H N Arabian Blog - Random Tales

  A Short Story: The Critic, the Dream, and the Waffles It was a chilly autumn Sunday in Watertown. At 7:30 a.m., I opened my eyes to a bedroom still wrapped in darkness. Rather than face the cold, I decided to stay under the covers until eight, giving the morning sun time to warm the room. I closed my eyes. Just for a few minutes. Moments later, I was on the phone with Armand, our book club’s lead organizer. He was not calling to wish me a pleasant Sunday. He had serious concerns about the story arc of my latest piece. “Did you find my criticism and suggestions valuable?” he pressed. “Are you going to revise your story?” I defended my artistic vision while trying to sound receptive to his advice. Armand was persistent, and our discussion was growing intense. I was in the middle of explaining why my protagonist’s choices made perfect sense when— “Breakfast is ready! Eggs and waffles!” Armand kept talking. “I'm asking you seriously. Are you going to revise it?” “Just a moment, Arman...

  *** The Open House is a quiet, reflective short story about time, marriage, aging, and the emotional layers hidden within ordinary moments. On the surface, very little happens: a married couple unexpectedly visits a model apartment while on their way to coffee. Yet beneath this simple event lies a meditation on life’s transitions — particularly the movement from youth and family-building into later adulthood. The story belongs to the tradition of domestic realism, where emotional depth emerges not from dramatic plot twists but from subtle observations, small gestures, and understated dialogue. *** The Open House The OPEN HOUSE sign stood at the curb like an afterthought, half-hidden beneath the branches of a maple tree just beginning to turn gold. If I had blinked while driving past, I might never have noticed it. Marie did. “There,” she said, touching my arm lightly. I slowed the car. Beyond the sign rose the new apartment complex beside Avalon — all clean angles, bright windo...

*** At its surface, The Spice Bandit is a light rural anecdote about a garden pest caught in a humane trap. Beneath the humor, however, the story works as a meditation on adaptation, perception, and the strange ways neighboring worlds influence one another. *** The Spice Bandit  By the time I reached Vick’s place, the evening fog had started rolling low across the pasture behind his house. The sheep beyond the fence looked like drifting clouds themselves, grazing silently beneath the orange glow of sunset. Vick was waiting beside the herb garden with the excitement of a man who had either solved a mystery or accidentally created one. “Come look at this thing,” he whispered dramatically. The humane trap sat beneath the basil plants, rocking gently. Dill brushed against the wire sides as the wind moved through the garden. For weeks something had been chewing perfect little crescent bites through the herbs. Vick took the offense personally. Nobody robbed his basil and escaped justice...

  Movie Review: Jumanji vs. Welcome to the Jungle vs. The Next Level A comparison of the original classic and its modern reinventions 1. Jumanji (1995) Directed by Sony Pictures The original Jumanji remains the most emotionally grounded film in the series. Built around Robin Williams’ performance as Alan Parrish — a boy trapped inside a supernatural jungle game for decades — the movie blends childhood fantasy with surprisingly dark themes: abandonment, fear, lost time, and reconciliation. The practical effects and animatronics give the film a tactile, chaotic energy. Stampeding rhinos crash through living rooms; giant spiders lurk in attics; monsoons flood suburban streets. The movie feels dangerous in a way family blockbusters rarely do now. Strengths Robin Williams brings warmth and melancholy. Strong emotional core about family and growing up. Practical effects still hold charm. The board game itself feels mysterious and cursed. Weaknesses Some CGI effects are dat...

  Book Review:  The Irresistible Attraction of Gravity Author:  Luciano Rezzolla Review of The Irresistible Attraction of Gravity by Luciano Rezzolla Luciano Rezzolla’s The Irresistible Attraction of Gravity: A Journey to Discover Black Holes is that rare science book capable of making readers feel both humbled and exhilarated. Written by one of the astrophysicists involved in producing the first image of a black hole, the book combines rigorous physics with a sense of cosmic wonder that recalls the popular science classics of Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking. Published by Cambridge University Press in 2023, the book traces humanity’s understanding of gravity from instinctive everyday experience to the strange geometry of Einstein’s spacetime and the extreme environments surrounding black holes. Rezzolla structures the work as a “journey,” beginning with simple observations — why objects fall, why planets orbit — before guiding readers toward neutron stars, gravitational...

