Agent Palmer

Recently I watched The Matrix for the first time. Yes, in 2019 I watched 1999’s The Matrix for the first time. Twenty years is a long time to be late to the party on something but I shouldn’t be vilified for not being a part of it, I should be welcomed to the party.

As I write this, I don’t know what the reaction will be, because I sat down with Bill on The Wicked Theory Podcast to discuss my first reactions to this twenty-year-old film, and that episode has not yet dropped.

Len Deighton’s Blitzkrieg is a focus on the many pieces of innovation, lessons learned, battles fought and won that lead to blitzkrieg, which “was quite different from anything ever experienced in previous wars.”

Deighton doesn’t go into much about the origin of the word, but he doesn’t mince words when describing what the short success of the blitzkrieg has been made of in hindsight where he writes “German triumphs in this campaign have caused their military recklessness to be hailed as genius, their dangerous gambles to be thought of as miracles.”

I always take notes when I read a book. Part of it comes from wanting the ability to add quotes to the reviews I write, but the bigger picture reason is because sometimes I like to go back to those notes and see them at a later date. By actually being able to read through a small document with all the quotes I pulled, I’ll find the one I remember, and it’s easier than paging through and rereading a whole page.

I bring this up because the notes I collected from reading The Innovators by Walter Isaacson are more than a lot of the other books I have recently read, even some on the same subject.

Edith Head famously said, “You can have anything you want in life if you dress for it.” Well, then Michael Caine was destined for success. In this book, Michael Caine: 1960s by Graham Marsh, the style of the era and of the man coincide with some of the most classic photo representations of the swingin’ sixties.

Now, there aren’t a lot of words in this book, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a lot to say. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then this book is longer than Moby Dick!

Michael Caine recently released his third autobiography Blowing the Bloody Doors Off: And Other Lessons in Life, the title of which comes from one memorable scene in The Italian Job. It joins What’s It All About? his first, and The Elephant to Hollywood his second.

I’ve now read all three and yes, there are some overlapping stories, but all three have a distinctive narrative because he is looking back from a different time in his life.