Bloom-shakalaka

Happy June 16, everyone. Happy Bloomsday. Bloomsday, if you don't want to click the link, the the worldwide celebration of James Joyce's novel Ulysses, a book that follows the life of a man named Leo Bloom as he travels around Dublin on - you guessed it, didn't you - 16 June, 1904. Last year was the Centennial Bloomsday, which was quite a big deal, but I know out there somewhere people are celebrating today, as well.

Now, be aware, by celebrating, I mean that probably some universities or other groups of readers are doing readinsg of the book - so maybe using the word "celebrating" was overstating the case a bit.

I read Ulysses in my senior year of college after twice starting it on my own and getting lost on, oh, about the second page. Maybe the second time I made it to the third page before throwing the thing across the room. The professor of that class is a man I loathe, who once even subtly accused me of plagiarism, who (IMHO folks) is pretty much the embodiment of what's wrong with most literary academics. And yet, he got me to read Ulysses, and for that - if nothing else, and really I mean for nothing else - I thank him.

I hope you don't think me conceited when I say that I am proud of having read this book. Reading isn't an interpersonal contest, it's an internal one. Ulysses was something I always wanted to do, and that I very often doubted I would. That I managed to, at the age of 21, not only read the whole thing but even understand a paragraph here and there is something I smile to think about. As such, today makes me happy.

If I think happily about having read Ulysses, it is not because I particularly enjoyed the experience. If the aforementioned (all for you, Tony!) professor is what's wrong with literary scholarship then Ulysses is the wrong thing that brought him about. My problem here is not with modernism or "difficult books" in principal but really with Ulysses in particular. Writers from Virginia Woolf to Ian McEwan have written books quite thematically and structurally similar to Ulysses - both both of those writers did it considerably more succintly and comprehensibly. I don't want to get into too much of an argument here on what I think literature should be, but surely we can all agree that a book no one can understand offers precious little literary value indeed. Ulysses spends far too many pages in this trap of uncomprehensibility. Still, it has moments of absolute brilliance. Moments that remind you that, yes, the same author who wrote one of the greatest stories in literature hadn't gone completely nuts by the time he wrote this novel. I mean, he at least seems to have had afew lucid days.

As such, I will leave you with this, perhaps my favorite of all literary passages, the closing words of Ulysses. May you all enjoy such an evening tonight.

"... and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes."

What Makes Summer Worth It

White Stripes show just announced for August adds yet another to this list of concerts I would like to see this summer ...

Thu / Jun 16 / Marc Broussard / Marquee Theatre
Wed / Jun 29 / Warped Tour – Offspring / Peoria Stadium: Probably not, since Diana will be in San Diego then.
Sat / July 16 / Alanis Morissette / Dodge Theatre: Laugh it up, bitch. Alanis is actually God, remember?
Tues / July 19 / Ray LaMontagne / Marquee Theatre
Sat / July 23 / DMB / Alpine Music Theatre / Wisconsin
Sun / July 24 / DMB / Alpine Music Theatre / Wisconsin
Fri / August 5 / Jack Johnson / Dodge Theatre
Tue / Aug 16 / American Idols Live / Glendale Arena
Fri / Aug 19 / White Stripes / Dodge Theatre
Thu / Aug 25 / Coldplay / Cricket Pavilion
Sat / August 27 / DMB / Home Depot / LA: Have tickets but this is kind of up to Diana (and Erin)
Tues / August 30 / DMB / Cricket Pavilion

Also, DMB at Red Rocks in Denver mid-September is apparently very likely. So hopefully that. And U2 in Vegas in November ... and.

BTW, one of those shows listed above is a joke. Were you paying attention? Or did you just rool your eyes at my questionable taste?

Wow, I really have not blogged in quite some time now. Which I suppose is a somewhat accurate description of just how exciting my life has been. Plus, Diana beats me to all the fun news, like the new cat, or ... yeah, did I mention the new cat?