  Movie Review:  Man on the Moon (1999)  Miloš Forman’s Man on the Moon is less a traditional Hollywood biopic than an elaborate prank played on the audience — which makes it the perfect film about Andy Kaufman. Instead of trying to “explain” Kaufman, the movie embraces the comedian’s greatest talent: making people uncertain whether they were watching genius, insanity, performance art, or some combination of all three. Jim Carrey delivers one of the boldest performances of his career. He does not merely imitate Kaufman’s voice or mannerisms; he captures the strange emotional tension beneath the comedy — the need for attention, the delight in discomfort, and the almost childlike obsession with testing audiences. Roger Ebert described the performance as “heroic,” noting how Carrey disappears into Kaufman’s peculiar worldview. The film follows Kaufman from awkward nightclub appearances to cult fame on Taxi , his invention of the grotesque lounge singer Tony Clifton, and fi...

  Book Review:  The Everglades: River of Grass Author:  Marjory Stoneman Douglas Marjory Stoneman Douglas’s The Everglades: River of Grass is one of the rare environmental books that changed how an entire region understood itself. Published in 1947 — the same year Everglades National Park was established — the book transformed the Everglades from what many Americans dismissed as a useless swamp into a living, interconnected ecosystem worthy of protection. What makes Douglas’s work remarkable is not simply its environmental message, but the elegance of its writing. She approaches the Everglades with the eye of a journalist, the patience of a historian, and the lyricism of a novelist. Her famous opening line — “There are no other Everglades in the world” — still carries the force of revelation nearly eighty years later. Rather than presenting the Everglades as a static wilderness, Douglas describes it as a “river of grass,” a slow-moving sheet of water flowing from Lake ...

  Book Review:  The Wilderness Idiot: Lessons from an Accidental Adventurer Author:  Ted Alvarez Ted Alvarez’s The Wilderness Idiot: Lessons from an Accidental Adventurer is part travel memoir, part outdoor philosophy, and part comedy of errors. Rather than presenting himself as a flawless wilderness hero, Alvarez embraces the role of the enthusiastic amateur — the guy who keeps saying “yes” to dangerous, exhausting, and occasionally absurd adventures even when common sense suggests otherwise. The result is a funny, thoughtful collection of essays that celebrates wilderness not as a stage for athletic perfection, but as a place where ordinary people stumble into transformation. Published in 2019, the book gathers stories from Alvarez’s years writing for Backpacker magazine, taking readers from Icelandic volcanoes and Alaska rivers to Japanese mountain trails and the rainforests of British Columbia. One of the book’s greatest strengths is its voice. Alvarez writes with s...

  Movie Review:  Sinners Ryan Coogler’s Sinners arrives like a juke-joint sermon delivered at midnight: sweaty, loud, seductive, haunted, and impossible to ignore. Reuniting with longtime collaborator Michael B. Jordan, Coogler crafts a fever-dream Southern Gothic that fuses vampire horror, blues mythology, historical drama, and musical spectacle into one of the boldest American films in years. Set in 1932 Mississippi, the film follows twin brothers Smoke and Stack (both played by Jordan), World War I veterans and former Chicago gangsters returning home with plans to open a Black-owned juke joint. Their dream of music, liquor, and liberation collides with supernatural terror when a mysterious vampire presence begins circling the Delta night. The premise sounds like exploitation pulp; the execution is something far richer and stranger. Jordan gives perhaps the finest performance of his career — or rather, two performances. Smoke moves through scenes with weary gravity, while S...

  Movie Review: Albert Brooks’s Lost in America Albert Brooks’s Lost in America plays, at first glance, like a shaggy midlife-crisis comedy—a yuppie temper tantrum played out on the open road. But revisit it now, and it feels sharper, almost diagnostic, a satire that cuts cleanly into the American habit of confusing freedom with liquidity. David Howard (Brooks), a Los Angeles advertising executive with a gift for slogans and self-delusion, believes he has cracked the code. After being passed over for a promotion, he quits his job, persuades his agreeable wife Linda (Julie Hagerty) to do the same, and cashes out their savings. The plan: buy a Winnebago, hit the highway, and “drop out” in the spirit of Easy Rider . It is rebellion as a line item—a carefully budgeted escape from the very system that made them comfortable. Brooks, who directs with a deceptively loose hand, understands that David isn’t a radical so much as a consumer of radicalism. His grand gesture is less about rej...

Spies, Lies, and Cybercrime  by Eric O’Neill   BOOK: - 042426 -When the Spycraft Goes Digital, So Do the Lies Spies, Lies, and Cybercrime by Eric O’Neill Eric O’Neill has long traded in the currency of secrets. As the former FBI counterintelligence operative who helped bring down Robert Hanssen, one of the most damaging spies in American history, he knows how deception works at a human level — how trust is built, manipulated and ultimately betrayed. In Spies, Lies, and Cybercrime , O’Neill extends that understanding into the digital age, where the tools have changed but the psychology has not. The book arrives at a moment when cybercrime has shed any lingering aura of abstraction. Data breaches, ransomware attacks and AI-driven scams are no longer distant headlines; they are part of the texture of everyday life. O’Neill’s aim is not to dazzle with technical mastery but to translate this sprawling threat landscape into something legible — and, more importantly, personal. H...

