Emotional About Baggage: The North Terminal at DTW is sparking clean, spacious, well designed, relatively quiet, and generally pleasant -- as you would expect of a state of the art airport terminal that just opened a month ago. Coupled with the enormous and quite lovely McNamara Terminal (the Northwest/Delta hub terminal) which is, I think, about five years old, Detroit Metro has become one of the nicest airports in the world.
But no matter how fine the airport, it can’t make the planes arrive on time. Right now my flight is delayed about 20 minutes, which cuts my transfer time in Atlanta down to about 20 minutes. Cutting it close -- but if I was checking bags they would certainly be lost.
I am not checking bags; I managed to wedge five days worth of clothes and all my gadgets into a couple of carry-ons. I anticipated this situation. I am not a frequent flyer for nothing. With sub-45 minute layovers, carry-on only is the way to go. However, even if I did have ample time, I still would have stuffed everything into carry-ons because of the insane policy virtually all airlines have adopted about adding fees for checked bags.
I’ve gone on about this before -- about how it completely buggers the boarding and deplaning process. In a somewhat naive article in the WSJ, a journalist proposes that if they wanted things to go more smoothly, they would charge for carry-ons rather than checked luggage. That is of course true, but completely misses the point. The charge is not intended to make things go smoothly. It is intended to generate revenue and whether the traveler experience is degraded or not means absolutely nothing to the airlines.
You could argue that charging for carry-ons instead of checked bags would generate similar revenue but would improve passenger experience so why is it not preferable even to airlines. Answer: It would degrade airline employee’s experience. Someone would have to decide when a purse was big enough to be called a carry-on, and then there’s all those extra checked bags -- there would be more pressure to actually have efficient and accurate baggage handling services and frankly why go to all that trouble when you can just charge for checked bags and let the traveler deal with the hassle.
My flight took off about thirty-five minutes late. I would have had about a 2% chance of making my connection but fortunately my plane was the connecting flight. Lucky.
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Southwest Passage
Southwest Passage: For a better travel story, you can read my lengthy report on my recent trip out west. As special bonus, this one includes thumbnails of all the pics I took; just click on the thumbnail for the full-sized pic. I generated the thumbnails using a free program called IrfanView which I don’t know well so the thumbs are all sized with gray border on the top and bottom. I have some learning to do, but you’ll get the idea.
Swinging Empress
Swinging Empress: Of all the photos I have posted over the years the one that generates the most email is a photo of a painting. The title of the painting is Above Washington, D.C. It currently hangs in the lobby of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Washington D.C. The only background I have found on it is from the hotel website:
"A large signature painting, 'Above Washington, D.C.', commissioned by Chinese/Canadian artist Zhong-Yang Huang, depicts the last empress of China, Empress Dowager, on a swing over D.C., blending Eastern and Western cultures. She lived in the 'Forbidden City' and had a fascination with the West. The artist has created a painting that is historical and metaphorical."
There are other works by the same artist at a gallery in Saskatchewan, Canada. I’ve also found other background on the artist.
Note to self: next time in DC get a better, higher res photo. It really is quite a stunning painting.
"A large signature painting, 'Above Washington, D.C.', commissioned by Chinese/Canadian artist Zhong-Yang Huang, depicts the last empress of China, Empress Dowager, on a swing over D.C., blending Eastern and Western cultures. She lived in the 'Forbidden City' and had a fascination with the West. The artist has created a painting that is historical and metaphorical."
There are other works by the same artist at a gallery in Saskatchewan, Canada. I’ve also found other background on the artist.
Note to self: next time in DC get a better, higher res photo. It really is quite a stunning painting.
Men Going Mad
Men Going Mad: Mad Men finished another season leaving me anxious for more. Season 1 was filled with folks grasping for their dreams, working diligently to make real the image they had of The Way Their Lives Should Be. In Season 2, many of the main characters got what they wanted only to collide with disappointment. This is clearest in Don’s case, when the 20 year-old, free-thinking, California chippie he diddles asks him directly: Why deny yourself what you obviously want? Surrounded by the temptation of a life that is the exact opposite of his “real” one -- the one that is falling apart -- he searches his past and finds an answer. Or so it seems.
