Tuesday, July 08, 2008
The Month That Was -- June 2008: Hoo boy am I late this month! I'm not really sure why. I spent a mess of evenings running my pile of Newfoundland pics through my Photoshop routine; spent a fair amount of time sick (for the first time in over a year a think); spent a weekend in Chicago (more below); was attempting to keep up a social life (with only marginal results); and finally, I had a bunch stuff written up to post but I had to do somewhere other than my home computer so I saved it to my flash drive, only to lose my flash drive before I got it copied over. That last one caused me to curse my luck, my life and pretty much the entirety of existence. So I guess a really do know why I'm so late.Last month I promised to have the trip report on Newfoundland and possibly do a literature round-up. Well, Newfoundland is not ready, so I lied a little bit. But I am going to feed you a whopping four book reviews in addtion to the usual nonsense.
Tender is the Night
Thus Was Adonis Murdered
Smile When You're Lying
Unknown Quantity
Still My Kinda Town
Politics Free Zone
The End of the End of the Sopranos
The Big Lolbowski Tender is the Night: I took my time reading Tender is the Night, and I'm glad I did. It merits a lot of thought. At the risk of eliciting an Oh-my-god-we-know-what-the- book-is-about-from-freshman-literature-just-get-on-with-it reaction, let me do a quick synopsis.
Dick Diver is prodigal young psychiatrist starting his career in Europe just after WW1. A handsome alpha-male, he is admired by all. He's is practicing at a plush sanatorium, when a beautiful schizophrenic named Nicole comes into his care; her illness having been brought on by an act of incest. In time, he commits an egregious violation of ethics by falling in love with Nicole and marrying her and taking her away under his personal care.
Nicole it seems is enormously wealthy. They fall in with a well-heeled party crowd; rich but damaged revelers who swarm around Dick and Nicole as their ideal. However, privately Nicole needs constant attention and always seems to be teetering on the brink of a meltdown. The combination of the hedonistic life and neediness of his wife begins to act as a drain on Dick. His work -- his psychiatric theories, his writing -- gets thrown by the wayside.
Into this mix appears Rosemary, a naive, teenage flavor of the month actress who develops an intense crush on the rather older Dick. The attraction in mutual and immediately obvious to Nicole. Although they don't consummate their mutual attraction the Dick/Rosemary relationship in combination with other events takes its toll on Nicole and she breaks down, and seems to be regressing.
More and more Dick's facade of masterfulness starts to slip away, accelerated by the death of his father. He subsequently does meet up with Rosemary again and they make love, but there is no follow through emotionally. Dick is left feeling beaten and unhappy and worst of all, he begins to see himself as a kept man. He frequently over drinks and engages in embarrassing behavior.
Meanwhile, perhaps in response to Dick's degradation, Nicole becomes more and more self-assured. She slowly comes to term with her past. She even takes a certain cruel pleasure in the image of Dick as a kept man. In time she takes her own lover. She and Dick finally divorce.
A dry description such as that makes it seem like the stuff of bad soap operas, but each flex point in the plot carries an stunning amount of emotional complexity, and when considered as a whole I cannot think of a more fully realized piece of humanity. It is on the face of it one of the purest tragedies ever written. It is the story of a man who is drained of life by his own idealism.
At the outset of his adult life Dick is brimming with intellectual energy and the power of his youth as he begins his career in psychiatry. He has high minded revolutionary ideas that he wants to pursue. He is clearly accustomed to being personally impressive. In fact, he is said to think of this time as his "heroic period."
Then comes the encounter with Nicole and subsequent romance and marriage. We try to discern what it is about Dick that would make him take such unethical actions -- what was it about Nicole that triggered them? Fitzgerald doesn't take the clear and easy road. We are left with a raft of possibilities: 1) Her physical beauty, 2) The professional challenge she offers, 3) Her money (we are forced to wonder if Dick isn't such a hero and is motivated by easy leisure as much as anyone else), 4) His chivalric instinct (he does see himself as heroic, after all).
Any one alone would be the stuff of boilerplate. Fitzgerald gives us all of them -- subtly, sometimes not until well after the fact. Character and motivations proceed to feed off each other and while we are left with uncertainty about the specifics, we are more certain of the character in full.
At each turn of the plot we are offered similar open-ended options -- the fateful meeting with Rosemary; interactions with the crowd of flawed and damaged hangers-on who circle the couple; an ultimate attempt to preserve his marriage and resume his career; the final betrayals. All of which continually build Dick's humanity through half-understood hints about motives.
At the end of the book, the point of view shifts to Nicole. She is now fully "cured" and has no need for Dick's attention any longer. Now it's she who is fully alive while Dick is spiritually drained. She has begun an affair and wants divorce. Perhaps she resents his affair with Rosemary. Perhaps she is simply a different person from when they met and no longer loves him. Perhaps it's an affirmation of independence. Perhaps she feels a debt of guilt to him for his years of care and it manifests as hostility. Again we don't know the specifics but the character is fuller for them.
Some reviewers, on full contemplation, think that end came because of Dick's ultimate success in curing Nicole, which was, at least superficially, his goal. Thus, there is a certain happy aspect to the ending. His work is done, so he can ride off into the sunset. That is, I think, way too easy. It may also be important to remember Fitzgerald, was in a real-life disaster of a marriage to a nut case. I doubt he found anything happy in such situations.
The end of the book is, in its way, as harrowing as any horror story. We stay in Nicole's point of view as her communication with Dick dwindles. In time, he no longer writes or asks for time with their children. He moves to from small town to small town, each more remote than the last. Eventually, she only knows what she hears piecemeal from rumor. At the end, she only thinks of him in passing once in awhile. The heroic young man, who so many loved when it was to their benefit, has ceased to exist except as an occasional musing in the mind of disinterested soul.
I wish I could do that. I wish I could write a character and story so complete. I wish I could find the perfect balance between the vague and the complex. It takes incredible talent, something Fitzgerald had in excess.
I'm going way out on a limb here, but upon consideration, I think it beats Gatsby. Thus Was Adonis Murdered: The first of four mysteries by the late Sarah Caudwell will make you want to read the rest. A ludicrous murder mystery set in Venice is solved long distance by a pack of dry and droll English barristers in a somewhat Rumpolian vein -- delightfully lighthearted, more than a bit randy, and exquisitely written in a quasi-Edwardian style (despite its setting in the 1980s). Highly recommended if you need something trivial and fun, yet clever and sharp.
Let me describe it another way, I picture this book being read by elegant women in beachside cabanas who grin slyly at the more witty passages. And yet I enjoyed it to pieces.
(That doesn't make me gay, does it? Um, no, it doesn't.) Smile When You're Lying: Chuck Thompson spent years in the trenches churning out those fluffy, content-free pieces that seem to recycle through glossy travel mags, including the ones in the seat pocket in front of you next to the air sickness bag. I can't imagine anyone thinking those represent the actual process and experiences of travel any more than Hogan's Heroes represents Nazi prison camp life. Real travel stories, while occasionally interesting, would piss off advertisers and so magazines and guidebooks actively omit them. The traditional travel writing industry is really in the fantasy business.
Apparently some people feel the veneer must be maintained because, in Smile When You're Lying, when Thompson explained how a lot of this nonsense simply amounts to re-summarizing other articles and doing web research, the industry took umbrage. Press releases flew about and a minor scandal (precious to any writer) was born.
To his credit, Thompson came out and said that the passages in question were really just a small part of the book -- which is true -- and really aren't such a big deal -- which is also true. The book as a whole is something of jumble -- part travel expose, part trip reporting, but mostly autobiographical. We are treated to extended sections on Thompson's adolescence in Juneau and his early adulthood as an ESL teacher in Japan. We then move on to his experiences with the standard travel industry as described above. He discusses some of this trips and then goes on to provide a long and rather tiresome explanation on what is the matter with Americans and their travel habits and how it is all related somehow to Bush/Cheney/Evil Corporations.
There is a class of travel writing, which can be thought of as "counter-travel." These sorts of books turn the fluffy stuff on its head, by writing about bad experiences, rip-offs, ugly hotels, and surly natives, with heavy doses of irony and snide humor. There are always semi-dangerous or quasi-illegal activities going on. Colorful expats play a crucial role. There is even a subclass of this sort of writing about white westerners opening bars in exotic foreign locales and, while they didn't make any money, they sure had a great time. Understand: these are real experiences. They are genuine. Your last trip to Cancun was pathetic by comparison.
The problem with counter-travel writing is that it's really just as bad as the fluff it counters, it simply defines itself by a different set of cliches. Instead of being studiously detached, it is personal to the point of a rant (it's all about Chuck). Instead of being carefully neutral and bland, it imbues each scene with opinion and judgment and sarcasm (that Chuck is quite a character). Instead of coddling, it is designed to challenge -- but one suspects it only challenges the appropriate sort of people (these would be the people who wish they could do the cool things Chuck does). You see, Chuck is a guy who has been there. Maybe one day, you will get there too. It's still a fantasy being sold.
If you are the right sort of people, you'll get a kick out of this book. Thompson has a solid fundamental game. He tells good stories. He shares my feelings about the Caribbean (overrated). His prose is lively and concise. He manages a just the right amount of self-depreciation when he's getting to be a bit too full of himself. In fact, chances are you are the right sort of person. You don't get a book contract without the publisher being confident in the size of the audience, and that means it probably includes you. So please, don't take my negativity as a reason not to buy the book. In fact, at the risk of contradicting everything I have just written, I hope Thompson keeps plugging away. He's clearly smart and funny guy and I would approach his next book with an open mind.
But I had hopes for an original voice in travel writing and I didn't get it. I got the cool cliche‚ instead of the square one. Interestingly, in my favorite chapter (the one on the Caribbean), he recounts a confounding comment made to him by David Swanson, a Caribbean guide book writer:
[Swanson said,] "In the middle of Curacao is a big oil refinery that belches soot all day. Right next to the oil refinery is the oldest Jewish cemetery in the new world...It sends chills up my spine. Because of all the soot the gravestones are eroding so badly you can't even read a lot of the names."Now there's a guy who should be writing a book; someone with that point of view has to be worth hearing out. Unfortunately, nobody has fantasies about soot-covered cemeteries. Unknown Quantity: I didn't make it. I didn't make it through. Unknown Quantity is a pop math history of algebra, by John Derbyshire who previously authored Prime Obsession, which was the story of the search for a solution to the Reimann Hypothesis with sidelights on the nature of prime numbers. I liked Prime and was able to follow it pretty well. Unknown Quantity lost me.
