drive-in about 6 minutes from here: Smith's Ranch Drive-In. They're showing Joker and Ad Astra. The former is yet another comic book movie, though I have to admit, I've heard many good things about it, so we'll see. The latter is one we would actually be interested in seeing even if we weren't going to the drive-in.
Maybe my snarky review in the morning won't have to be as snarky as some of my previous efforts!
The reviews are in and....drum roll...you know it's a weird day at the drive-in when we liked the comic book movie better (a LOT better) than the sci-fi flick. These are two movies which both tried for some sort of insight into sons who have lost their fathers. Ad Astra failed not only to generate even empathy, but also believability. Or interest. Joker, on the other hand, managed believability but also a weird and unsettling sympathy, and it parleyed the idea into something much bigger and more dangerous on a societal scale. No contest.
First, my top three reasons not to spend your money on Ad Astra. (Many spoilers alert--if you want to see this movie, don't read this review; skip down and read about Joker. My advice, though, is to save your money and read this review. It's not worth your $12--or even the half of our $5 entry fee to the drive-in last night).
#3. The plot made no sense. Here is a partial list of things that happen in the movie which would never have happened in any remotely realistic universe (not counting science things--see #2):
- People shooting guns inside space ships.
- Unexplained cannisters of fatally air-polluting substances inside a space ship.
- An underwater lake on Mars with an access port some several hundred meters from the spaceship Brad Pitt character wants to get into AND, luckily, the spaceship parked right over another access port so he could climb out of the lake and into the engine.
- Doorways in spaceships wherever it is convenient--like from the engine into the passenger compartment.
- Engine firing while Brad Pitt character is climbing up to get into the passenger compartment through aforementioned extremely convenient hatch.
- Brad Pitt character not wet when he climbs out of lake. Though to be fair, the engines firing would probably dry him out pretty quickly.
- Obviously emotionally damaged Brad Pitt character passes psych test after psych test. People are impressed, rather than worried, by the fact that his heartbeat never goes about 80, even when he is falling all the way from outerspace to earth.
- Brad Pitt character falls all the way from outerspace to earth and lives to tell the tale.
- Brad Pitt character who has become a danger to the mission can just walk out the door, accompanied by the base commander who did not have enough clearance to know what the mission was.
- AWOL Brad Pitt character gets himself onto spaceship fjrom which he was explicitly excluded, stands by while the three-person crew kills each other and themselves (in part by shooting above-mentioned poison gas cannister with above-mentioned guns), but when he comes back to earth, he's allowed to walk around and live his own life. Not a court-martial in sight.
- Space agency secretly knows that Brad Pitt character's father, Tommy Lee Jones character, is not dead, although he's been presumed dead for something like 16 years (timeline VERY murky). We don't know how they know.
- Space agency, having determined that Tommy Lee Jones character (Brad Pitt character's long-missing father) is not dead, determines that he is deliberately sending dangerous space pulses from Neptune to destroy the earth. (See #2 below.)
- Inexplicable appearance of Donald Sutherland, who shows up and then almost dies without performing any notable function. Last we hear, he's headed into emergency surgery. We never hear of him again.
- Inexplicable appearance of space pirates on Mars trying to kill Brad Pitt character. They get just about everyone else. Why would space pirates want to kill all the establishment spacemen?
- I could go on.
#2: Bad Science: Again, a partial list:
- A series of mysterious pulses coming from the vicinity of Neptune involving anti-matter causing cosmic rays (which theoretically would cause massive explosion on coming into contact with matter), rather than exploding when it comes into contact with matter, instead shuts down the power of everything for thousands of miles, causing more than 43,000 deaths on earth. Huh? The whale-seeking probe in Star Trek IV was massively more believable.
- A machine can run a psych test and decide whether Brad Pitt character passes by reading something through a patch on Brad Pitt character's throat.
- 17 days to Mars in a space ship. Google says 150-300 days.
- 79 days to Neptune in a space ship. Google says 12 years. (That's how long it took Voyager to get out there.)
- Lag time for messages between Mars and Neptune, approximately 20 seconds round trip. We calculated that it would take more like 12 hours each way.
- Brad Pitt character uses a piece of armor off of his father's spaceship as a shield, while he leaps from a spinning windmill arm thingy (on same spaceship) to launch himself through the rings of Neptune with precision accuracy to get him back to his own spaceship (because his shuttle was damaged and he couldn't use it to get back).
- Brad Pitt character continues moving toward his spaceship without changing course even though his shield gets pounded with the debris that makes up a ring around Neptune. Even I know that motion in space is controlled by momentum. He'd have been ping-ponging here, there, and everywhere.
- Is there really any reason to believe that there are underground lakes on Mars? Average temperature on Mars (according to the Internet): -81F. That lake, if it existed, would be a solid block of ice. Not great for swimming.
- And the piece de resistance: the uncontrolled explosion of an atom bomb in Tommy Lee Jones character's spaceship propels Brad Pitt character's spaceship right back to earth. Perfect trajectory calculation somewhere. Somehow.
- Apparently, without this explosion, the original crew, had they never died from poisoned air, could never have returned. Huh?
- I could go on.
#1: (stolen from a pithy review on IMDB): Rating: 1/10. This movie literally has man-eating space babboons in it.
Nuff said.
Joker, on the other hand...
More spoilers here. If you want to see the movie, go see it before you read this. This one is worth your shelling out for a ticket.
Provides a more cogent explanation of the Joker becoming the Joker than Jack Nicholson being dunked into a vat of acid.
What I can say about this movie is that it transcends its comic book origin to become a story that is completely believable. The growing madness of Arthur Fleck and his transformation into the psychotic, violent, Joker, a man completely unbounded by any societal more, is presented as a microcosm of the society around him.
The poor majority of Gotham City (read any big city), inspired by his "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more" strike against the oppressors murder of three privileged young white men who think they can harass and assault anyone they want with impunity, sparks a massive revolt in Gotham City of the downtrodden against the smug, heartless privileged ruling class. Think French Revolution.
Complex relationships between Arthur and his mother, Arthur and the man he thinks is his father (and who turns out not to be), the television comedian whom he has long worshipped as a father-figure (and who betrays him by mocking him publicly on the television show), and the girlfriend he only thinks he has make for compelling psychological studies--a far cry from the superficial Oedipal schlock we got in Ad Astra.
When the movie was over, I asked Tim what he thought, and he said "That was profoundly scary." (He actually used a few more off-color words, which I have left out for the PG rating of this blog, but which actually describe the feeling accurately.
) That's exactly right. This is a very, very scary movie because it could happen today. I'd have to say the best comic book movie I've seen--maybe ever.
My top three favorite things about Joker (to balance my top three awful things from Bad Astra):
#3: Aforementioned elevation of the story above the comic book into something frightenling real. Give credit to producer, director, and screenwriter. It seems to me that someone gave Todd Phillips (the director) a big leg up--his previous stuff was peurile comedies, the apex of which appears to have been the re-boot of Starsky and Hutch in 2004. He's had nothing, near as I can tell, with this calibre of script or actors, or this budget. Phillips stepped up in a big way.
#2: Excellent care taken to walk a very fine line between what was real and what was all in Arthur's delusions. By the end, we couldn't tell, and so we saw the world as Arthur did. Talk about scary. All set up carefully by showing us how funding cuts resulted in Arthur's going off his meds.
#1: Joaquin Phoenix.
The man has an Oscar in his future.
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2025-05-22