Thursday, December 25, 2025
"Dragonslayer" and "Apocalypto": two-fer review
[WARNING: spoilers.]
I recently rewatched "Dragonslayer" and sort-of rewatched "Apocalypto." I say "sort of" because I'd seen parts of it years ago, and I somehow misremembered that I'd seen all of it. When I rewatched "Apocalypto," I had only recently rewatched "Dragonslayer," and I initially thought that the two movies had nothing in common. But as I thought more about them, I realized they actually have some important themes and qualities in common. After reviewing both films, I'll discuss what I mean.
Dragonslayer
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| Peter MacNicol as Galen Bradwarden and Caitlin Clarke as Valerian |
The story takes place in a somewhat fictionalized version of Europe, first in a remote, local setting called Cragganmore (in my youth, I heard this as "Krakenmoor," which still sounds cooler to me)—an old fortress across the water where the aging sorcerer Ulrich lives with his ancient and constantly carping servant Hodge (Bromley) and his young apprentice Galen Bradwarden (MacNicol)—then in the larger kingdom of Urland, ruled over by King Casiodorus (Eyre). Urland is being terrorized by the last of the dragons, an old beast named Vermithrax Pejorative, grown angry and spiteful in her old age and "constant pain." To stop the dragon from burning the cities and villages of his kingdom, Casiodorus has made a pact with Vermithrax: twice a year, at the spring and fall equinoxes, all the virgins are gathered in one place, and one virgin's name is drawn by lottery. She is then chained up, wheeled over to the dragon's lair, and left to die. This has been a more or less satisfactory arrangement for the dragon and for the king, but not for the kingdom's young daughters, who have known the terror of the lottery for years. As the story begins, a delegation of villagers, led by a young boy named Valerian (Clarke) and without the king's knowledge, has arrived at Cragganmore to ask Ulrich—last of the sorcerers—to use his powers to destroy Vermithrax—seemingly the last of the dragons—and save the kingdom's daughters. Ulrich, at first taken aback by the sight of one of the dragon's teeth, is hesitant at first, but he decides to help. The following morning, as he's about to leave, Galen expresses doubt that Ulrich can walk even a league given his age. At the same time, a knight arrives: Tyrian (Hallam, and not Tyrion as in Lannister), smug and insouciant. Tyrian is obviously here to stop anyone from undermining the king's lottery, but he takes a different tack, expressing doubts about Ulrich's magical capabilities and demanding a test of his power. This is the end of the Dark Ages and the beginning of the simultaneous rise of Christianity and pre-Renaissance skepticism. Ulrich gives Tyrian a dagger and invites the knight to stab him in the chest, smiling while avowing, "Don't worry: You can't hurt me." Tyrian delivers the blow; Ulrich stares meaningfully into the distance, blinks a few times, then collapses and dies. Tyrian leaves in sneering disgust; Galen and Hodge, crestfallen, cremate their master and gather his ashes into a leather pouch.
What follows is a clever adventure leavened with moments of humor, romance, and tragedy as Galen discovers Valerian is actually a woman (a virgin disguised by her father as a boy to protect her from the lottery), King Casiodorus's kind daughter Elspeth (Chloe Salaman) discovers she has been protected from participating in the lottery, and Christianity in the form of a priest (Ian McDiarmid, the Emperor himself!) comes to the villages of Urland to preach the holy word and attempt to banish the dragon through prayer. The priest gains a strong convert named Greil (Salmi). Galen also learns that Ulrich, knowing he was too weak to make the journey to the dragon's lair, had planned his own death; this results in a surprising (but only temporary) magical resurrection and a final duel with Vermithrax, whose three offspring Galen, armed with a magical spear given to him by Valerian's father (James), manages to kill.
"Dragonslayer" has a surprising amount of blood and partial nudity for what is technically a Disney film (this was back when Disney was more daring in its live-action efforts; the movie was co-produced with Paramount). In the scene where Galen discovers Valerian is a woman, we get some from-behind nude shots of both Galen and Valerian. We also see multiple people being burned alive by the dragon. When one virgin is killed by the dragon's offspring inside the beast's cave, we witness the unsettling vision of one of the babies gnawing at a human leg right at the shin—and the body's foot, nearly chewed off, is moving loosely on its own, suggesting the baby has already made it through the bone. I first saw this movie in a theater in 1981 back when I was eleven or twelve; the sight of that girl's foot about to come off was seared into my brain. When Galen belatedly appears beside the girl's corpse with his magical spear, Sicarius Dracorum ("Dragonslayer"), he stabs and beheads two of the three reptilian offspring before beating the final one to death with a torch. The whole thing is bloody and visceral, and I haven't even gotten to Galen's desperate fight with Tyrian, which ends with a vicious stab to the gut. There must have been a time, long ago, when dragons ruled the air, sorcerers cast their spells, and Disney movies had balls.