David put a bow on this enchanting package by saying something I immediately made him repeat...
"It's one of the coolest places I've been in the Caribbean."
Some folks cannot understand the first level of abstraction where x and y variables are used to solve simple equations. Others can go further. Some mental mutants even find new levels of abstraction. It is, I suspect, built into our wiring. Algebra is, simply put, abstraction in its purest form. In the discipline of Algebra, new fields open up when someone comes along and finds a new level of abstraction. From simple x and y unknowns, to classes of numbers and equations represented by other symbols and operators, to classes of classes given yet newer gadgety symbols, to classes of classes of classes... Derbyshire does his best to explain this, and if you are an equation tinkerer or you spend your spare time doing IQ tests you might get a kick out of the samples and examples. But I got to the point where I would cringe when he would casually toss out a "You can easily calculate from table 12.1..." or an "As is obvious from figure 16.3..." My days of trying to understand higher math are long past. I will have to go to my grave unable to find the root of a matrix, or whatever is going on.
More importantly, I found the historical sketches a bit less compelling this time around. Frankly, the personalities involved in the history of Algebra are less interesting than the ones from Prime. So, no, I didn't make it to the end. Approach this book with caution. You'll need paper, pencil and maybe an HP-15C calculator. Still My Kinda Town: Chicago was tugging my sleeve. This was spur of the moment weekend, just to break routine, and it was sweet.
I took the train. If you can take the train without adding time to your trip, you should. Amtrak advertises four and a half hours. In my case I drive the fifteen minutes into Ann Arbor, pick up my ticket at the station, and I'm ready to go. Contrast this to a half hour drive to DTW, a wait for the parking lot shuttle, a wait to check my bag and get my boarding pass, a wait to get through security...why rehash it, you know the score. Even when a storm knocked out the train signals, forcing us to complete a long stretch at a speedy fifteen mph, we still completed the trip in a little over five hassle-free hours. If everything went perfect (as if) it's four hours via air. The choice is clear.
So, I had a day and a half in Chi-town and first up was an extended visit to the Taste of Chicago. Most cities have a "Taste" and Chicago is one of the best. I had shark-on-a-stick, a spicy cup of gazpacho, and I got my deep dish fix from the Lou Malnati's booth. Then I sat for a while listening to Lovers in Arms, a funky hot little outfit that deserves better than quick set at a food festival.
In the afternoon I wandered over to Millennium Park -- still a great place -- and snagged a seat at the bar in the Park Grill to watch battle of Chicago: Cubs vs. White Sox. Like always, the crowd in Chicago is was friendly and everyone was chatting about whether they were south side or north side fans. Case in point, I had a nice conversation with the girl next to me, a trial lawyer raised on an Iowa farm, who was so trusting she left me (almost a complete stranger) in charge of her purse while she hit the ladies' room. The Cubs got slaughtered, by the way.
In the evening I headed down to Navy Pier where a Tony award winning production of Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors was staged, but they had the temerity to sell out before I got there. So I wandered down to the beer garden and had a ludicrously delicious Italian beef sandwich, followed by a nightcap and some excellent jazz at Joe's Be Bop.
The next day I stopped for Jamba Juice breakfast then immediately rented a bike for a nice long ride along the lakeshore. I headed north towards the beaches, seemingly along with half the population. Folks were generally lazing in the sun. One thing I noticed was a small course set up for open water swimming and the triathletes were out in force. Further north you come to the big beach bar where all the volleyball nets are set up. They were full. My next visit will involve some extended time at the beach.
Finally I turned south down and headed all the way down to museum campus. I made my habitual pilgrimage to the Tsavo Lions exhibit at the Field Museum, had a bite to eat, trolled some of the other exhibits, then headed back to turn in my bike. I made a final stop at Hotel Sax and had snack in their high end bowling alley / ultra lounge called 10 pin. Nothing special about the lounge, but it looks like it could be fun with a group. Then it was time to leave.
Just about the perfect weekend in my kind of town. Politics Free Zone: I've developed a minor obsession with reading Tyler Cowen's blog Marginal Revolution. Cowen is the author of the pop economics book Discover Your Inner Economist, and he writes about just about anything that comes into his purview from a market economics perspective.
I came across one passage in a .pdf of an old paper he had linked up that absolutely perfectly describes why I do not engage in discussions on the politics of the day. To wit:
Just about everyone thinks that their political views are better than the views of smarter or better trained others. On economic issues, few voters defer to the opinions of economists. Nor does this appear to be a well-grounded suspicion of experts. Many citizens are deliberately dismissive, stubborn and irrational. At the same time these individuals maintain a passionate self-righteousness. They are keener to talk than to listen, the opposite of what an information-gathering model would suggest. Individuals tend to believe that their private self-interest coincides with the national self-interest. Debates and exchange of information tend to polarize opinion rather than producing convergence.I'll add something to that. Right now I would wager you are telling yourself that it is true, that people do that sort of thing all the time. What you are not saying is, "I do that all the time." That should tell you something. The End of The End of The Sopranos: When The Sopranos ended last year I developed a fascination with the famous black ending. Specifically, I found it interesting that everybody was debating whether Tony was dead, when in fact it didn't really matter. That wasn't the point. Still, just to finally put the matter to rest, we now have the definitive answer. Tony is dead and here is the evidence. There are lots of good points in this essay, but the POV evidence and the timing of the shots of the Tony looking up at the door are incontrovertible to me. The Big Lolbowski: Profound genius. The Big Lebowski/LOLcat mash-up. You will need to know the tale of the Dude well and be down with LOLcats. If you are, you will see genius. If not, your nose will scrunch up and you'll say, "Huh?"
Individuals often continue to hold their political views even when a contrary reality stares them in the face....[There is significant] self-deception in human behavior and in politics. By self-deception I mean individual behavior that disregards, throws out, or reinterprets freely available information. Individuals frequently treat their personal values as a kind of ideal point, and assume that the pursuit of those values also yield the best practical outcome.
Saturday, June 07, 2008
The Month That Was - May 2008: I managed to knock off one of the trips from my list for 2008 (previously), specifically: Newfoundland. I just returned from ten days of exploration of that far-off and have copious notes and many hundreds of photos, but it's going to take me a while to get it all together. Coming next month.Also, I finished Tender is the Night, then spend a couple of days obsessively thinking about it -- it's that kind of book. I have lots of thoughts and opinions, but I haven't had a chance to sort them into something presentable. Maybe next month we'll do a big reading roundup too.
A couple of quick site housekeeping notes: 1) Clicking on the links to individual posts should now take you to a page with that post alone on it, whereas previously it just took you to the month's post and positioned you as near the post you selected as it could. 2) The RSS feed title should now be the same as the post title. It gets duplicated since the first words of the post are the title, but it's better than (title unknown). Both these changes are from now going-forward, unless I find a clever way to reto fit them without going through every post in the past five years.
Hooray Bikes!
To Serve (a) Man
Flick Notes
Music Appreciation
Music Unappreciated
Michigan Life Imitates Cable TV
Howl of Tom Wolfe
Stop Killing Hitler Hooray Bikes!: That's what the sign says on the street outside one of the local bike shops, Great Lakes Cycling. You see, I bought a bike. It is my intent to get more outside exercise this summer. I looked at a review in Outside magazine and they identified the Schwinn Le Tour as a top notch entry level road bike -- by that they mean inexpensive but with quality components. A web search quickly revealed to me that the best price was to be had by ordering online from Nashbar via Amazon. Cool so far.
The bike arrived boxed and unassembled, as expected. On the outside of the box there was a list of the tools that would be required to assemble it. A set of metric box wrenches, various screwdrivers, and a few sizes of hex wrenches. No problem, I had all that stuff. So one afternoon I set out to put the thing together. Problem: there were no assembly instructions. Each component (crankset, handlebars, seats, brakes, etc.) came with a detailed manual about how to use it but not how to attach it to the frame. The bike itself came with an owner's manual that suggested I always ride with a helmet, and other anti-liability information, but no "insert part a into slot b and tighten" directions. It took me about 15 seconds to realize there was no way I would be able to just figure it out. Apparently assembling a bike is something you can only do if you already know how to assemble a bike. Thus, the call was placed to Great Lakes Cycling and arrangements were made for assembly and a "fitting".
One week later, I stood by as a very bike-ish dude attached my now fully assembled bike to a trainer (kind of like a treadmill for bikes) and told me to get on and start pedaling and he would commence with the fitting. I had expected that he would take some quick measurements and make some adjustments and send me on my way. Forty-five minutes later, with me nice and sweaty and out of breath, we finally decided that the bike fit. Let's just say it was a very thorough fitting. But I was proud of myself for not letting the bike-ish dude get the best of me -- I pedaled right on through without a complaint.
I have since purchased a trunk rack so I can safely transport the thing wherever. Now I need to invest in a lock, a set of clipless pedals, and, most annoyingly, a helmet.
My problems with helmets are twofold. First, there is no human being on Earth, however self-possessed, that does not look like he is on the way home from special ed. when wearing a bike helmet. I am absolutely dumbfounded that, in a world where fashion and coolness are prized above all else, bike helmets even exist. I would gladly invest in any company that comes up with a way to make a non-dorky-looking bike helmet. That would be found money.
Second, and more importantly, as a child I rode around many, many miles in the most rambunctious, irresponsible way imaginable, all without a helmet and all without injury. Suddenly I have a moral obligation to wear a helmet? My life is in jeopardy if I don't? I'm a mortal lock for brain damage? When did the world turn into a nervous old lady? I may be 47, but I'm still a boy, you know.
I am resigned to buying a helmet because a dear friend of mine, who will likely be a riding partner, has told me she will not permit me to ride without one and that, in fact, there are some places where you can get a ticket (presumably from a cop on a bike) for doing what you did every day when you were nine years old.
