A Tangent on Rule of Law and Property Rights in Byzantium

This two-month trip to Europe has allowed me to finish a couple of books that have been sitting on my TBR pile for too long, among which is John Julius Norwich's Short History of Byzantium. Lord Norwich is perhaps not my favorite historian, but I appreciate his ability to put together a coherent narrative for the thousand-year history of the Byzantine Empire, even if he himself didn't add any new scholarship to the subject. He also had a nice and catty turn of phrase, which livened up the books of his that I've read.

One of these bons mots came when Lord Norwich suggested that a Byzantine emperor nationalizing a certain industry amounted to socialism, avant la lettre. He was being cheeky, given that he was no fan of socialists or communists, but his joke points to something relevant beyond his target, which is the role of property rights in the concept of rule of law.

Lord Norwich's joke was that this emperor was nationalizing the means of production by taking over this industry. I take it as a fair point, although a government doesn't have to be socialist to ignore property rights - it just has to assume that every item of property in the country belongs to the government, which in this case can be a single monarch or junta.

It got me thinking about a concept I've been turning over in my head for a while (which I acknowledge is probably old hat to scholars who study this stuff professionally), which is that you can't have rule of law without well-defined property rights. In this case, I define rule of law as the idea that the law applies equally to everyone, whether that's the king, the president or the ruling council. Property rights, for my purposes, consist of the idea that certain items or intangibles don't belong to the government.

To put it another way, if there are no property rights, then effectively everything in a country belongs to the government, and you as a citizen (or subject, I suppose), legally own nothing. The government can take your house, your car or your laptop whenever it wants and there's nothing you can do about it. This means there's also no rule of law, because if the government owns everything then the law is whatever it says it is at that time. This is indeed a pretty good definition of the legal status in autocratic empires such as Rome and Byzantium, but probably also France under the absolute rule of Louis XIV or China under its Communist Party.

On the other hand, if there's a mechanism for a private citizen to obtain legal redress from the government for property being taken away, then that means the government's powers are limited, and rule of law becomes possible. More than that, there should then also be a well-defined legal basis for resolving disputes between individual citizens. I don't know anything about Roman or Byzantine law, but despite the voluminous legal codices put together by emperors such as Justinian I, I assume there wasn't any concept of individual rights as we understand it today. This is probably also how Napoleonic France approached things, despite having sprung out of the Revolution: I suspect that Napoleon was okay with liberty, fraternity and equality as long as he got to run everything - and take whatever he wanted from whoever he wanted.

Lord Norwich's joke may have been aimed at well-heeled Trotskyites of his acquaintance, but you can also argue that English history has been a slow crawl along that continuum from absolute power wielded by the strong, whose monopoly on state violence meant that if they really wanted your land, they could take it. Documents like the Magna Carta were the first steps toward the other end of the continuum, where the monarch and the state could be held accountable for injuries to individuals, even if the individuals they had in mind in 1215 were landowning nobles and other potentates.

It's not a long distance from these concepts to our modern understanding of what governments can do with their own citizens. Prior to the Second World War and the Holocaust, international law essentially suggested that a government could do whatever it wanted with its own citizens, whether they owed allegiance to the head of state or a duly elected government. When the Nazi government decided to massacre millions of its own Jewish, Roma, LGBTQ and disabled citizens, among others, the world community essentially decided that this state of affairs couldn't stand, and built mechanisms to hold accountable leaders (if not nations) who tried to do the same.

The success of these measure is debatable, but it's notable that the debate exists at all. Apparently, when an Armenian survivor of the 1915 genocide killed one of his Turkish oppressors, there was no legal framework to mitigate the charges against the Armenian, who was tried for murder. Now it seems logical to us that a crime like the Armenian Genocide or the Holocaust should be prosecutable - even if international law scholars would point out that there's still a lot more nuance than how lay people understand this question.

Anyway, this is how my brain works - John Julius Norwich makes a cheeky comment about socialist Byzantine Emperors, and I find my way straight through to absolutist monarchies, rule of law and crimes against humanity. All of which, it must be said, are questions that run straight through Byzantine history anyway, if in different contexts to our own. At any rate, all things being equal, I'd rather live in a society where the government can't just jack my shit with impunity, because that also means the government can't just shoot me and toss me in a ditch whenever it wants.

At any rate, if a government did that to me now, one hopes there would be some debate about whether it was justified. It's a big question, and one we've been trying to solve throughout human history.

The Great European Roadtrip

On this large portion of my trip, where I've been in Italy for over a month, I've had time to consider two points: one, that driving long distances here in Italy is actually not too unpleasant, and two, that there doesn't seem to be enough travel literature that looks into that.

Listen, I'm just as obsessed with trains as the next travel nerd. I've reread Paul Theroux's Great Railway Bazaar more times than I can remember, and I've reread most of his other travel books too. Same with Bill Bryson and any number of travel writers. One year I treated myself to the Eurostar and the TGV as a way to get from London to Turin, and it remains one of my favorite travel experiences ever.

At the same time, I've recently become disillusioned with all the urbanists that I come across on social media and YouTube. This is a source of deep cognitive dissonance for me: I live in the Bay Area, where you have to drive pretty much everywhere and where it's unpleasant to do so. If Caltrain ran more regularly from my nearest station than once per hour, it'd make it more fun to go out drinking in San Francisco or San Jose - but at the same time, having a car means I can go to either city whenever I want, and can also go to a bunch of places that aren't covered by public transportation.

When I lived in London, I found it difficult to get out of the bounds of the city, in part because it meant getting on a train and figuring out the schedule and all of that. But not having my own set of wheels meant that certain parts of the country just weren't available to me: I'm sure you can visit the Lake District without a car, but it might be a lot more of a faff, or more expensive, if you're taking taxis everywhere.

I've also come around to this way of thinking in the last couple of years because I've finally felt financially secure enough to start renting cars when I'm in Italy. My family house is out in the countryside, away from rail networks and up a big hill (with a dirt road to get up to it, no less), so even buses aren't a great option - and those only come around once per hour, if you're lucky.

My dad's tried to get me to learn to drive manual transmission, which I can broadly do, but I'm way more comfortable driving automatic. This is mostly because the roads are narrow and winding and I'd rather focus on getting around than on being in the right gear. Renting cars with automatic transmissions  means I can trade off driving duties with my dad for long drives up to the mountains, or just take off on my own for an afternoon.

Coming back to my earlier point about driving in Italy, I've now had the chance to drive the autostrade, and I find that it's harder and harder to go back to freeway driving in California. The main thing is that European freeways only allow passing in the left lanes, which means you get way fewer of these cases where some jerk goes almost all the way to the left and then cruises along at 50mph. I know that if I get in the left lane, I should step on it and pass whoever I'm passing, because otherwise I'll end up with a Mercedes riding my exhaust and flashing his lights from here to Taranto.

But then there's the more actively pleasant part, which is the rest areas. Not every rest stop on the Italian autostrade is like this, but the vast majority are owned by the Autogrill chain, which means a certain consistency in architecture, facilities and food service. Stopping for lunch on our drive down to Pisa last week, I had the fried chicken sandwich with fries: instead of a soggy chicken burger and a plate of chips that had just come from under a heat lamp, the man behind the counter assembled a fresh bun, condiments and fixings on top, then lovingly placed a freshly cooked fried chicken escalope on it. He then provided a perfectly crispy portion of fries that outdid anything from McDonald's.

While it's important not to over-romanticize a meal at a highway rest stop, it's notable that in Italy, you can get decent quality food that isn't just from a large fast-food chain (at this same lunch my dad got a plate of chicken curry with rice and fresh roasted vegetables).

It's worth noting that you don't really get this quality of food on European trains anymore. I still remember a train trip with my dad in 1990, from Padua to Turin, where there was still a dining car with tablecloths and silverware on the tables. I was super impressed to be fed a cotoletta milanese and a Coke by a waiter in a white jacket, and my dad still reminds me of this wide-eyed wonderment. But if you think you're eating like this on the TGV or the ICE or the Frecciarossa, I'm sorry to report it ain't necessarily so (although business and first class on the Eurostar do feature some excellent dining).

Are trains better for the environment than a million cars on the road? Of course they are. And it's one of life's great pleasures to sit on a train and either read your book or listen to a podcast, enjoying the changing scenery and the knowledge that someone else is doing the driving. Bonus points if the scenery is great, as it frequently is when you're crossing the Alps.

But the pleasures of tooling along in your own car, listening to your own music or podcasts or chatting with your passenger in peace, are not to be discounted either. You can stop for a snack or a bathroom break whenever you want, without losing your seat or worrying about someone stealing your stuff, and when you arrive at your destination, you're right there (although you do have to find some parking, of course). And again, the car lets you get to places that the trains don't go - not only places off the beaten path or in the countryside, but you can also stop off somewhere on a whim. When you're on the train, you can see some unexpected spots from the window, but most of the time you can't get off and explore without losing your reserved seat or missing your onward connection.

Again, I'm not saying everyone should stop using the trains to get around. I'd love to see a robust public transit network in the Bay Area, if not the whole of California. If California could finally get around to building a train network that takes you from downtown SF to downtown LA, I'd adore that - and it wouldn't even need to be high-speed (although, you know, yes please to doing it in three hours rather than eight).

