Halibut Cheek Tacos, Seattle, WA

No, it’s NOT a good retelling of The Odyssey.  Nolan and company desiccated a lavish poem and made a too-noisy, battle-centric, another-closeup-on-a-beardy-face, but skip-any-powerful-women film.  It’s pretty.  Pretty is not good.  Stop reading if you don’t want spoilers.  Like the lettuce diarrhea, if I don’t get this out, I shall explode.

The poem called The Odyssey has been in my life a long time. Read most of it in Greek as a youngster, and all of it in English several times.  Recently I enjoyed Emily Wilson’s contemporary translation.  It’s a great way to experience The Odyssey.  If the movie moved you, go read her translation.  The audio book is read by Claire Danes, 10/10 would recommend.

Onto the film.

Matt Damon was a poor choice.  There is a ton of trickery (that backfires) in Odysseus and there was z e r o trickery in Damon.  He didn’t even seem clever, despite being able to string a bow and shoot well.  Partly the script and partly performance, he is not a hero.

The entire story is unsexed and that is no bueno.  Calypso and Odysseus were banging for 7 years.  Circe and Odysseus were banging for a year.  Penelope knows Odysseus by the bed he carved right before they bang.  There was no banging and there could have been lots of banging.  Have ya seen the cast?

The women are diminished to an extreme extent, which is my biggest disappointment.  Females are perfectly dominant in the poem, guiding, rescuing, caring, cunning, and richly woven into the story.  They’re almost all boringly third-fiddle in the film.  Athena has mostly glances, without the Mentes and Mentor bits.  Calypso’s “remember-don’t remember-remember” was all wrong (I’ll get to that in a moment), and Circe, the brilliant Samantha Morton, has probably the best scene of the entire film (men to pigs). Yet she was super condensed in time.  With no banging.

Where was Zeus?  Where the hell was Hermes?  Hermes plays a strong part in the poem.  Poseidon and the Anemoi?  These are all epic characters that, even if only given seconds on screen, propel the poem forward.

Where was the bag of winds? If anyone could have given us a bag of winds, Nolan could have done so.

The film was too damn loud.  You could barely hear Tiresias’ prophecy to Odysseus, telling him to prevent his men from eating the sacred cows.  There were too many loud and weird sounds in Oceanus during that scene.  AND YET, when they sail past the land of the sirens, you can’t hear them because we, the audience, have our ears plugged.  For a film that makes a hell of a racket, it was another poor choice.  I would have loved to hear the sirens eerie singing and sexy whispering to Odysseus as he was bound to the ship’s mast.  But again, this is a sexy story, unsexed.

In the poem, when we first meet Odysseus solo, in the water after losing all his men because they ate the wrong cows, Ino (a fabulously-ankled sea nymph) rescues him to the land of the Phaeacians, where Nausicaä and her parents Arete and Alcinous care for and listen to Odysseus as he recounts the lavish tale.  All this was cut, so Calypso had to (poorly) do the flashback work.  If she used the word remember one more time…

The land of the Lotophagi (lotus-eaters) was not related to Calypso.  Odysseus rescuing his men from the lotus-eaters could have been an epic scene, quite relevant to today…

Polyphemus should have talked.  Odysseus got him drunk in the poem and, when asked, said his name was Nobody, to which Polyphemus said “I’ll eat nobody last!”  The drunken giant falls asleep, so that when he was stabbed in the eye, Polyphemus gropes his way to his door, opens it, and yells to the other giants “Nobody is killing me!” to which they basically laugh at and ignore.  Why no talking giants?  Boo.

If you can’t tell, I’m heaving with disappointment.  Removing the strong women and removing the sex were major blunders.  Too loud when it could have been quieter, and quiet when it could have been louder, all I can suggest is to go read the poem.  It’s so fabulous.  This film is not.

After many months of learning, and many mistakes, so many that I’ve lost count, I knit out my first sample of 2-color double-bed jacquard fabric of my own design.

The door is opening to so much more. There’s a ton I will write about the journey to knitting out this sample, but my brain is reeling with excitement, and the momentum is carrying me back to the machine presently.

I’m not in the habit of making resolutions for a new year.  With that said, a little seed was planted in my head many months ago while watching the brilliant machine knitting videos on https://www.youtube.com/@KnitFactoryImpl.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Let’s rewind many, many moons and talk about knitting.

The idea of taking yarn and weaving it into something wearable using hands and two sticks, along with a few other notions, blew open a creative door or two in my brain.  I learned to hand knit quite a while ago and have been at it on and off again for many years.  Translating a ball of yarn into a three-dimensional object is challenging and exhilarating.  Muscle-memory begins to develop with constant repetition.

Practice never makes perfect.  Practice makes permanent.

It’s slow and methodical work, with the pacing set by your hands, your skill, and the time you give it.  I’m not a great knitter.  I’m a functional knitter.  My needles have made a number of objects, most wearable, some decorative, all translating ideas out into the world.  Call it what you like, but when I have a creative idea and figure out a way to make it exist outside of my mind, that’s art.

Enter circular knitting machines, specifically the Addi King Size (46 needles) and the Addi Express (22 needles).  They’re great pieces of hardware that help you create knitting projects at a substantially faster pace than by hand.  Simple tubes or flat panels of stockinette are their output.  They have their limits, but coupled with creative planning, they really do produce wonderful wearables in a relatively short time depending on the project.  If all you want is a beautiful scarf, grab some variegated yarn size US 4, cast on, and crank away.  In about an hour or two, you have a wonderful wearable.

Some hand knitters call that cheating.  Cheating what, exactly?  Did I knit it?  Yes.  Did I use a machine?  Yes.  Did it take skill to use the machine?  Yes.  Does it make my art inferior to yours?  Hell naw.  Low and slow may be good for stew, but if I can reach my end goal using new skills and technology, I’m gonna do it.  Hand knitting has its place, and I celebrate it regularly.  However, critiquing machine knitting or machine knitters is not one of those places.

OK, so here’s where I’m at.  Hand knitter for a while, circular machine knitter for a while, and now it’s time to level up.  Only it’s a big level up.  Next week, I should have a used flatbed knitting machine in my studio.  Honestly, I have no real experience with these machines.  There’s so much to learn, and looking around the internet, there are many great resources out there.

So here’s to walking through a new creative door.  Is it time to go yarn shopping yet…