The movie's story and script have held up well over time. The cleverness of Ulrich's plan is a major plot element. This being a 1981 production, Valerian—especially once she reveals to her whole village that she's a woman—comes off as feminine without being a man-hating girl-boss. She also plays a crucial role in Galen's ability to survive his first direct encounter with Vermithrax: Valerian makes a shield out of dragon scales, which is enough to protect Galen from most of the dragon's fiery fury. Ulrich, whom we see at the movie's beginning and end, is smartly written and characterized, as are both Galen and Valerian, who each have their own arcs to follow. Galen, who had arrogated to himself the role of "master" upon Ulrich's death, has to learn important lessons about humility and the wielding of power; Valerian meanwhile, transitions from young man to young woman but has to retain the inner strength she had gained while in the guise of a boy. And lurking in the background is the mysterious or ironic role of Christianity: as dragons and wizards kill each other off, a new age is about to begin, and could it truly be that the last wizards on Earth were, in some way, instruments of God facing off against the last dragon? Early on, Ulrich remarks to Valerian that there would be no dragons were it not for wizards, i.e., dragons are magical in origin. Perhaps on a metaphysical level, dragons and wizards are are kind of matter and antimatter: twinned and separate, but bring them together, and they annihilate each other. The story seems to suggest that magic lives on and is woven into the pagan fabric of this fictional version of western Europe (I assume this is meant to be early Europe despite Galen's and Valerian's American accents).
But as satisfying as "Dragonslayer" is, it isn't without its flaws. It's implied that Ulrich's Cragganmore lies outside of the kingdom of Urland, but Tyrian, an authority within Urland, strays outside to visit Ulrich at his keep. (I suppose the answer to that conundrum could be that Tyrian, being arrogant, feels that his authority extends as far as his ego.) Vermithrax, we know, is old and bitter and in pain. We also infer she's a she thanks to her offspring (so perhaps there was a male dragon sometime in her past... unless being a magical creature means parthenogenesis, even when elderly). But almost everything we learn about the dragon's personality and her pact with Urland's king comes to us through exposition, i.e., through the mouths of the human characters. Unlike Peter Jackson's wonderful rendition of Smaug (maybe the best thing about the Hobbit trilogy), Vermithrax doesn't talk, so there's little chance to develop her further as a character. In fact, how did Vermithrax get the name Vermithrax? That's a name that isn't pronounceable by a dragon's speech organs (at least in this universe; Smaug was capable of human speech); it can only be said by humans. And who named her? A wizard? An antecedent dragon? I would also like to have seen more about Christianity's conflict with local paganism and sorcery. I gather that, as depictions of the Dark Ages go, the movie mixed and matched several primitive historical eras, with ambiance being more important than accuracy. Some of the minor characters, like Tyrion and Hodge, could have used a bit more development, but I imagine the film would have become too long had the director chosen to weave in more details. And for a movie about magic, there weren't nearly enough "vulgar displays of power" for my taste. Most of the fireworks come at the very end.
The special effects also mostly hold up, but to use the terminology of today's Millennials and Zoomers, some of the VFX are, by today's standards, janky. The film was one of the first to use a then-new technique called go-motion, which meant photographing robotically controlled moving models and adding blur to create smoother, more realistic creature movements (unlike stop-motion, which involves photographing unmoving-but-adjustable miniatures). Still, certain flame effects and model effects could stand to be improved through the subtle use of modern CGI. Many of the film's practical effects, though, still hold up fairly well. When we first encounter Vermithrax, we initially see her only partially—a heavy tail here, an enormous talon there, giant horns on a face obscured by some foreground object. It's a lot like a horror-movie buildup, and we don't get the full reveal of the dragon until we're about two-thirds of the way through the story. Nowadays, especially after "Game of Thrones," I think we take animated dragons for granted, but back in 1981, this was top-of-the-line animation. Even by today's standards, it's impressive and beautiful if not entirely smooth.
I also tip my hat to composer Alex North, a fifteen-time Oscar nominee. His score for this movie is wild and all over the place, ranging from dramatic and operatic to lightly whimsical during humorous moments. His leitmotifs for the dragon evoke mystery, awe, and horror; his soundtrack for ceremonies and kingly pomp and circumstance evoke the primitivity of the Dark Ages. I have to sit my brother Sean down to listen to North's score: Sean is a professional cellist with unconventional tastes; I imagine he'd either love North's score or hate it.
Watching "Dragonslayer" again after so many years brought back fond memories. I recalled my crush on beautiful, winsome actress Caitlin Clarke, who died at age 52 of ovarian cancer. I was weirdly saddened by that news despite not knowing a thing about the actress—her true character, her individual quirks, her other performances (she did a lot of stage work and also taught acting toward the end). It was amusing to see Peter MacNicol back when he was young; I think I remember him best as the boss who occasionally stuttered like Porky Pig on "Ally McBeal." I don't recall ever seeing Sir Ralph Richardson in any other production (scratch that: he was apparently in "Dr. Zhivago," which I did see ages and ages ago), but he carried himself in the manner of a classically trained Shakespearean actor.
And this is going to sound strange, but as I was watching "Dragonslayer" this time around, I realized that the movie's cinematography—the lighting, the landscapes, the panoramas—perfectly matched my mental image of what author Stephen R. Donaldson's "The Land" must look like in his The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant trilogies. If anything, "Dragonslayer" influenced how I imagined The Land since I didn't start reading Donaldson until I was in junior high. The movie came out in June of '81; I started junior high later that year, in September, and began reading Donaldson soon after.
