It’s not even been an hour since I walked out of the theatre and, as such, it’s far too early to properly judge, but still: Stranger Than Fiction might be my favorite movie I’ve ever watched.

There are movies I love. Movies I admire as incredible achievements, movies that make me laugh uncontrollably, movies that do any number of things very well and that I enthusiastically recommend. But it’s very rare (I suspect this is true for everyone and not only me) that a movie comes along that I find really speaks to me. Transfixes me. Grabs me early on and makes me feel like it’s not simply talking to me but through me. Like it’s expressing a part of me, but in a better, more perfect way than I ever could.

Almost Famous did, but was far from perfect – it was too long and the actual plot wasn’t as great as the feeling of thee movie. Pleasantville was speaking to me – right up until the last third of the movie turned to total shit.

From the very first moment, Stranger Than Fiction seemed to be speaking to me. Naturally this filled me with terror, because I was so sure this movie couldn’t end well, they were bound to screw it up somehow (you can just see the gaping plot holes), and every failed ending is proportionately worse based on how much you enjoy what came before. And then … I was wrong. It’s just this amazingly perfect movie, all the way through. Well, not perfect, there’s at least one thing that doesn’t work, but that’s pretty easy to forgive in a movie that’s otherwise so good. So good and so funny and so dark and so sad and so … I don’t know, so me.

I’m still on a high from it clearly, because wow. Just wow.

I have been having some trouble this year – as I did the year before, and the year before that – getting into the holiday spirit. This didn’t used to be particularly hard for me to do. Though not my favorite holiday (it’s pretty much always been Halloween, even when I was little), I’ve always (or perhaps I should say at least until recently) really loved the holiday. This despite my complete lack of religious belief and general annoyance with the crass commercialization of something that I love for the Rockwell-like ideas of hot apple cider and family and gathering around the tree. My childhood was at times amazingly like that Rockwellian fantasy. My adult life to this point, sadly is not.

When I was younger I had a tradition that I observed every Thanksgiving night that began my happy embrace of the season. Sometime after all the family had gone home and I was as full of apple pie and cranberry sauce as it is possible to be, I would go to my room and listen to a very particular song on a very particular holiday CD. (The actual artist and CD are too embarrassing to reveal here, and that must be truly embarrassing when you consider that just a few posts below this one I gush all over how much I enjoy that “Unwritten” song.) That tradition has in recent years fallen by the wayside. This year it didn’t even occur to me until sometime last week that I hadn’t listened to the song – and even though I’ve finally broken down and put holiday music on my iPod, I still haven’t heard that song.

Part of this, almost certainly, is that I have not yet (and may never truly) adjust to the reality of winter in Phoenix (read: there isn’t such a thing). I all but missed Halloween what with the 100-degree temperatures and on Thanksgiving I was uncomfortably hot sitting outside. Even the recent “cold”-er weather hasn’t really helped. I’m not going to extol the virtues of a white Christmas or anything – snow is only pretty in theory, in reality it is wet and cold and makes traveling a distinct pain in the ass. But it does at least set the right mood.

More of the problem, though, is just that I’ve become an adult and being an adult sucks. Sucks hard. I mean, OK, sex is pretty good and I enjoy my booze every now and then and driving is nice, but besides all that adulthood is pretty much a bust. Work? Sucks. Money? Don’t have enough. Bills? Don’t get me started. And even Christmas. It’s just not fun anymore.

The worst of it is that Christmas reminds me not only of the basic things you lose as you grow from a child into an adult, but it reminds me in particular of a part of me that I’ve lost and that I miss. It might seem hard to believe, those of you who have never known me as anything but the decidedly cynical bastard I am, but as recently as high school I was terribly romantic, hopelessly romantic. Not in the Valentine way (I’m still reasonably good at all that), but in the classical way. I believed in the goodness of the world and the power of love to overcome everything and in beauty and in soulmates and … basically all the shit that I today roll my eyes at and regard as utter bullshit.

But, like most cynics who deride the more wide-eyed among us, I really only do so out of jealousy: I miss being that way. Even as I openly gag and push away any such silly, starry-eyed idealism, part of me still yearns for it, part of me remembers when I believed in it, and that part of me misses being that way. It’s a much more fulfilling way to live.

Take the movie to which I increasingly make an effort to relate every thing in the world to – Love Actually. It’s not just a romantic comedy. It’s like ten. It’s sickeningly bursting with optimism and joy and the belief that amor omnia vincit and “all you need is love” and while it gets to me on all those levels (I’m still not that jaded, apparently) the stories I find myself liking best are the dark ones – the long-time wife who knows her husband is cheating but doesn’t know exactly in what manner, and the new wife who suddenly realizes that her husband’s best friend is in love with her. These plot lines have the ring of dark reality to them, and of course like any realist I’m far more enamored with dark real stories than happy real ones (my happy marriage is not nearly as interesting to write about as a marriage falling apart would be, for example). This is disturbing, and while this is itself a sign of hope, I just know that it wasn’t so long ago when I would have seen myself in Colin Firth’s writer character and hated the two stories that dared to bring darkness into such a bright movie. I still love Firth’s story, and Hugh Grant’s, and etc., but they don’t interest me. This is how I have become a dark and cynical person: I am, at least in my approach to art, more head than heart – I’ve become overly cerebral. And it’s ruining my Christmas.

There’s other adult stuff getting in the way, too, of course. The older you get, the shorter any individual month becomes in terms of the entire life you’ve lived, and the more you begin to realize that whether it’s Christmas or Halloween or some week in June, you still have to go to work and your boss still needs those TPS reports yesterday. But that, ultimately, I secondary. I mourn my lost Christmas spirit, but some of that is inevitable and I can live with that – it’s just ridiculous to bundle up in a parka to do Christmas shopping when you know perfectly well that it’s going to be sunny and 70 outside. It’s bad enough admitting that – it’s even worse being reminded that every year I become a little more like Ebenezer Scrooge and a little less like his nephew.

Just like Jay-Z ...

I’m back. Except, I think I was gone a lot longer than Jigga ever was.

You might notice that my absence corresponds rather well with a typical fall semester of school and there’s a reason for that, of course. But now, while not being completely finished, the bulk of my class work is finished, and here I am again.

I have to admit, it’s not that I was so busy 100% of the time that I couldn’t blog, far from it in fact. But this semester I was enrolled in two literature classes, which turns our to be a hell of a lot of reading, even when you can skim or skip a few books that you’ve read previously. But, again, it wasn’t that I was too busy … I was just unmotivated.

One thing I have learned about myself in recent years is that I’m a writer. That is, I’m not someone who can write, or who writes well, or who uses writing as a particular tool to solve this issue or another. Nor does it mean – God knows – that I actually make any money from writing. I used to think that when I was depressed, if I could force myself to write that it would help to cheer my mood. In fact I had it backwards: it’s not that writing cheers me up necessarily, it’s that not writing makes me depressed. And if there’s one thing that can keep me from writing too much, it’s reading.

This is, I know, kind of a terrible thing to say. A writer has to read, has to really fucking love reading, if he wants to be a good writer. This I believe absolutely. By the time I reached high school I understood – mostly intuitively, though I was able to break it out if needed – a lot of the basic underlying conventions of writing in different genres. It shocked me that so many of my peers – and when I here use the term peers I’m not referring just to other high school students, but to those who were in AP English classes with me and many of whom were way, way smarter than me – flat out didn’t get this stuff. Even some of the good writers didn’t same entirely capable of functioning outside of the convention 5-paragraph essay. I learned all this from reading; not reading anything about how to write, just reading. I read newspapers and saw how that kind of journalistic writing is different from magazine journalism, and how features are different from news, and how and when it’s OK to let opinion slip into writing. Surely I wasn’t born with any of this knowledge, though I may have been born with a brain receptive to it – I just read all the time as a kid. It wasn’t until college that I learned that reading could be a problem, too.

Throughout junior high and high school, I wrote all the time. Awful, trite crap and silly stupid shit, yes, but I just wrote and wrote and wrote. I loved it so much that during my sophomore year of high school it occurred to me that – outside of writing books, which, let’s face it, doesn’t pay the bills – one of the best ways to get paid for being a writer was journalism. I was good at journalism, both writing and editing, because I understood it. The problem was that I kind of hated it (mostly the reporting). So, even though one of the reasons I was interested in UA to begin with was their strong journalism program, when I went to college I enrolled as a creative writing major. And then I promptly stopped writing almost altogether.
Well, that’s not entirely true. I was writing a lot. I had papers to write all the time and all kinds of interesting and not-at-all interesting stuff to read. I didn’t stop reading for pleasure, but I surely cut it back a lot. And as I spent more and more time thinking about academic topics, I spent less and less time allowing the creative side of my grain to make up stories.

I graduated with a creative writing major and barely wrote anything creative in all those four-plus years. Everything that I finished in that time was required of me for a grade. Nothing was longer than 30 pages or so. And most of it was bad. I mean, I was an OK writer then, though four years have made me a better writer now so that I sometimes wince to read some of my old stories, but the stories themselves were just uninspired. You can tell they were forced. There’s nothing behind them, even when they’re (mildly) clever, or (almost) have a plot. Almost all of that fiction (and even some of the “creative non-fiction”) was banged out in the wee hours of the morning mere hours before it was due to be turned in. Every writer runs up against deadlines, but I was pathetic.