The older I get the more clearly I see that this is not my world anymore. It's moved past me, or at least, gone off in a different direction. Oh well; at least I get to bitch about it.
So, yeah, I have a new bike. To Serve (a) Man: Customer service observations...
The coolest thing about flying Air Canada is that they have in-seat entertainment systems in coach. It's like having your own personal a miniature version of On-Demand. Very cool. (I watched Cloverfield -- discussed below). Awesome way to pass the time. Also the seats seemed cushy and comfortable and had a reasonable amount of legroom for coach. I'm liking Air Canada. Good on ya, Canucks.
Contrast that to American Airlines which has just announced that they are going to charge for every checked bag. If you fly American Airlines your checked baggage allowance has gone from 2 to 0 in less than a year. This means boarding the plane will become an eleven letter word beginning with 'cluster' as everyone tries to wedge as much as they can into the overheads and under the seats to save money. American has officially ceased to be a serious airline. They may survive, and perhaps eventually turn a profit, but they should be deeply ashamed at the course they have taken. Two-bit is the best description for them.
Eddie Bauer, on the other hand, just got me as a loyal customer for life. While in Newfoundland I found myself in dire need of a windbreaker/rain jacket. So I stopped in the Eddie Bauer in St. John's and picked one up for $69. In the course of my trip -- actually in the Toronto airport on the way home -- the breast pocket zipper got snagged and pulled right off. After cursing the hateful universe for my fate, I figured I'd just stop in the local Eddie Bauer in Ann Arbor to see if they had a repair service. They don't, but they replaced the jacket on the spot, no questions asked, and even gave me a refund for the price difference of $25 (it was way cheaper here at home). Amazing. I walked in hoping to not pay too much for a repair, and I walked out with a completely new jacket and $25 in my pocket. And they will win in the long run, because Eddie is going to get my default business for just about any products they may carry from now on. Flick Notes: I actually watched two complete movies this month, which is rare. First was Rocky Balboa, the sixth installment of the saga of the Stallion. I was careful not to say "sixth and final" because I'm holding out hope for a Rocky VII wherein he fights the cold-hearted retirement home head nurse to a heroic and inspirational draw. In truth I must say that I thought Rocky Balboa was a decent film. Here's the thing about Stallone: in the right situation, he can act extremely well. Go back and watch the original Rocky. Stallone did a helluva job with that character. No, playing Rocky Balboa doesn't involve the same level of challenges as playing King Lear, but Stallone got three dimensions and lot of humanity out of a brain dead palooka. Then, regrettably, came the sequels.
In Rocky Balboa you get flashes of that affecting, original-Rocky Stallone. The plot involves Rocky feeling the need to fight one more time in the face of loss and loneliness over the death of Adrian and also some frustration over the distance his now adult son is keeping from him. There is a terrific scene where these feelings come to the surface during a conversation with Paulie, moving Rocky to the point of tears, and Stallone pulls it off just like in the old days.
The fight itself is somewhat an anti-climax. The circumstances are contrived and the outcome exactly as expected. Luckily, it's only a small part of the film. Rocky Balboa is worth a look and might give you a good idea why Stallone is still around, both in the artistic and commercial sense. Even old and worn out in a ludicrous situation you still gotta root for Rocky. In the same vein, I'm really hoping that even at this late stage, Stallone finds a role that will let him show what he can do again.
Cloverfield is intense. So much so that I was riveted even though I was watching it on the el cheapo four-inch LCD screen wedged in the back of the seat in front of me on an Air Canada jet from St. John's, Newfoundland to Toronto. In terms of tension, Cloverfield is awesome. The problem is that tension is really all there is. It's an exercise in "can't-look-away-ness".
I feel silly describing the plots of movies since by the time I see them they have pretty much slid into the backlist on Netflix and everyone else is reciting dialogue, but for the sake of good form Cloverfield is a about a big scary monster devouring Manhattan. Armed with nothing but a handheld video camera, a frightened band of painfully arch hipsters journey from somewhere near the financial district all the way to midtown to rescue a friend who has been trapped in a collapsing building while scary monster attacks loom around every corner.
Cloverfield is effectively The Blair Witch Project scaled up. That's not a slam. It's really the first non-gimmicky enhancement to the successful first person webcam paradigm that Blair Witch started. And it's an effective technique in this setting. But that's all it is. I really had no interest in the characters involved in the search. And the plot is, presumably intentionally, empty and unresolved. There is nothing more than the search and rescue and then that's it. I don't think I'm spoiling too much by saying that in the end, there is no resolution of any sort.
You could draw any number of thematic connections to any number of current events here. Seriously, name your socio-political hobby horse and you can make Cloverfield a metaphor for it. I'll pass on the exercise in self-validation, and if you choose to also, what you are left with is a cleverly conceived and exquisitely produced mega-chase without much of a human story. Fun to watch -- more so than most other thrillers -- but ultimately hollow and unsatisfying. Music Appreciation: My appreciation of Classical music is fairly stunted. I know the basics -- Beethoven Symphonies, Mozart Concertos, etc. And I know enough to know I like Bach above everyone (I have the Gould's Goldbergs, Tureck's Well-Tempered Clavier, and Orch. of the Enlightenment's Brandenbergs, and Julliard String Quartet's Art of the Fugue -- all on my Zune). Beyond that, I'm pathetic. Over the course of the month I stumbled on a couple of articles that caused me to wonder if any classical had even been created in my lifetime, 'cause I sure couldn't name anything.
Well the first idea that came up was that Classical music as an accessible product now exists almost solely for film scores. Certainly, I'd heard of John Williams, hadn't I? But there are many others: Bernard Herrmann scored numerous Hitchcock flicks among others, Enrico Morricone did the Clint Eastwood Westerns among others, Aaron Copland did some astounding work for film, but that was a bit before my lifetime. I just never made the connection in my brain that I was hearing modern Classical music. So there you go.
But of non-film based classical music one CD consistently showed up on recommended lists far and wide: Steven Reich's Different Trains. So I snagged a copy. It is absolutely mesmerizing. Different Trains uses a string quartet wherein the different instruments repeat a melody based on a spoken phrase that is related to train travel. The actual spoken phrases are interwoven with the melodies played on the instruments. The work is divided into three movements 1) America-before the war, 2) Europe-during the war, and 3) After the war. The phrases, and even the speakers, are connected to those time periods. It is virtually impossible to describe this work, other than to say it works very well and it is a remarkably appropriate and coherent use of sampling, which is rare in Classical works.
But it does beg the question, what makes this Classical music? Given the use of sampling why is this not considered some variation of the Electronica or Ambient genres. It uses sampled spoken words, sound effects and standard instrumentation in combination. It certainly eschews what might be considered traditional musical formats. How does this become classical music as opposed to, say, avant-garde electronica. I don't know? I don't doubt that there is a reason, which may be beyond my musical understanding. I'd just be curious to know what it is.
Fabulous piece of music, whatever it is.
Different Trains is usually combined on CD with another work, Electric Counterpoint, which is also quite beautiful. A looping mesh of guitars; bass and tenor, live and sampled. Also recommended.
P.S. Microsoft came through with an update to the Zune player software that allows for gapless playback (see last month's complaint), which is needed to for these pieces. Great timing MS! Music Unappreciated: While we are on the topic of my musical confusion. Three bands that have enormous and loyal followings, but I can't stand:
- U2 -- Boy came out in, what was it, '79? '80? I remember listening to it in my fraternity and finding no attraction whatsoever. Now nearly thirty years later, Bono is rich and obnoxious beyond any rock star's dreams but my feelings haven't changed. Every song of theirs I've heard over the years sounds utterly conventional and soulless to my ears.
- Radiohead -- OK, Computer is often spoken of as one of the greatest albums ever. I can't even force myself to listen to the previews of the songs on Amazon. It just sounds so dreary to me. But its success spawned a tidal wave of equally dreary "alt rock" that completely dominated the airwaves in the '90s and early '00s. I suppose I should thank them and their spawn for driving me to the loving arms of Sirius.
- Dave Matthews -- This guy has an enormous live following, on the same scale as the Grateful Dead in their heyday. I really can't explain why I don't like Dave Matthews except to say his voice and lyrics make me think (irrationally, perhaps) of a perfect, sensitive hipster. I bet this is what the folks from Cloverfield listened to. Makes me press seek.
Out near me in Ann Arbor, a civilian clerk at the Ann Arbor police department has been righteously busted:
[H]er co-workers were stunned to learn the popular employee's Hamburg Township home was raided, where authorities say they found 30 pounds of marijuana, more than 40 pot plants and guns.
...
"Sometimes, people have double lives,'' said Jones, who added he had a "cry out'' in his office with many of Hamell's co-workers when the news broke. "We are still stunned. ... People want to know, 'Why?'''
Well, I'll give you two reasons. 1) The money. 2) She thought Weeds was an instructional video. (Although why this would be a cry-out and not a laugh-out escapes me.)
Now all we need is a serial killer in Flint who only kills murderers or a Grand Rapids mob boss who is in therapy and our lives here will be complete. Howl of Tom Wolfe: A five part video interview with Tom Wolfe (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). I happen to think Tom Wolfe is the finest cultural commentator we have; although that's not saying much, he is likely the only one that matters. He's the only one I know of who doesn't walk in lock step with one op-ed ideology or another and one who actually does his research and reporting rather than just scan the zeitgeist. Here's the money quote: "The biggest problem is all the people who see a problem. It's very fashionable to think that the end is near." Stop Killing Hitler: Just for pure laughs, if you have ever been involved with any online communities or discussion forums you will crack-up over this piece about going back in time to kill Hitler. It's perfect.