Unfortunately, our poor little Mason is sick. Basically, he has a head cold. He is sneezing his little head off, which is just about the saddest thing you've ever heard. Also, his sneezes are louder than Jen's, which is kind of disconcerting from a 10-lb cat. Also he drools a lot, which I would say is pretty much equally sad and gross. The worst part is that he can't be near Murray because we don't want Murray to get sick (goodness knows he had enough problems breathing as it is), so Mason has to be locked in a room. For the past two days he's been in the hall bathroom but I think we're going to move him to the guest bedroom so he at least has a little more room and some natural light. Checking on him is a whole production, it's like a trip to visit the infirmary. Or the quarantine ward. It's sort of reminiscent of a killer virus movie like Outbreak. Except, he's a cat not a monkey. But you get the idea. Get better soon Mason!

So this weekend I have quite a bit planned. On Sunday I am going to tempt fate and forego common sense by playing 36 holes of golf at the TPC. Sunday is still forecasted to be below 100 degrees and may well be the last such day until ... oh, October. So I guess if I'm going to do this sooner is better.

On Saturday night I believe we are bowling with Trish to help her celebrate her birthday, which is awesome. However, I don't know what to get her (*coughthinthintcough*). Diana I think is going to make her a cake, though, and Diana makes a damn good sour cream cake so if Trish gets that maybe she doesn't need anything else. Damn greedy friends. Also, apparently Trish is turning 26, and (no offense to Trish) that freaks me out a little. I am considerably younger than pretty much all of my friends, which I should be used to after always being the youngest one in my grade all throughout school, but I sort of thought I was done with that. Guess not. Wait, though. I think Josh might be younger than me. Is that right? See, there's yet another good reason he needs to move back here. Oh, and I guess Tony can move back, too. (That little joke there would probably be funnier if Tony read this blog but of course he doesn't have Internet access and when he is online I think it's just for email and Madonna news. I would throw in porn but I have a feeling that Kinkos blocks that sort of thing.)

Also today Mr. and Mrs. Smith is opening. Diana and I will probably go see this sooner or later. This is where I'm supposed to be excited because Angelina Jolie is hot and I'm a guy and I should want to go see her look hot in a movie. Except, I really don't like Angelina Jolie. At all. Her lips frighten me. Based on that, I'm tempted to write her off as a butterface, but it's not really that. Even her body is somehow off-putting to me. I think I can recognize why many people think she's hot but for me there is nothing sexually-appealing about her. Of course, this could just still be because of her close association in my mind with Billy Bob Thornton.

I've been at work for like an hour and a half now and I've done ... oh, maybe 20 minutes of actual work. Sadly, though, it's too early to take my lunch break.

A defense

My little "I'm really not a Star Wars geek ... I promise" disclaimer in the previouss post reminded me of something I was thinking about last week when those Star Wars movies came out. A few of us at work were talking about those people who not only were there for the very first midnight showings, but had camped out in line beforehand - hours, day, maybe even weeks earlier. Do they not have jobs? we wondered. One of my middle aged co-workers said his high-school age daughter was going to see the movie at midnight with some of her friends. He thought that was a great thing to do when "you're a young person" (his words) but that as an adult there starts to be something weird and wrong in your priorities. I almost agree with him.

Midnight movies and cultural events like this are great for teenagers. Everyone should have some of those experiences in high school or college. But, I was rather surprised to find I have a soft spot for the Star Wars dweebs who waited breathlessly, camped out, and saw the movie five times before I ever did.

Sure, there are extremes of obsession and being an obsessive fan of something can be dangerous. It can also be great. I think everyone needs agt least one thing in their life that they love so much that it's a little embarrassing. I have many things I'm passionate about, but the two things that really grip me you all probably know: live music and Harry Potter. I've already been to midnight release parties for the last two Harry Potter books, and you can be sure I'll be there again this July for no. 6. As for concerts, let's see: in 2000 I saw Pearl Jam on consecutive nights in Albuquerque, Phoenix, and Las Vegas. Last year, I went to San Francisco for a Dave Matthews Band concert. This summer I'm taking a trip to visit Tony in Chicago ... as an excuse to see Dave Matthews Band's two-night stint at Alpine Valley in Wisconsin. Dorky? Damn right. Enough so that I don't ever much talk about it except with people who share the same obsession. I can talk to Brianna about Harry Potter. I can taalk to Erin about DMB. But I barely talk about either of those things with anyone else.