The only two stories I’m at all fond of that I wrote in college were both conceived – if not written – while on vacation. One takes place in London, where I went on vacation during my sophomore spring break. The other takes place in an unnamed city but was a re-inspired version of a story I had worked on in high school that came back to me while I was in Hawaii. I wrote something recently (which I will probably post here sooner or later) about the very great extent to which travel and foreign places inspire me. It’s not that I can’t commit to a story and let writing it become a part of my daily life. In high school I was good at that, and over the past 2+ years I have learned the skill again. But when much of my life becomes devoted to some other kind of pursuit – generally school – the creative side of me atrophies. In those times, it seems only travel is particularly effective at breaking my stupor (London and Hawaii in college, a weekend trip to California this fall).

I always want to write. As I said earlier, not writing tends to put me in a bad mood. But there are times when I have much else to do that I find I can’t force it – and that if I were to try, I would be forcing it. At these times, even my recreational writing (what there is of it) gets vaguely academic – see the aforementioned essay about me, travel and writing, and another literary critique of Lemony Snicket that I’ll post here as well.

The good news is that the semester is over, more or less. The bad news is that winter session starts in a week or two. But at least I’m blogging again.

In which I make my triumphant return

(A blog in 5 acts.)

*

I think if I were a pop music producer I would have a backup choir in pretty much every song I produced. Usually coming in toward the end to add that last over-the-top soulful touch. Seriously, I know plenty of songs have this already, but I can’t fathom why every song doesn’t. It’s not like pop music has ever been afraid of doing too much of a good thing. And a choir singing backup and adding little soulful shouting behind the vocals is most definitely a good thing.

This is how I’m justifying my love for this Unwritten song that was (I guess) a pretty big hit this summer. It’s a good bit of bubblegum pop anyway, and goodness knows I’m a sucker for inspirational-seize-the-day type songs anyway, but it’s that choir toward the end that takes me “this song is OK” to “I’m actually embarrassed by how much I like this song.”

Sure, there are other factors. I tend to hear the song in particularly appropriate situations – driving through Beverly Hills on a lovely June day, driving through Mission Hills on one of the most beautiful August days God ever created – and so I associate the song with those happy times. That’s all well and good, but it really comes back to that choir.

It’s basically a verse-chorus-verse-chorus-chorus-chorus song and the end would be really monotonous if it were just Natasha Beddiwhatever (full disclosure: this song is on my iPod so I could look her name up, I’m just too lazy) singing it over and over – though even then she (or, probably, the producer) does a nice job of altering the phrasing anyway. Still again – that choir.

Thing is, it’s probably not actually a choir. There could have been one or two people in the studio doing background vocals and it’s easy enough to make them sound like hundreds of voices. I care not. When those voice kick in I allow myself to see a balcony full of soul-singing women in white robes, giving it their utmost. I can see the lady at the far end of the line who’s not singing the words but instead is skatting and making all kinds of bizarre but soulful noises, complete with wild gyrations and hand movements. I see the choir moving together as one in a side-to-side motion, and yet individually breaking the rhythm of movement with arms thrown into the air or hands extended to assist in reaching a note as appropriate. I see and hear all of this and the song becomes secondary. I am powerless, I turn up the volume, my face breaks into a smile, I sing along. I feel no embarrassment until the song ends.

This is what pop music should be – and would be, if I were producing it.

**

I’m thinking about changing my license plate again, mostly because I want a personalized plate, but also because it offers the side benefit of ridding myself of A6NEW, which I have hated ever since it arrived.

This started mostly in San Diego last month, because I saw a few music-related plates and I envied them. I spent one bored afternoon checking what was and was not currently taken according to the AZMVD web site and determined many interesting DMB-themed plates were available. I tabled the idea at that point, because my registration will need to be renewed at the end of October anyway – I decided to wait until it came due and if it still seemed like a good idea then, I would go ahead. It’s not registration time yet, but it’s been several weeks, and I’m still thinking I might do it. My favorite options are both reasonably easy to interpret, though even once correctly read most people won’t necessarily understand what it refers to. That’s OK with me.

The best of the options I remember were NMBR41 and LVRLYDN, for the songs #41 and Lover Lay Down, respectively. Something like 364041 is also an option – those are the untitled/numbered songs in the DMB catalog. I like all these options, but really wish I could somehow get something relating to the phrase “Don’t burn the day” on there. But I just can’t see how to compress that to seven letters. The lyric comes from the song “Pig,” but I really don’t need a license plate that says “Pig” on it. Suggestions and/or comments are welcome.

***

I know I’ve been reading a lot of old literature (Shakespeare and gothic novels – all for school, of course) because when I above wrote “because I want” I first started to write “I am desirous of” and when I wrote “my face breaks into a smile” I originally had “my countenance becomes full of joy.” No kidding.

****

Every year Neil Young puts on two concerts in San Francisco that are a benefit for the Bridge School, a special program that supports disabled children (gross oversimplification but I don’t really know all the details). The concerts attract big name bands that each night play acoustic sets of about an hour. Usually there are 3-4 big name bands and a few other smaller acts that you may or may not have ever heard of I’ve always thought it would be fun to go, but never been sufficiently motivated to make the trip.

This year’s lineup, however, includes not only my two favorite bands – Dave Matthews Band and Pearl Jam, to the uninitiated – but also Brian Wilson, Foo Fighters, Death Cab for Cutie, and – perhaps most intriguingly given the all-acoustic setting – Trent Reznor. Oh, how I want to go!

I spent Sunday looking up travel deals and flights and hotels and car rentals and all those nasty details. It wouldn’t be ridiculously expensive, but it’s more than I need to be spending. Plus it would require at least one and possibly two days of vacation from work, and those are increasingly hard to come by at this point. On Monday I decided the wise thing would be to not go. I made my peace.

Then yesterday I got a check from NAU for the balance of my student loan for this semester – they’re idiots and not only didn’t process it in a timely manner but also didn’t reduce the amount as I had requested. So it was a sizable check and for a moment there I thought, “Damn it all! I’ll go! I’ll pay for friends to come, as well! It’ll be a grand old time!” Then I came to my senses and reconfirmed my commitment to adult sensibilities – but the peace I had made had been disturbed and I was sad again.

But as of last night a wondrous new possibility has presented itself. It’s not in San Francisco and it’s not a bunch of interesting bands, but it’s within driving distance, it’s on a free weekend, and it’s realistic enough that it might cure my melancholy. On Saturday October 28 and Sunday October 29 Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds will play acoustic shows at the Santa Barbara Bowl! I’m giddy at the thought. Tickets will be hard to come by, but I think I’ll at least have to try. Even if only for Saturday night. And could there be a way to work this into a Disneyland / Knott’s / Six Flags trip? Oh, the enticing possibilities …

*****

People sometimes look at me like I’m crazy when I confess how much I like Elton John, but you have to understand that I’m not talking about Lion King/Aida/80s and early 90s Elton John when I praise him. Most of that stuff wasn’t even good pop music. But in the 70s, he was brilliant, and some of his most recent records have at least teased at that old style and quality. Now he has released a record called The Cowboy and The Kid that claims to be a sequel to one of his best albums of the seventies – Captain Fantastic and The Brown Dirty Cowboy. And not only is this new record great, I think it’s better than Captain Fantastic. Definitely gets a seal of approval.

I also am feeling the need to pimp Amos Lee as much as possible. His first album has been out for some time, but you still probably haven’t heard it. It’s great. He’s got an acoustic songwriting style that’s reminiscent of folk, but he sings like Otis Redding. And his new album, which comes out next month, is amazingly good stuff. (Uh, a little birdie told me so.)

My pseudo-summer vacation

Last night marked the end of my summer session class (ie, month of hell) and as far as I know I passed it, so that means it’s a reason to celebrate. I’ll grant you, it would be easier to celebrate with air conditioning, but I’m trying not to wallow in self-pity. At least it’s somewhat overcast and not 110 today.

But once the A/C gets fixed (and provided that it works for longer than 4 days this time), there’s some fun stuff to look forward to:

• Ben Harper at the Dodge Theatre tomorrow night.
• DMB two weeks from tonight on my birthday. That’s a fun birthday party all by itself, but I do like any excuse to get my friends together. Especially if it’s in honor of me. The problem is I think Brianna and Robert are out of town the weekend before and we’re going to be out of town the weekend after my birthday. And the weekend after that is Labor Day weekend. Anyone with a clever solution to this problem (Thursday night dinner?) is welcome to make a suggestion.
• Going to San Diego for a weekend (August 25-27). Ah, San Diego let me count the things I love about thee: nightlife, beaches, downtown and Gaslamp, little Italy, and weather that’s cooler than the temperature I would set on my thermostat – if , of course, I had a working cooling system.
• I actually have to start school again on the 28th, but I’m almost excited about that, too, since it will be my first exposure to actual literature classes. This could go either way.
• Broncos v. Cardinals pre-season football game on August 31. It’s preseason so I don’t much care about the game, but it should be fun to go have a look at the new stadium.
• The lovely woman here at work who just sold me tickets to Wicked at face value, while I was seriously considering paying a ridiculous markup to get them off Craigslist. No one mourns the wicked, you know. But they do mourn the loss of air conditioning.

no. 12

I have no idea if anyone reads this who doesn't also read Lisa's blog, but I implore you to take three minutes of your life and go watch this film.

http://www.myspace.com/no12movie

It's amazing, and probably the coolest thing I have ever been a part of.