All in all, the flaws I mentioned above are relatively minor, and I happily recommend this movie to anyone who'll listen. Given the jankiness of the special effects by today's standards, I understand if younger audiences don't get into the movie. But for us old farts, "Dragonslayer" is a smart, exciting adventure with a very interesting twist and a huge, menacing enemy. It's also a bit of a throwback to a time before political correctness and wokeness ruined the moviegoing experience. Women in this movie (except for Vermithrax) are beautifully feminine, strong without being insecure nut-cutters; the dragon isn't some tragically misunderstood beast but a truly evil entity. Some of the male characters are physically weak, but they find reserves of inner strength, and the story—with the arrival of Christianity as its backdrop—is smart enough not to be the typical, formulaic hero's journey. Go see this movie.
Apocalypto
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L to R: Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), Flint Sky (Morris Birdyellowhead), Curl Nose (Amílcar Ramírez), and Blunted (Jonathan Brewer) |
The story begins in the jungle with a hunt for a tapir. We quickly establish that Jaguar Paw is a skilled hunter, and his best friend Blunted (Brewer) has some problem preventing him from impregnating his wife (one possibility is what we, in modern times, would call "shooting blanks"; another possibility, not faced in the story, is that his wife is incapable of getting pregnant). Blunted's inability in this area makes him the butt of the tribe's jokes; even the chieftain Flint Sky (Morris Birdyellowhead—yes, that's his name) pulls good-natured pranks on Blunted. The village is primitive but generally at peace, hunting the jungle for resources and living life day by day. One day, though, the fearful members of another tribe come stumbling through, creating unease among Jaguar Paw's people. And soon after, a raiding party of Holcane warriors appears and plunders the village, which they burn. One psychotic Holcane warrior, Middle Eye (Taracena), kills Flint Sky in front of Jaguar Paw. Jaguar Paw manages to hide his pregnant wife Seven and his son Turtles Run (Carlos Emilio Báez) in a deep pit before being taken away by the Holcane.
The story now splits between Jaguar Paw's captivity and Seven's struggle to (1) figure a way out of the pit, (2) take care of Turtles Run, and (3) handle her incoming baby as she begins to go into labor. Jaguar Paw and his fellow captive villagers, meanwhile, are led through the Mayan capital, with its bustling markets, its putrid construction areas denuded of vegetation and running with filth, and finally the city's immense central temple, where the captured men are hand-painted with blue dye and led up to the temple's top tier to be sacrificed. In a harrowing scene, two of Jaguar Paw's fellow villagers are laid face-up upon a sacrificial stone; their hearts are removed by the priest, and their heads are cut off and cast down the temple's front steps to the waiting, cheering crowd below, followed by their now-headless bodies. Jaguar Paw is next in line to be sacrificed, but a solar eclipse darkens the sky, and the priest declares that the gods are pleased with the sacrifices that have already been done. The rest of the prisoners are taken to a nearby field where they will be subjected to a cruel game: run across the dirt to the tall vegetation at the field's far end without getting hit by stones, arrows, and spears, and make it past the "finisher," Zero Wolf's son Cut Rock (Mendoza), who stands ready to bring down anyone who makes it to the far side of the field. If they manage that, they are free. Meanwhile, still in the pit, Seven has to kill a predator that accidentally falls in, and all her attempts at climbing out end in failure (the vine that had let her descend into the pit had been cut by a Holcane warrior who didn't see her at the pit's bottom). Heavy rains come, and Seven gives birth as the pit fills with water. As the water rises, she and her son are naturally buoyed closer to the pit's edge. Jaguar Paw watches several of his friends die in the cruel field-crossing game, and his friend Blunted is mortally wounded. When Jaguar Paw's turn to run comes up, he evades every projectile but is struck in the side by Zero Wolf's well-aimed arrow. Cut Rock closes in to finish him, but Blunted, still alive, grabs Cut Rock's ankle while Jaguar Paw stabs Cut Rock in the throat. Zero Wolf is furious that his son has just been killed, and the chase is on: Jaguar Paw leaves Blunted's corpse behind and runs full-tilt into the jungle, Zero Wolf and his warriors—including the psychotic Middle Eye—in pursuit.
"Apocalypto" works as a chase movie, but like other "historical" efforts that Gibson has been involved with ("Braveheart," which he directed and starred in; and "The Patriot," which he starred in), it fails miserably in terms of accuracy, freely borrowing from various periods of Central and South American history, taking gross liberties with late-Mayan "post-classical" village and city architecture, and perhaps most egregiously, utterly flubbing the timeline for the arrival of smallpox and the arrival of seagoing Europeans. So "Apocalypto" should be viewed as a metaphor or a fairy tale, but not as anything remotely accurate—this despite Gibson's claim to have roped in a whole team of professors and historians to make sure he was more or less on track. YouTuber Nick Hodges, who runs the channel History Buffs, had some choice, loud, angry words for Gibson's film, which he saw as complete trash from a historian's perspective, sloppily playing fast and loose with the facts and largely confusing Mayan civilization with Aztec. Meanwhile, the prestigious Motion Picture Academy nominated the movie for three Oscars (makeup, sound editing, sound mixing), and prominent personalities as diverse as Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, and Edward James Olmos heaped effusive praise on Gibson's effort. The movie is also immersive, Gibson claims, because it's entirely in Yucatec Mayan: there is no English to be heard anywhere.