Pete Campbell got the fast-track-ad-exec/well-monied-Upper-East-Side-WASP lifestyle he wanted and finds out he may have blown his chance for a child and a woman who understands him with Peggy, who he passed off as a bangable secretary, and is stuck with a dissatisfied wife and financially manipulative in-laws. Peggy, for her part, played the game and got her groundbreaking career, at the cost of a certain sense of shame at abandoning her child. Roger got out of his marriage and found what he thinks is rebirth and happiness with his 20-something trophy mistress, but he’ll get taken to the cleaners by his ex-wife and his relationship with his daughter may never be repaired.
At the end, it looks like Don was the only one who may have put “want he obviously wants” in the proper perspective, but I suppose we’ll see since Mad Men has been renewed. Now the agonizing wait starts and we live once again in a TV world devoid of drama for the ages.
On last interesting note: Mattew Weiner, the series creator, made an comment during a recent interview about one similarity between Mad Men and The Sopranos, which he produced. He said in both cases what makes them unique is that the characters often find themselves in need a sweeping change in their lives, thoughts, needs, etc., but unlike most dramas, the people in their lives form barriers and act as a hindrance to their personal development. I find that fascinating, and quite true to life. People often view others as props in their own life and are deeply resistant to letting them change. Like the saying goes, the expectations of friends and family can hold you back more effectively than anything else. Which gives me the expectation that next season may concern itself with the question, “Do people ever really change?”
Pete Campbell got the fast-track-ad-exec/well-monied-Upper-East-Side-WASP lifestyle he wanted and finds out he may have blown his chance for a child and a woman who understands him with Peggy, who he passed off as a bangable secretary, and is stuck with a dissatisfied wife and financially manipulative in-laws. Peggy, for her part, played the game and got her groundbreaking career, at the cost of a certain sense of shame at abandoning her child. Roger got out of his marriage and found what he thinks is rebirth and happiness with his 20-something trophy mistress, but he’ll get taken to the cleaners by his ex-wife and his relationship with his daughter may never be repaired.
At the end, it looks like Don was the only one who may have put “want he obviously wants” in the proper perspective, but I suppose we’ll see since Mad Men has been renewed. Now the agonizing wait starts and we live once again in a TV world devoid of drama for the ages.
On last interesting note: Mattew Weiner, the series creator, made an comment during a recent interview about one similarity between Mad Men and The Sopranos, which he produced. He said in both cases what makes them unique is that the characters often find themselves in need a sweeping change in their lives, thoughts, needs, etc., but unlike most dramas, the people in their lives form barriers and act as a hindrance to their personal development. I find that fascinating, and quite true to life. People often view others as props in their own life and are deeply resistant to letting them change. Like the saying goes, the expectations of friends and family can hold you back more effectively than anything else. Which gives me the expectation that next season may concern itself with the question, “Do people ever really change?”
Mapping Reality
Mapping Reality: I have mentioned that I have reached a point in my life where I am letting new technologies pass me by, and am quite happy to do so. Any take on Social Networking is lost on me. Instant messaging…well I exchange texts on my cell, does that count? Facebook…I really have plenty of friends already, thanks. Twitter…you’ve got to be kidding me. MMOG…uh, what?
What all these things have in common is that they are enhancements to virtual life. I’ll pass on that, but there are occasional bits and pieces of tech that are of actual use for someone who isn’t looking to weave himself into the fabric of cyberspace, but exist more easily in the tactile world. Mapping software is one of them. In the past six months I have driven all around Arizona, New Mexico, Florida, and Newfoundland with little more than printed out Google or Mapblast maps to guide me.
I am currently hunting around making plans for my next excursion almost exclusively by zeroing on one destination in Mapblast and simply moving the map around on screen to get ideas for side trips. A little while back I spent some time on Google Maps designing running routes of specific distances around the local neighborhoods.
When I had to get to a certain funeral home half way across the state, I only needed the name of the business and the city to get a turn-by-turn print out; no asking at gas stations for directions, no ball park guesses based on a poorly communicated phone call, no hoping I can read what I scribbled down or wondering if I am correctly oriented to tell north from south.
It’s like magic. I can guarantee you that whoever came up with mapping software and the intelligence behind it deserves a Nobel Prize more than anyone of this year’s winners, whoever they were.
What all these things have in common is that they are enhancements to virtual life. I’ll pass on that, but there are occasional bits and pieces of tech that are of actual use for someone who isn’t looking to weave himself into the fabric of cyberspace, but exist more easily in the tactile world. Mapping software is one of them. In the past six months I have driven all around Arizona, New Mexico, Florida, and Newfoundland with little more than printed out Google or Mapblast maps to guide me.