But also again, sometimes the car lets you have experiences that the train doesn't. Just because we're over invested in car infrastructure doesn't mean we should correct that by over-investing in rail. We should have multiple ways to get around that don't excessively prioritize dangerous and dirty modes of transportation.

If anything, what I'd really like to see is a good-quality equivalent to the Autogrill, but along American highways. Imagine stopping off for a good, not too expensive meal with access to clean bathrooms while driving down the 5 from SF to LA - it may not be as good as a three-hour high-speed train, but it sounds pretty great to me.

Unexpected Fecundity on Vacation

Given that this is my second time being between jobs, I've tried to improve on the previous bout, which was back in 2018. I had a lot more freelance work, then - scratch that, I had freelance work, full stop - but in between jobs I found it harder to maintain focus on bringing in business and taking care of other stuff I wanted to do. The main thing that I remember wishing I'd done more of was writing.

So this time, I decided to do things a little more intelligently. I built myself a weekly schedule, which broke each day into four parts similar to how I organized my time after I started working from home during and after the pandemic. While almost each day had to feature one block of time for job-hunting, I also built in a block for writing, and I've generally managed to stick to both, plus other important stuff like learning and going to the gym.

When I decided to take an extended trip to Europe I continued with my weekly scheduling, which was easier to do when I was in London and mostly on my own. It was a little more difficult in Oslo, but I gave myself a break for being officially on vacation... and I still managed to do a little job-hunt related stuff and a fair amount of writing-related stuff.

One thing that's helped keep me on track with writing has been the sequence of TV writing classes I've been taking through the UCLA Extension since last fall. I lost my job just as the first class in the sequence ended, and I've since continued plugging away at it, because I figured that at least I'd have something to show people once I finished (I'm now in possession of a Star Trek: Strange New Worlds spec script, if anyone out there wants to get me on that writing team before the show ends).

Now that I've moved on in the sequence to the part where I write my own TV pilot, I find the ideas flowing even more freely. In addition to the outline and script I'm writing for class, I'm developing a couple of ideas that have been percolating in my head for the last couple of years, as well as looking at revising a novel I was working on a year or two ago and writing novel versions of my TV pilot ideas.

It's actually been quite exciting to have so many things to keep me occupied during this time. Also, the class allows me to break up tasks in a way that deeply appeals to my methodical nature, which means that whenever I finish one component of a given project, I can just move on to the next project, knowing that I'll return to the first one the following week. Work for the TV class takes precedence, obviously, but the structure also gives me a way to break down my other stuff and devote time to work on it when I'm up to date on my homework.

The other thing that's allowed me to do so much writing is simply time. Of course I have the same 24 hours each day here in Italy that I have in California, but I also have fewer demands on my time. I'm way out in the country, so mobile internet is spotty, even with my roaming pass from T-Mobile; not only that, but the Wi-Fi in the house only reaches a couple of rooms, so I'm not doomscrolling from every horizontal surface I can lie on.

I also don't have a car, so I can't go out and do other stuff that I'd do in Palo Alto. The most obvious thing is going to the gym - though back home that got its own block of time on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so it didn't interfere with the writing. The main thing that should take time away from the writing is doing DIY work on the house, but even with that in mind I manage to carve out a couple of hours for writing and job-hunting and even some learning on Khan Academy.

Of course, I'm super fortunate. I have a pretty big emergency fund, plus I'm spending the month of August in a pretty cheap part of the world, and I'm not even paying for a hotel for the privilege. I had the wherewithal to depart for London, Oslo and Turin for two months in the first place, which not everyone in my position could have done.

There's also the fact that the freelance stuff has been singularly thin on the ground this year. When you don't have the option of doing that to earn a crust of bread, then you fill your hours with other stuff. I've just been lucky enough that I could fill my hours with writing a Star Trek script and plot out novel revisions. 

But the main point that's worth considering here is, how easy it is to get distracted from writing, or whatever else it is you think you "should" be doing. Even when you're not employed full time, your house can hold a lot of distractions, and the ability to deal with them. There must be some way to neutralize those distractions, and when I get home I hope to continue this streak of getting shit done.

In any case, the upshot is that, whatever else I remember and/or regret about this particular period of funemployment, when I look back on it at least I'll be able to say that I took the time to get serious about the writing. And hopefully that leads to something, somewhere down the line.

Oslo 2025

With the loss of my job came a lot of time to think about next steps and so forth, and not long after I had the idea to go traveling. My initial thought was a little out there: months and months away, in which I'd be soliciting freelance work and stuff. In consultation with my family and my bank account, I cut that down to two months, in which I'd spend some time in my usual spots of London and Turin. But I also wanted to take advantage of the free time that I had to do something that I don't get to do that often. 

When looking at Europe, the problem is whittling down the enormous array of stuff to see. I knew I wanted to go somewhere I hadn't been before, but the glamor of a long train trip down through France was also attractive. In the end, I decided that as much as I love the Eurostar and Paris, and that a few days in Lyon would have been nice, I'd rather go to a completely new country. Eliminating anywhere too far out of my way (like Iceland), or too small (like Luxembourg or Malta), left me with the Nordics, and so I decided on Oslo.

I'm really glad I did that.

The Radhuss, from the National Museum

I found a decently priced hotel, which turned out to be right in the center of town. The hotel itself was nothing special: the room was so tiny that in the evenings I had to move my suitcase against the front door, so that I wouldn't trip over it if I got up to pee in the middle of the night. The bathroom sink was so tiny that shaving or washing my face meant getting water everywhere. And worst of all, this being a, normally, particularly cold part of Northern Europe, there was no air conditioning - which is forgivable except that the window barely let in any air from outside, even at night.

Did I mention that this was in the middle of an epochal heatwave? I based my activities in the three full days I had in Oslo around where I could find air conditioning.

Luckily, that wasn't too difficult - major sights like the National Museum and the Munch Museum were air-conditioned (and required me to put my bag in a locker, so I got to dry out even further), and the day I went up to the ski jump at Holmenkollen it was high enough in the hills that there was some breeze, especially in among the trees. Also, walking along the harbor was a delight, because any wind coming off the water did a nice job of cooling me down.

The harbor, from the National Museum

The location of the hotel, despite my objections above, was perfect: the only time I needed public transportation was to get to Holmenkollen, but everything else was within a 20-30 minute walk. I had the royal palace just five minutes away, which I didn't catch because I was busy with other sights, and the National Museum was about ten minutes away. There was also food and drink aplenty, about which I'll speak in a moment.

The National Museum was a particular highlight for me. The first floor had a lot of Nordic design and some plaster copies of classical statuary, but the best was on the second floor, where it offered a survey of painting from the 1500s through to now, with a special focus on Norwegian painters. Among those there were a lot of good landscape paintings by Johan Christian Dahl, as well as a room devoted to Edvard Munch. In fact, the National Museum is a better place to see Munch's most famous painting, the Scream, than the Munch Museum itself (both have copies, but the one in the National isn't mobbed and is visible at all times).

The Munch Museum was also pretty great, even if I wasn't initially sure I wanted to spend a morning just with Munch's paintings. The building itself is beautiful, a 13-story tower overlooking the harbor and with views of the whole city. I could even see the Holmenkollen ski jump from the Munch's upper floors. The assortment of Munch's works was also great, though I feel like I might have appreciated a more biographical approach, seeing how his work evolved as he battled depression and drink over the course of his life.

The Munch Museum seen from the Opera House

The very first day, I went up to Holmenkollen, which was a trek because the T-Bane up there was out of service, so I got to enjoy a sweaty, crowded replacement bus service for half an hour; as an aside, I find it notable that rail replacement buses, the bane of my existence when I lived in Britain, are just as grim in Norway. As you can imagine, I took an Uber back into town at the end of the day.

The ski jump at Holmenkollen

Holmenkollen itself was nice, though - I got to walk around the hill where it's located, exploring some of the wooded trails surrounding it, and got to explore a classic Norwegian stave church. Under the ski jump was a little museum dedicated to skiing, which was nice for me to see as a northern Italian who learned cross country skiing at the same time I learned to walk.

The stave church at Holmenkollen

The food was uniformly good, whether I went to restaurants or ate a quick sandwich or focaccia at the museums. I've previously had bad experiences with food in Denmark and Sweden (or at least so unmemorable as to be etched in memory), so it's probably not too surprising that I ended up eating a lot of Asian food while I was in Oslo. But it's a good sign when a city has decent foreign food - it shows that there's a lot of openness to new stuff, which is good to see. And the city itself was pretty diverse: a glance at Oslo's demographics on Wikipedia suggests that immigrants or children of immigrants account for about 30% of the population, compared to 14% nationally.

In terms of other tourists, I was surprised to hear German as the most spoken language at all the tourist sights. There were Italians, Spanish, French and Brits, as well as a healthy smattering of Swedes and probably Danes, but it felt like wherever I went was a German, or at least a German-speaker (there were some Swiss around). The people of Oslo were themselves fairly unobjectionable, apart from their tendency to run red lights on those little electric scooters that were the plague of other big cities a few years ago. There was also the extremely drunk guy who wandered into the place I was having dinner on the second night, whereupon he announced he wanted to have sex with the waitress (I think that's what he said anyway; he was speaking English but slurring heavily).