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
The Month That Was - April 2008: Another month with no travel. There are two reasons for that. 1) Work. The day job. Been hellacious, and I have just not been in a position to take time off. But more importantly, 2) I've actually been making good progress with fiction. Misspent Youth keeps going and going, but I finally feel like I am getting somewhere. I have known for a while how I wanted it to end, but I was stuck dead in the middle. Now I have a decent sense of how it's all going to pull together which has given me new motivation. Plus, I have started a new writing project -- something that I have never tried before, and so am not ready to discuss yet. The point is that however much I want to get back on the move, I don't want to break whatever routines have gotten me back into the swing of writing. Thus, I remain geostationary for the moment.Another problem I have been having is that I fall asleep at the drop of a hat lately -- that is, unless I'm trying to fall asleep. What's been happening is that I've been coming home in the evening, sometimes directly after work, sometimes after hitting the gym or a drink with friends, and I start to sort out everything I have to do, then I sit back on the couch and fall asleep for an hour or so, then I can't get to sleep later when I really need to. I can't seem to break the cycle. I bet travel would do it.
I hope to pull out of this and have something more substantial for next month. Maybe even a trip report.
Art Consumption Down
Detroit Apocalypto
Your Five Years Are Up
Ann Arbor Snaps
Fairness, Idealism, and Other Atrocities Art Consumption Down: Reading, Movies, TV, all seemed to dissipate of late. I can't think of a single movie or TV show I saw this month worth mentioning.
For months now, I've been reading bits and pieces of Tender is the Night and will likely finish it this month. I certainly understand why it has always had such a mixed reputation. Fitzgerald's drawn a very compelling lead character that has really hit home strongly for me. But the story and structure are something of a jumble, and if you don't identify as strongly with the lead, I doubt there would be much of interest.
I've also been struggling through John Derbyshire's Unknown Quantity, which is a history of algebra for the layman. Of course, by layman I mean someone who can still solve quadratic equations and can grasp concepts as abstract as matrices and fields and all sorts of stuff that I have not encountered since undergrad. It's a mental challenge, certainly. Derbyshire makes the valid point the algebra = abstraction in its purest form and even in a layman's tome like this, your powers of abstract thinking will be challenged to the utmost. Derbyshire writes exceeding well and clearly and interjects biographical stories of the key algebraists to humanize the topic, but unless you're the kind of person who solves brain teasers for kicks, you may find yourself in over your head. I know I have.
My reading list is quite full. Next up will certainly be less intellectual reads. I have my eye on a mystery (Thus Was Adonis Murdered, by Sarah Caudwell) and a spy thriller (The Devil's Alternative by William Forsyth).
Actually, what I said above is not entirely true. HBO re-ran the entire series of John from Cincinnati in a marathon (it was only nine episodes, I think) and I watched it. The show's problems were not diminished on a second viewing and, frankly, it deserved cancellation, but I liked it even more than I did the first time. It helps to view it as an absurdist ensemble comedy, which it was, at least as much as anything else. I still think Ed O'Neill deserved an Emmy. Detroit Apocalypto: As my birth city continues its devolution into primitivism, over at the Wall Street Journal they have written up a good summary of the current situation. It's nothing you haven't already read right here, but it's an excellent quick intro. Here's a telling prognostication:
A recent study by the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments estimated that, if current trends continue, the city's population will shrink to 770,000 in seven years, from about 900,000 when Mr. Kilpatrick became mayor.
That's about 18,500 people leaving every year. I still maintain that the end for Detroit will come when the population is reduced to about a dozen people wearing rat pelt loin cloths who, in turn, die out when they finally have to resort to cannibalism. At the current rate of population loss, it could happen in my lifetime. Alternatively, we could wall off the city into a big prison and send in Kurt Russell to rescue any innocents.
A perfectly telling video is now available on YouTube. City Councilwoman Monica Conyers derogatorily referred to the (noticeably bald) president of the city council as "Shrek," because that's what mature, reasonable council members do in the course of policy debate. For doing this, she got a dressing down from a 13-year-old school girl, Kierra Bell, about her bad manners, so she then proceeded to engage the child in strident lawyerly debate. Mind you, this is the same woman who has threatened to have her "brothers" attack council members who have crossed her. Good god, what a horrible woman.
Conyers eventually backed off and even arranged for Kierra to get some sort of award, which I'm sure was totally sincere and had nothing to do with damage control. Kierra seems like a sharp cookie; the kind of citizen the City of Detroit needs. Here's hoping she gets out ahead of the cannibals. Your Five Years Are Up: The adage about technology is that we overestimate what can be done in one year and underestimate what can be done in five. It's remarkable to think back on how many things have changed forever since back when the internet consisted of a handful of nerds with 9600 baud modems. Entire industries have withered, or at least been completely redefined, in this light. For example, does anybody remember Tower Records? Border's Books is close to bankruptcy. Paper newspapers are dropping like flies, destined to survive as vanity toys for rich egos. Landfills are chock full of fax machines. Try to buy film for your old camera and see how many options you have left.
What brought all this to mind was dealing with my father's finances. He is no longer capable of managing his investments so we are working to keep on top of things. In the course of this I've had a lot of interaction with his stockbroker. Now, I haven't used a stockbroker in close to ten years. I manage all my investments online through accounts on E-trade and Fidelity. His stockbroker is a very good sort of fellow -- attentive, a good listener, doesn't seem to shill for easy commissions. If I was going to have a stockbroker, he would be the guy. But it's worth asking the question: Is the stockbroker's five years up?
Your basic run-of-the-mill old school stockbroker is no more. The kind of guy who you called every once in a while to place a buy or sell order is toast. A robot can place a stock order, and they do so much more cheaply and accurately than some yuppie Peter Lynch wannabe. If you are old enough to remember Olde Discount Brokers, who were the kings of the discount brokerage houses way back when, you know the type of clowns I'm talking about. It's good that they are gone, they were pretty much useless and often dirtbags to boot.
So placing the order is of zero value. What about providing company/industry/market research and information? Well I can get the same information from Google Finance and MSN Moneycentral, gratis, 24/7, no strings attached. Unless you've been living in a cave, Osama, providing financial info is of zero value.
What about opinions and advice? I suppose it is possible that you could find a broker who is a true wizard of stock picking, but I feel completely safe in saying you won't. That's because there is the statistical equivalent of zero such people in the world. It would be like adopting a random Chinese baby in the hopes of him growing into Yao Ming. Advice is better weighed in the aggregate than from one individual and, as with information, you can get an ocean of advice for free on the web.
Furthermore, as study after study shows, the best and safest way to get long term gains is to buy index funds and hold them for years. Anything else is a gamble that, historically speaking, is not worth the risk. So however you happen to get advice, it may not be in your best interest to listen.
Where does that leave us? However kind and supportive a stockbroker is, what is the value in retaining one?
If you just never got comfortable with online life, well, you need one for all those reasons I don't. (Interestingly this is where my father and my family fall.) If you have a great mountain of money you don't really need a stock broker, but an investment manager -- a kind of super stock broker, and a well connected to get you in on large scale deals, IPOs, etc., as well as handling your transactions. That's about it.
Actually there is one other class of people who do need stockbrokers: Verbalists. There are people for whom communication needs to be verbal, and often, person-to-person direct. You can hand them perfectly written documents in any form, but the mere act of having to read decreases its effectiveness. The written word in any form just doesn't register. This is not a criticism; it is just a way a brain can be wired. I am the exact opposite. The written word is my preferred means of acquiring information. Talk, to me, is inexact; a roadblock to understanding. A phone call is the most tedious, unproductive thing I can imagine. I'll respond instantly to email, but a phone call goes right to voice mail because it's extra psychic energy for me to grasp. Verbalists are my opposites; the sorts of folks who still call travel agents, movie theatre hot-lines, and 411. They need stockbrokers too.
In deference to my family we are keeping the stockbroker on. That's fine. Who knows, maybe the day will come when I have a big mountain of cash I need help with. (Sure...)
By the way: One occupation whose demise I am looking forward to is car salesmen. Horrendous, mealy-mouthed, four flushers, the whole lot of 'em. Why do we need these people? Anybody can check the web and find out exactly how much a car is worth, what the dealer paid for it, the average time it has been sitting in inventory, get carfax repair reports, determine resale value -- so you are not going to squeeze and extra few hundred out of some poor sap just by jawboning him anymore. Not to mention the insulting customer experience they provide. It's a wonder any dealerships have repeat customers. These guys should be out on the street hustling for loose change within a year or two. I will snicker at them as I pass. Ann Arbor Snaps: I did my first spring walkthrough of Ann Arbor a couple of weeks ago. Hit all the basics. Spent the afternoon writing at Sweetwater's, then wandered up to Zingerman's for a sandwich with some nasal cavity clearing mustard (Zing's is still overrated, and still delicious), then back to the heart of town and a visit to the original Borders. I'm pretty sure I am going to make a Sunday tradition of this. Here're a handful of snaps taken with my el cheapo Kodak point-and-shoot.
• We still have brick streets in the historic district (I used to live on this street many years ago).
• There is a street performer downtown who sets up his boom box and cranks Thriller-era Michael Jackson while moonwalking and otherwise getting funky. Sometimes the sorority girls join in.
• Painfully hip signage for the Metro Cafe and the Monkey Bar.
• The last vestiges of hippie-dom survive in stores and street art.
• Soon, these vines will be green.
• Zingerman's outside seating is just gearing up.
• What's playing at our historic Michigan Theatre; also viewed from Border's across the street. Fairness, Idealism, and Other Atrocities: It's graduation time, so all around the country poor, unsuspecting shlubs are being given sheepskins and maudlin advice from semi-famous people. As usual, you can't do better than P.J. O'Rourke. My favorite lines:
Idealists are also bullies. The idealist says, "I care more about the redwood trees than you do. I care so much I can't eat. I can't sleep. It broke up my marriage. And because I care more than you do, I'm a better person. And because I'm the better person, I have the right to boss you around."
and
I am here to advocate for unfairness. I've got a 10-year-old at home. She's always saying, "That's not fair." When she says this, I say, "Honey, you're cute. That's not fair. Your family is pretty well off. That's not fair. You were born in America. That's not fair. Darling, you had better pray to God that things don't start getting fair for you."
I wish I could sum things up so perfectly.