I'm extremely proud of Kane, Tracy, and Trish who really are the ones who make the film what it is. If we were only going to win one award then I'm absolutely glad that this was it. And better yet is that it will be played again at the International Horror & SciFi Film Festival, and hopefully on in a few other places after that.

Go watch this now. Then when my friend Kane becomes famous you can say you remember him from this short.

You've probably all seen this week's cover of People:



But here is an exclusive sneak preview of next week's cover!

Three of my favorite authors all in one room. Cool.



Personally, I'm sort of ambivalent about Harry's potential to die. I don't want him to, I guess, but if he does and she does it right (which I have every faith she would) then I wouldn't really have an argument with that decision.

Big Mouth Lancey Bass

Yeah, because you keeping this "secret" really fooled everyone. We're shocked!

***

Last week I praised Phoenix for having a number of sporting/concert venues that are not named after corporate sponsors. In fact, I think I called it one of the city's few redeeming qualities (there are probably more but they're so hard to think of when it's 118). Then I read the Cardinals are shopping for a sponsor to grant naming rights to for their new stadium. So much for Cardinals Stadium, I guess. Bastards.

Mega Book Post

I’ve had a good run lately with the books I’ve been reading.


It started with a huge novel by an Australian prosecutor named Eliot Perlman called Seven Types Of Ambiguity. It tells the story of a kidnapping and the successive trial from the points of view of seven of the involved parties. It’s got a Dickensian (both a word and a style that I love) quality in its political and social scope, but also gets very po-mo with its different narrators and the way it shows how truth varies from person to person. Simply one of the best novels I’ve ever read, but it’s a serious undertaking.





Also read Joan Didion’s memoir called The Year Of Magical Thinking about the year after her husband’s death during which she was also dealing with her daughter being sick. Brutal and honest stuff. Not something you’d want to read just for fun, but if you’ve ever lost a person this is about as good a memoir on grieving as you’re going to find (C.S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed is the only other better thing I’ve read).




Then I went for a wonderful satire by Max Barry called Company. Barry also wrote a book satirizing advertising called Jennifer Government that I loved—Company takes on corporate culture. As often happens with satires, the plot just sort of unravels at a certain point, but it’s so worth it for the horrid and painful truths in the first half of the book. If you’ve never worked in a corporate office, it would probably just seem like absurdism, but – tragically – it’s not.




Kevin Brockmeier wrote a book called The Short History Of The Dead that is far from perfect but I’ll always remember because it has one of the best ideas I’ve ever heard for a story. The book takes place (in even numbered chapters) sometimes in the future, as a plague of some sort is killing off virtually all humanity. One of the last people left living is a researcher in Antarctica. The odd-numbered chapters take place in a sort-of Purgatory-like City that’s somewhere after life but not quite like what we think of as death. It’s based on a belief prevalent in many African cultures that there are not two states of existence (alive and dead) like we assume in the Western world, but instead there are three: alive, dead but still remembered by the living, and ancestors (not necessarily people who have been forgotten, but those who are no longer remembered by the living). The odd numbered chapters make the book. The city first fills up drastically, then begins to drastically empty as quickly as it filled (all as a result of the plague). Ultimately, the only inhabitants left are those remembered by the researcher in the even-numbered chapters. It’s a very good book and there are some passages of writing that are excellent, but it’s such a neat idea I’m not sure any writer could have pulled it off.


Then I read Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro (the guy who wrote The Remains Of The Day). This book inexplicably takes place in the twentieth century, but in a different twentieth century than the actual one we just completed. It’s revealed slowly, but the essential idea is that clones were created, raised separately to adulthood, and then essentially used for parts. The book is the journal of one of these clones and it’s about as creepy as anything I’ve ever read. Her story is mostly mundane (schoolyard crush becomes lifelong flame), but the background of who they are and what future faces them is so abhorrent that it just paints every little action that might otherwise be boring or trite as painfully bittersweet. This is a book I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend to anyone.


Most recently, with a little urging from Brianna, I moved onto Daniel Handler (the guy who also writes as Lemony Snicket). I read his first novel The Basic Eight and loved it, and just finished his novel/short story collection Adverbs and loved maybe half of it. Handler is one of those writers who is as much or more interested in playing with language as he is in plot. That’s fine and interesting – it’s just not generally my preference. (I’m a plot guy. Tell me a good story and write well and I don’t care if there’s nothing new in the writing at all.) This worked out pretty well in The Basic Eight because he has 400 pages of novel to fill up so he essentially had to give us plot. And, really, there’s not that much plot – just enough. But his writing is entertaining enough to cover a lot of things that might have been flaws in other books. In general, I hate novels told in a series of letters or diary entries, but this “diary” worked. Flannery is entertaining to read. There’s an over-long section at the end that is almost all about circuitous writing and not at all about plot and that’s the only part of the book I didn’t just love. It should really be a movie (except they’d probably ruin it and they aren’t big on school killing movies since Columbine).


Adverbs is billed as a novel on the cover and true enough seems to contain many of the same characters … but it’s still really a collection of stories. As such, some are excellent, others are just semi-interesting exercises in complicated exposition. Still, there are a handful of the through-images that I just love from Adverbs: (1) The stories mostly take place in San Francisco in a time around (before, during, and after) a disaster of some kind. We don’t really know what. Maybe it’s an act of terrorism. Maybe it’s a volcano. Maybe it’s an earthquake (hey, it’s San Francisco). This is brilliant to me. The not knowing is cryptic and frightening, which is of course the point. What better expression of our national consciousness post-9/11? Moreover, it gets to the point of something I have always tried to work into stories about San Francisco, which is that an impending dread hangs over the place and did so even long before 9/11. The city is sitting right on top of probably the world’s most treacherous fault line. The city has been destroyed before, and very well may be again. But no one knows when. That feeling of uncertain but potentially approaching doom pervades many of the stories, and is wonderful. (2) Although the book is taking place in a recognizable place, it’s not really our world. It’s not our San Francisco, or it is but it’s not our world of culture. Characters have passionate discussions about music, naming bands that Handler has completely made up. If you try really hard you can maybe guess that he may or may not be referring to some real world bands (and places, etc). But maybe he’s just making it up. To his characters, though, the bands they talk about are as real as U2 and Shakira. It’s a nice touch and a tempting one to emulate.


Anyway. Having finished the Handler books, I’ve gone back to Perlman for a collection her wrote called The Reasons I Won’t Be Coming. The first story is one of those that just takes your breath away. Mine, anyway. The second story was also very good. I’m excited.

Other stuff I want to read soon, but may or may not get to:
Handler’s other books, the adult Watch Your Mouth and the Lemony Snicket series so that I’m caught up for #13 this fall
Levi’s American Vertigo essays
A memoir called Oh, The Glory Of It All, by Sean Willsey. But maybe I should wait until I’m working on a San Francisco book to pull out all the SF stuff. Also if I ever get around to writing that, I should re-read the best earthquake novels I've ever read, The Ground Beneath Her Feet (Salman Rushdie) and Strong Mation (Jonathan Franzen).
I’m always itching to re-read Bret Easton Ellis stuff. I’m thinking it might be time to revisit Glamorama.
Jose Saramago’s Seeing/Blindness books.
Who knows how much else?

Tagged

from Robert ...

Everyone has a job where the same situation, complaint and/or problem comes up. We all know how to resolve the issue quickly and easily because, after all, it's a routine. I'm curious, what is routine for everyone? Each one of us, unless we work at the same place, will all have a different answer.

Q: What's subrogation?
A: God I hate the California Department Of Insurance.

Q: What's segregation? Isn't that illegal?
A: I don't know. I haven't read the laws in Illiterate Nation.

Q: Where's the rest of my money?
A: You live in Idaho and your claim was handled by an Asaian girl. You've just called a 602 area code to get ahold of me. And you think I'm going to just send you money?

Q: What's the status of my claim?
A: I re-assigned my entire caseload three months ago.

Q: What's the status of my claim that was caused by a washing machine/dishwasher/refrigerator?
A: (1, truth): Four years from now, we might send you a check for about 15% of your deductible. If you're still living at the same place. If not, don't expect me to look too hard to find where I should send your $3.47. (2, my answer): Well, I'm not certain of the attorney's schedule but I think he's hoping to get something filed by the end of the summer. From there, it's all up to the courts and the defendants. It's really not in our hands if they want to drag their feet.

Q: What's the status of my E&O claim? I've emailed you five times.
A: I know I've been the "E&O Specialist" for three months, but I haven't actually been trained in it yet. I'll get back to you if that ever happens. Unless I quit first. Or jump off the roof.

Seriously, so you've been the president for more than five years and in all that time you have never vetoed a bill that Congress has sent you, and you're starting to think, "Y'know, it's really time."