Overall, I can't recommend the city highly enough. It might be different in other seasons, or even when the summers aren't as blazing hot as July 2025 was, but everybody seemed to be having a great time, whether tourist or local. There were people swimming at the beaches by the Opera House and the Astrup Fearnley Museum (and er, this is a good time to note how good-looking a lot of Norwegians seem to be), and the vibe felt to me like Sydney. If I was going to splurge irresponsibly on travel during this period of funemployment, then I'm glad I did it in Oslo. I can't wait to check it out again.

This good boi travelled with Amundsen, 13/10

James Gunn's Punk as F Superman

I just saw the new Superman movie yesterday, marking the first time in... gosh, years... that I've watched a movie on opening day. Of course, it's easy to do that when you're funemployed and able to hit the 3.30pm show at your local cineplex. I'm gonna write without fear of spoilers below the jump, but just in case you're skimming, my overall verdict is that this is a way better movie than we had any right to expect, and better than any other attempt this century. I'd say the original, 1978 movie with Christopher Reeves is still better, but this absolutely holds its own.

RIP Diogo Jota

Just a quick one, as I didn't know much about Diogo Jota as a person or as a player, but like everyone I was blindsided by the news this week that he'd died in a car crash in Spain. Coming so soon after Liverpool's Premier League victory, and after Jota's wedding to his long-term partner, it all feels like a bad dream.

Given that I'm not a Liverpool fan, and my knowledge of the team is based mostly on its storied history and my own travails choosing Liverpool players for Fantasy Premier League, I don't have much of a sense of him. He was certainly important, though, scoring a number of important goals over his years there. He may not have been one of the most high-profile names in a team that featured Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mane, but he was surely more than a squad player. His Wikipedia page says that he scored 47 goals in 123 appearance for the club, which is an impressive feat.

In his time at Liverpool the club won the Premier League (2024-25), the FA Cup (2021-22) and the League Cup twice (2021-22, 2023-24), while also coming in as runners-up in the League Cup in 2024-25 and the Champions League in 2021-22. At international level, he was part of the Portugal teams that won the Nations League in 2018-19 and 2024-25.

These stats are obviously just numbers and dates, and sadly, his part in the history of Liverpool, Wolverhampton Wanderers and the Portugal men's team is over, carrying with it the question of where his career might have gone. If he hadn't died, one can question if he'd ever have won another trophy (football is after all a cruel old game), but at least he'd be here to savor the ones he did win, as well as getting to see his kids grow up. His death, and the hole it leaves behind in the lives of his loved ones, is a reminder that, in Arrigo Sacchi's words, football is the most important of the least important things in life.

RIP Jim Shooter

I heard about Jim Shooter's death last week, and I've seen obituaries almost every day since from comics professionals who got their start under him in the late 1970s and early 80s. Every obituary talks about what a divisive figure he was, but every obituary also talks about his kindness to them personally. There might be some survivorship bias here, in that the people who really had problems with him are probably keeping their thoughts to themselves, but it's still interesting that so many comics creators have banded together to praise him.

I always knew of him as the guy who got his start, aged 13, writing for the Legion of Superheroes for DC. When I was 13 myself, that was kind of mind-blowing, the thought that someone like me could do something like that. And while I never got to that level, that story is probably buried somewhere in my writing DNA, as one of my influences. Certainly it helped that he was associated with one of my favorite books.

He was also editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics in the 80s, which is where his reputation as a difficult person comes from. On the one hand, Marvel created some of its best comics under his leadership, like the Chris Claremont years of Uncanny X-Men and various sagas in the Spider-Man books. Daredevil got dark and gritty under Frank Miller and the Punisher became one of Marvel's most popular characters (for better or for worse), and big crossovers became a thing, starting with Shooter's own miniseries Secret Wars.

On the other, a lot of that period has been criticized as unadventurous both in terms of plotting and art. I've heard rumors that Shooter insisted on strict 2x3 grids with figures confined to each panel, and while Todd McFarlane has disputed it, it's true that panel layouts grew more adventurous after Tom DeFalco replaced him as editor-in-chief. 

Plotwise, Shooter has been blamed for the lack of LGBTQ representation in Marvel until the 90s - to hear Claremont tell it, Shooter was instrumental in vetoing any same-sex relationships between Kitty Pryde and Rachel Summers or Illyana Rasputina, as well as Claremont's (frankly bonkers, but in the best way) idea for Nightcrawler's parentage: that the shapeshifter Mystique, who'd been implied to be his mother, was actually his father, and that Mystique's long-term lover Destiny had been Nightcrawler's birth mother. This plot point has since become canon in the comics, but you have to wonder where the characters could have gone if the creators had been allowed to tell these stories back then.

On the positive side again, a number of tributes to Shooter have also highlighted how he worked to get royalties and fairer contracts for freelancers at Marvel, and how those contracts were then abandoned after he left. Given how many creators were left out in the cold while the characters they created made millions for Marvel, it certainly adds some nuance to the controversy over Shooter.

In the end, being editor-in-chief of Marvel at that time must have been a pretty thankless job: riding herd on a bunch of fractious creatives who wanted to tell more advanced stories than what superhero comics usually featured, while also fighting his bosses in corporate over spending. There may have been some poor decisions on his part, or they may have seemed heavy-handed to creators who didn't get their way. That said, given how Marvel nearly went out of business in the 90s amid the speculator boom and an attempt to buy the main distributor, Diamond, maybe Shooter wasn't that bad?

Whatever the truth of the matter, it's notable that the stories I've read about him this week have highlighted those same points: Shooter gave a lot of people their breaks in the business, and he made sure various people got the credit they deserved for ideas that made it to print. He wasn't perfect, as so many of these tributes point out, but then, who is?

All of the Star Treks

Last week I finally hit a goal I first set for myself back in 2006, when I watched the final episode of Star Trek: Voyager. That means that I've now watched almost all Trek, with the exception of Short Treks and the Section 31 movie - which I suppose means my title for this post is somewhat misleading, but bear with me.

When I decided that watching every Trek show and movie was a worthwhile goal (yes, I know, I know), we were a couple of years off from the end of Enterprise, which was the last, somewhat labored gasp of what I like to call Trek's imperial phase: that period from 1987 to about 2004 that saw the launch of The Next Generation, Deep Space 9, Voyager and Enterprise, as well as four movies starring the TNG cast. Not only did Trek finally get a measure of critical and ratings recognition, but every one of those shows lasted longer than the Original Series (and Enterprise was the first Trek show to be cancelled since TOS).

When I made that goal, I'd only seen a few episodes of TOS here and there, none of the Animated Series, large parts of TNG but never in any systematic way, seasons 3-6 of DS9, and parts of the first two seasons of Voyager. I'd also seen all 6 of the original cast movies and three of the four TNG movies (Nemesis might not have come out yet). The Kelvin Timeline movies hadn't come out yet, and we were still more than a decade away from new Trek TV shows.

A big part of my decision to try to watch all Trek was that I'd just started a new job after graduating from journalism school, and I'd made a friend at work who was just as into Trek and all the other 90s SF shows that I'd loved. My new friend Paul lent me DVD box sets of Deep Space 9, Babylon 5 and the X-Files (as well as the West Wing), and when I discovered that someone in my building was stealing my mailed-in DVDs of DS9, Paul graciously allowed me to send them to his place and then brought them with him to work.

(No lie: this incident led me to rule out subsequent flatshares if they didn't have a personal letterbox in the front door, for fear of my rental DVDs getting nicked again)

Another coworker helped me catch up with a couple more seasons of TNG and the first two seasons of Voyager, and other shows I caught bit by bit, by renting from Sofa Cinema, which was the UK version of Netflix back then. But I wasn't very focused on my goal in those days: I watched all of TNG and Enterprise, but my attempts to watch TOS, DS9 and Voyager petered out - in part because TOS is quite slow and uneven, and Voyager takes a while to get better, if not ever properly good. I can't remember why I lost the thread of DS9 at that time, but on that attempt I only managed to get to the end of Season 4.

One thing that helped me stay focused on the TOS watch was the Mission Log podcast, which I've spoken about here. I remember seeing their first episode pop up on the Nerdist Podcast Network in 2012, so I listened to it eagerly even though I hadn't watched the Cage (TOS's first pilot). By 2013 I was watching more of season 1 of TOS and dutifully listening to Mission Log after each episode - but I took so long with it that in the interim I moved to the US and had to switch my DVD and streaming queue over to Netflix.

Now, I was a partisan of Netflix's DVD rental service up until the end, but I have to admit that once I was able to stream Netflix on a TV (first through the smart TV itself, then through an Amazon Fire TV and finally through Apple TV), it made it easier to keep up with Trek shows. I also determined that I was taking too long with too many shows - I'd finish a season of something, jump to another show entirely, and then by the time I went back to the first show I'd forgotten what I'd already seen of it.

So with that in mind, I finally decided to polish off DS9, all in one go. I took a few months, but it was the only show I was watching, and it was so good that I didn't feel the need to check out other shows in that time.

(I suspect that Kids These Days might have more trouble conceiving of a world with only one streaming service, Netflix, than of a world where Netflix mailed you DVDs)

With the end of DS9, I decided it was finally time to tackle Voyager, but I didn't do it in a very methodical way. It's so long ago now that I can't remember when I started it, but I must have given it a proper try after 2018, because that's when I worked with another colleague who also loved Trek, and assured me that Voyager picked up after Kes left and Seven of Nine joined the cast.