  GREAT OUTDOORS: 042526 The Twisted Catalpa: A Local Tree with a Story to Tell On the grounds of the Lincoln Public Library stands a tree that rarely goes unnoticed. Its trunk spirals upward in thick, rope-like ridges, as though shaped by a patient hand over decades. At first glance, many observers—myself included—have mistaken it for a black locust, drawn in by the deeply furrowed bark and dramatic twisting form. But a closer look, especially in late fall and winter, reveals the truth. Hanging from its branches are long, slender seed pods—often a foot or more in length—swaying like narrow ribbons in the wind. These “cigars,” as they are sometimes called, unmistakably identify the tree as a Northern Catalpa (Catalpa speciosa) . A Tree with Character—and History According to Lincoln Public Library records, this catalpa was planted in the early 1900s and quickly became a fixture of the grounds. Its unusual twisting trunk has inspired decades of curiosity. Was it shaped by vines? ...

  FILM: 0501234 - “15 Minutes” (2001) — A Boston Globe–style Review There’s a nasty little idea pulsing beneath 15 Minutes : that in America, notoriety isn’t just a byproduct of crime—it’s the goal. Director John Herzfeld builds his film around that premise and then lets it spiral into something lurid, uneven, and strangely prophetic. Robert De Niro plays Eddie Flemming, a celebrity homicide detective whose media savvy is nearly as sharp as his instincts. He’s partnered (uneasily) with Jordy Warsaw (Edward Burns), a fire marshal drawn into a case that quickly metastasizes from routine investigation to something far uglier. Opposite them are two Eastern European criminals—Emil (Karel Roden), a manipulative opportunist, and Oleg (Oleg Taktarov), his dim but eager accomplice—who discover that filming their crimes might be the quickest route to fame in a tabloid-hungry culture. That premise—kill, record, become famous—feels less like satire today than diagnosis. In 2001, Herzfeld’s ...

  Movie Review | The Boston Globe (Sunday Arts) FILM: 042626 -‘What’s Love Got to Do with It’ burns with the truth of I, Tina There are music biopics that polish a legend into myth, and then there are films that risk something messier: telling the story as it felt from the inside. What’s Love Got to Do with It (1993), drawn from I, Tina by Tina Turner and Kurt Loder, lands firmly in the latter camp—raw, unsettling, and powered by a performance that refuses to be forgotten. Directed by Brian Gibson, the film traces Turner’s journey from Anna Mae Bullock, a church-raised girl from Nutbush, Tennessee, to an international icon who had to fight—physically, emotionally, and professionally—for every inch of her autonomy. The spine of the film is not fame but survival, and that distinction gives it its enduring charge. Angela Bassett’s portrayal of Tina Turner is, by now, the stuff of cinematic legend, but revisiting it underscores just how precise and athletic it is. This is not mere i...

  FILM: 042226 -  ‘Song Sung Blue’ finds grace in the grit of a borrowed spotlight By Harry Arabian There’s a particular kind of New England appreciation for the earnest striver — the person who knows the odds are long, the stage is small, and the applause is fleeting, but shows up anyway. Song Sung Blue , Craig Brewer’s tender, uneven, and ultimately winning new film, understands that instinct intimately. It’s a movie about imitation that, at its best, feels entirely authentic. Inspired by the real-life Milwaukee couple who built a modest following as a Neil Diamond tribute act, the film stars Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson as Mike and Claire Sardina, a pair of working-class dreamers who transform themselves into “Lightning & Thunder.” Their act is, on paper, kitsch: rhinestones, smoky bars, and a catalog of songs everyone already knows. But Brewer isn’t interested in the spectacle so much as the need behind it — the quiet desperation that turns performance into survival...

  A Silver Ball, a Long Arc of History Review: “Pinball: A Graphic History of the Silver Ball,” by Jon Chad There’s a particular music to a pinball machine — the sharp clap of the flippers, the ricocheted chatter of metal on metal, the sudden celebratory chime that feels both earned and accidental. Jon Chad’s Pinball captures that sound on the page, translating noise, motion, and history into a graphic narrative that is as instructive as it is playful. At first glance, the subject might seem slight. Pinball? A diversion wedged between pool tables and Pac-Man cabinets? Chad’s book, however, argues — persuasively and with considerable charm — that the silver ball has traced a far more consequential path through modern culture than its flashing lights suggest. The story begins not in neon-lit arcades but in the salons of Europe, where early tabletop games like bagatelle entertained aristocrats. Chad sketches these origins with a light hand, connecting them to the physics that still ...