So you choose to veto a stem cell research bill? As your first veto. Seriously? Because I was hoping it was just a bad dream. But apparently not.

Even though we learn history as a series of events, with very few exceptions it doesn’t really work that way. Sure there are historic moments that we all sit up and take notice of, but maybe only a few in a lifetime. (Recent ones that come to mind are Pearl Harbor, Kennedy’s assassination, and of course 9/11.) So, while we all learned that World War I started when the Archduke got shot, I’m willing to wager that most people (even in Europe) didn’t even know it had happened and that those who did scarcely expected just how widespread the consequences would be.

Which is why this shit freaks me out so much. Right now it’s over there and involves two other countries and sure we’ve got a whole other war we’re actually fighting. But this kind of crap has a bad habit of spreading. I think another all-out war involving Israel is about the scariest possibility of all in the Middle East and right now it seems they’re walking right up to the brink of it.

Hey blog, what’s up? Haven’t seen you for a while. You look good. Did you lose a little weight? Yeah. I know, I’m sorry I never write. Or call. Or even read other blogs. I know I can be insensitive. Let me make up for it. I’m sure I’ll never neglect you again.

***

We notice the big changes more, but I think it’s the little battles, the skirmishes around the edges, where change really happens.

That’s why I don’t think you have to care about football or sports or colleges or Michigan at all to take some small bit of interest in this story.

The athletic director and the president of the University of Michigan want to add luxury skyboxes to Michigan Stadium. The stadium is one of the country’s oldest and largest, with a capacity of over 100,000. As you can see, the stadium is a huge oval, with only press boxes that interrupt the shape. However, given its age, the stadium is in pretty desperate need of renovations that will cost millions. The plan to add skyboxes would help recoup the costs of the other renovations.

The thing is, there’s nothing inherently evil about luxury skyboxes. I would never argue that a new stadium should be built without them. I’ve had the pleasure of attending a handful of basketball, hockey, and baseball games in box seats and the appeal is obvious. So it’s hard to argue against the basic concept. And it’s easy to say, “It’s just one stadium.”



But I think it’s more than that. There’s a kind of strange beauty in the tradition of a gigantic public stadium like the one at Michigan. The kind of place where every fan who piles in is sitting on a bleacher seat amongst a sea of humanity. To me, adding what amount o plush condominiums on the side of that stadium, would be to rob it of some of that history and tradition and beauty. It would kill a little something in Michigan U culture. More and more, it seems we are willing to surrender ourselves and our community to the almighty dollar. It makes me sad.

I’m a believer in communities and the power of people working together. My faith in the power of togetherness is the foundation for virtually everything else I believe in – from democracy to live music. Communities with pride are miraculous and powerful things.

So, while I might not often have a lot of positive things to say about Arizona (and Phoenix in particular) I’ll say that one thing I love about this place is that while we do have plenty of places like Dodge Theatre, US Airways Center, Wells Fargo Arena, Chase Field, and Cricket Pavilion, we also have Glendale Arena, Marquee Theatre, Celebrity Theatre, Cardinals Stadium, Sun Devil Stadium, Walkup Skydome (in Flagstaff), and (in Tucson) Arizona Stadium and McKale Center.

These places – stadiums, theatres, concert venues – are where communities come together. These places form the basis for whatever civic pride we might have, and I believe civic pride is a vital thing.

I grew up in Denver which is a place with a very strong sense of community in every way – great fan support for sports teams, major city centers where large numbers of people work, a strong downtown people are happy to visit and are proud of, good nightlife, well-developed public transportation, etc. It’s a strong community that’s perennially among the highest ranked in surveys of good places to live. It’s also one of the highest ranked cities in terms of healthy population. I can’t believe that this is all a coincidence. (For example, you might argue some of this is due to geography and climate but Seattle’s geography and climate are almost exactly opposite to Denver and yet it too is a town with a lot of civic pride and well-known as a popular place to live.)

In my teens, Denver had a quickly growing population, skyrocketing property values, etc etc. To catch a game or a show I went to places like McNichol’s Sports Arena, Mile High Stadium, Fiddler’s Green, and Red Rocks Amphitheatre. Places whose names said something about the community, about the place itself. In 1996, the Avalanche won the Stanley Cup, the first pro sports championship for the Denver area. And in 1998 and 1999, the Broncos won the Super Bowl. I know few things without doubt but I know that I will never experience another night like the night the Broncos won their first Super Bowl. Imagine a team (or a music group, or a movie star) who you love with every atom in your body, a team (or etc) you have loved since birth. Imagine that for years they have failed, or (trust me it’s even worse) come oh so close to glory but fallen short. And then, just at the point you’ve resigned yourself to the permanent misery of a Cubs fan, your team (etc) wins. Imagine how ecstatic you would feel – for them, but also for you, you who has lived and died watching them for years and years. Then try to imagine that everyone else in the city where you live feels the exact same way. Imagine what it was like for me on that day when my mother, who was always aware of sports but never seemed to care in the least (unless it was to roll her eyes at the silliness of it all), broke down in tears in the second half because Green Bay had taken the lead and she thought, “The Broncos are going to blow it again. Just when I let myself get my hopes up.” Have you ever seen complete strangers on the street hugging? Have you seen grown men cry tears of joy? Probably not, unless you were in Denver that January night (or in Boston when the Red Sox finally won the World Series a few years ago). It was magic. The city exploded, but not into riots or violence (which sadly isn’t rare and is what happened pretty much anytime Dallas won the Super Bowl). The city exploded with love. It was the craziest week I’ve ever lived through. That’s the public benefit of sports teams.

But since those wonderful days (and since I’ve moved away) they tore down McNichol’s and built something called the Pepsi Center (even though Albany already had a place called Pepsi Arena – formerly the much more charming Knickerbocker Arena), they renamed Fiddler’s Green to Coors Amphitheatre (even though there was already a Coors Amphitheatre in San Diego), and – worst of all by far – tore down Mile High Stadium and had the audacity to call the new place Invesco Field (OK, they caved and decided to make it Invesco Field at Mile High, but that kind of patronizing is almost worse).

Population growth slowed. Housing prices declined. Homes were foreclosed. The bubble burst. Is this coincidence?

OK, probably it is.

But I’ve heard stories from those of you who lived here or have had family here for years. Stories about the year the Suns made it to the finals and the whole Valley got Suns fever. Stories about grandmas and cousins who caught Suns fever that year and still have it. Isn’t it a beautiful thing when that happens? Even if it’s only happening because of a stupid game, isn’t it beautiful?

I think we lose some of this when we let our stadiums be called not by names that are recognizable and geographically relevant even to non-sports fans but by ever-rotating monikers based on yearly profits and airline mergers. Everyone knew about Mile High Stadium. Even if you’d never heard of it, you’d know where it was. But Invesco Field, what the hell is that?

And I think it holds true for the tradition of Michigan Stadium, this epic venue where seeing a game today is not fundamentally different then seeing a game there in 1960. They’re willing to sacrifice the beautiful tradition of the place for the possibility of money. We all are. We, as a society, have proved we’re willing to make that trade. And I humbly submit that we’re clearly none the better for it.

Michigan’s board of regents will vote on the proposal this week. I’m hoping it gets denied. It’s a small thing. But it matters.

Pearl Jam has released their first music video in 8 years (bet you didn't even know about that one, did you?).

And it scares me.

A lot.

(Watch it here.)

Dear writer's of Grey's Anatomy,

Boooooooooooo.

Seriously.

Sincerely,

Matthew

I don't want to be rude here, because apparently at some point he finds ways to score (last night he had 32 according to the paper), but I never really see Shawn Marion do anything but miss lay-ups.

I'm not a Suns fan but I've watched a few of their games during the playoffs and it's infuriating from a fundaemntal perspective. The Suns will be out on a 2-on-1 break and Nash will dish to Marion for an uncomtested lay-up ... that he misses. Or he'll pull down an offensive rebound and go back up ... and miss the lay in. Hell, last night I only saw one play in the Suns-Clippers game as I walked through the bar of a restarant where we ere eating. The play was Marion missing a lay-up on a fast break.

How good would this guy actually be if he made all his easy shots?

I think maybe someone should take my credit cards away.

(Diana, I’m in $50,000 of debt and this is how I’ve chose to tell you. Just kidding! Did you really think I was Nicki from Big Love? You did for a second, didn’t you?)

For the past several weeks I have been holding out hope that, since Pearl Jam’s current tour plans ignore pretty much everything south of the Mason-Dixon line (including Arizona) that they would announce fall tour dates for our part of the country for when they finish their European tour. Instead they have announced they are going to go tour in Australia. I now bear a grudge toward boomerangs.

So, either they will come visit Phoenix (but not until 2007 sometime) or we’re getting skipped completely. I know this is ridiculous, but this really bums me out.

I’ll see them on this tour anyway, because I’m driving to San Diego on July 7 to see them there. But now, with little prospect of them playing Phoenix for a year at best or three or four more years at worst, I’m getting the itch to drive to Vegas for the show the night before that one, too. (I could take a half day from work and be there in time! I think.)