Friday, April 04, 2008
The Month That Was - March 2008: It's starting to get warm. Well, warmer. We twice had brutal snowstorms after the vernal equinox, which really pisses people off. Seriously, if you don't live in the north, you can't imagine how tired everyone is of winter by this time. It was a cold and snowy winter and it didn't let up until the last second, but the flip side of being sick of winter is the rush you get when you finally realize it's over and you can breathe without your lungs freezing over. Your first hint that it is coming is when you leave work at 6pm and it's still light out. Then that first splash of green appears and you start making plans for summer activities. Then Mother Nature slaps you back with one final blizzard.Oh well, this time it really is over. For sure. The Dairy Queen just reopened.
My Blue Heaven
Toob Notes
'Bout a Hundred Dollars
Luggage is the Enemy
Ain't So Bad My Blue Heaven: Four nights in Key West probably deserves its own trip report, but I just don't have the energy at the moment. This being my third (and certainly not final) visit to the Conch Republic, I'm getting close to being knowledgeable enough to do some sort of guide in the future, but for now a few stray observations and pics will have to serve.
My big concern was that it was spring break time. I feared a pack of drunken frat boys may have turned Duvall St. into Bourbon St. Not to worry. Maybe it was because we arrived late Saturday night and so our active time span was Sunday through Tuesday, but for the most part Duvall Street was very subdued. Crowds picked up when the cruise ships were docked, but other than that, it seemed like any other time.
My second concern was getting in and out of Miami International. I had arrived a couple of days earlier and made a quick run across the state to Sarasota for family stuff. My plan was to dash back across Alligator Alley to pick up Miss Kate, HRH Miss Anna, and Anna's beau at MIA around dusk then make a nighttime dash to Key West. I was worried about traffic and construction around the airport. I was worried about maneuvering through the Keys in the dark. I needn't have worried. Everything went smoothly and we arrived a little before midnight.
We stayed at the Santa Maria Suites and I cannot recommend this place highly enough. Nicely styled, a sweet little pool area, nightly turn down service, they leave you with all manner of sweets in the room -- muffins, ice cream treats, a bottle of water or two -- all gratis. Friendly helpful staff. Big screen TVs in every room. Located just a block or so off the southern end of Duvall Street, maybe three or four blocks from the Southernmost Point. The more southerly shops and restaurants are an easy walk, getting all the way down to Mallory Square and back would be a full day's wander.
Sunday was set aside for exploring and getting our bearings; that and a good bit of pool time. By the time the sun started to drop we were on a sunset dinner cruise aboard the gaff-rigged schooner Liberty Clipper. This is a nice gentle little cruise out into the Gulf, and it really does involve actual sailing -- wind permitting. The food and drink was pretty standard, but the crew were very genial and the captain a bit of cut up. The sunset was exquisite. Highly recommended is the Liberty Clipper.
Pics:
A smaller schooner sharing our wind and barreling toward the sun.
Amazing sunsets: 1, 2, 3, 4
The next day was going to be our big time on the water. We booked a day long "Power Adventure" through Sebago -- a major day tour outfitter on the island. The itinerary was to sail out to the coral reef to snorkel around for a while, then have lunch onboard, then sail back into the Gulf and tie up to a platform where we would get our chance at activities such as jet skiing and parasailing.
I'm going to have to label this process a disappointment. You sail out to the reef at which point you are given an area of about 40 square yards in which you are allowed to snorkel. The snorkel gear provided was awful, clearly designed for the bathtub -- you are given full coverage masks and then told not to breathe through your nose or you'll fog up the mask. Anti-fog spray? Sorry not available. I gave up on snorkeling and just swam around in the water for a while. But even just swimming around, they make you wear an annoying floatation vest. I'm lucky they didn't require a permission slip from my Mom. The best part of this segment was feeding a mean-looking three-and-a-half-foot long barracuda off the side of the boat.
My guess is you got about a half hour to forty-five minutes to snorkel and then it's everyone back in the boat to head into the Gulf. With the wind up, the sailing was a blast. The big catamaran sliced through the rollers drenching everyone on deck. I crawled up as close to the bow as possible to get deluged to full effect.
Next we tied up to a platform where there were a couple of jet skis waiting and a trampoline and a banana boat. We were divided into two groups: one starts on the jet skis and one goes parasailing, then we switch half way through. But parasailing got cancelled due to the high winds. And the jet skis -- well, you had a circle of about a hundred yard radius in which you were allowed to stay and your ride needed to be limited to 5 minutes or so. So as it turned out, there was actually very little to do. I was able to get in three separate 5-minute trips on the jet ski, by the last of which I had that 100-yard radius circle pretty well memorized. As a result, in the height of the afternoon everyone was flopped about on the boat getting badly sunburned (especially the fair Miss Anna) and wondering when we were going to head back to port and get on with our lives.
I can't recommend Sebago's Power Adventure. Even if the parasailing had been available, the whole process is too regimented. "Quickly now, have heavily monitored fun so we can rush somewhere else and have a different kind of heavily monitored fun." If you want to snorkel, arrange a leisurely snorkeling trip. If you want to parasail, catch a specialty boat in port for a longer ride. If you want to jet ski, find somewhere to rent jet skis on your own schedule. Give Sebago's Power Adventure a miss.
At least we were back in time to catch the famous sunset at Mallory Square, where the street performers turned out in full. The standout was Dominique and his trained cats. Dominique is a certified eccentric who in any other context would probably be locked in a padded room or living over a heating grate in a refrigerator box, but in Mallory Square he fits right in. His act is difficult to describe, but you can catch video snippets at YouTube and AOL. "Hurry up take your time!" is now a catch phrase among us.
The next day, our last full day, we had discussed going out on the water again, but I was in no condition for another day in the sun. Miss Anna was even worse. I felt bad about it, because I knew I should have tanned up before the trip but I just never got the chance -- lesson re-learned. As a result I had to leave the ferry to the Dry Tortugas on my to do list for the future. Instead, and perhaps to our benefit, Kate and I rented bikes and had our own little island safari.
Key West is not big and there are a variety of options for getting around. A car is bulky and expensive. Most folks opt for scooters or electric carts. But unless you are completely out of shape, I'd recommend a plain old bicycle. It's cheaper, can go anywhere, and you get exercise which means you're allowed an extra boat drink with dinner.
We trolled along the west end of the island, eventually making our way to Ft. Zachary State Park, which has the best beach on the island. Best is relative -- it isn't bad, although it seems like it's a bit on the rocky side. The fact is, there are really no great beaches on Key West. But the park itself is nice and wooded and sparsely decorated with odd sculptures and signs warning you to avoid attack turtles and scooter riding pelicans and so forth. From there we barreled back across town to the heart of residential Key West and rode pleasantly along the narrow, shady streets and through their crypt-laden cemetery.
Pics:
Dog totem at Ft. Zack
Why ask Y?
Manatee mailbox
Sunset Key (a private island just off Key West)
A stately pelican
Key West Gothic
I wonder what goes on in there?
In his song Blue Heaven Rendezvous, Jimmy Buffet sings of Key West: "There's still some magic left in this tourist town." I have been all over Florida, up and down both coasts and all through the Mouse House. I have seen all the various ways in which Florida has imposed an orderly, commercial skin over its swampish innards, from St. Armand's Circle to South Beach. But Key West, while equally commercial, is more genuine and more organic. They put up the tawdry t-shirt shops and the tacky theme restaurants, but they don't bother trying to hide the oddballs and corner dives and local color. Jimmy's right. There's still plenty of magic to go around. Toob Notes The Wire ended early in the month, and while it didn't end on a high -- this was the weakest season -- it was still the best show on TV. (No real spoilers follow, but I am assuming you watched the show.)
The proper theme of this season was fakery. Both the police (McNulty at first, then others) and the Sun reporter invest themselves in lies. These lies did not arise in a vacuum, however. McNulty spins his web in reaction to the lies of the city's governors in an effort to win the drug war which, as becomes clear, is itself mired in falsehoods. The reporter, in contrast, lies partially out of laziness and partially out of desperation, but the institutions surrounding him fully support him since it is to their benefit.
This season featured perhaps my favorite moments in the series. The FBI is called in to profile the serial killer, which the viewer knows to be a fiction created by McNulty. The camera stays on McNulty's face as the FBI agent describes the serial killer in terms that exactly fit McNulty personally. Flawless comedy. Also we got a lot of time on Lester Freemon, the Sherlock Holmes of the 'hood, who was probably my favorite character in the series. And we had a web of dependent, self-perpetuating lies so intricate that it became a thing of beauty in itself.
But there were big problems this year. There was an over abundance of cameos of previously featured characters and a mess of contrived "full-circle" finishes in an orgy of closure. Many of the characters seemed to become mere plot devices at the expense of their humanity. And, as much as they probably tried to avoid it, there was the sound of a grinding axe running in the background as the creative team eviscerated the newspaper industry from whence they sprung.
Meanwhile, in real life, creator David Simon took every opportunity to engage in barking political crackpottery to anyone who put a microphone in front of him, as if he was Barbra Streisand or something, culminating in an embarrassing berating of viewers and critics for "not getting" what he was trying to say. Poor David suffers the fate every other pseudo-great thinker in history -- he's so wise and insightful, yet must live in a world of blind, thoughtless rabble who cannot understand or appreciate him.
One of the enduring mysteries of art is that great works can be created by people anywhere on the spectrum of humanity -- young, old, weak, strong, good, evil. Clearly loudmouth crank falls somewhere on that spectrum because despite all Simon's ancillary nonsense, The Wire was a remarkable achievement. The core idea -- the story of a dying city as a Greek tragedy with institutions in the role of the gods was brilliantly conceived and beautifully realized.
If the The Sopranos was the last word in mob drama (except for the inevitable "courageous" film about two gay wiseguys) and Deadwood was the last word in westerns (except for the...oh, never mind), then The Wire will likely stand as the last word in cop shows. True to the theme, but so very much more. Time to move on to new paradigms.
And perhaps that is exactly what HBO has been trying to do, but with little success. In Treatment, a show which I came to late, just finished its first season and I have a sneaking feeling that's all it's going to get. The show was about people in therapy and the gimmick was that it ran each day of the week with a different patient on each day. It was decently done and the dialogue was never mawkish. The challenge was to hold a viewer's attention through a half-hour show that consisted almost entirely of a conversation between two or three people. In some ways it was reminiscent of classic TV drama from the fifties, when the actors and the dialogue had to carry the entire production. I wouldn't go out of my way to watch it again, but it was about as well done as that sort of thing could be.