On the level of mythology, one of the major themes of "Apocalypto" is the tidal nature of creation and destruction, of beginnings and endings and new beginnings. Jaguar Paw's village life is overturned when the marauding Holcane warriors arrive; his wife Seven's life enters a new phase with the birth of her second child; all of the natives' lives are changed when they sight the first Europeans landing on their shores, bring foreign culture, greed, and new diseases. Wave upon wave of destruction and creation, of endings and beginnings, infuse this tense story with the rhythm of labored breathing. Gibson and his team did research on creation stories like the Popol Vuh (see here and here) to gain a sense of this cosmic rhythm. There might almost be something of mythological value in Gibson's tale that goes beyond all the pierced guts, severed heads, and bashed-in skulls.
At the time the movie came out, Gibson had been dealing with alcohol-related scandals, so he was already on the outs with certain reviewers. Some critics went so far as to accuse Gibson's film of being a white man's twisted fantasy about brown-skinned civilization. To say this, though, requires one to cherry-pick the data, to deliberately ignore the parts of the movie that show humanity, nobility, gentleness, humor, love, wit, and civilization. "Apocalypto" might feel like a relentless parade of barbarity, and on a certain level, that's what it is. But Gibson is smart enough, as a filmmaker, to infuse the movie with deeper themes and complexity than a mere prolonged chase scene can provide.
In the end, I would call "Apocalypto" both watchable and rewatchable. While it's not even close to being the greatest film I've ever seen, nor is it even close to being one of Gibson's best-directed films, it's still a very good film on its own terms, i.e., as entertainment, not as history. Rudy Youngblood as Jaguar Paw conveys determination and desperation; both Raoul Trujillo as Zero Wolf and Gerardo Taracena as Middle Eye are positively scary villains. What the movie lacks in historical accuracy it makes up for in sheer grit and gore. Watch and feel.
Discussion
I had originally thought that, in reviewing "Dragonslayer" and "Apocalypto" in a single, two-fer review, I would be dealing with two films that had nothing in common. But as I pondered both stories, I began to realize that they do, in fact, have certain elements in common.
Take the matter of the solar eclipse, which appears in both movies. In "Dragonslayer," the resurrected Ulrich's final fight with the dragon takes place during a solar eclipse, a cosmic sign that would have been saturated with meaning in pagan Europe. By the time the eclipse is over, Vermithrax is dead, having titanically plunged into a lake. In "Apocalypto," the ritual human sacrifices stop when the eclipse happens. A cynical moment passes between the high priest and the watchful king, who quietly nod to each other; both know the solar and lunar calendars (the Mayans, as we know from their complex calendars, were experts at tracking celestial movements), so they know how to time their rituals and what ritual words to use to convince the masses of their power and their association with the sun-deity. While "Apocalypto" is by far the bloodier of the two films, neither film shies away from bloodshed as a necessary part of existence and the maintenance of social order. Central to both stories is the significance of human sacrifice: in Galen Bradwarden's world, virgin sacrifice directly results in the appeasement of the dragon. In the world of "Apocalypto," the eclipse symbolizes the propitiation of the gods, who use the sky to signal that, today, they require no more sacrifices. Both stories also feature the arrival in force of Christianity. While Christianity appears weak and vain (but subtly powerful?) in "Dragonslayer," it is implied to be a much more powerful and sinister force at the very end of "Apocalypto."
But "Dragonslayer" does something at the tail end of its story that undermines Christianity's arrival. As Galen and Valerian walk away from Valerian's village to start a new life together, Galen moans that he wishes they had a horse. And a horse appears! Galen's amulet, inherited from Ulrich and important at the start of the film, has been destroyed by the end of the movie as the way to kill Vermithrax. Yet despite Galen's destruction of the amulet and his abandonment of Cragganmore—still full of Ulrich's magical items—Galen himself still retains some magic within him. There is still magic in the world. The dragon's death doesn't signal the end. And while "Dragonslayer" is a work of fantasy fiction, a historical point is being made: Europe to this day is the ground on which many ancients forces continue to contend, from Christianity to magical paganism to rational skepticism. In the New World of "Apocalypto," Jaguar Paw has several visions of the future and at a guess, these visions will continue. But now that Christianity has arrived on foreign shores, his visions will be subsumed under the Christian label of prophecy as a new worldview comes to take over the old.
So both of these movies are about beginnings and endings. They are also at least tangentially about clashes in fundamental worldviews, with the Christian worldview on the precipice of taking over large chunks of the world. Maybe the universes of "Dragonslayer" and "Apocalypto" aren't as far apart as they might seem at first.
cake!
I finally used my cake pans for their intended purpose after having bought the pans years ago. I also layered the bottom of each pan with baking spray and parchment paper. The cake recipe was, of course, the decadent Cooking with Sugar recipe, which is designed to put you into diabetic shock. My oven, being small, quirky, and a little temperamental, didn't handle the presence of both cakes inside it at the same time that well (I was worried about what might change if I did the bake one at a time). The result was, despite extra baking time, somewhat underdone and dense. But I went ahead and made a 2-layer cake anyway.
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| Here's the icing. Pretty much nothing but coca, sugar, butter, and heavy cream. I know what it looks like a lump of. |
I'd expected the cakes to release easily from the pan after baking, but it turns out I needed my little offset spatula (here's a pic) to help persuade the cakes out. After that, peeling off the parchment paper was a breeze.