This all started a few years (wait, actually 6 years. God I’m old) ago, in 2000 when (living in Tucson and having no Friday classes) I decided I could drive to Albuquerque on Friday, see the show, then drive and see them in Phoenix Saturday night. Then I found out the Sunday night show in Vegas would be their tenth anniversary concert and I had to go to that, too. And so I became a person who is willing (indeed, gets giddy at the prospect) to travel to concerts. I saw three shows in three nights in three different states.

But since then I’ve only seen Pearl Jam in concert once. In 2003 I had planned to see them in Las Vegas and then again the following night back here in Phoenix. I changed my mind, though, and decided to just spend the weekend in Vegas with friends. I sold my Phoenix ticket to some guy on eBay.

Pearl Jam tours are few and far between so I have always tried to maximize. I saw them first when I was in eighth grade (1993) and then made sure I found a way to get tickets to both of their 1995 shows at Red Rocks. Then nothing until 1998. It was the prospect of having only seen one show in 5 years that inspired me to go on the road in 2000. And now I’ve only seen one show since then.

Tickets are still available for Las Vegas via Ticketmaster. I thought perhaps if for whatever reason our June Disneyland trip didn’t work out that I would be able to justify taking another day off to go to LV. Happily (and I really mean that) Disneyland has worked out and I’m excited to be going. But now my excuse for going to LV is gone.

It is so tempting, though.

Dear Pearl Jam,

Thanks for the really great new album. I mean, I’ve been a big fan of all your stuff but there’s an energy to this new stuff that is special. I can see why you’re excited about sharing it, being more visible in the press, and all that. So thanks.

Having said that, and without wanting to be rude, let’s talk about something you really have to do.

See, the penultimate song on your new record (“Come Back”) is one of the most amazing things you’ve ever written. I was happy to see that the song made its live debut the other night at Irving Plaza. But … mid-set? What’s that all about?

I mean, you would never play Yellow Ledbetter randomly in the middle of a set, right? So why do it with Come Back, seeing as it’s so obviously such a perfect “last song”? You’ve probably already thought of this, though. You’re all very good at what you and when it comes to putting on a concert no one is better. Maybe this is already in the works for tonight’s set. You know, Ed, how you’ll say something like, “Thanks for coming. We hope you’ll all come back tomorrow night so we can do this again.” How you’ll let Mike just go off on a ridiculous solo, then bring back Ed with the little woos and “Come Back! I’ll be here!” with the crowd singing those lines right along, really feeling it. Maybe the band will even leave the stage while Mike is still playing (the way you sometimes do with YL) and the crowd will keep singing and Mike will keep kicking their asses.

Won’t that be an especially perfect closer for the first show of a two-night stand in a given city? I thought so. But you wouldn’t even have to limit it to that. One of the genius things about Yellow Ledbetter is that it’s not just a great musical way to say goodbye – the whole “I don’t wanna stay” thing is poignant. “Come Back” could be equally poignant, reassuring. As fans we often wait 2, 3, even 4 years between shows in our hometowns. Why not at least thank the fans for such patience with a simple request like this at the end of some shows?

As I said, though, I’m sure you’ve already thought about this. I’m really looking forward to it. (In San Diego.)

Thanks again. Great song. Great record.

Sincerely,

Everyone with ears

PS

If you decide you want to use it as a set closer or as the last song in an encore break I won’t be too upset. Just for variety’s sake.

Golf and Dads

Earl Woods, Tiger’s dad, died yesterday after years of pretty extreme sickness and prostate cancer.

I’m not usually a big fan of parents, like Earl Woods, who really press their kids toward some potential professional career. The father of Venus and Serena Williams, for example – or Jennifer’s Capriati’s parents – may have produced well-known star athletes, but you have to wonder how many kids out there had the same lack of a childhood due to that kind of parent and yet will never achieve any sort of fame at all. But Tiger’s dad, for all his faults and bad quotes, seemed to be a genuinely good guy, and I’m sad to learn of his death.

Maybe I forgive him because it seems (to the extent that anyone on the outside can know) that Tiger himself is a phenomenally well-adjusted person. I think it’s a great compliment to any parent to have a child turn out to be as composed and articulate as Tiger is – never mind how much harder it is to be well-adjusted when you’ve lived a life under such intense scrutiny as Tiger has.

Tiger is only in his early 30s – I think he may actually have just turned 30, but I’m not sure – so this is still a young age to lose a parent. His dad has been sick for years, and this is no surprise, but it still has to be hard.

Over his career, Tiger has often been accused of lacking emotion – which I think is completely ridiculous – but even if it were true I don’t think any son could have sat unmoved through the victory speech he gave after winning The Masters last year. He plainly choked up and nearly cried as he recalled that every previous time he had won the tournament his father had been there with him – 2005 was the first year he was not. And Tiger, barely able to get the words out, said he couldn’t wait to get home to give his dad a hug, then quickly thanked the crowd and walked away. It is to me a moment as defining and wonderful in his career as any of the many great shots he’s hit and putts he’s holed.

So, I’m very sad for Tiger today.

But, as a fan, I’m also very intrigued. Golf is one of those few games that you can excel at by sheer force of will. Even the player who doesn’t have all parts of his game working can win if he wants it more than the other guy. Tiger has proved this himself often enough (and it helps that even when he doesn’t have his A game that he’s still as good or better than anyone else talent-wise). He hasn’t won a major since that Masters last April. For Tiger, that actually counts as a long drought.

I think that “drought” is going to end, though, in a big way. In 2000 I was lucky enough to get to attend some of the US Open at Pebble Beach – when Tiger broke every conceivable record winning by such a ridiculous margin that you’d have thought he was playing a different course. I frankly expect the same thing at this year’s US Open. That is, I don’t just expect him to win, I expect him to embarrass everyone else in the field. And the same thing at the British Open in July, the PGA in August, etc etc. I’m just telling you now: Look out.

Super Tuesday!

So today is the big day.

You know what I’m talking about.

I’ve been waiting for years for this to finally happen.

A new album.

From one of the greatest artists of the 90s.

One of the greatest artists of all time, really.

Finally, today it happens.





Jewel’s new album is out.









(Oh, also I guess Pearl Jam and Tool have new CDs coming out. Who even knew they were still around?)

* * *

If you thought I was done foaming at the mouth over how good the new Pearl Jam is, well, then you obviously don’t know me very well.

As for Tool, I’ve heard the artwork with their new album is really spectacular. The case comes with a pair of 3-D glasses and … well, you know, it’s Tool so we can all guess at what kind of 3-D images are inside. And, considering the album is only $10 on sale this week, it’s a tempting purchase. Unfortunately, I already listened to the album and it’s … pretty uninspiring. I like Tool, and this album is by no means bad, it’s just nothing new. Only two tracks really capture my interest. (On the plus side, that’s two more tracks than captured my interest on Lateralus so at least it’s an improvement.)

I hate avocados. But not records with avocados on their cover.

I know I’m biased.

I am one of those obsessive Pearl Jam fans who buys their new records at midnight and buys their bootlegs and travels to neighboring states to see them play live.

But the thing is I’m a realistic obsessive Pearl Jam fan. I never would have tried to convince anyone that Binaural or Riot Act (their two most recent efforts) were albums worthy of praise or even purchase by an average music fan. So try to take me at face value when I tell you that you should really at the very least strongly consider buying Pearl Jam’s new self-titled record when it comes out tomorrow.

It’s their best album in 12 years. Actually, maybe longer.

There’s a little bit of everything on offer here. The album kicks off with five of the strongest straight-ahead punch-you-in-the-face rock songs that the band has come up with in years.

“Life Wasted” is all power chords and a positive Eddie Vedder who sings: “I have faced it, a life waster. I am never going back again.” It’s actually one of the few personal songs on the album. This is one of the strengths. Eddie seems to have finally learned that whe it comes to telling stories showing is better than telling.

This is Pearl Jam so there are political tracks and those will be talked about, but it’s not as political as I would have expected.

There are typically almost-punk Pearl Jam rock tracks in the tradition of “Animal” or “Even Flow”: World Wide Suicide, Comatose, Severed Hand, Big Wave. There are songs with huge soaring melodies in the vein of “Alive”: Life Wasted and Marker In the Sand, an open letter to God that may be the album’s best track.

But after the jolting first five songs, the album gets significantly softer in tone. And – this is what really makes the album stand out from their lesser efforts over the past decade plus – the second half of the album is as strong or stronger than the first half. “Parachutes” features a drifting melody that’s reminiscent of Lennon. “Gone” sounds like a classic Bruce Springsteen track. And the seven-minute closing track “Inside Job” heeds the well known truth that rock music is always just a little better with piano.

But all of those tracks pale in comparison to “Come Back,” which is the most unique song Pearl Jam has ever written. The song feels a little like an old Elvis lounge song, as if the band took inspiration from the feeling of their last hit, their cover of J Frank Wilson’s “Last Kiss.” It’s the best vocal Vedder has put down in I don’t know how long. Some sad songs are pretty. Some are just sad. This one is both and yet is also redemptive – it’s the kind of sad song that pays tribute to how good the good times must have been. Can you tell? I’m obsessed with this song.