Less successful is John Adams, a Tom Hanks' guided dramatization of the bestseller by David McCullough. This entire production comes off as little more than a retelling of key scenes from the book, no humanistic background added. Really, it is very sterile and quite aimless from a character point of view. A huge backslide from the superb Band of Brothers he did a few years back. Give it a miss.
Following HBO's lead, other networks are taking risks on more interesting projects. AMC followed up its excellent Mad Men (season 2 can't come soon enough for me) with Breaking Bad, about a high-school chemistry teacher who is diagnosed with a nearly hopeless case of lung cancer and so takes up cooking meth with a sleezebag ex-student so as to have something to leave his family. Over time the motivation morphs into having enough money to pay for exceedingly expensive uninsured treatments in an effort to stay alive. At the close of the first season it is clearly heading towards a conflict where he is trying to make money to survive cancer and if he lives he will find himself to be a drug dealer, living on borrowed time. Good supporting cast of a ball-buster wife, a kleptomaniac sister-in-law, and a DEA agent brother-in-law leave open lots of possibilities. If these guys can keep the plotline tight, the direction fresh, and the conflicts uncontrived, Breaking Bad will continue to be a winner. Another season 2 I am anxiously awaiting. Well done AMC.
Dexter, from Showtime, is my most recent guilty pleasure. Dexter Morgan is a serial killer who only kills other murderers, who he has ready access to through his work as a forensic blood analyst for the Miami police. It has completed two seasons and I have been through both on-demand. While there were occasionally tedious back stories, it was very well done on the whole, and the acting and concept seemed to improve over time as everyone involved got into a groove.
I could tell you that it is really a thought-provoking parable about Man's need for morality and rules (the Code of Harry, in this case) to channel his dark, fallen nature into something good, but that might be a bit of a stretch. I'll stick with guilty pleasure for my purposes. During my viewing of both seasons, once I reached about the half way point I ended up so engrossed that I stayed up until about 3 AM to finish in marathon sessions. The following mornings were brutal. Dexter killed me. 'Bout a Hundred Dollars: I've been guzzling Diet Pepsi at an alarming rate to get Pepsi points to buy MP3s from Amazon. The problem is the only some MP3s are eligible. When I went to buy the latest Fountains of Wayne (Traffic and Weather -- awesome) I couldn't buy the whole album at once, I had to download each individual song. Can't complain if it's for free, I suppose. Thievery Corporation's Mirror Conspiracy wasn;t available on MP3 so I actually had to order the used CD. I also picked up Firesign Theatre's comedy classic from the sixties, Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers. The album consists of two tracks, one for each side and Amazon had them priced like individual song tracks -- 99 cents each; so I got the entire album for $1.98. (This is me high-fiving myself.)
Zune let me down for the first time. My latest CD purchase, The Avalanches' Since I Left You is gapless. That is to say, each track runs seamlessly into the next with no silence in between. Zune (the player, not the application) apparently doesn't support this, so as I listen I get an annoying instant of silence between each track. The Zune application does support gapless playback, so I'm hoping MS will update the player software also, eventually.
I'm generally very pleased with my music situation at the moment. I stumbled into something good with my $99 refurbished Zune. I snagged the Zune off Woot, the semi-famous, one-sale-item-per-day site, and since then I have been checking every day. Sure enough, another offer came up that I jumped on.
I have been looking for a cheap-ish point-and-shoot camera. My Nikon DLSR is still dear to my heart, but there are times when I just don't want to risk it -- like out on a wet and wild catamaran ride off Key West -- or lug it around, like an evening out with friends. Well, what should appear on Woot but a refurb'ed Kodak 10mp point and shoot for $99? That's perfect. I snagged one -- coffee colored, for no good reason. Now, if I lose it - oh well, I'm out a hundred bucks. Sad, but I'll live.
In fact, $100 seems to be about the sweet spot for gadgets in my life. My cell service is T-Mobile prepaid. I drop a hundred dollars up front and at .10/minute voice and .05/text message, it gets me through about six months. So my entire phone service costs me about $200 per year. I recently picked up a new cell phone when my five year old discontinued Siemens gave up the ghost. I got a keen-looking (I can say "keen", I'm old enough) Motorola RAZR on special for, yeah you guessed it, $99.
To you folks targeting spam, you now know the number that will get my attention. Luggage is the Enemy: I was shocked -- shocked! -- to learn that many of the big airlines now allow only a single piece of checked luggage per passenger. That's checked luggage, not carry-ons. Although why I was shocked I don't know, since they seem to work so very hard at making flying as miserable an experience as possible.
I rarely need to check more than one bag, so it doesn't have a big effect on me directly, but what this is going to do is force people to stuff as much as they can into their carry-ons. Carry-on luggage is the single greatest impediment to efficiently boarding and exiting a plane at the gate. Some of the most pleasant flights I can remember were the ones I took shortly after the big "no liquids" policy went into effect. Passengers were forced to check through all their personal stuff, so they mostly said screw it, and just checked everything through. The overhead bins were half empty; everyone got to their seats with a minimum of fuss; fastest deplaning ever. Now we are going to get the opposite; it's going to take that much longer to get on and off the plane. Plus, everyone is going to try to scam the system by bringing a carry-on that is too big and then checking it at the gate in the hopes they won't get charged.
The claim is that extra piece of luggage is so expensive at the current cost of fuel that they have to charge for it. I call B.S. on that: prove it. Of the major carriers, it looks like Northwest, United and US Air have already switched to a one-bag policy for coach fliers. A second bag will cost $25, although it looks like Northwest is letting the frequent flier members skate on the second bag charge. American and Delta seem to still be letting 2 bags through for the time being.
Between the security environment, fuel costs, legal liability and their own monumentally stupid reactions to these things, I am amazed the airlines continue to function.
And speaking of luggage disasters, have you been following the chaos at Heathrow? 19,000 lost bags -- system failure -- sorting through them by hand. You can now play a Mario-esque baggage handling flash game. Surreal. It's enough to almost make you feel sorry for Naomi Campbell. (Ok, no it isn't. Not even almost.) Ain't So Bad: And just to end on an high note for a change, I would like to point out how good things are.
If you spend any time reading the newspapers or watching CNN or wandering the Internet, you would think that we are on the verge of apocalypse; as if there was a race to see what tragedy will befall us first: financial, social, or environmental. In fact, on balance, the world is better off (especially here in Western civilization), than at any time in history and there is no reason to expect it won't get better. But you can't tell people that. The loudmouths of the world are so wholly invested in doom and dire predictions that they will take grave offense and protest indignantly.
Personally, I find this confounding. I can only assume it is because they don't have enough drama or interest in their personal lives so they make some up to fill the hole. Or perhaps they do it as a way to make themselves feel that their problems are not their own fault but stem from the curse of living in these horrible times.
Anyway, if you are one of those folks who is all end-is-nigh, you might gain some insight into why you feel that way by reading Journalist Bites Reailty, Steve Salerno's brilliant exposition on why the media is so deeply invested in the horrific. Then you may want to pause and consider how lucky you really are to live now.
Thursday, March 06, 2008
The Month That Was - February 2008: February flew by, highlighted by the most exciting Super Bowl in history (after one of the more tedious seasons) and a spur of the moment long weekend in Hilton Head/Charleston SC. Give it a read; it's short with lots of pictures linked. Apart from that, I can't for the life of me think of what else happened in February. Actually that's not true. I got through a full revision of Misspent Youth, now a little more than half way complete, and I have ideas for more. I also made some progress in getting my investment portfolio sorted out more intelligently -- something that had needed doing for years. (Would it be tedious for me to expound on my stock market investments? I'm guessing yes, but I'll give it some thought.) Speaking of finances, this weekend is reserved for doing taxes. Joy.Missing in Action
Spirit of Detroit
Principled Apathy
Time Off Missing in Action: Tube Notes takes a break this month. The Wire ends in early March. Same with Breaking Bad. And I've latched on to Dexter, which is a (very) guilty pleasure. Next month for sure.
Also, no Movie Round-Up. I really didn't see anything worth writing about. The only think that sticks out in my head is The 300 which made its HBO premiere. It was visually striking in the action sequences, but it wasn't very good otherwise. Disturbia has hit cable also, and I'm mildly anxious to compare it to Rear Window, the a bona fide classic to which it is an homage. Again, maybe next month.
And to complete the theme, no book commentary either. I am still crawling through the lovely and difficult Tender is the Night, and I have started Unknown Quantity, a history of algebra by John Derbyshire. It's not as compelling as his previous Prime Obsession which I read and discussed many months ago but it is at least challenging me to do some algebraic thinking which I probably haven't dome since I was an undergrad. Possible comments next month, but not likely. Spirit of Detroit: Of course, who needs The Wire when you have Detroit. John Conyers, Detroit's U.S. Congressman has long been known to be a high-end nut job, but his wife, president of the City Council, may take the cake, telling an aide to the Mayor that she would get a gun or get her brothers to whip his ass. The government of Detroit is about on par with some corrupt third world hellhole. And, of course, they have the standard of living that goes along with it. If it wasn't for fear of the country having enough and the National Guard taking over, Detroit would probably be engulfed in a shooting war between the Kilpatrick junta and the Conyers guerillas, with the BBC running videos of starving citizens begging for U.N assistance, and Bono flying in for a humanitarian photo op. It's that bad.
Last month I mentioned the infamous (alleged) party at the Manoogian Mansion, the Mayor's official residence, which (allegedly) featured strippers and catfights. It seems now there is a big to do about the (alleged) interference of the Mayor's office in the investigation of the drive by murder of a stripper who (allegedly) was at the party. A whistle-blowing ex-cop has suggested that she was killed by a Detroit cop at the behest of the Mayor or someone in his administration. Among other things, there was some confusion about whether she was shot three times or eighteen times. Easy to get those two numbers confused.