Crap, I'm terrible with frosting my cakes. It would help to have a proper rotating cake stand. It would even more to take a class or at least watch some videos on cake decoration.
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| the completed cake, frosted, looking evil and monstrous |
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| That smear on the wooden cutting board annoys me. |
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| probably the cake's best angle |
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| how much was left when I finished giving out cake |
I first gave cake to the security guards/concierges in the lobby. The one guy told me there were only two staffers this evening, but there'd be two more tomorrow, so he greedily sliced the cake in half with my plastic knife, then cut that half into four pieces—two to be eaten tonight, two to be wrapped up and given to the other staffers tomorrow. I had brought everything: picnic plates; plastic spoons; a plastic cake knife; a plastic, wedge-shaped spatula for lifting the cake slice and placing it on a plate (always a balancing act); and shower-cap-shaped plastic wrap to cover the plates of the cake meant to be eaten tomorrow.
Next stop: the downstairs grocery, where I see the same overworked staffers day after day, working hard on Christmas. I gave out five slices of cake—three to the staffers I immediately saw, and two for the other (I assume) two staffers roaming around out of sight. I told everybody, the guards and the staffers, that I had no idea how good or bad the cake might be, and that they could throw the cake away if they didn't like it.
So here I am now, alone again, with my one remaining slice of cake, which is all mine. I shall now consume its soul because, no matter what anyone else thinks of my cooking, I like my cooking. Yes, even when it sucks. Unless it's that keto stromboli I'd made the other day.
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| the victim awaits, trembling |
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| the Kevin must be propitiated |
(insert horrific slurping, sucking, and chewing noises)
That was a heavy cake, too—easily more than a kilogram. All gone now.
keto pot pie: success?
Today's Christmas lunch was good: keto pot pie. It was a real bitch to make, though.
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| You saw this pic yesterday. |
The keto dough contains a lot of butter, but the recipe doesn't make very much dough, as I found out. There's only 85 g of keto flour and close to the same amount of butter.
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| the dough I had originally intended to be the pie's top |
The recipes for the dough called for the dough to be rolled out and frozen for ten minutes. I went twelve minutes, which meant the dough, rolled thin, was as stiff and breakable as peanut brittle. So I had to wait a few minutes for the dough to thaw and soften. I won't be doing this freezing thing the next time I use this dough recipe.
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| the dough for the pie shell's bottom |
I ended up having to scrap and redo the dough-shaping several times, by which point the butter inside the dough was softening and melting—something you don't want in any pie crust because chunks of cold, solid butter start to steam when they bake, creating the air pockets that mean a flaky crust when the pie comes out of the oven. I had originally thought that putting this keto dough into a pie tin would be easy and straightforward. But the dough proved unworkable and overly sticky, so I ended up hand-pressing it into the container you see below, using up every bit of the dough just to have enough to go up the container's edges. Yeesh.
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| Still, despite the lack of a cover, it doesn't look half bad. |
The pie ended up coming out fine. I had thought about taking it out of its container to eat it, but I decided not to risk it. I shouldn't have worried. The pie shell baked up nice and firm, and it didn't taste awful. In fact, it was pretty buttery.
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| almost like chicken and dumplings |
Here—see what I mean by buttery:
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| Yum. But the filling was still better than the crust. |
Victoria's Keto Flour is a decent keto recipe. Certainly better than my attempt.
you rarely see the "strongmen" do many legit pullups
I'd argue that a lot of the guys shown in the video aren't even doing legit pullups. Either your chin has to clear the bar or your chest has to touch the bar. And no kipping or otherwise throwing yourself upward.
Merry Christmas!
Card designs from the past, when I was young and irreverent and full of mind-juice:
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| when you're too impatient to wait for your steak |
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| when your head is as tall as her upper body |
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| And that's when she was in a good mood. |
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| the cover art for my first book, Scary Spasms in Hairy Chasms |
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| "Phosphorescent Snot" could be a band name. |
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| A lot of my kids at the tutoring center didn't understand how this image worked. |
May your days be merry and bright.
Wednesday, December 24, 2025
precursor of tomorrow's Christmas meal
Keto (or almost-keto) pot pie for one:
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| Just the filling. The keto crust is yet to come. |
No peas. Too carby. The carrots are also too carby, but I've included them anyway. Broccoli for greens. Mushrooms, kind of taking the place of potatoes. Dried onions. Sous-vide chicken and diced, pan-fried pork belly. Salt, pepper, garlic powder, sage. The cream is Chef Mike Symon's version* of double cream: gently boil and reduce heavy cream (at medium-high, constantly stirring for about 40 minutes) until it's about half its original volume, thus making it twice as dense, hence double cream (there are actually several versions of "double cream").
Still to make tonight:
- keto pie crust
- decadent chocolate cake to slice and pass out to workers tomorrow (ho ho ho)
I'll probably eat most of the rest of the cake once I get back to my place, God help me—thus negating the benefits of having keto pie. (I thought about this and seriously considered making regular pie crust.) It's a bad choice given that I have a major doctor's appointment on January 9, including a heart ultrasound to look for further blockages. But I'm too lazy and selfish to deprive myself of Christmas cheer. I'll just have to starve for the rest of December and the beginning of January. Whatever brings the A1c average down.