I’d almost say that “Come Back” by itself is worth you dropping $10 to get the album while it’s on sale this week, or from iTunes at some point. Even if not, then Come Back and Marker In The Sand together are worth it. But the whole thing shines.

I’m serious. If you like rock music, do yourself a favor and buy this record. Pearl Jam, finally, is back.

A hundred years ago last week, God tried to take San Francisco. The city was leveled by a shattering earthquake, then burned for three days. But she wouldn’t go.

City Hall after the earthquake and fire

Oh, how I was tempted to write that God tried to take “my city.” San Francisco is the city I love above all others. More than others I have visited and love deeply – Chicago, London, Denver. And surely more than those I have yet to see – New York, Rome. Words cannot express how I love San Francisco, how strong the feeling of desperation can be, wanting to be there. I don’t know if I will ever live there. I know I will always want to.

A hundred years ago last Tuesday (April 18), in the early morning when the sun was just starting to light the day, the earth split open a few miles west of the city, somewhere under the ocean. Modern estimates suggest the magnitude of the quake was 8.25. (Compare that with the earthquake we can probably all remember from 1989 – the one that knocked out whole sections of bridges – that measured a mere 6.7.) Then, of course, the fire came.

Some photos of the city were taken just as the fires were staring to burn.

Like so many cities of the time, San Francisco was a hastily constructed city, which is to say it was wooden. The quake both started fires and cracked what few water supply pipe there were that might have helped firefighters. No one ever actually stopped the fires, after three days they had simply burned everything there was to burn. 25,000 buildings were destroyed. As many as 700 died. And 250,000 people were left homeless.


The city, five weeks after the fires burned themselves out.

What is it about great American cities and perilous locations? Rome was famously built among seven hills for protection and as a reward has endured for millennia. Here in America we eschew such logic. Everyone likes to joke about how the Dutch bought Manhattan from the natives for $24 (though the story about it being $24 worth of beads is untrue), but frankly $24 for a swamp isn’t a bad deal. New York, the very capital of the world, is built on a piece of “land” that’s little more than a sandbar between rivers. Chicago burned down in 1871. Then there are Los Angeles and San Francisco, built along beautiful coastlines where mountains meet the sea. Pity that all that beauty is largely the result of one of the world’s more active faults. Consider where I live: Phoenix, the country’s fifth-largest city, built in a place with no water. And must I even mention New Orleans?

Thing is, and I don’t say this to in any way minimize the horror of what has become of New Orleans, some day – probably within our lifetime – something will happen to San Francisco much worse than what happened in the Gulf last September. A 2003 study found a 62% probability that a 6.7 or greater magnitude quake will hit in San Francisco between now and 2032. That is, there’s a better chance than not that within the next 25 years, San Francisco will be hit by an earthquake worse than the 1989 event. Have I mentioned that the neighborhoods hardest hit by the 1989 quake even still aren’t completely repaired?

Simon Winchester recently wrote a book about the 1906 earthquake and devoted the better part of a chapter to warning how easily it could happen again. It’s a terrifying book. Scary enough most Californians don’t even want to hear about it, as he notes in this article.

“Fragile” he calls San Francisco. If you’ve ever been there, can you possibly disagree?


But – and this I know is completely crazy – it doesn’t make me want to live there any less.

I went to New Orleans once and I’m glad I did because I’ll never get to go back. Even if I again make it to a city by that name I know the place will not be the same.

And I still want to live in San Francisco. Because – look at the place – how can you not? Because, if the worst one day happens, at least I would be able to say: I lived there once, before God finally had his way, and took it.


Why wouldn't you want to live in this place?

Stuff

This is why I should have been a judge.

Dan Brown, the author of The Da Vinci Code, was recently sued in British court by authors of 1982 book called Holy Blood, Holy Grail. They claimed violation of copyright based on supposed similarities between the books. They lost. Not just that, the judge all but mocked the claimants in his ruling. But that's not all. Apparently, he also put a code in his decision.

I for one hope that the judge's code points out that if Dan Brown is guilty from stealing from anyone it's from himself - he's now written pretty much the same damn book four times over.

***

Elsewhere in the seemy world of literary scandal, we have proof that just because you go to Harvard doesn't mean you have a brain in your head.

What's more offensive here? How completely blatant the plagiarism was or that she chose to plagiarize a book by Megan McCafferty. I mean, really, if you absolutely have to steal to finish your book, steal something better.

***

Finally, it's no Sopranos, but Big Love on HBO is certainly an intriguing show.

Is the show for or against the practic of polygamy?

It's hard to say. The objectivist argument that the show makes (if only implicitly) is essentially: Assuming you, like a majority of Americans now, support gay or non-traditional marriage on the grounds that consenting adults should be able to enter into arrangements of their choosing and not ultimately be dictated morality by the state, then why can't more than two consenting adults enter into a similar arrangement?

It is a tempting and probably convincing argument that the show seems to be promoting: Bill Hendrickson and his three wives fiercely insist that they are happy and living the life they chose.

The show also (creepily) portrays the most logical and common argument against polygamy: That, in reality, most plural marriages are not the result of choice but are the prodcut of cult-like indoctrination. To that end, the show gives us the Juniper Creek "compiund," which is for all intents and purposes Colorado City, the now relatively famous polygamist society in Arizona near the Utah border. Here one man (a self-proclaimed "prophet") essentially runs everything and has many wives, some of them distressingly young teenagers. The whole thing is both convincing and beyond unsettling.

But where the show is really succeeding is in showing the great extent to which even the Hendrickson's willing, big-city four-way marriage isn't really working. The problem, of course, is jealousy. (An excellent article on the ways jealousy is tearing the group apart is here at Slate.)

It's sad to watch the Juniper Creek scenes, but the scenes at the Hendrickson's are frustrating to watch in their own way. It all seems like it should work out -- one can even imagine how it might be fun to be one of the wives (the fun part of being the husband is, I should think, obvious). Except despite all the potential upside their home life is filled with problem after problem after problem. And realistic issues, too, it's not all completely manufactured TV "problems."

More and more, it seems, the real question the show is asking isn't whether or not we should allow polygamy but why anyone would want to be a polygamist in the first place.

Oh, and also, how often can we show Bill paxton's ass before everyone stops watching altogether?

And you thought Voldemort was evil

The Harry Potter-bashing fun in Georgia continues.

After my last post, Diana commented on an equally (if not moreso) absurd situation in which a certain school administrator disbanded a Harry Potter club when he was aghast to find students "practicing spells" during club time.

Little do those students know how lucky they are that their aspirations to witchcraft were nipped in the bud:

"At Thursday’s hearing, Mallory spoke against the books along with four other parents and students. One of them was Stacy Thomas, a mother of five, who said reading the 'Harry Potter' series made her daughter turn to witchcraft, ultimately causing their Christian family to lose friends, finances and their reputation.

Her daughter, Jordan Fusch, 15, testified that she began experimenting with tarot cards, curses and seances after reading the books.

'As a former witch, I can tell you that witchcraft is not fantasy. ... I felt I could not escape the clutches of witchcraft,' Fusch said. 'It has taken several years of counseling to get to where I was before witchcraft and reading "Harry Potter" books.'"

Fortunately for Jordan she turned away from the dark arts before being led to an even more aboniable fate that is, as Willow Rosenberg would tell us, the inevitable next step after witchcraft.

Every Country Has Problems With Education

The prime minister of Australia is so upset about schools teaching the postmodern approach to literature that he's considering tying funding to the elimnation of such practices.

I can barely even wrap my head around this. I don't actually have anything against postmodern discussion of literature, but I guess I would generally say it's a bit much for high school. There are so many things about this story that just don't make sense to me as an American. For instance, in most American high schools we're lucky if all the classes can even read Shakespeare. Bonus points if they understand it, and nevermind interpretation postmodern or otherwise.

So, there's some dissonance to realize that in Australia the prime minister can get worked up over how literature is being taught, while here we're more concerned with if it is at all. But the most dissonant thing about this story is to try to imagine the President of the United States even trying to pronounce "postmodern."

I haven't actually read the Bible because the type is too small

... maybe I should just let other people tell me what to think. That's the ticket!

Thing is, I actually have read the Bible. I mean, I was doing some serious skimming through all of the "A begat B begat C begat ..." (I mean, I like sex in my literature as much as the next guy but it just got gratuitous.) Anyway, the point is I read the Bible before making up my mind about it: For the record I would say it's often boring, occasionally it's great literature, but I'm not buying the whole 'word of God' thing.

I guess I'm just not as trusting as some people. Which brings me to this lady ...

who wants to ban Harry Potter from the library of the public school her children attend.

The story I linked to is about how most people who heard about her cause decided to defend the Potter books, but I particularly liked these comments the paper noted from their message boards:

"I totally agree with this parent seeking to have Harry Potter books removed. If we suggested the Bible be on a list of mandatory books for students to read as a part of their novel requirement, there would be an immediate protest. Therefore, as a Christian, we must begin to take a stand and begin to show accountability for what our children are being taught and exposed to."

— Posted by Mendi on the message board

Because being in the library is exactly the same as being on a list of mandatory books for students to read.