I think it's healthy to have an obsession that borders on unhealthy. I think it's one of those things that makes life worth living. Maybe it's self-justification, but I can't imagine a life that doesn't include some things that I'm willing to fly across the country and spend ridiculous amounts of money on. The older I get, the more that changes. Having a wife means I need music somewhat less. Having a full-time job means it's harder to fly cross-country to see a concert, or stay up past midnight to buy a book. Having children, growing older, these things I'm sure will further lessen my obsessions. And sooner or later, the bands in this world that I love enough to travel to another state to see will be gone, the books I count the hours waiting for will be finished. That's life. It's probably also why most of the 45 year-olds who still line up in full dress costume for Star Wars are bachelors.

OK, they're all bad

Being as I had no tickets to the NIN concert tonight and Diana figured she was headed for an early night as her reward for the last day of school, I decided to finally go ahead and watch the original Star Wars movies that I got for Christmas but had never even touched. And, as I kind of suspected, it turns out that when it comes to the acting and the dialogue, the originals are really no better than the prequels.

Maybe it's because I saw Star Wars for the first time when I was so young that I can't even remember the actual first time, maybe it's just that "classic" status, I don't know. But confirming the suspicion makes me like the prequel trilogy more in retrospect. Not that I'm going back to the theatre to see Episode III again. I mean, it's dorky enough devoting two posts in a row to these movies ...

Hot Time, Summer In The City

So the A/C at work went out this morning around 10a.

Have I mentioned I live in Phoenix, which in May is roughly the third circle of hell?

By noon, it was all but unbearable in the building, which meant a free afternoon for me, so all in all I shouldn't really complain.

So I went and saw Star Wars, being as its one of those movies that I had no hope of dragging Diana to go see and I think most everyone else I know had already gone to see it. I'm glad to have seen it but it wasn't exactly a great film. Unless you're comparing it to the first two prequels, of course. If that were the standard this one would be Oscar-worthy.

Now maybe if they don't get the air conditioning at work fixed I'll get tomorrow off, too, and I can finally go see Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Dead Like Me

Starting tonight and apparently running most of the summer, Showtime is going to be running the first two seasons of Dead Like Me. On Tuesdays at 8 ET, though what that means for your local time I can't even begin to guess.

Like most people you probably haven't even heard of Dead Like Me, which no doubt has a lot to do with why it was cancelled. It was among my favorite television shows ever. It has no genre because it's everything from dark comedy to uplifting drama. Seriously a great show.

I'm not sure why, having cancelled the show, the network is airing all these old epidoes, but it gives me a tiny sliver of hope that it could be revived if it gets some viewers this time around. Or, at the very least, you can watch it now and understand why every time Mandy Patinkin shows up in one of those prescription drug commericals my heart hurts a little.

Trish dun tagged me!

So here goes ...

The total volume of music files on my computer: Well, none on the computer here at work. At home ...? Yikes. At any given time if you include whatever concerts I haven't yet archived to disc in some way, probably 30 GB or more. I think about 4GB is my actual iTunes folder, though.

The last CD I bought was: Dave Matthews Band, Stand Up. But the new Audioslave was released today and I might buy that sometime.

Song playing right now: "Fat Bottomed Girls", Queen. Simple because when the iPod is on shuffle you really never know what's in store. Great song, though. How awesome was it that the guy included it in "Super Size Me"? That was inspired filmmaking, right there ...

Five songs I listen to a lot or mean a lot to me, in no particular order:
Incubus / Wish You Were Here. Probably the least cheesy of all the many songs that make me sigh and think of Diana. Think about this: I was on Spring Break in San Diego in a house with nine girls and only one other guy ... and I spent the week on the beach thinking about some chick I worked with and listening to this song. Good thing I married her, otherwise that would have been quite a waste.

Better Than Ezra, This Time of Year. It breaks my heart that most people, if they remember who Better Than Ezra are at all, think they're a few-hit wonder from the mid-90s. Great song about that first feeling of autumn in the air. I had this song dedicated to me at a concert many, many years ago - and that was before I moved to Arizona and autumn suddenly became my favorite season.