Getting a girlfriend put a little kibosh on the Voyager watch-through, especially because we were effectively living together during the pandemic and she didn't like Trek (she liked Star Wars, though). The other thing that slowed me down was Voyager's move from Netflix to Paramount Plus, along with the rest of the shows. I subsequently signed up for Paramount, and when I broke up with the GF, I had more time to watch whatever I wanted. I duly resumed Voyager, reserving it for lunch on Sundays.

That all still took years, of course. I finished season 7 of Voyager in June of 2025, and determined that I'd finished season 6 in June of 2024, with a similar amount of time since I finished season 5. It doesn't help that Voyager is still, for me, the weakest of the pre-2017 Trek shows - making it my only show, seven days a week, is probably more than I could handle.

And of course, yes, it took me so long to watch all these shows that Trek underwent a renaissance in the interim (two of them, technically). It's notable that in the time it's taken me to watch all of Voyager, I've also watched all 5 seasons of Discovery, 3 of Picard, 5 of Lower Decks, 2 of Prodigy, and the 2 so far of Strange New Worlds. 

So what does all this Trek amount to? I've watched the good (large chunks of TNG, almost all of DS9, large bits of TOS, Lower Decks and SNW), and I've watched the less entertaining (Voyager, Enterprise, Disco, those other bits of TOS and TNG). I've even watched TAS, which looks pretty abysmal but features the odd grown-up storyline, like a young Spock mercy killing his beloved pet to spare it a painful death, and the Devil telling children that they shouldn't let authority figures tell them who to be friends with. I'm not even joking!

My favorite period of Trek remains the imperial phase, specifically season 3 of TNG to the end of DS9. A lot of modern Trek is very good, but even the best of it sometimes feels too beholden to the past, as if they're worried that viewers won't like shows if they don't call back to every minute detail from the last 60 years of shows. This nostalgia works better on Lower Decks, which subjects every era of Trek to this treatment, and mines all that continuity for good-natured laughs; and while I love SNW, it sometimes feels too beholden to fan service as well. But it's still miles better than Star Trek Into Darkness, the second JJ Abrams-helmed Kelvin Timeline film, which does... not a great job of revisiting The Wrath of Khan.

And unfortunately, even when Trek does try to break free of the past, it feels very self-conscious. Look, Discovery is, hands down, my least favorite Trek, but I applaud it for making a clean break with the past at the end of season 2 and jumping forward over 900 years, so that it's nominally not beholden even to the TNG era. And yet, the show still fails to hold my attention as much as I'd like - its attempts to discuss hot-button social issues feel inorganic and labored, we never learn enough about the non-Michael Burnham characters to really like them, and the plots just don't feel that urgent. Even Prodigy, which grew into a fine show by the end of season 1, sometimes feels like it's laboring under the burden of showing that it's a Trek show.

This isn't to say that 90s Trek is perfect. Seasons 1 and 2 of TNG are absolutely terrible, with only one episode of note (Measure of a Man) to redeem them. DS9 can be slow at the start, and even up to the final season isn't completely immune from subjecting to us to some duff episodes. And for a supposed showcase of futuristic values, 90s Trek can be pretty disappointingly regressive: early TNG episodes like Code of Honor are rightly held up as grossly racist, while Harry Kim, Voyager's Asian cast member (the first since TOS's Sulu), always seems to get belittled and forgotten compared with the boorish white character, Tom Paris.

But the best summation I've heard of Trek (I believe from Mission Log) is that it's "competence porn", i.e. a show about smart people working together to solve problems. This squares with Gene Roddenberry's original vision, and his oft-quoted disparagement of "ancient aliens" hokum: he used to say that of course humans built the pyramids, because they're clever and they work hard. This spirit suffuses the best of Trek, and it's why Lower Decks and SNW and Prodigy have landed the best for me among the most recent entries.

It's worth noting that I've finished Voyager at an odd time for Trek in general. We're only a few weeks off from the premiere of SNW's third season, but Paramount has also announced that the show will be ending with season 5, which will be an abbreviated 6 episodes, rather than SNW's usual 10. Given the long lead times for the show, that could take a while yet, but it means that Trek is going from having 5 series on the air to just one, the Starfleet Academy show that's meant to emerge at some point.

Trek hasn't been immune to the toxic fandom that plagues other nerd-world properties, like the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Star Wars. It's also suffered, in my opinion, from over-production on the TV shows, meaning that Paramount had to cancel them all to save money as it looks for a buyer; that over-production, in turn, has meant that the Trek creative teams relied too much on visual effects and action scenes, and not always enough on the interpersonal relationships among the members of each ensemble cast that made Trek so good (at least in the 80s and 90s).

I want Academy to do well, but I also kind of wonder if it wouldn't be good for Trek to have a little break again for a year or two. It'd be nice to see it come back with something important to say, rather than always trying to recapture the magic of TOS - a quest that goes back all the way to 1995, when Voyager launched. My friend Paul, the one who lent me those DS9 and X-Files and Babylon 5 DVDs almost 20 years ago, hasn't really warmed to the latest generations of Trek, because he'd like to see another time jump like the one between TOS and TNG - one where there are reminders of the past, but where the shows aren't in thrall to it.

I'd like to see that new, third generation myself. And I'd like it to bring the best of both worlds with it: the actual recognition of non-white, non-male, non-hetero characters that New Trek does so well, with the episodic but still interconnected storytelling that Old Trek did nicely.

And if it goes away for another long period, well: today I restarted Enterprise. As long as it's available somewhere on streaming, we'll always have Trek to inspire us.

RIP Brian Wilson

Usually I'm a little quicker at getting these obituary posts up, but a number of things got in the way, and I also found myself having to consider what I could say about Brian Wilson or about The Beach Boys in general. I'm not that big of a fan: my direct experience is with Pet Sounds, as well as some of the songs that have filtered through into the wider culture, like the early surf-rock songs or Kokomo. 

I'm also aware of Brian Wilson's influence on other artists, REM being a prime example. In their singles collection, In Time, several members of REM talk about how their love for Pet Sounds and later Brian Wilson work influenced songs like At My Most Beautiful.

I'll also be blunt: for the longest time I associated liking The Beach Boys with a certain type of middle-of-the-road white dude. I then met a super-racist white dude in college who was into them, which colored my opinion of the band. It wasn't until I got into the Beatles that I learned about how influential Pet Sounds and other Brian Wilson works were on them. And it helped that a friend of mine, who was also into the Beatles, could paint a better picture of The Beach Boys (hi, Matt!).

So a couple of years later, spurred by those experiences and by reading panegyrics about it on Pitchfork, I picked up Pet Sounds. I'll say that it's not my favorite album of all time, but it's a good listen - my favorite is Sloop John B, but there's a certain spirit pervading the entire album, from the first note of Wouldn't It Be Nice to the sonic landscape at the end of Caroline, No.

From there I heard about the lost album, Smile, but I never got as far as that, even when Brian Wilson came out of seclusion in 2004 to release something approximating what he'd envisaged the original album to be. I got more traction with Surf's Up, which is another step in that darker, more mature direction that Wilson dreamed of when he came up with Pet Sounds.

Reading this piece in the Guardian, it's easy to see why Wilson gets name-checked by so many other artists. In collaboration with Van Dyke Parks and others, he went deeper than the surf-rock style that the band was famous for and pulled in influences from all over American music. Indeed, listening to Parks's album Song Cycle feels like the bits of Surf's Up and Smile that I have heard, while also reflecting folk and classical idioms. BTW I should point out that Van Dyke Parks remains the only artist I've ever met after a gig, and the only one I've ever high-fived, after having asked him whether Aaron Copland really smacked him on the ass. Nice guy.

Anyway, I don't know as much about Brian Wilson's work as I ought to, but I greatly appreciate what I do know. And I think I'll take a break from my British music project to listen to Smile and Surf's Up, because I should know more about them in general.

A Quick One on the No Kings Protests

I went to the protests against Trump's military parade and general agenda this afternoon, because I thought it was important to be part of it, rather than sniping from social media and whatever. I also just wanted to see what it would be like: we've had some protests in Palo Alto and Mountain View and Los Altos in the last couple of years, but never anything too big.

Honestly, I wasn't sure what to expect, but this was by far the biggest protest I've seen in the Peninsula, even if it was pretty small compared to the march against the Iraq War I attended in London back in 2003. It certainly beat the protest I joined briefly in 2017 in response to the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, as well as the various protests calling for an end to the war in Gaza more recently. The one protest I've seen lately that was comparable - but still nowhere near as big - was the one at all the Tesla showrooms a couple of months ago, which protested Elon Musk's DOGE activities.

For this one, I went with my dad to stand along a stretch of El Camino in Mountain View, and we were among the hundreds of folks holding flags and signs and eliciting honks of approval (usually) from people driving past. It was all pretty calm, with just about everyone who joined in being pretty chill and good-humored about it. Most of the drivers along El Camino, as I mentioned, were supportive, but one guy did shout something incomprehensible as he drove past, and another guy rode by on his bike in a MAGA hat. But the only organized counter-protest was a couple (literally two) anti-abortion rights protesters across the street from the main group.

This was good, because I was a little worried about agents provocateurs causing fights or looting, or about crazy assholes driving their cars into the crowds. I was also a little apprehensive about my dad and his partner walking around and potentially getting targeted by Nazi thugs, but it looks, as I say, like everyone was pretty chill.