Right now, though, I need to go shopping because I have no idea whether the grocery will be open tomorrow, on Christmas Day. I have to buy party plates and plastic utensils and napkins for people to be able to eat cake. More tomorrow.
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*Making the pot-pie cream this way avoids the whole roux/Béchamel issue. A roux is a combination of equal parts-per-volume of butter and flour; you let those cook together for a bit, then to make the Béchamel, you start gradually adding milk. It'll seize up at first, but as the roux continues to cook, and you continue to add milk, the liquid eventually wins out as you saturate the emulsion to the point where it has no choice but to turn into a creamy mixture. This is Béchamel, one of the five French "mother sauces." For sauce veloutée (lit. "velvety sauce"), use stock instead of milk. A basic velouté is not much different from gravy, and you can definitely take it in a gravy direction. Anyway, regular roux, because it starts with flour, is very carby. Using Michael Symon's method of boiling heavy cream down to make double cream means you avoid putting any flour into your cream sauce.
sharpening made simple
Years and years ago, a Kiwi buddy of mine showed me how it's possible to sharpen a knife on pretty much any surface. This video is almost as fascinating.
Tuesday, December 23, 2025
I can't do much for Christmas this year
With my budget growing ever tighter, I can't be my usual Santa-ish self this year, which means whatever Christmasy thing I do has to remain local. To that end, I plan to bake a big, nasty-rich chocolate cake, frost it up with rich frosting, and give slices of it to the people in my building—guards, grocery-shop staff, and Paris Baguette staff. I need to buy a lot of party-sized plates and plastic utensils to make this work.
As for my own Christmas celebration... I'll be making myself a keto version of chicken pot pie. The carrots in the pie won't be very keto, but everything else will be, including the crust (using a "Victoria's" recipe instead of my own abomination). No peas, of course: too carby. Broccoli instead. And no potatoes, of course. I did look for cauliflower to replace the potatoes, but I couldn't find any at my local grocery. Not a problem; I'll do without.
it is accomplished
I've had a chance to proofread Day 20 of the walk blog, and I ran through the postmortem, too, making only a few tweaks to the prose for clarity. So—the whole blog is done, which makes it your playground. Go visit the hell outta that thang. Whenever Instapundit publishes its next "open thread," probably tomorrow morning (i.e., Tuesday night, EST), I'll stick an announcement in there so my Insta-audience will know and can come visit.
Right now, though, I've got a ton of other things I need to catch up on, mostly on Substack.
no Kylo Ren movie
First, let it be know that I had no idea a Kylo Ren movie was even being planned. Second, I always thought Adam Driver—who's a fine actor in other movies—had been woefully miscast for any Star Wars endeavor. Third, with the damage already done to the Star Wars brand, simply canceling a Kylo Ren movie isn't going to raise my hopes for the future of the franchise.
this is a wee bit premature, but...
I think I'm mostly done with the walk blog. Whew. It's 5 a.m. as I write this; that last day was a doozy, inserting captions and commentary with over 500 photos.
Yet to do: I now need to go through and proofread Day 20 of the walk, then re-proofread the postmortem, making any tweaks and additions to that as necessary.
I'm secretly hoping I can just leave the postmortem alone, but I having a feeling I'm going to discover some egregious errors that need repairing. George Lucas's attitude toward films applies here: he says that Films aren't made; they're abandoned, and I feel that way about my blogs. At some point, you just have to shrug and let go. You'll never catch every single mistake, especially when you're your own editor. I can go back years later and catch errors I had missed long before. A perfectionist's work is never done.
So after tomorrow, like it or not, I'll be done. But feel free to visit the walk blog now and, if you find any problems, shoot me an email or leave a comment.
Monday, December 22, 2025
teachers quit to homeschool their kids (h/t John from Daejeon)
American teachers are quitting in disgust. The problem in education runs deep.
The parents have failed these kids by not inculcating them with the value that education is important—not just to get a job but to navigate the world intelligently and to be someone of character. The teachers and school systems have failed by lowering standards every year and allowing failing kids to "fail upwards" instead of retaining them until they finally learn. And the students have failed by being lazy, unmotivated, unteachable shits obsessed with TikTok and video games. So naturally, teachers are quitting in disgust.
First, watch this video. (h/t to John from Daejeon)
I might try making these
I don't know when, but I might try making these. If the texture works, I'll put this recipe on rotation. Keto bread is often a dicey proposition.
the Avatar franchise
I was going to write a comment on YouTube after I'd seen a review for "Avatar: Fire and Ash," but in reading through the comments, I saw that someone had beaten me to it: it was the idea that James Cameron's unintended commentary was that immigrants who refuse to assimilate and have clearly bad intentions for your beautiful realm are evil. So, far from being a Kumbaya-liberal sermon about protecting the beauty of the natural environment and the natural badness of human technology and human rapaciousness in general, could it be that the entire Avatar franchise is watchable and interpretable from the point of view of anti-immigrant conservatism? I wouldn't know; I saw the first movie as, at least partly, a continuation of Cameron's antiwar Vietnam commentary from "Aliens," and I haven't watched either of the two sequels. From what I've heard, though, the three movies all follow very similar story beats, kind of the way most Star Wars movies have to include certain tropes: there has to be a ground battle; there has to be a space battle; there has to be a lightsaber fight. Cameron's movies also have tropes: ground battle, sea battle, air battle, and telepathic bonding via those tendril-thingies. Oh, and manifestations of the local "goddess" Eywa, the life-force and integrated consciousness of the moon Pandora.