Pseudopod, Shrinks. Back before the lead singer got a brain tumor and the band broke up I was certain these guys were going to be the next big thing. If it had ever been released this song couldn't have failed to be a huge summer radio hit. And manages to say a lot about the way I look at the world at the same time.

Duncan Sheik, That Says It All. Lyrics here. The most inspirational song I know.

Led Zepplein, Your Times Is Gonna Come. The first rock song I remember loving. My neighbor's Dad had Led Zeppelin I on vinyl and most of the album was just noise to me (today, some of it still is). But I can still remember being 4 years old and singing this, seriosuly weirding out my parents.

Who are you tagging and why?:

Looks like Trish got almost the whole list except Lani, whose responses I am very interested to see. (EDIT: Damn. Trish tagged Lani, too. EDIT PART 2: Not only did Trish tag her, she's already updated.) I would so tage Erin, but, oh that's right, beeyotch ain't go no blog yet.

Crying Wolfe

So last night I finished reading a real shit pile of a novel, and it occurred to me the most important question to ask about it is: Why, given that this book was such a tremendous piece of crap, did I read all of its nearly 700 pages? Seriously. Why the fuck did I just do that? (And why, since I started reading the book, has the word “fuck” become a much more prominent part of my vocabulary?)

The answer is Tom Wolfe. Now, as a general rule, I kinda like Tom Wolfe. Just kinda. Bonfire of the Vanities is one of the great novels I have ever read and much of his reporting is excellent, as well. A Man In Full is a very good book, just not one I was able to love. But his newest novel, I Am Charlotte Simmons, the immovable doorstop I finished last night, is a miserable disappointment.

I am not in the least against putting a book down if its not worth reading. There are too many books in this world and not enough days left in my life to waste too many reading crap. But I kept reading this book. Maybe it was hardheadedness. I wanted to like this book. Wolfe’s previous two novels do an incredibly good job of really speaking to their topics; here he was turning his focus on college life in the new millennium. Something I’ve experienced! I thought I might like this book so much. I didn’t. Let’s talk briefly about why.

Above all things, the writing. I’m not of the school that good writing has to be difficult to read, as I think most of you know. I love Michael Ondaatje and James Joyce but I’m also a huge fan of Dickens, John Irving, and Stephen King. It’s not the simplicity of the writing in this book that fails. It’s just bad writing. Most of the prose has the feeling of the first person, except that the story is always told in the third person and alternates between the points of view of the brilliant but naïve Charlotte and the three men who desperately want to get into her pants. Wolfe likes narration of this sort because he can be inside a character’s head but also step outside to wax philosophical, which is often when he gets into the most trouble. His early dissertation on the language of people our age, the Fuck Patois as he calls it, is enjoyable to read, it’s funny, and it’s so right. And yet so wrong. Wolfe wants us to believe it’s an isolated thing, this liberal use of the word. He seems to think it’s a college thing, an under 30 thing. Hasn’t he ever seen a Quentin Tarantino movie? This is indicative of how Wolfe consistently gets so close to the truth and then fails. Throughout the book I found myself thinking, “My God! Yes! This is what it’s like!” Only to read one more sentence in which the author completely obliterates his credibility. Memo to Mr. Wolfe: It’s not news that college campuses are absolutely dripping with sex. It’s not news because it’s been that way forever.

And how bad the sex in this book is. I guess he won the bad sex writing award and I cannot imagine a book more deserving. Characters don’t get fingered in this book, certain parts of their mons get prodded at by the tips of the digits of other characters. Are you kidding me? No one thinks like that. Ever. Especially not while wedged in the front seat of a car making out.

To a great extent, I think Wolfe – one of the great reporters of our time, in truth – didn’t do a very good job with his research here. Its as if he visited a number of college campuses and heard any number of salacious stories and not only believed them all but decided that must be the tip of the iceberg. This is another way the narrator fails. As a reader I can’t discern a difference between a section where he’s overstating reality because that’s what Charlotte would be doing (ie, not every single girl on campus wear Dieseil jeans, is Charlotte exaggerating? Or is Wolfe that naïve?), or because he’s just wrong.