I'll also admit, it was kind of moving to join in with the crowd and see people standing up for constitutionality and rule of law: a friend of mine suggested that the folks protesting down here tend to be self-ingratiating and disingenuous, which is hard to argue with, given how many older white folks there were. But he also appreciated that they were actually out there, whether or not they're in it for the long haul. And notably, while the crowd where I was skewed heavily older and whiter, there was definitely a range of ethnicities and age groups represented.

That was more true as I left the protest and drove into Palo Alto, to see what things were like there. The protesters were still out along El Camino until Los Altos, and then petered out until I got to the Stanford Campus, where the protest had taken route on all four corners of the intersection there. That crowd also seemed to venture further into the heart of Palo Alto, down Embarcadero, which was even more impressive: Palo Alto doesn't really seem like it'd be into the protests, but folks came out.

In terms of what's next, who knows? Things will happen regardless of what a bunch of people in the Peninsula do, but as I say, it's nice that they came out for this. At the very least, it'll give our elected representatives, both in Sacramento and in Washington, an idea that people want them do something about this mess of an administration. Though with the handcuffing of elected officials like Senator Alex Padilla, I think they've gotten the message on their own.

Europe's Top 4 Leagues and PSG

Much as it pains me to say it, congratulations to Paris St Germain for becoming the first French team to win the Champions League since Marseille in 1993. I don't know if they were particularly on form tonight, if Inter were particularly off, or whatever, but 5-0 is a pretty emphatic victory. Especially when you consider that PSG got here by beating a bunch of English teams, while Inter got here by beating this season's German and Spanish champions. One would have expected more of a fight from Inter, but clearly their age told, especially when up against epochal talents like Kvicha Kvaratskhelia and Desiré Doué, plus all the other great players PSG have built into this team.

It's easy to be dismissive, but maybe a little unfair. Yes, the French league is ridiculously uncompetitive: PSG have won the last four titles, plus eight of the last 10, and they didn't lose a game this season until they'd guaranteed the title. This is after the period a few years ago when Olympique Lyonnais won seven titles in a row.

It's also easy to be dismissive of a team that's so transparently become a petrostate's sports washing project, and that spent the last decade pursuing the Galactico model. They paid a record fee for Neymar Jr, brought Lionel Messi in from Barcelona, and snapped up Kylian Mbappé in time to see him blossom into one of Europe's finest players and see his transfer fee and influence shoot up. As a result, it was easy to enjoy the sight of them dominating the French league but always falling short in the Champions League, sometimes embarrassingly so.

But credit where credit is due: the management at PSG have abandoned the Galactico thing, allowing those three huge-name players to leave (some with better reputations than others, it must be said), and then giving coach Luis Enrique the latitude to actually build a team. I haven't watched much of PSG this season, but when I have, Kvaratskhelia has been particularly eye-catching for his runs up the flank, and I think he has a genuine claim to being Europe's most exciting young player. Kylian who?

I don't know if I've changed my stance about France's position at the top of the UEFA coefficients. I continue to maintain that there's a Top 4 leagues (England, Spain, Italy and Germany), which are typically closer to one another than they are to the chasing pack - though currently England is so far ahead that I might need to revise this statement. France has the fifth-highest coefficient, but it's farther from Germany, in fourth, than it is from the Netherlands in sixth, or than Germany is from Italy in second place.

French teams haven't really performed very well in Europe, historically, as evidenced by the fact that today's result is only the second time a French team has won the highest European trophy. No French team has ever won the Europa League (or its predecessor, the UEFA Cup), and PSG is the only French club ever to win the now-defunct Cup-Winners' Cup.

PSG is helped along by its owners' financial clout, much as Manchester City has benefited in the Premier League - although curiously, they also found it difficult to win the Champions League until fairly recently, when they, too, beat Inter in the final. This is why I say, there's no Top 5: it's just a Top 4 plus PSG.

Would it be good if French teams won more stuff? I suppose, if it meant more than just PSG winning European trophies, or at least getting to semifinals of major European competitions. But I wouldn't like to see a situation where England, Spain, Italy, Germany and now France are all getting oversized Champions League presences. 

Under the previous rules, before the Champions League switched to the league format in the fall, the top 4 countries got four spots each, guaranteed, which accounted for fully half of the teams participating in the competition at that level. Accordingly, the group phase typically featured teams from more countries but then the knockout phase would only ever feature teams from the Top 4 and PSG. Maybe a Dutch or Portuguese team would slip in there, usually because an Italian team would slip up somewhere, but certainly no Eastern European teams.

I don't see this state of affairs changing anytime soon. The other traditional French powers just can't seem to compete with PSG's money, and they can't seem to get their acts together in Europe. But although today's result isn't exactly a win for teams from countries outside the Top 4, it does at least mark the first Champions League win from a team that isn't English, Spanish, Italian or German since 2004.

Although now that PSG has its trophy, I wouldn't mind seeing an Italian team win it again, for once...

The Europa League Penalty

Like most fans of the Premier League, I watched dumbfounded this season as Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur flailed through two achievements that don't normally go together. The first and more prestigious is reaching the Europa League final, but the second was doing that while being the two worst teams in the English top flight that didn't get relegated.

Watching them play against one another on Wednesday, 21 May, made me think again about the long-held tradition that playing Europa League matches on Thursdays drags a team's league performance down. It's usually blamed on the shorter rest time compared to teams in the Champions League (which is on Tuesdays and Wednesdays), or on the fact that the travels to away matches are longer - there are more Eastern European teams in the Europa League, so you might find yourself drawn against a side from Kazakhstan and effectively be playing in Asia.

Another possibility was that because the teams that usually play in the Europa League aren't as rich as the Champions League teams, they might have less chance to rotate out players who are as good as their normal starters. It's also fairly common for some clubs de-prioritize the Europa League or domestic cups by fielding academy teams (Arsenal used to do this quite a bit with the EFL Cup, if I recall).

In any case, as I always do when I have a question like this, I built a spreadsheet to see what the numbers suggested. I took the English Premier League teams that have participated in the Europa League in the past 10 seasons and calculated their average points per game in the Premier League for each of those seasons. I then compared their averages in seasons when they were in the Europa League with seasons when they weren't. I also included participation in the more recent Europa Conference league, because those games are also played on Thursdays. Once I had the average points per season and points per game in UEL (UEFA Europa League) and non-UEL seasons, I calculated the averages across all the teams.

There are 13 teams in total, but not all of them have point totals/averages for every season, because some were relegated from the Premier League during that 10-year period. Frankly, those relegation seasons tended to come with such low point-totals that they may have skewed the numbers a bit. At the other end of the scale, a number of teams (Leicester City, Chelsea and Liverpool) have won the Premier League at least once in the same period, which presumably also skews the numbers.

In the end, I can report that there doesn't appear to be a UEL penalty, at least in the years I'm looking at. Average points per game across all 13 teams was 1.5, regardless of whether they competed in the Europa League or not. If you add one decimal place, UEL seasons on average had 1.53 points per game, while non-UEL seasons had 1.48. With regard to total points per season, the 13 teams accrued an average of 58.1 points per season that they played the Thursday games, against 56.3 points for the seasons where they didn't.

That's right: playing in the Europa League was associated with better league form.

I don't need to tell you that correlation doesn't equal causation, so I'm not saying that playing in the Europa League made the teams have better seasons. But I also don't observe clear drop-offs in points during the seasons where the teams did participate.

To take one example, Burnley's single Europa League season (2018-19) saw them reach 40 points, or 1.1 points per game. In the season right before and the season right after, they earned 54 total (1.4 per game), but two seasons before playing in Europe, Burnley had also racked up just 40 points during the season. Two seasons after playing in Europe they picked up just 39 in total (a little over 1.0 per game), and then the season after that were relegated after getting 35 points, or 0.9 per game.

Wolves make for another interesting example. Like Burnley, they played in the Europa League just once during this period (2019-20), but that season they ended up earning their highest points tally since getting promoted back to the Premier League, with 59 (1.6 per game). The season before, which was their first in the top flight, they earned 57 points, or 1.5 per game, and the season after they got just 45 points, or 1.2 points per game. In every subsequent season Wolves have earned between 1.3 and 1.1 points per game, and have not played in Europe.

The bigger teams fared a little worse. In seasons where they didn't play the Thursday games, the representatives of the so-called Big Six accrued an average of 1.9 points per game, compared with 1.8 points per game where they did play in the Europa League. Also FYI, the teams included in those numbers are Manchester United, Spurs, Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea; Manchester City was the only Big Six team not to play in the Europa League during this period.

Liverpool suffered the biggest drop, going from 2.2 points per game in non-UEL seasons, as against 1.9 in UEL seasons. This result is skewed by the fact that Liverpool played just three UEL seasons, of which one (2015-16) represented their lowest points-per-game average during this decade; in among the non-UEL seasons are the two seasons where they won 2.6 points per game (2018-19 and 2019-20, the latter of which they won the league). Liverpool's most recent UEL season (2023-24) saw them get 2.2 points per game, but this season, where they won the league they got 2.3.

Arsenal also suffered a drop in UEL seasons, registering 1.8 points per game vs 2.0 in non-UEL seasons, and Tottenham's UEL points per game are 1.7 vs 1.8 for non-UEL seasons. Manchester United's points per game are the same across the decade (reflecting the years of drift post-Alex Ferguson), while Chelsea actually sees better points per game in UEL seasons (1.9) as against non-UEL seasons (1.7).