Of course, not even the city government could be as fundamentally fubar as the Detroit Lions. Matt Millen's picture is next to the word "assclown" in the dictionary. Or at least it would be if "assclown" was in the dictionary. Recently fired offensive coordinator and Super Bowl winning coach Mike Martz observed of the Lions management: "I can't explain anything they do. I can't." The team's response to being the whipping boys of the NFL for, oh, fifty years or so? Raise ticket prices. That, my friends, is Detroit logic.
I feel mildly ashamed at how fascinated I am by the slow, steady degradation of the city to depths unknown. I am anxious to see where the bottom is. I'm guessing it will be when there are only a couple dozen people left and they have to resort to cannibalism. But that's just a guess. Principled Apathy: I have pretty much decided not to vote. I figure it like this. People should vote when they have a clear sincere belief that a certain candidate will be better for the country than the others. Although this may surprise you, I do occasionally have an opinion or two, but if there is one big thing I have learned in life, it is that I am wrong a lot. I suspect I am not wrong much more often than anyone else but, if I can be allowed a moment of pure ego, I think I do a better job of admitting it and accepting it than most. When faced with an outcome other than what they expected, human nature is to simply spin the results to show that they weren't wrong after all (make excuses), or maybe they'll say that everybody was equally wrong (mitigate the damage), or, most commonly, not even consciously acknowledge the connection between their formerly fervently held opinion and an outcome that was just the opposite (avoidance). They will have already moved on to their next unshakable belief.
Not me. I am wrong a lot. I can turn my way-too-numerous years of experience, graduate level education, and reasonably high IQ to an issue, arrive at a conclusion that seems blindingly obvious and unimpeachable -- then turn out to be stupendously wrong. As the various candidates drench me in their inane drivel, I occasionally hear something from one of them that makes sense and I think that's a good reason to cast a vote in a certain direction. But then, with the full knowledge that my opinion is as likely to wrong as right, I reflexively justify the counter-opinion and become suspicious of my own motives for thinking that way. As result, I end up figuring it's a dice roll whether one or the other will work out better for the country, and ergo, my vote will add nothing of value.
As I pointed out last month, our government is so entrenched and stable that we could probably pick a president at random from the phone book and suffer little more than mild annoyance. So, really, what good would I be doing by voting? Of course the same can be said for everyone. Why, then, would anybody vote? The answer is that you should vote if you sincerely see one of these clowns as being significantly better for the country. A tiny fraction of you may be right, but the vast majority of you will just be voting along the lines of your preconceived prejudices -- more often than not, we hold the opinions that justify our biases, and fool ourselves that they are the result of reason. At least you will feel good about yourselves and besides, someone has to pick a president; it might as well be you. I'll save my energy for other more pleasurable things.
Put it all together and it makes a decent case for apathy. But if I were to vote, I would vote against Obama. Can't stand the guy. Can't stand his Bob-the-Builder, "Yes we can!" inanity. Nobody who has slogged through middle management in corporate American has avoided a session with some moronic motivational speaker who spews out rah-rah blather like "Yes I can!" or "Make it happen!" or "Seize the Day!" The higher-ups consider arranging those kind of sessions "leadership" and slap each other on their enlightened backs. Half the HR department gets to check off "Improve Workforce Engagement Level" on their annual goals list. Meanwhile, everyone who has to sit through it is that much closer to buying an Uzi. Now CNN gets to pummel us with that tripe thanks to Obama.
What about Hope? We don't need no stinkin' Hope! Are people so infantile, so helpless, that they need someone to come along and with a wave of his blessed hand, anoint them with Hope? If it is the case that the majority of the most prosperous and pampered people in the world, when confronted with the complexities and challenges of life, can do no better than flop back on the couch and cry out for someone to give them Hope, then Oprah has her final victory.
Still, wouldn't even vote against Obama. My Mom (who is a saint, by the way) is a big Obama fan, and what kind of son would cancel out his own Mother's vote? So that's really why I'm not voting. 'Cause of my Mom. Time Off: My day job has revised its policy on vacation and sick time for this year and the upshot is that I have to take a ton of use-it-or-lose-it time off before 2008 is out. Of all the problems I have ever had in my disturbingly long life, this is probably the best one ever. So I'm starting to line up destinations. Among the potential targets for yet-to-be-visited areas:
• Pacific Northwest. I have been to Portland Oregon, which marginally qualifies. But Seattle and Vancouver/Victoria/Whistler have been on my list for a while. I've even priced them out previously. Truthfully, the big goal for this area would be trolling around the Pacific Northwest for a few days, then making my way, either by car or ferry, up to Alaska for a week. That would be a blast. Expensive as hell, though.
• Southeast Asia. Specifically, the standard Singapore/Bangkok/Hong Kong triumvirate. I have never been to Asia and I would guess this would be a good starter tour. Actually, this is mostly because Anthony Bourdain goes to these places and eats the amazing food that I can only imagine. I'd also bet these places would be have just the right amount of visual and cultural shock, enough to be challenging but not enough to drive me insane. Relative frequent flights are available from Detroit. The big problem is that you can easily burn a day and a half of travel time each way, which I would have to come to terms with. Now, if I could afford Singapore Airlines...
• Newfoundland. Certainly not a place everyone thinks of, but I understand it is quite beautiful. This would be few days with a car to tour the island and maybe even take a side trip up into Labrador. There is not a lot of tourist stuff so it would be low-key, which is fine. Some of my favorite vacations have been about finding interesting, out-doorsy places and just tooling around with my camera.
• Unusual Caribbean. I was thinking something along the lines of Saba/Montserrat/Dominica/Grenada. The islands the most people don't visit. I would do this in summer when nobody is in the Caribbean anyway. The fact that I could do this on the cheap off-season is not the least of its attractions. An alternative would be the out islands of the Bahamas.
• Greenland. No really. Greenland. Same direction as Newfoundland, but only more so. There are direct flights from BWI now and they are just getting the tourist industry kicked up. I bet I never hear, "Greenland? Should have been there 10 years ago." A tour is probably the only way to go with this one since infrastructure is uncertain and logistics troubling. Top of the world, Ma!
• Mexico. I've never really been but I'd sure like to go. Everyone I know who goes there loves it and it is right next door (so to speak). I have no excuses. Mexico is a big place. I'd narrow starter trips down to Playa Del Carmen or the Puerto Vallarta area. I wouldn't argue with that train ride through Copper Canyon either.
For repeat destinations:
• New York City. OK, this isn't really more than a long weekender, but it's been a while since I've been to Manhattan and I really, really need to get back to the center of the universe for a couple of days.
• Hawaii. Specifically the Big Island. I love Maui and Kauai but I've yet to visit the Big Island. My priorities for a Hawaii trip would be 1) a good long time on the Big Island, 2) the Kauai north shore (I was on the south shore last time), 3) Lanai just for a night or two.
• California Parks tour. Only partially a repeat, but the idea would be to fly into Reno, spend a couple of days around Tahoe, then head down eastern California hitting all the parks along the way including Yosemite, Kings Canyon, and my beloved Death Valley, then finishing up with a couple of nights in Vegas and flying home from there.
• Hit the Spa. One of the Canyon Ranches or Mirival. There's also a Green Valley in Utah that I have had my eye on for a while. It's been a couple of years since I hit one of the killer Spas and not only would my body be grateful for the temporary drop in toxins, I could probably get a ton of writing done.
The fact is, just the planning of a serious trip is enjoyable so I'm looking forward to a fun year on that basis alone. If I knock off two of these (three including NYC), I'll declare victory.
Saturday, February 02, 2008
The Month That Was - January 2008: I think this is the first month is years when I didn't do any travelling. Not even a weekend or an overnighter. That must not continue. In the meantime, I finished my Death Valley trip report. There are some good photos in there, but it's amazing the difference a good monitor can make when looking at photos online. Viewed through my cheapy 14" Dell LCD at work, they look rather bland, but in my spankin' HP 23" external monitor at home they are striking.With my football column on hiatus, all that is left is for me to return to fiction. About time. But I do not want to let February slip away without at least a brief bit of travel. Suggestions are welcome.
Tube Notes
Detroit Low Down
Tender is the Night
Zune, Zune, Zune
Insane Clown Politics Tube Notes: As usual, a quick rundown of some idiot box viewings that caught my eye.
The Wire -- Last month I feared that David Simon had let The Wire turn into a personal platform for forwarding his (somewhat sophomoric) socio-political philosophy. I'm glad to say it looks like I was wrong about that, or perhaps it was mostly isolated to the first couple of episodes. It's pretty clear now that this season is about lies; specifically about one big lie that spirals out to ensnare just about everyone in the city of Baltimore. Like they said in episode one, "The bigger the lie, the more they believe." Maybe. Still, I don't detect the heightened level of humanity in this season that I have in the previous ones. It's mostly an extended series of plot mechanisms so far.
Another interesting theme is how prime drug dealers get offed once they start deluding themselves that there is something logical or civilized about what they are doing. Chaos and evil rise up to destroy them. I'd go into this in more detail but I don't want to be a spoiler. More to come.
Breaking Bad -- This is AMC's new original series, following up last year's excellent Mad Men. Like Mad Men, it's clearly got boundless potential, but at episode two it has yet to hit its stride. Alternately harrowing and comic, it's the story of a high school chemistry teacher who discovers he has inoperable lung cancer and so gets involved cooking up crystal meth with a druggie former student. The situation is complicated by his stuck-up, pregnant wife and a DEA agent brother-in-law. Murder and mayhem ensue.
Bryan Cranston (the father from Malcolm in the Middle) plays the lead exceptionally well: a straight-laced, meek, inhibited guy, faced with a suddenly limited lifespan, goes off the deep end. It seems to be playing out in a 24 sort of format where we get a day or so with every episode. Of course, the storyline of comically inept drug amateurs can only go so far. If the characters flesh out and we witness some big picture enlightening, this could turn out to be a winner. I'll let you know.
No Reservations -- I hate Anthony Bourdain. He travels around the world, eats incredible food, then writes and hosts his TV show about it. Bastard. I should be doing that. Bourdain brings something to travel and food shows that is sorely lacking. Specifically: wit. With so many whitebread cooking shows and dry-as-sand travel shows hovering around, No reservations just jumps out as something special. A smarty-pants guy who's not out to further cultural empathy or sell recipes, just have some fun experiences and not take himself too seriously. That's all you need to be a cut above in the current market. For me, No Reservations is a mixed blessing. It's a cool and interesting show to watch for a while, but then I get all angry that it's not me. I repeat: Bastard. Detroit Low Down: Just when I thought Detroit had hit rock bottom, it blasts through the mantle and burrows deeper.