"I am a Christian. I feel that Christian rights are being abolished in this country. Everyone talks about our views being pushed on them. But what about our beliefs? Don't we have any rights at all?"

— Posted by "red" on the message board

That one is so ridiculous that I'm very tempted to believe it's just sarcastic.

But the best of all is the reason given by the petitioning mother herself:

"On the forms, she wrote that she objected to the series’ 'evil themes, witchcraft, demonic activity, murder, evil blood sacrifice, spells and teaching children all of this.'

She wrote she had not read the series because it is long, and she is a working mother of four."

Where have all the books with good, wholesome blood sacrifice gone anyway? At least she's right about one thing: The books are long. Worse yet, I think once or twice, they may have even made me think.

Frankly I think she's just bitter that an online sorting hat put her in Slytherin.

United 93 follow-up and other stuff

Last week I went to a movie (Inside Man, if you care) for the first time in a while, and while there saw the trailer for United 93. And I have to say, whereas watching it on my home computer gave me a vaguely sick-to-my-stomach feeling and a case of the mopes, seeing it in the theatre elicited a quite different response: Total rage. Hatred. Seething animosity.

Well, you get the point.

My feelings about the film itself remain essentially the same (in a nutshell: I personally have no desire to see a film like that yet, even if it's very good which it may well be considering it's from the guy who made "Bloody Sunday." But much as I don't think it's apprpriate I also don't wish to tell peopl what they can and cannot make movies about. Moreover, Oliver Stone has a 9/11 movie coming out later this summer so don't just blame the makers of this film.)

But there's something about the trailer that makes it unforgivable to me. Something I noticed when I watched the thing online but wasn't as strongly affected by. The brief clip from CNN showing the second plane strike the South Tower.

The thing about that video footage is that no matter how many times I watched and rewatched it on that day and in the years since, it's more than just news footage and I've never been able to forget that. It is, quite literally, a video of a murder. I cannot imagine any other film using actual crime scene footage. Not in the movie and especially not in the trailer.

It's one thing if it's your choice, I think. D and I watched Amityville Horror yesterday and actually lamented that in their "documentary" about the real house that they used so few of the actual crime scene photos, instead relying on "re-created" photos. But that was by choice.

Wednesday night I went to the thatre looking for a simple popcorn bank robbery movie that wouldn't make me think too much. And before I got that I was subjected to a video of an attrocious crime.

I'm not one of those who believes that the families of 9/11 victims should have say over any discussion or representation of that day. Nonetheless, what must it be like to go to a movie expecting to see whatever innocuous movie and suddenly on the screen be watching a video clip of how your husband/father/mother/etc died?

I've said before that I don't want to tell any artist what they can or can't make a movie about. And that's fine. But this trailer isn't the movie. It's advertsing. And it's beyond fucked up to use that video in a an advertisement for the film. The trailer wouldn't be any less effective without the clip. Those who were interested in the movie would still be interested, those turned off by the idea would still be turned off. Either way, the film would have been advertised. In fact, the trailer would still be emotionally powerful. So why use that clip?

I can't come up with a valid reason. But it was the wrong choice.

***

Granted, this is a story about a simple little online poll. But still.

The thing is, on the face of it, I should applaud the result. U2's "One" is among my very favorite songs and the lyrics as a whole are stunning. Take the song as you will (an embittered love song, a confession from a gay son, an essay on AIDS have all been proposed and all seemingly make sense). The song challenges and gets racy and ... well, basically I just think it's a really good song.

The problem is, the lyrics from "One" that won this competetion were the worst part of the song: "One life with each other, sisters, brothers." I'm sorry but yawn. Why didn't everyone just vote for "We Are the World"?

Then I realized Robbie Williams also made the list and felt slightly better. Clearly, the contest was only open to pre-teen girls.

***

Crazy.

***

And I realize this is the height of ... being a hypocrite (hypocritciscm? hypocritcalness?) but I really appreciated this blog entry. I know I'm often snarky (again, see above), but it's good to remember you really need to be a fan first.

2 links; 2 divergent moods

I'm not totally sure I even understand what's going on in this story, but even though we can all agree he's probably right, it's pretty great to see a pastor actually quoted as saying:

"Jesus is not OK with it."

I had to read the article a couple times to realize the "it" Jesus isn't OK with is pornography, not the publisher's decision.

Still, Jesus is not OK with it. And Shakespeare still got to get paid, son.

***

I feel like I should have a strong opinion about this movie ... the thing is I really don't.

I probably would if I saw it, but I've really no desire at all to see it. Just watching the preview made me unbearably sad and I'd rather not have two hours of that feeling. My lack of desire to see the movie is an opinion, I suppose, but it's not a strong one.

My feeling is that I would hate the movie, just despise it. Because, for me at least, it's too soon. It wasn't even five years ago that I (like the rest of you) actually lived through that day and even watching the trailer and remembering it as I write this now causes a sadness that is literally physical (tears, trembling, shortness of breath).

But who am I to tell people what art they can and cannot make? I refuse to do that, but I don't necessarily need to patronize the movie.

Some day, not yet for me and maybe not even within my lifetime, the time will be right for a movie like this. It was more than 50 years between D-Day and when Saving Private Ryan opened and I remember many people who had lived then were even still uncomfortable with it. But for people in my (even my parents') generation who knew the stories but hadn't lived through it, the movie was a powerful lesson - it made a heroic but flat incident on the page of a history book truly come alive. Someday my children may similarly find the events of that terrible day more of a curiosity than a horror. Maybe then a movie like this could help them to understand why those two numbers 9-11 are still so powerful in our culture. God willing it will remain an isolated and shocking event, not merely the first of many disastrous days.

But, frankly, I can see no real reason to make this movie now besides money. Of course, it's the motivating factor behind everything in Hollywood. Even the few people who are in it for the art only do so at the behest of those holding the pursestrings. But my God, who really thinks 9-11 is an appropriate thing to wring for profit?

For what it is, the movie doesn't look all that bad, judging by the previes. At least it doesnt seem to Wesley Snipes-ish.

It's not that I'm not interested in stories that are in some way "about" 9/11. I've read several books in the past years that use that day in one way or another to tell a larger story ("Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" comes to mind, as do "Saturday" and "Pattern Recognition". I also hear the new McInerny book is "about" 9/11 in a way, too.). But we're talking about larger stories, not just retellings of that day's events. (In fact I have read one book just about that day's events and so far as I'm concerned it's the only one worth reading: The 9/11 Comission Report.)

I say all of this with hesitation, though - my opinion is not strong. These are vague notions if anything at all.

Even if United 93 is good, moving but not sappy, dramatic but not heavy-handed, sensitive without being treacly ... even if it's everything it can be, how much can it really be? What is this movie aiming to contribute? We all know the story already.

I was all ready to buy myself the wonderful "Prose before hos" shirt but then I found this one, which is seriously competing for my affections.

Though, the full story of why is only revealed here, and is not on the shirt, sadly.



I had dreams of wearing one of these shirts to the Shakespeare class I have to take in fall semester, but it won't happen ... the class is online. But I'll totally wear them once I'm actually the teacher.

With apologies to my wife and many of my best friends, I don't really like horror movies. But in college I saw one horror movie that I absolutely loved. It was Val Lewton's 1940's movie "Cat People" (do not even talk to me about that godawful 80's remake).

My love for it tends to highlight why I don't like most modern horror movies. For years, I looked for the film but couldn't even find it on VHS. Happily, it was released (with a lot of Lewton's other work) on DVD just last year. And I just found this wonderful article from Roger Ebert's great movies series about the movie, as well.

I don't even remember why for sure I watched the movie. I saw it as part of a "Film and Literature" class. Generally, we read a book, watched a movie based on the book, and discussed. There were some older movies and a few never ones - Kiss of a Spider Woman and Clueless come to mind. But Cat People isn't based on any book so far as I can tell and I don't recall reading anything with even vaguely ssimilar things. Maybe the prof just really liked the movie and wanted to show it, for all I know. If so, good on ya, prof.

It's a mood piece. Not for everyone. But I really encourage you to give it a chance (it's short!). Watch it with the lights off and no distractions. It's way scarier than "Scream."



***

Other stuff I like right now:

1. James Blunt
2. Ben Harper, esp. his new CD "Both Sides of the Gun"
3. The new season of The Sopranos
4. For that matter, season 1 of The Sopranos, which I have been re-watching with Diana
5. Big Love (new show on HBO)
6. really just HBO in general
7. Chino Bandido
8. that wet stuff what has been falling from the sky lately

The living

Disclaimer

The world has seen a lot of writing about death. It is, after all, the most universal theme imaginable. Writers (who generally ply their trade as a kind of therapy) are especially likely to write about death. And, once something is written, the writer’s temptation to share it (even if it was only written for personal reflection) can be too strong to resist. So we have entire sections of bookstores on death and grieving. And (seeing as I don’t have a publisher willing to indulge my every written whim) we now have this blog entry.

Subject

Two of the books I’m reading now are about death. This was not necessarily intentional, but neither is it wholly a coincidence – death has been on my mind more than usual lately.

