The Hidden Manuscript

 Which is not to be confused with The Secret History. Here's a not particularly exciting picture of a pile of books (all Shahnameh-related) that keep me company in my little loft office. Now, if you look closer, you can make out a poorly stacked pile of papers. That's half of my Epics manuscript. Long ago I stopped referring to it as my book (someday, inshallah, I will be able to refer to it as my book) and started simply calling it my manuscript. While I would prefer that it's published someday, obviously, in other ways the key is that I set out to write it - and I wrote it. My goal is to have to have it completely finished (as much as a book, uh, manuscript, is ever finished) by my last day of this last semester. Being able to turn my head and see the stack, growing larger week by week, gives me resolution to keep pushing grinding away.

I'm putting the final gloss on the entire manuscript. That's half of it, so you can get a sense of how big it will end up. 

Movies in 2026 98

 

Loves of a Blonde, (Milos Forman, 1965)

I mentioned that it was strange that I had never watched Jasny's All My Good Countrymen before. Last night I watched a film that I would have sworn that I had watched - and which the Criterion Channel assured me that I had - but of which I had absolutely no memory at all. I don't know how one would reach sixty-six years of age without ever having seen Milos Forman's Loves of a Blonde, but, again, I'm from Indiana, and thus poorly educated. It tells the story of Andula (played by Jana Brejchova, in her first role), a young Czech woman working in a pretty desultory Soviet-era factory. The entire story takes place within one week, from the dream of an exciting love that might get her out of her little village to the inevitable heartbreak. I'm not a huge Milos Forman fan, but I liked this a lot, and it's definitely recommended.

Movies in 2026 97

 

All My Good Countrymen, (Vojtech Jasny, 1969)

Several of the Czech New Wave films I've watched recently are ones that I had first viewed a few years ago. The other night I watched a film that I had somehow never seen before: Vojtech Jasny's wonderful and bittersweet 1969 film All My Good Countrymen. It's set in a small Czechoslovakian village, which passes from the joy of pushing out the Nazis (with the assistance of the Soviet Union) to the dehumanization and sadness of Communist rule. There are so many characters who pass in and out of focus, several of them dying, all of them disillusioned. It's sort of like a Gogol novel, except much, much more emotionally gutting. Highly recommended.

At Least 1007

 My wonderful friend and former student Ines sent me this picture, which she snapped outside the shawarma stand across the street from the University of Jordan in Amman. The first stop on the Jordan trip was always a walk down the hill to the little stand. I'm sure I've posted this picture before, but I love it so much. Even considering the chaos engulfing the region, I wish I were sitting there right now.

The thing that is amazing about that picture is that guy is clearly at least a thousand years old, and since that picture was taken at least seven years ago, it means that ancient dude is (if my limited Hoosier math will back me up) at least 1007. That said, I could walk then, so I had that going for me.

 

8

 Four weeks of the regular semester left. My students were alternately joyously engaged or sullenly disengaged this week. I have one class that is so much better than my other three that I'm tempted to manipulate my schedule so that they're the last college class I actually walk out of (it will make it seem slightly less certain that I've wasted the last forty years). The talk of me giving a going away speech, which would turn into the Gary Scudder Symposium, has reared its ugly head again. I'm honored, but the only thing I hate more than public speaking is being the center of attention, so I need to be even more deliberate in my no (although I've been pretty deliberate so far). 

Thanks to Zach Collaros for loaning me his number 8 for the Countdown. Collaros is a favorite of mine, not simply because he currently plays for my beloved Winnipeg Blue Bombers (they are one of my four favorite CFL teams), but also because he played college ball at the University of Cincinnati (where I attended graduate school). He was born in Steubenville, Ohio, and after his career with the UC Bearcats he went undrafted by the NFL. Callaros was on the practice squad of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for one year, but after that he's spent more than a dozen year north of the border. Along the way he's played for the Toronto Argonauts, Hamilton Tiger-Cats, Saskatchewan Roughriders, and Winnipeg Blue Bombers. Along the way he's won three Grey Cups, one as a backup for the Double Blues and two as a starter for the Bombers (he also lost three straight Grey Cups after the initial success - to be fair, two of them were last second heartbreakers, and in the third he was hurt in the game). While in college he roomed with the Kelce brothers, which means he essentially is dating Taylor Swift.

Movies in 2026 96

 

Gunbuster: The Movie (Hideaki Anno and Shoichi Masuo, 2006)

And from the sublime to the ridiculous. After collapsing at my friend Kevin's apartment, my usual Thursday night habit so that I can enjoy the Breakfast of Excellence on Friday morning, I wasn't quite tired enough to drop off nor was I awake enough to tackle a serious film (all Thursday night/Friday morning movies are Criterion Channel streams on my phone). So, I took a Criterion flyer and watched Hideaki Anno and Shoichi Masuo's Gunbuster: The Movie. Just as last year I tackled a bunch of books that I normally wouldn't bother with, I'm trying to broaden my cinematic field of view this year (as you might have guessed, it's already pretty wide). I'm not normally an anime viewer, but I figured I'd give it a shot. It's a hard film to judge, mainly because it's a condensed hour and a half version of a six episode series.  A lot of the action felt too much like a Transformers reboot, and thus I was just waiting it out. At the same time, there was an interesting side plot about how the teenage girls blasting into space to try and save the earth ended up aging at a different rate than their friends and loved ones left behind, and it made me wonder if that's actually played up more in the series, which could have ended up being fairly interesting. Anyway, as I am wont to say, watching it didn't do me any harm.

Movies in 2026 95

 

The Shop on Main Street, (Jan Kadar and Elmar Klos,1965)

I definitely went down the Czech New Wave rabbit hole, which I had warned that I would (also keeping in mind that I've already seen all these movies). A couple days ago I watched Jan Kadar and Elmar Klos's The Shop on Main Street again. I think this is the darkest of the Czech New Wave films I've seen so far, although it has some light and sweet moments. It focuses on the time during World War II when the Slovaks were Nazi supporters. In this way it sort of reminded me of Kobayashi's The Human Condition, and the desire of artists inside a country to not let the past slip away. Jozef Kroner plays Antonin "Tono" Brtko, who is given control over Rozalia Lautmannova's (beautifully played by Ida Kaminska) small button shop as part of the Nazi Aryanization program. Despite Tono's efforts to avoid doing harm, the system itself makes it impossible. As the Jews are being taken away, Tono tries one last time to save Razalia, but is unable, and in the end he cannot accept his role, although limited, in a regime committing such horrible atrocities. A brilliant film, and one that I can't recommend too highly.