First, to the litany of "worsts" for the city we can now add Worst Place to Have a Baby thanks to Fit Pregnancy Magazine. My favorite quote: "Detroit received its best grades, D's, in the amount of access to hospitals..." If his best grade is a D, Kwame Kilpatrick needs to get called into Dean Wormer's office and put on double secret probation.
Second, speaking of Motown's good Irish mayor, let's review the timeline of his achievements, courtesy of the Detroit News:
- January 2002: Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick takes office.
- Fall 2002 : As the Manoogian Mansion remains unoccupied while renovations are being completed, rumors begin to surface of a wild party there and the mayor's wife, Carlita Kilpatrick, showing up unexpectedly and slapping a stripper.
- March 2003 : Police Officer Harold Nelthrope, after being transferred out of the mayor's Executive Protection Unit, contacts the Police Department's Internal Affairs division about allegations of misconduct involving mayoral bodyguards Mike Martin and Greg Jones, as well as the Manoogian Mansion rumor.
- March 2003 : Shortly after making the complaint, Nelthrope is called at home by Martin. Nelthrope said he begins to fear for his life.
- March 2003 : Internal Affairs, headed by Deputy Police Chief Gary Brown, makes preliminary investigation into Nelthrope's allegations.
- May 2003 : After a request from the mayor's of chief of staff, Christine Beatty, Brown prepares a two-page memo outlining misconduct by Martin and Jones. It does not mention the Manoogian rumor -- which is never substantiated -- but, in a separate memo, Brown writes he is prepared to look into those allegations if directed to by then-Police Chief Jerry Oliver.
- May 2003 : A day or two after getting the memo from Oliver, Beatty claims she received a short, unsigned note saying Brown is not to be trusted. She shreds the note. The mayor, without consulting with the police chief, demotes Brown.
- June 2003 : A whistleblower lawsuit is filed against the city and Kilpatrick by Brown and Nelthrope.
- August 2007: Both Beatty and the mayor testify during trial that they did not have a romantic relationship.
- September 2007 : Following a trial -- and testimony alleging misbehavior by the mayor as well as his bodyguards -- a jury awards Nelthrope and Brown $6.5 million in damages.
The latest: After swearing under oath that he was not dallying with his Chief of Staff, Christine Beatty, thousand of text messages surfaced featuring a lot of dirty talk and tryst arranging between hizzoner and Beatty. Beatty has resigned and Kwame went into hiding for a couple of days then emerged to say, "Hey, sorry, man."
Beatty's replacement, Kandia Milton, brings a bit of baggage himself. Again, per the Detroit News: "According to the bankruptcy records that Milton and his wife Lisa filed in August 2006, they owed more than $388,000 to a variety of creditors, including mortgages on three properties, a $1,305 bill from DTE Energy, $18,000 for 12 credit cards, $1,080 in Detroit parking tickets and more than $1,000 in Wayne County property taxes." Even after bankruptcy, they are still over $9000 in the hole in back taxes. Yeah, this oughtta work out well.
Just in case you were wondering, this is not a treatment for a new screenplay from David Simon. It's actually happening.
Next, just to add a little bit of weirdness, the only recent organization to relocate into the city is the Scientologists. This will be the ultimate challenge for the followers of L. Ron. I don't hold out much hope for them. The City of Detroit has devoured far more worthy and dedicated tenants. I'd lay odds they all end up in psychotherapy.
Lastly, to add absurdity on top of weirdness, Eminem, the most successful Detroit singer since Diana Ross, has apparently taken to shoveling cake down his pie-hole at an alarming rate, ballooning to over 200 pounds. I guess we can start calling him the Real Fat Shady. Guess who's fat? Fat and round. Shady's fat... (I'm having too much fun with this.)
Ah yes, Detroit just keeps on giving. Onward and downward! Tender is the Night: I've been strolling slowly through F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night. What's fascinating so far is how he presents a group of people -- good-timing, well-heeled, mostly American friends/acquaintances travelling in France just post WW1 -- and slowly peels away the facade of each of the characters especially the alpha male of the group who starts out heroic, but in time, buckles under the strain of being the rock to which the others are tethered. It is intricately done, often using close descriptions of seemingly trivial moments to set the stage.
Here, Fitzgerald describes the atmosphere of a dinner party thrown by the Divers (the story's alpha male and his wife).
The table seemed to have risen a little toward the sky like a mechanical dancing platform, giving the people around it the sense of being alone with each other in the dark universe, nourished by its only food, warmed by its only lights. And, as if a curious hushed laugh from Mrs. McKisco [a guest] were a signal that such detachment from the world had been attained, the two Divers began to warm and glow and expand, as if to make up to their guests, already so subtly assured of their importance, so flattered with politeness, for anything they might still miss from that country well left behind. Just for a moment they seemed to speak to everyone at the table, singly and together, assuring them of their friendliness and affection. And for a moment the faces turned up toward them were like the faces of poor children at a Christmas tree. Then abruptly the table broke up - the moment when the guests had been daringly lifted above conviviality into the rarer atmosphere of sentiment, was over before it could be irreverently breathed, before they had half realized it was there.
There is so much in that single paragraph -- the sensitive description of a transcendent moment in the midst of a commonplace event that most everyone would just briefly feel, partially appreciate, then let pass only subconsciously understood; the reference to "poor children at a Christmas tree" to indicate that the Divers were of a deeper, primal emotional significance to the group, beyond being perfect hosts and admirable friends -- great stuff.
Ol' F. Scott had some chops, he did. I'm taking my time reading Tender is the Night, sometimes only a few paragraphs at a sitting. I don't want to miss anything. Zune, Zune, Zune: I realize it makes me horribly uncool to have a non-iPod mp3 player, but I love my $99 30-gig Zune. I know it's big and heavy for a music player, but really, we're talking about ounces here. It's not particularly attractive on the outside -- black plastic with a hint of blue, but the interface is as slick as the iPod, if not more so. My music collection has a long way to go fill it up so I end up carrying every piece of music I own around with me.
One interesting thing I realized about my music collection is that there is very little commercial rock in it. Not that I don't listen to commercial rock, it's just that I don't own much. It makes sense, I suppose. My buddy Sirius has one classical station and maybe 2 or 3 jazz stations, depending on your definition, while roughly half their gajillion music stations are playing some variation of rock, so why would I need to own any.
For the record, here is a short list of some of the more prominent recordings on my Zune right now. I defy anyone to claim to have more eclectic music taste than me.
- All the Cats Join In, Benny Goodman Orchestra
- Bach: The Art of the Fugue, Juilliard Quartet
- Bach: The Well-Tempered Klavier, Rosalyn Tureck
- Ballads, John Coltrane
- Barometer Soup, Jimmy Buffet
- Classic Essentials Goa Mix, Paul Oakenfold
- Compact Jazz, Stan Getz
- Dirt Track Date, Southern Culture on the Skids
- Discovery of a World Inside the Moon, Apples in Stereo
- G. Love and Special Sauce, G. Love and Special Sauce
- Into the Labyrinth, Dead Can Dance
- The Look of Love, Diana Krall
- The Men From Uncle, Ray Gelato
- Nightfly, Donald Fagen
- Nomad, Aqua Velvets
- Playboy & Playgirl, Pizzicato Five
- Safe as Milk, Captain Beefheart
- Simple Things, Zero 7
- Synchronized, Jamiroquai
- Welcome Interstate Managers, Fountains of Wayne
- Written In the Stars, Bill Charlap
There's more, but I didn't want to totally blow your mind. Insane Clown Politics: I am probably the least political person in the world. I have zero interest. I thank the gods of technology for my DVR so I can skip seeing these clowns ram their messages home to the lowest common denominator every commercial break. I am constantly changing the channel on the TV in my health club from MSNBC to ESPN. I weep for the trees killed to make all the flyers they leave on my door. Every couple of years I have to take sites like Metafilter and Reddit out of my RSS feeds because their little subcultures tend to go stark raving insane during elections. Every possible permutation of human irrationality gets shouted from the rooftops. What's worse, it often gets praised as "involvement" or "awareness" when in fact it is just acting out.
I can't stand the noise, so I don't listen -- at least to the extent that is possible. As a result, I know very little about what the current group of politicians is trying to say other than the odd sentence or comment that happens to slip through my filters. One quote that slipped through and stuck in my head was from Rudy Giuliani:
I get very, very frustrated when I...hear certain Americans talk about how difficult the problems we face are, how overwhelming they are, what a dangerous era we live in. I think we've lost perspective. We've always had difficult problems, we've always had great challenges, and we've always lived in danger.
Do we think our parents and our grandparents and our great grandparents didn't live in danger and didn't have difficult problems? Do we think the Second World War was less difficult than our struggle with Islamic terrorism? Do we think that the Great Depression was a less difficult economic struggle for people to face than the struggles we're facing now? Have we entirely lost perspective of the great challenges America has faced in the past and has been able to overcome and overcome brilliantly? I think sometimes we have lost that perspective.
Now, I have no idea what stance Giuliani is taking on any issues (although I am a big fan of New York City), but that may be the only time in the last 20 years that I have heard a political express any such sense and perspective. Anyone with any reasonable world view would see this era as being amazingly stable and prosperous, and blissfully uneventful in any historic sense. We should be delighted by this. It means we can get on with our lives, devoting ourselves to personal relationships, spiritual fulfillment, commercial advancement, artistic or scientific achievement, and other activities vastly more valuable and important than politics. Instead, we wring our hands and convince ourselves the end is nigh unless we CHANGE or DO SOMETHING.
I suppose part of it is a combination of politicians needing to convince you they are essential to your life for the sake of their power, and journalists needing to convince you to watch cable news or buy a newspaper for their livelihood. And there are probably other reasons more deeply-seated in human neuroses. The net result is everyone goes insane. As I write this we a