So what accounts for the discrepancies, both in the general sample and in the Big Six teams?

For the smaller teams, points totals and points-per-game may be skewed by the presence of historically bad seasons in which they got relegated. Southampton, Burnley, Leicester and Aston Villa each suffered at least one relegation in this period, and of those, Southampton, Burnley and Leicester managed to get relegated twice. Southampton's first relegation season of the period saw them net 25 points across the season (0.7 per game), and their second, which was this season, got them 12 points (0.3 per game), which is the second-lowest points total in Premier League history. Villa's relegation in 2015-16 saw them earn a pretty dismal 17 points overall or 0.4 per game.

And while none of the big teams got relegated in this period, they did have a few stinkers. Chelsea amassed just 44 points, or 1.2 per game, in 2022-23, as they recovered from the forced sale from former owner Roman Abramovich in response to the Ukraine war. But Manchester United and Spurs have them beat this season, with 42 and 38 points overall, respectively, or 1.1 and 1.0 points per game. 

The big teams skewed things in the other direction, by the way, mainly by having really good seasons. Leicester, Chelsea and Liverpool all won the title during these years (Liverpool twice), which suggests some good points totals, but even when they didn't win some of the big teams racked up good points totals. There were seven seasons in which a team amassed over 80 points without winning the league, and four of those were non-UEL seasons. All of the four times that a team won over 90 points (Liverpool in 2018-19, 2019-20 and 2021-22, Chelsea in 2016-17) were non-UEL seasons for those teams.

Coming back to the original question, it seems clear that their extended runs in the Europa League aren't sufficient to explain Manchester United or Spurs' low points totals this season. A more likely explanation for both is severe injury crises, where a great many key players were unavailable for large parts of the season. The other problem, though less quantifiable, is the dysfunction in the backrooms of both clubs: Spurs are run by Daniel Levy, who tends to be quick to sack managers but reluctant to buy players, while Manchester United is in the middle of a decade-long quagmire relating to servicing their primary owners' debt incurred in buying them, plus a new minority owner who seems even less inclined to spend than the majority owners. United's dysfunction has extended to selling off a load of players who promptly pull up trees at their next clubs, which implies that morale and management are both in the dumps.

This is all to say that, while the achievement of contesting a major European trophy puts at least some lipstick on the pig that the 2024-25 season has represented for both clubs, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur need to look to other factors to explain this year's dismal form. While they may do marginally worse in seasons where they play in the Europa League, they won't have this excuse next season. 

But at least Spurs can look forward to playing in the Champions League. Hopefully they strengthen the team enough for it.

Andor Season 2: The Best Star Wars of All

I've been trying to formulate my thoughts on the second, and final, season of Andor since I finished the last couple of episodes earlier this week. The first thought that came to mind was that it may well be the best Star Wars offering of all, including the much-hallowed original trilogy.

Perhaps that's overblown. Andor and the original films represent very different things, based on the times when they were made and the audiences they were aimed at. Moreover, they're connected by Rogue One, which is my favorite of the new Star Wars movies but has its own problems. Still, I want to explore these ideas in this blog, and I'm gonna need to spoil the hell out of the show to do it, so you can catch that after the jump.

Congrats to Liverpool as 2024-25 Premier League Champions

It doesn't feel like it should be a big deal, but Liverpool winning the Premier League does feel exciting in a way that a league title hasn't in a while. This is only the second time in the past eight seasons that a team other than Manchester City has won the Premier League, and Liverpool won that other time too. BTW, for the completists: if you look at the previous decade, you also get Chelsea's win in 2016-17 and more importantly, Leicester's in 2015-16 (how long ago that must seem for Leicester City fans...).

This reminded me a lot of Liverpool's previous title win, during the 2019-20 season. Leaving aside the impact of the pandemic on that season, Liverpool spent basically that entire season at the top of the table, and it was similar this season. Last time round, they didn't seem to lose a match until the teams returned from the Covid-induced break, but by then it was pretty much already in the bag, to the point that they recorded the earliest win, in terms of games left to play (seven).

This year's Liverpool didn't sweep the league quite so commandingly, winning with "only" four matches left to play. They also seemed to stumble a few times, though for all that they had the odd inopportune draw or loss, second-placed Arsenal was never able to capitalize on those mistakes. Liverpool are currently 15 points ahead of Arsenal, and 20 points ahead of Newcastle, who are currently in third place. 

Much of the commentary on Liverpool's win has focused on the fact that it was masterminded by the new manager, Arne Slot, in his first season at Anfield. Taking over from Jürgen Klopp, Slot hasn't tinkered much with the team, bringing in only one player of note (Federico Chiesa, whom I'd like to see have more of a role in future). This has led to some commentators suggesting that this win belongs to Klopp, but I disagree. 

Klopp was a good manager but not quite the revolutionary genius that some seem to have made him out to be - he may have masterminded Borussia Dortmund claiming the Bundesliga, but by the time he left that team they were clearly on their last legs, and out of ideas. English commentary talked a lot about Klopp's "heavy metal" brand of gegenpressing football, and while this style of play kept Liverpool in among the top teams of the league, it also burned players out easily. 

It's impressive, therefore, that Slot got such good results out of the same group of players, but with a less frenetic style of play. Klopp may have assembled this team, but Slot is the one who got the best out of them, and so he deserves full credit for the title win.

The question that remains, then, is what Slot does next season. He's managed to hold onto two of the side's key players, Mohamed Salah and Virgil van Dijk, after a season-long drama of whether they'd sign new contracts. Keeping them at Anfield next season is definitely a positive, but whether they succumb to age next season or the season after, their knees and reflexes will go sooner rather than later. It'll be interesting to see if he can maintain this balance next season, getting the best out of this group of players, or if he'll be forced at some point to perform a major overhaul.

The question came up on Football Weekly of whether this is the start of a dynasty at Liverpool, but apart from how well Slot can build a team, the answer will depend on what the rest of the teams do next season. Manchester City had an absolute mare this year, and it'll be interesting to see if Pep Guardiola is able to rebuild his team into challengers, or if he's now become the problem keeping them from winning. 

Same with Mikel Arteta at Arsenal: I sometimes think he's a bit too much of a whiner, but it's undeniable that he did well to pull Arsenal out of its post-Arsène Wenger, post-Unai Emery doldrums. He's definitely brought in a number of good players, but I don't know if he's had the tactical nous to properly fill the positions where he's lacking cover, mainly a good striker. Next season will be the most important, I think: if he can't strengthen the side enough to challenge for the title, then it'll probably be time for Arsenal to find a new manager.

I'm not too interested in whether any of the other so-called "Big Six" will do well, with one exception: Ruben Amorim has presided over Manchester United's worst campaign of the post-Alex Ferguson era, but he seems to eke out the odd result here and there. He got hamstrung by being hired mid-season (because the Manchester United hierarchy can't seem to organize a piss-up in a brewery, given that they should have fired Erik ten Hag at the end of last season), but it'll be interesting to see if he can rebuild the squad for next season. Or if he'll even be given enough time to do so.

I'm slightly more interested in the prospects of other strong teams outside the traditional big names, specifically Newcastle United, Nottingham Forest and Aston Villa. Newcastle have generally had a good season, their win in the EFL Cup balancing out some inconsistent league performances, though as I said, they're currently in third place. Forest have been the big surprise of the season, sitting in third place for large parts of the season and only recently falling away; I'm still hopeful they can at least qualify for the Champions League next season, even if that'll probably be a poisoned chalice for them. And finally, Aston Villa did well to get to the Champions League quarterfinals, so if they can strengthen and make their league performances more consistent, they should challenge for Europe again... though it'd be fun to see someone from outside of London, Manchester and Liverpool challenge for the title again.

The league's not quite over, as the European places are still up for grabs, at least third through fifth. And if either Manchester United or Spurs win the Europa League, they'll be in the Champions League next season, despite lying closer to the relegation places this season. But overall, with Liverpool's win and the relegation places sewn up, most of the drama is done now. It'll be interesting to see if Liverpool rest on their laurels for the rest of the season, or if they come out ready to play again - that'll be the real test of what kind of manager Arne Slot turns out to be.

Daredevil Born Again Mostly Sticks the Landing

When I previously wrote about the show, I was three episodes in and we'd just seen the culmination of the White Tiger storyline, along with a tease of things to come in the shape of the assailant's Punisher logo-bearing shirt. Since then we've gotten the real thing, and in a fairly prominent role, as well as hints of the wider Defenders and/or MCU continuity. I'm pretty happy with how it's turned out, but if you haven't seen it yet, be warned of spoilers ahead.

Paul McCartney's Photography at the DeYoung Museum

I spent yesterday afternoon up at Golden Gate Park with my dad, since we had the day free and wanted to get out of the house. The plan had originally been just to drive up, walk around the park and have a snack at the museum cafe. But since my dad has a membership to the DeYoung Museum (as well as its sister museum, the Legion of Honor), we decided to have a look around the galleries a bit.