Maybe it’s because my grandmother has been sick. Last year she had a stroke and now she has breast cancer. This is my maternal grandmother who has always been (as grandmothers go) youthful, independent, and intelligent and eloquent beyond all reason. For years, even decades, I have been preparing myself for the death of my paternal grandparents. They are older and have been in generally poor health for a very long time. They live in Nebraska and have scads of other grandchildren and frankly have never been a part of my life in the major way my grandma Lucore has been. And, sad to say, I always expected my Dad’s parents would go first. I haven’t seen them for almost four years but I still have the mental picture of the last time I saw them – a habit I got into many years ago when visiting them, because I was aware the opportunities might be few. But now my Mom’s mom is showing startling and terrible signs of her mortality and it hurts like being hit in the stomach.

Also, a few weeks ago, apropos of nothing so far as I know, Diana asked me about death and dying and the extent to which I have known people who died and what it’s like. Maybe it was because of that I have been keenly aware this month that it’s now been five years since my friend Gwen died. Five years ago this month. And I’m sure it would have been on my mind anyway, but Diana’s question put me in a particularly philosophical mood about it all.

Anyway, this obscenely long post is not really a book review, though it kind of is – it’s mostly some thoughts about a not-especially-blog-friendly subject: death. Or, more specifically, living after those we love have died.

Background

I have known a few people who have died. Many older relatives of some degree of removal. I’ve been to lots of funerals that were really nothing more than formalities. But I have been to two significant funerals in my life, and missed one other that would have been the most significant of all.

I remember my great grandfather, but I can recall nothing of his death. He and my great grandmother lived in New Mexico and I suppose the greatest impact his death had on me was that it meant my great grandmother moved to Pueblo to be near my grandmother and so I saw her much more. She died when I was five or six. It was a Saturday morning and I was watching cartoons. My parents were still asleep. The phone rang but one of my parents (probably my Dad) answered it before I got to the kitchen. I went back into the living room, watching TV. Then my parents called me into their bedroom and told me great grandma had died. I don’t know that I really understood but I was very aware of how sad my mother looked about it and so I was sad, too. I went back into the living room and a McDonald’s ad was playing. This was when I began to hate clowns and their fake, painted-on smiles, and especially Ronald McDonald. I dressed up and we went to Pueblo for the funeral, during which I fell asleep. On the way back home I started to understand what it means to be dead – we never went to Pueblo without seeing my great grandma, but we had just been and I hadn’t gotten to see her and from what everyone was telling me I never would get to again.

When I was a freshman in college, I was in a long-distance relationship with a girl who still lived in Denver. Her sister had died very suddenly from leukemia a few years earlier and the loss had absolutely wrecked her family. One morning in December, a few hours before I was supposed to take a math final, my girlfriend called and woke me up. She was crying. It had happened before and from the very first moment I tried to soothe her and tell her it would be OK. But she told me that I was wrong, it was not OK. She told me her mother had killed herself in the night. I think I may have flunked the final. Just a few days later I was back in Denver for winter break. It was one of the coldest weekends I can remember in Denver. The first time my parents met any member of my girlfriend’s family was in the receiving line after the funeral. A Christian service for a woman who has committed suicide is awkward enough but toward the end a piece of music was played. Toccatta, maybe? Several rows in front of where I sat with my parents and for no immediately discernible reason, my girlfriend stood during the playing of the song. Everyone else remained seated. When, later, I asked her why, even she seemed not to know. “It seemed like the thing to do,” she said. I think it was defiant, a final fuck-you to her mother, who took the pills just after an argument with my girlfriend. Death, I learned, does not always bring on grief.

And then there’s Gwen, who was my best friend sometimes and sometimes almost like a girlfriend and sometimes someone who broke my heart and who I hated. And I don’t talk about her much because it’s awkward and because I think if I were Diana I might not want to hear about it all the time. But Gwen, who died five years ago this month in a car accident that was her own stupid fault, is ultimately the only real experience I have with loss and grieving. She lived in New York when she died and I was in Tucson and didn’t even find out for days that she was gone. I didn’t go back to New York for the service and I don’t know what her mother did with the ashes. The closest I got to saying goodbye was a small gathering I had with four other people who had known her in Tucson. We lit some candles and we talked about her and we cried a lot and that night it seemed like maybe it was some kind of closure but the next morning I woke up and nothing was different.

Losing Gwen, for me, was fundamentally different than most significant deaths because she was not physically close to me at the time and hadn’t been for a couple of years. We were still very close as friends, but I was accustomed to not seeing her, I was used to the feeling of thinking of her and wishing she was around. It’s the way I feel today about Tony in Chicago. Except that if I see something that makes me want to talk to Tony I can call him and I used to call Gwen for the same random reasons – and now I can’t. Gwen’s death is not a constant hole in my life because for two years before she died she wasn’t constantly there. I had already, with the benefit of a few thousand miles, conquered what I imagine to be the most difficult part of the death of a loved one – the lack of their physical presence. Which is not to say that her death was not devastating to me, for it was. But what I do mean is that I have been surprised while reading Joan Didion’s startling memoir about the death of her husband to find how similar my grief was, how similar it is.

The Books

Joan Didion’s husband died, very suddenly, at the end of 2003. That event and the experiences of the year that followed, form the basis for her newest book, a memoir called “The Year of Magical Thinking.”

The other book is fiction, an almost sci-fi novel by Kevin Brockmeier, called “The Brief History of the Dead.” The book takes very literally an idea common to many African and some eastern cultures that there are not two states of being (alive and dead), as we generally believe in the West, but three: living, the recently deceased who are still “alive” in the memories of the living, and the forgotten dead. “Brief History” takes place partly in a city inhabited by that middle category, those who exist only in the imaginations of those still living. They come to the city when they die, and survive there only until all the people who remembered them are still living – then they vanish. The book takes this concept much farther with a global plague and other adventures, but it’s the philosophy that everyone (me included) wants to talk about, not the plot.

Just thinking with my fingers

I like the idea of that middle state of existence. It fits with my ultimate belief that there is no afterlife and that we are nothing more than what we leave behind. And it seems kind of true, as well: Gwen isn’t really gone for me. I still think of her. I know others who do. Two years ago I bizarrely ran into Gwen’s freshman year roommate at Coit Tower in San Francisco and we spent just a few hours together and we didn’t talk about much except Gwen. So long as she lives in my memory, then, she’s not really, completely gone. Is she? I don’t now remember much about my great grandmother but I do always think of the way she would touch the top of my head. That might not affect me as much as memories of Gwen (or my ex-girlfriend’s mother) do, but they’re still real memories, strong, clear.

My problem comes from one of the only other books I have read about dying and grief, which I read after Gwen died because when someone you know dies you will inevitably be given a copy of this book (maybe by me), called “A Grief Observed” by CS Lewis about the death of his first wife. He wrote:

“Slowly, quietly, like snow-flakes – like the small flakes that come when it is going to snow all night – little flakes of me, my impressions, my selections, are settling down on the image of her. The real shape will be quite hidden in the end.”

This is true of all memory – we remember what we want to remember – but is especially true and worth remembering when thinking about the dead. After all, I don’t fully know anyone, even my wife – I have but impressions and selections of her. I have only what she chooses to show me and the way I interpret that. The thing is that while she’s living my idea of her continually grows, every interaction with a person you know challenges your idea of them, offers a chance for you to re-write the file that the computer of your brain has labeled with their name. But if that person should die, they no longer have the chance to challenge you and your own vision can become the reality – you can choose the details that best fit your needs and forget the rest. Most of us forget the bad times – the dead are more often than not angels in our memory, no matter how much they may have hurt us when living. Then again, at least in the short term aftermath of her mother’s death, my ex-girlfriend remembered none of the good things about her mother – only remembering the fights made it possible to hate her.

And I tend to feel that if I die the part of me that lives on in the memories of those I have known will not truly be me. Pieces of me, maybe. Fragments. But not me. I haven’t read far enough into “Brief History” to yet know if this identity problem is an issue in the world of the dead, but it seems a bit much for such a slim book to take on.

What I’ve marveled at from the initial chapters of Didion’s memoir is the way our brain never fully comprehends the notion of death. It is very literally unimaginable. We have many theories of what being dead is, but we cannot know. So, when someone close to us dies, it never fully makes sense.

I have always assumed, to the limited extent that I think about death, that it’s the physical part that drives home the reality. Maybe this is because the way I miss Gwen – as I described before – is not physical, but emotional. I had already adjusted to the physical distance before she actually died. My assumption, then, has generally been that if someone who is literally physically close to you dies that the reality of it is much more immediate. Clearly, it will make the loss of that person worse in the short term. But my guess was that, in the long run, the physical withdrawal would also result in a better mental conception of the reality of the person’s absence. Didion’s memoir tells me that this is not so. Even in the midst of her struggle – and it is of course a horrible struggle – to adjust to the physical loss of her husband, what she finds harder is to accept, to mentally conceive, of his death. I sometimes catch myself thinking I should call Gwen, or that it’s been a while since she called me – Didion, similarly, keeps expecting her husband to walk through the front door. She won’t get rid of his clothes or his shoes – she assumes he will need them as soon as he is back.

It’s a beautiful book, marvelous in its awful, dark honesty. Highly recommended.