So—watch the Avatar films if you hate the idea of unassimilating immigrants. Heh.
Sam does holiday sides
I disagree with anything oniony, and Sam is obsessed with onions. Otherwise, a good watch.
Gary reviews Christmas dinners
Whatever Christmas dinner I have will not be to any scale. Enjoy, Gary.
Sunday, December 21, 2025
the enstupidation proceeds apace
This is a depressing watch. But it's the future. And the future is now.
keto stromboli
Ugh. The keto-stromboli experiment was a failure. Not that keto stromboli have never existed until now, but rather that my personal experiment—which involved trying to create my own mix of keto flours to create my own keto dough—was a failure. I should've just gone with a Joe Duff-style fathead dough (mozzarella cheese, cream cheese, and almond flour), or I could've pan-fried some mozz to use as a no-carb wrap, of sorts, for my stromboli filling.
The mix of ingredients turned out to be off. I started off with 135 g of almond flour, then 70 g each of flaxseed meal and oat-fiber powder. I added 45 g of vital wheat gluten, 10 g of yeast, some salt, some garlic powder, some inulin (for the yeast to eat), some Everything Bagel seasoning, some dried oregano, and some dried basil. I added warm water and olive oil to the mix and churned everything for a couple minutes in my stand mixer. Nothing came together, so I added two more tablespoons of vital wheat gluten for the dough's gluten structure, plus another whole cup of warm water and maybe a sixth of a cup of olive oil. That improved the dough's texture greatly, and the smell coming off the raw dough was lovely—very Italian-ish.
I then had to measure the dough out into 250 g portions; I rolled out each portion between two sheets of parchment paper, added the stromboli filling (sauce, mozz, salsiccia, sliced dry-cure sausage, mushrooms, and a shredded-Parmigiano/mozzarella combination on top), folded everything over, then baked it all.
The result was terrible—the dough had lost its lovely smell by the time the baking was done, and while the fillings were okay, the dough's taste was bitter. I could have mitigated that through the use of more sweetener. If I ever try this again, though, I think I might avoid nastier flours and flour substitutes like oat fiber and flaxseed meal in favor of safer-tasting flour subs like almond flour and coconut flour (which, like flaxseed meal, absorbs a ton of water). Or I'll stick with established keto-flour recipes made by the pro-level experimenters, e.g., Victoria's Keto Flour.
All the same, I ate both stromboli because I'm not gonna waste even my failures. I thought of it as punishment for my lack of success.
Here are some pics:
I could've rolled the dough thinner and done the spiral thing that a lot of people like to do with stromboli (see here, for example), but that wouldn't have improved the taste. The bitterness of the flaxseed and oat fiber dominated everything. I've made other breads using these flour subs before, but in those recipes, there was also a lot of sweetener to compensate for the bitterness.
The search for decent dough goes on.
walk blog: Day 19 done
I just finished proofreading Day 19 of the walk blog. All I have left to do are Day 20 and the postmortem. I think the postmortem ought to go quickly since it's mostly about proofreading the text one more time; Day 20, though, has over 500 photos, so that's a ton of captions and commentary to insert. I might not be done with all of this until Tuesday. We'll see.
As always, shoot me an email (or leave a comment) if you find anything amiss.
Saturday, December 20, 2025
walk blog: Day 17 done
Whew... with its 493 images, Day 17 of the walk blog took two days, but it's now done. Day 18 was already prepped, so that leaves Day 19, Day 20 and, I suppose, the postmortem. So check out Day 17, and as always, if you see something wrong, please shoot me an email. (Or, hell, leave a comment, but don't expect me to publish it. I'll read over your comment, make whatever correction you suggest, then delete the comment.)
These posts are taking so long to prep because I'm writing a lot more than I normally do. By the time I'm done, going through this walk blog will be almost like reading a book. I'm doing this because a few people on Instapundit had been following the blog, and I'm not sure how many of them know anything deep about South Korea aside from salient war- and economy-related facts (and people on Instapundit are always talking about South Korea's flaccid birth rate). Anyway, I want this blog to round out their knowledge a bit, assuming they have the patience and fortitude to get through everything; I suspect a lot of them don't. They're mostly older folks, over 60, with shrinking attention spans and impatient minds as they harbor a dawning sense that life is short, so gotta move, gotta move.
In other news: I've come to realize that the thing I want to make over the weekend is keto stromboli, not a calzone. I have trouble keeping the two straight in my head, but I think I've got it now. Calzone = half-moon with ricotta; stromboli = log-shaped with mozzarella (and sometimes parm). Stromboli are also more likely to have tomato sauce (or some kind of sauce) inside them; for calzones, the sauce is generally served alongside for dipping. But stromboli can have sauce on the inside as well.
news from a month ago: is LOTR racist?
This question of whether The Lord of the Rings is racist has dogged the saga for years, always fueled by leftist PC resentment and the constant need to find something to complain about. The racism charge flared up again recently.