The main exhibit we checked out was the collection of Paul McCartney's photos from the Beatles' early tours, including their visits to Paris, New York City and Miami. McCartney had been experimenting with photography for a while and had brought his camera along to take some candid backstage photos as well as some artsy compositions of the Beatles and their friends and well-wishers. Along the way, the pictures also depict the preparations for the band's arrival in America, press events, the famous appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, and the band in relaxation mode in various places.

The backstage snaps are all pretty interesting: there are shots of band members goofing around their dressing rooms, along with shots of other performers who were touring with the Beatles, such as Cilla Black. In the sequence showing the band's visit to Paris, there are studio snaps of them hanging out with local musicians who were recording work for other bands or for the re-recordings in other languages of the Beatles' own songs. You also get glimpses of various band members' partners at the time, like Cynthia Lennon and Jane Asher, whom Paul was dating at the time.

Most of the photography is in black and white, but it bursts into brilliant color for the section showing the Beatles in Miami. That section is pretty much all vacation snaps, depicting the band swimming, lounging by the pool or fishing on boats. Everyone looks impossibly young and the Fab Four in particular seem delighted to be trading the environs of rainy northern England for the swanky parts of Miami in the summer.

One of the things that was fascinating about the exhibition was seeing my dad's reaction to it. He was initially skeptical about it, thinking it wouldn't be that interesting, but he ended up enjoying it a lot, especially seeing again the decor and names of that period, when he himself had been a teenager. At the end, when we ventured into the gift shop, he was moved to buy a double CD compilation of Beatles songs from the period (for my part, I bought Help!).

The other thing that struck me was how of their time the shots of the Ed Sullivan performance were. John, Paul and George are standing in a line, dressed in suits, each carrying their guitars and bouncing up and down slightly as they play. It's the iconic shot of them, and the pose that countless bands imitated in those initial years as other artists and impresarios aimed to capitalize on the Beatles' success. But it's also very, very different from how artists present themselves these days.

As I write this blog, I'm listening to an album by Beady Eye, the band that Liam Gallagher formed after the breakup of Oasis. Liam was particularly drawn to Beatles iconography, but it's hard to imagine a more different image from the clean-cut and purposely non-threatening Beatles than Liam Gallagher, who once stalked up and down the stage at the BRIT Awards in big puffer jacket, inviting people to fight while his brother Noel gave the thank-you speech for their award win.

That's not to say that Liam's bad and the Beatles were good. I just find it funny to see the original pose from their performance that gave rise to, as I said, so many imitators but also to so many reactions against that image. The Rolling Stones started out looking similar to the Beatles, but soon leaned into Mick Jagger's physicality, while The Who also initially ran around in blazers and ties but would end their sets by destroying their instruments.

In a world of Mick Jagger or Morrissey slinking around the stage and flaunting their sexuality, and Beyonce or Lady Gaga putting on elaborate choreography and costuming, it's quaint and kind of sweet to see those four young guys from working-class Liverpool, looking so self-conscious in their suits as they bounce around on TV. Just like the playbills depicting Sylvie Vartan and Johnny Halliday, or the interior decor of Pan-Am airplanes circa 1964, they're images from a bygone world, and it's great that this exhibition captured them so well.

The exhibition is on at the DeYoung until July of this year, so if you're in the Bay Area and have a free afternoon, it's worth checking out. And if you're not in the Bay Area, I'm sure it'll come to your city sometime soon, if it hasn't already. It's definitely worth a look, especially if you're a big Beatles fan like me.

Thoughts on Star Trek: Prodigy (with Spoilers)

Just finished Prodigy last night, and wanted to set down some thoughts. The first being, it's nice to see that it did get picked up somewhere after Paramount Plus cancelled it and dropped it from its platform. It was a bit slow going at points, but in the end it came good, with an emotional ending to the second season and nice tie-ins to the rest of Trek. Anyway, there are probably going to be some spoilers, so catch my more detailed thoughts after the jump.

WTF Italy

I wasn't following these Nations League matches very closely, but I feel compelled to share this one, because of the general WTF-ness of the whole situation. The second German goal has made the rounds on the news and podcasts, because of the absolute insanity of the Italian team getting so caught up in their own BS that they get taken by surprise by Germany's quickly taken corner.

While Italy's second-half fightback can be taken as a positive, you have to ask whether they'd have mustered up the courage to do it if they hadn't let in that comedy goal. Apparently Donnarumma's a good goalkeeper, but I feel like I rarely see it, and he certainly doesn't demonstrate a lot of tactical nous here.

Moise Kean seems like the goal threat that Italy's needed for years (you know, since about 2018), but again, he's had a weird career and I think he's had fewer call-ups to the national team because of his skin color. He certainly doesn't seem to have had a good time of it at big teams like Juventus.

This just all makes me think of the shocking displays Italy's graced us with at World Cups since winning in 2006, as well as the incredible collapse at last year's Euros. If Italy keeps letting in goals like this, how do they expect to qualify for 2026?

Though, on the other hand, maybe they're just getting a jump on being banned from entering the US next year...

Daredevil Born Again Is Off to a Good Start

Once again I'm breaking my rule about not writing a post about a show that I'm currently watching. But I've been considering the first three episodes of Daredevil: Born Again, and I'm interested to capture this moment and see where the show goes.

Obviously, I'm covering big spoilers, which come after the jump, so don't read on if you don't want to know what happens.

Captain America: Brave New World is a step, but only a step, in the right direction

I decided to snag a random day off, and while I ended up wasting half of it at the gym and then a good quarter at the doctor's office (because things happen at random, don't they), I also found the time to go to the theater to watch the latest Captain America movie.

As I say in my headline, it's a step, but it remains to be seen if it's enough of a step. Spoilers for the whole movie after the jump:

Now That's What I Call All of British Music: The Britpop Years

My project to listen to (almost) all of the biggest UK rock bands from the 60s to now continues, and in recent weeks I've hit a big milestone that I was looking forward to, namely I've reached the Britpop era.

Because I listen to all of a given band's discography, I've gone through several bands and artists that were releasing material in the 90s, some of which swirled around what the Britpop bands were doing. For example, David Bowie was getting recognition again at that time, even as he experimented with other genres and styles, like electronica. Then there were the bands who came just before Britpop, like the Madchester/baggy scene (notably the Stone Roses and the Happy Mondays), or the likes of the Beautiful South, Saint Etienne and the Lightning Seeds.

BTW, speaking of electronica, I've already explored the strand that was most closely associated with Britpop, the genre called big beat, which for my purposes consisted of Fatboy Slim, the Chemical Brothers and the Prodigy. And what's most fascinating about big beat is that my way in was through Fatboy Slim, aka Norman Cook, who was previously a member of the Hull indie band the Housemartins. While Cook went on to become one of the biggest names in electronic dance music, his former bandmate Paul Heaton spearheaded the Beautiful South, bringing things back to 90s guitar rock.

These bands, like the Beautiful South, were all in rotation on MTV Europe during the summers when I'd go to Italy, and they played between the videos that I was really looking forward to, those from Blur and Pulp. That's why it's kind of poignant to reach Blur and Pulp's discographies, because I'm reminded of how new and fresh they felt when I was just discovering them, and it also reminds me of how hard it used to be to find certain music.

It wouldn't be fair to say that it was impossible to hear these bands here in the US. Before the mythical summer of 1995, when I first saw the videos for Blur's Country House and Pulp's Common People, I'd already heard Girls and Boys and Underwear on my local alternative rock station, Live 105, but the visual component turned out to be so important for imprinting on my brain. As I've mentioned before on this blog, Country House (despite being reviled by a number of reviewers at the time) was bright and breezy and irreverent, in contrast to the dour fare I saw on American MTV at the same time. Common People was also a blast of fresh air, with its 70s sartorial stylings and bright colors.

When I got obsessed with Blur (moreso than with Pulp), I was fascinated by the diversity of musical styles on their albums as well as the aesthetics of their singles. To the End, from the Parklife album, features on its cover a rose lying on top of a gun with a silencer, evoking James Bond. End of a Century, also from Parklife, features a painting of a starship resembling the USS Enterprise from Star Trek. 

I wasn't picking up these singles at the time, though I'd likely have seen posters for some of them when I started visiting London. But the real impact is seeing them now and imagining how it would have felt to see them back then. It's the same with Pulp's songs from 1995 or so - in addition to remembering how I felt about certain songs at the time, I also find myself thinking about they must have sounded to other people.

The aims of the British rock listening project were initially to get acquainted with the discographies of the Kinks and then of The Rolling Stones, and subsequently to work my way up to music from beyond 2006 or so, which is about when I stopped being current with new music. But one of the other benefits has been to contextualize a bunch of bands I was listening to when I was in high school, such as Peter Gabriel or the Pet Shop Boys. 

Now that I'm at the Britpop years, I'm getting to do the same with an even bigger, more important chunk of my musical background, and I'll be at it for a while: after Blur there's Oasis and Elastica and Sleeper and all the other lesser-known bands that made up the scene, or at least orbited around it. Without getting too caught up in nostalgia, it'll be fun to revisit those times, and fill in any gaps in my musical knowledge of the era.

Thoughts on the Super Bowl at around halftime

Thoughts on TV Writing Classes

I've been looking for evening classes for a while, to get me either out of the house or to help improve some skill that's important to me. And then last summer/early fall I started seeing ads on Facebook for TV and film writing classes at UCLA.