The school setting – Dupont University – is a fictional place with both stellar athletics and academics of the highest standard, as well. That’s hard enough to believe, but generally I found myself thinking of Duke when I thought of Dupont. Now, I remind you that I went to a much bigger school than Duke, but one that is surely no slouch in basketball and one that is pretty rabidly sports obsessed. But not like this. Wolfe spends many pages of his book dissecting what is and is not cool in the college student’s mind, and again he is mostly right except that, given how often random students shout at the basketball player character “Go go, Jojo!” he must think that sort of display is also cool. No. It’s not cool to even acknowledge that a basketball player in your class is anything but a normal student … until later that night when you’re actually at the game.

Finally, and maybe most glaringly wrong, is the bizarre sexual dynamic in this book. It’s one thing for the basketball players to have “groupies.” I can imagine that not being entirely too far from the truth – although in my experience, the players I knew were no more likely to be able to point at a girl and have her come back to his room than I would be if I tried the trick. But the females in this book are disturbingly pathetic. Charlotte’s drunken roommate outside a lacrosse player’s room begging for sex is one of the most ridiculous scenes I’ve ever read. It’s just not like that, and I can’t fully understand where Wolfe got the idea that it’s girls who have to ask for sex. It never has been that way in human history, and it’s sure not now. But that speaks to the larger surreal quality of the book: how completely obsessed it is with the male. I have never read so much about muscles, even in a human physiology textbook. I have never been asked to think so much about what it means to be a man. And in a book where the main character is female. All I’m saying, Tom, is it makes me wonder ...

So why did I read this damnable thing? Well, it’s a good story. It’s not a new story in any way and it has more flaws than I have ever hinted at here, but Wolfe can still move a plot along. Charlotte’s story is implausible, yes, and unrealistic, true, but it’s also moving. It’s engaging. It just ought to have been told better.

OMG, CSI goes QT

Maybe last night’s episode of CSI: wasn’t the best episode of the program I’ve ever seen. But, if so, I think that’s only because last night wasn’t so much an episode of CSI: as it was – despite the commercial breaks – the first CSI: movie.

I’m neither a Quentin Tarantino fan nor a hater. Some of the scenes in his movies are among the best and most memorable I’ve ever watched. In the end, however, I’ve never found any of his movies to be truly great (to be fair, I have never watched Kill Bill, though both parts have been waiting for me on the DVR for months). I’ve always gotten the feeling he tries to do just a bit too much, to be too great, or just too too. But I think he did a marvelous job with CSI:. The first hour of last night’s show was right up there with the best network TV I’ve ever watched. Tarantino left a definite stamp on almost every scene, but it was still CSI:, with only a handful of exceptions (the early conversation between Nick and Warrick being the main example).

I am not sure the second half lived up to the promise of the first, but such is the curse of great ideas – the more impossible the situation you set up in the first act, the more the second act will have to cheat to resolve it.

Also, some of the more overtly Tarantino bits worked better in the first half than they did in the second. The scene in which the team first watches Nick on the computer while the Walkman plays the Turtles’ “Outside Change” was brilliant. Sure, it was a blatant rip off of the ear-cutting scene from “Reservoir Dogs,” but it worked. It was completely unlike any moment CSI: has ever had and one of the few times I’ve been happy to dwell on the characters as people. On the other hand, Nick’s hallucination of his autopsy at the hands of his father and the coroner didn’t work for me at all – it was pointlessly gruesome and sort of killed the suspense that had been building before the commercial break. That kind of thing might have worked better earlier on.

It did lack a lot of classic CSI: stuff. I know Diana was disappointed at the lack of triumph at the end – her favorite moments from the show are those scenes when the bad guy finally realizes he’s been caught. I missed that as well, although it would have been inauthentic for the female prisoner at the end to show such remorse. What really bothered me was the relative lack of a villain. The episode was built around a great idea – let’s put Nick in a box! – but never was able to justify the situation. They needed a bad guy but had nothing to do with him – so they blew him up. It might have been more powerful if it was someone from a CSI: past – an old villain who’s grudge against the department would have made more sense to us as longtime viewers of the show.

Still, and here I quote Lani, who had the decency to send only this even though she was finishing the episode just as we started it: “OMG … CSI … just … wow.”