Friday, December 19, 2025
have you seen this show?
I admit I'm curious.
I thought the screamer in the thumbnail was Laura Dern, but it's Rhea Seehorn.
the bots are back in force as of yesterday
I'd been bumbling along, averaging 2,000 visits per day for most of this month. Then yesterday, for whatever unfathomable reason, I had 16,761 visits. Today only just began (the clock resets at 9 a.m. for some mysterious reason), and with the day being barely four hours old, I already have 4,173 visits. Thanks, bots!
Thursday, December 18, 2025
"Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery": one-paragraph review
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| actors, L to R: Cailee Spaeny, Andrew Scott, Daniel Craig, Mila Kunis, Daryl McCormack, Thomas Haden Church |
About a third of the way through 2025's "Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery," written and directed by the audience-hating Rian Johnson, I had already had enough. For a movie that is purportedly skeptical about the evils of organized religion (and I admit that organized religion has done a lot of terrible things), the story is overbearingly preachy about its own leftist agenda. This was a problem with the two previous "Knives Out" films as well, but I'd argue it was more of a problem in the first film than in the second. In this third installment, there is no attempt to hide the writer-director's agenda or his contemptuous caricaturing of the American right. The story focuses on a young priest named Jud Duplenticy (Josh O'Connor), transferred by Bishop Langstrom (Jeffrey Wright) and a council to Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude, which is pastored by Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), a fire-and-brimstone priest whose caustic sermons have served to shrink the congregation down to just a handful of members, including overly serious Martha Delacroix (Glenn Close), bitter divorcee Dr. Nathaniel "Nat" Sharp (Jeremy Renner), lawyer Vera Draven (Kerry Washington), rightie YouTuber and politician wannabe Cy Draven (Daryl McCormack), sour-on-life writer Lee Ross (Andrew Scott), earnest groundskeeper Sam (Thomas Haden Church), and wheelchair-bound Simone Vivane (Cailee Spaeny). Young Father Jud, an ex-boxer from a gentler, more liberal theological background, finds himself in conflict with Monsignor Wicks and his fiery style. When he witnesses Monsignor Wicks's apparent murder, the police arrive on scene with private detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig). Police chief Geraldine Scott (Mila Kunis) is skeptical of allowing Blanc to recruit Father Jud to help solve the murder since Father Jud is himself the chief suspect. What follows is the revelation of a convoluted scheme that has gone wrong at several points, with the guiltiest parties eliminating themselves by the end. Given the run time of around two hours and twenty minutes, I found myself fidgeting by the end. I was also pretty sure I knew who the fundamental culprit was fairly early on in the movie for the same reason that I knew who the big bad guy was going to be before the second episode of Season 1 of "The Terminal List": it's always the person right under your nose, and it's never the people who look the guiltiest at first. This wasn't because I'd caught every clue in the story, but rather because I have the writerly instinct of knowing how unoriginal plots are often constructed. Rian Johnson, as a writer still trying to subvert expectations, remains "not half as smart as he thinks he is." I was amused to see so many Marvel actors involved in this project (Renner, Close, Brolin, Church, Wright). It was good to see Jeremy Renner back in action after his horrific winter accident from a couple years ago, but surprising to see him sporting a double chin. The film also contains plenty of biblical tropes and quotes, and since the story involves a fake resurrection at one point, I just knew that some character was going to mention "Scooby Doo." In all, it was two hours and twenty minutes of well-acted, unmemorable tedium and overly convoluted plotting (which, admittedly, the script is smart enough to call out). Writer-director Johnson is on record saying he was partly inspired by Agatha Christie this time around; in my review of "Glass Onion," I had noted how contrived and AC Doyle-ish his plotting had been. This time around, Christie's influence was more obvious: Johnson leaves a breadcrumb-trail of sensory evidence for the viewer to follow and solve the mystery on his own. I didn't solve the mystery on my own, but as I said above, I was pretty sure I knew who the most guilty party was fairly early on. While the movie grapples with various ways in which to be a Christian, its bitterly cynical and overtly leftist politics tend to overshadow other themes, and it all becomes overbearing. Also—is the obviously made-up surname Duplenticy supposed to be a nod to the concept of duplicity? Father Jud, with his complicated past, does seem to be hiding some things. While the acting and cinematography are great, I do not recommend this movie to anyone but the most diehard Knives Out-franchise lovers. To the rest of you: find something better to do for 144 minutes.
a lot can change in six years
I was struck by a photo put up by fellow blogger John McCrarey that he says is from six years ago. Compare that image to one from just recently—this year, in fact. This is what a mere few years and a lot of beer will do to a man:
As John says, he can always serve as a bad example. Stay away from excessive beer, kiddies.
walk blog: Day 16 done
I've added content to and proofread Day 16 on the walk blog, so go check it out. And please shoot me an email if you find anything amiss. Another few days, and I'll blog here more normally. As always, my apologies. Or as Alex might say, "Apple polly loggies."
Wednesday, December 17, 2025
set leaks: a bald Paul Atreides?
The girls are gonna weep to see ol' Timothée without his kinky locks.
toe update
Looking a lot better:
See? I didn't need the orthopede at all. It took a few weeks to get to this point, but I had faith.
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