Because I'm not quite on the verge of moving to LA, I was glad to see that these classes through the UCLA Extension are mostly offered online. I started off with an Intro to TV Writing course, which consisted of six weekly sessions on Zoom. As the name implies, it was an introduction to how TV is generally written, both 30-minute comedies and 60-minute dramas. Each week we had to watch an episode of one or more specific shows, then compare them with the scripts or write our own beat sheets summarizing the various plot lines going through each episode.

It was in this way that I got introduced to Barry, on HBO, and Severance, on Apple TV Plus. I've sort of fallen off with Barry, but I want to get back to it soon, while for Severance I'm currently taking advantage of Apple's promotion to get a month of Apple TV Plus for free, so that I can catch up on the first season and watch the second season. I'm even considering keeping the subscription for an extra month, so I can get to the end of Season 2.

After that, I decided to keep on doing it, so I found an Intro to 60 Minute Drama class, as that's more in line with the kind of TV I'm interested in. That's a ten-week class, so I'm still in the middle of it, but so far it's pretty interesting. Where the previous class talked a lot about theory and the business, this class drops us straight into the plotting aspect - early on we had to choose a show for which to write a spec script, and every week we've been refining the idea for our spec. Because I don't watch loads of network TV, and most of the stuff I've watched lately is more of a limited series than an ongoing (stuff like Agatha All Along and the Penguin), I opted for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

It helps that SNW is episodic rather than serialized, so I don't have to worry about fitting into something so tightly plotted - although a couple of classmates are tackling shows like House of the Dragon, which I found too intimidating (apart from the fact that I'm not watching it).

At any rate, I've enjoyed coming up with a story for my own episode of SNW, and at the same time figuring out the B and C stories, and determining how they fit into the overall whole. Because SNW's episodes are mostly self-contained, it's easier to watch them to piece together how that interplay works, and then try to replicate that in my own story.

We also have to give feedback on classmates' work, so I get to examine storytelling from that angle, too - looking at what works and what takes me out of the story. A couple of other people are doing SNW stories too, so I've mostly commented on theirs, but I've also given comments on a few other shows, though some of the ones that I don't watch are tough to find comments for.

With regard to the teaching, I think it's pretty good so far. For this week's assignment I had some questions for the instructor, and she got back to me with some helpful comments quite quickly. That meant I ended up submitting my assignment a few days early (we have a deadline every Friday), and so I can do other stuff, like this here blog.

Another thing that's been helpful about this class is that, while it seems focused on network dramas with ad breaks, the format that it teaches is still relevant for shows on streaming services, which typically don't have ads. It's one of those things that feels very "duh" when you see it, but it's been a revelation to see how act breaks work, especially with the need for a good cliffhanger to keep that audience there from act to act. This is a relic of network TV, when viewers might use act breaks as an excuse to flip to other channels, but it's still relevant when you're competing against whatever they're looking at on their phones.

I don't know if it'll lead to a TV writing job, since I don't know what the prospects are for a 45-year-old with no experience, but I'm also looking at it as an opportunity to improve my storytelling in other media. The main thing I'm taking from it is plotting out my main plot and subplots, from start to finish, and then plotting the story by putting them together. I figure that any skills that improve my writing should be transferable to whatever form I'm writing in, whether it's TV, movies, prose or comics. It's also given me a taste for deconstructing books and shows that I like, to see how they're telling their stories.

And yeah, if it does end up leading to a Hollywood writing career... that's not such a bad outcome, is it?

Thought of this song today, no particular reason

 

England's Weird Problem with Ireland

One of the books I'm reading at the moment is The Song Rising, the third in Samantha Shannon's Bone Season series. I met Shannon at a Super Relaxed Fantasy Club evening in London back in 2018, and ended up checking out her books after that, starting with the (then) standalone Priory of the Orange Tree, and eventually moving on to her ongoing series. I wasn't sure at first if it was the kind of thing I'd be into, but as I got further into the first book I became gradually more hooked.

It's not exactly urban fantasy, though it takes place in London and features spirits, psychics and otherworldly beings. It's also not exactly science fiction, even though it's set in a future fascist dystopia and features a certain amount of advanced technology. It's an interesting mix of those two genres, with Victorian/Edwardian trappings and a heavy debt to penny dreadfuls and the culture of London gangs.

Another thing that's struck me, several times as I've read the previous books in the series but most forcefully again as I've read this current book, is the Irish through line permeating the books. It makes sense when you consider Shannon's name, and her protagonist, Paige Mahoney, but a key theme in the series is the ongoing anti-Irish prejudice displayed by the ruling entity, Scion, as well as normal people surrounding Paige. This all made me think of the weird relationship the English have with the Irish, something I observed as a foreigner to both cultures, but which I'm sure Shannon has experienced firsthand growing up in London.

I first moved to the UK after my final year of university in Göttingen, Germany, where among other things, I got interested in Ireland. That's the year that I got into the Pogues, Brendan Behan and James Joyce, as well as general Irish history, all washed down with copious amounts of Guinness and other stouts at my local Irish pub. Part of it was my ongoing obsession with the works of Northern Irish comics writer Garth Ennis, but I think I was just fascinated by meeting actual Irish people for the first time, whether a crowd of kids from Dublin or the manager of the Irish pub, a guy named Mick. I made friends with Mick and with the Irish exchange students, took a class on the history of the Irish Free State (1916-1921) and ended up going on a trip to Dublin, Galway and Belfast, which was super fun.

All this Irish-ness gave me a certain perspective, not to say bias perhaps, when I moved to London at the end of that academic year. For a while I hung out with the brother of one of my friends from Göttingen and some of his Irish pals, and otherwise I absorbed how the English viewed their neighbors from across the Irish Sea.

This was the aftermath of the Good Friday Accords, which essentially put an end to the decades-long emergency in Northern Ireland, although in those months when I was newly in London tensions erupted again in Belfast. Luckily they didn't ruin the Accords, but it's been clear ever since that the various sides are always at least a little mistrustful of one another.

As I say, I had a certain perspective on the Troubles and the English response to them, whereas for my peers at my first job, there in Southend in Essex, I suppose various IRA atrocities were still alarmingly fresh in mind. I remember being shocked by a case where some Irish people suspected of IRA connections had just been gunned down, and being equally shocked when my flatmate at the time justified it saying that the UK had been on such a high alert because of the IRA; incidentally, this is why trash bins are so difficult to find in public places in London, especially on the Tube.

There were other examples, like when a friend rebuked me for referring to Derry instead of Londonderry. He claimed that only Irish republicans called it Derry, but my experience had been rather that only the English used the other name; in my experience in Belfast even the Protestants called it Derry. Or, most hilariously, when another friend suggested that the IRA had been engaged in a genocidal war against the English, which seems... a bit much.

And moving on from my own circle of friends into the wider culture, a travel book named McCarthy's Bar came out around then. Written by a comedian named Pete McCarthy, it was about a trip he took in Ireland, in which the hook was that he went to every pub he could find that had his name on it. Notably, it features the following line: 

"Each 17 March brings to a head the inability of the English middle classes to deal with the Irish Problem, in the sense that Ireland is a problem because it exists."

I still remember that line, despite only having read it once over two decades ago while skimming the book in the local Waterstone's on my lunch break, because it squared so totally with my own experience. That line McCarthy wrote went on to talk about how celebrations of St Patrick's Day always brought out the English patriots, or nationalists rather, who got annoyed at celebrating a patron saint of Ireland instead of their "own" Saint George (though these folks would doubtless get annoyed if you suggested that George wasn't, himself, English).

That all took place in the years 2002-2004, when we were still less than a decade off from the Good Friday Accords. But there were more recent indications of the weird attitude of the English (though I think at least the Scots, if not also the Welsh, are guilty of some of this too) during the whole Brexit tomfoolery. Because of the unique and weird status of Northern Ireland, Brexit threatened to either re-erect a physical barrier between the Republic of Ireland and the North, which would have been a violation of the Good Friday Accords; or it would have put up a hard border in the Irish Sea between Northern Ireland and the island of Britain, which was seen as effectively ceding the North to the Republic.

Neither option was palatable, so the ruling Tories went for a third option. Some suggested that the Republic of Ireland should also leave the EU, while others, most notably former Home Secretary Priti Patel, rather astonishingly suggested using food shortages to pressure the Republic to accede to British demands over the movement of goods between the south and the north. The point about the food shortages is particularly galling in light of the history of the Irish famine of the 1850s, in which about half the population emigrated or died, all because the English not only refused to provide aid but also continued exporting food from Ireland.

While it may be unfair to tar all the English by association with their absolute stupidest person (Priti Patel, to be clear, though she has a lot of competition these days from the likes of Liz Truss, Kemi Badenoch and Boris Johnson, among far too many others), it's notable that someone felt able to say the not-very-quiet part out loud like that. As the commentary I linked to suggests, the British and the Irish worked well together and learned more about one another while they were together in the EU, but it's depressing that this kind of boorishness was so ready to come back to the surface once the Brexit negotiations got serious.

All of this is to say that I appreciate that touch in Samantha Shannon's Bone Season novels, in which the English nationalist overlords are particularly anti-Irish. It's not something you're as likely to see in an English writer's dystopian vision, but I find it notable that Shannon has made it such a key part of her story. It's a shame that these prejudices persist, even among people that you'd normally consider reasonably progressive or enlightened, and it seems a shame that these attitudes will only harden the longer the UK is estranged from the EU.