I am currently hunting around making plans for my next excursion almost exclusively by zeroing on one destination in Mapblast and simply moving the map around on screen to get ideas for side trips. A little while back I spent some time on Google Maps designing running routes of specific distances around the local neighborhoods.
When I had to get to a certain funeral home half way across the state, I only needed the name of the business and the city to get a turn-by-turn print out; no asking at gas stations for directions, no ball park guesses based on a poorly communicated phone call, no hoping I can read what I scribbled down or wondering if I am correctly oriented to tell north from south.
It’s like magic. I can guarantee you that whoever came up with mapping software and the intelligence behind it deserves a Nobel Prize more than anyone of this year’s winners, whoever they were.
Reduction in Ugly
Reduction in Ugly: By the time this gets posted the excruciating presidential campaign will be over. If there was anything heartening about it, it was that a majority of people in were as uninterested as I was and generally didn’t vote or at least put off their decision until the last minute. Can you blame us?
Statistically speaking, the probability that you encountered a political conversation that was anything more than people spewing venous op-eds at each other approached zero. Otherwise kind, good-natured people seemed ready to get behind a pogrom against their neighbors over a simple disagreement.
“McCain gives tax cuts to Exxon” and “Obama is a Socialist” are specious, scurrilous tactics designed specifically to appeal to people who have no capacity for critical thinking. Did you believe one and not the other? You qualify as a slovenly thinker. Your politician of choice holds you in contempt to manipulate you like that. He probably even felt ashamed to do it, but your ignorant vote still counted so he figured he had no choice.
All those bumper stickers and lawn signs -- have any of those ever changed anyone’s mind? No, they are an act of self-definition for people of shallow character. They are the Gucci bags and Red Sox caps for the morally self-righteous. The people behind them really don’t know the complex details about issues, they are responding to a brand. It is a mutant form of tribalism.
Every ugly aspect of humanity was out there on display and even celebrated, and so only the ugly got involved. It is a wonder we survive. Here’s to a three year reduction in ugly.
Statistically speaking, the probability that you encountered a political conversation that was anything more than people spewing venous op-eds at each other approached zero. Otherwise kind, good-natured people seemed ready to get behind a pogrom against their neighbors over a simple disagreement.
“McCain gives tax cuts to Exxon” and “Obama is a Socialist” are specious, scurrilous tactics designed specifically to appeal to people who have no capacity for critical thinking. Did you believe one and not the other? You qualify as a slovenly thinker. Your politician of choice holds you in contempt to manipulate you like that. He probably even felt ashamed to do it, but your ignorant vote still counted so he figured he had no choice.
All those bumper stickers and lawn signs -- have any of those ever changed anyone’s mind? No, they are an act of self-definition for people of shallow character. They are the Gucci bags and Red Sox caps for the morally self-righteous. The people behind them really don’t know the complex details about issues, they are responding to a brand. It is a mutant form of tribalism.
Every ugly aspect of humanity was out there on display and even celebrated, and so only the ugly got involved. It is a wonder we survive. Here’s to a three year reduction in ugly.
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
The Month That Was - September 2008
The Month That Was - September 2008: Another year under the belt in my increasingly long life. Birthday 48 passed at about 6:15AM on the 13th. I am closing in all too fast on a half century. For what it's worth, I detect no special impartation of wisdom or peace so far. I did have a wonderful week in the Southwest, touring through New Mexico and eventually settling in for a few nights at a Tucson spa, each day a minor adventure. A full report will be forthcoming.
I am struggling with what to write in this update, primarily because I am very disconnected from most everything of common interest these days. The presidential campaign dominates everything, and I have zero interest. I have no doubt the nation will continue whatever the outcome and, more likely than not, anyone's expectations about the effect of a particular candidate on the world is probably wrong. The financial meltdown is somewhat troubling, but luckily I am not a struggling young man anymore and I have been fairly wise with my money so I am not in a position to be fiscally devastated by anything short of a depression.
My life pretty much revolves around going to work (which I never blog about on principle), staying healthy and fit (boring, and annoying to listeners), travelling, and consuming art. The last two dominate this site. Oh, and football, which I am not writing about for blogcritics for the first time in three years. (Maybe I should post stuff here instead?) I am doing a fair amount of writing on my top secret new project, which may never amount anything. And I am still working on Misspent Youth, which may never amount to anything.
I am not a hermit. I see friends regularly. Stay involved with family and my father's finances (he can no longer do so himself). I am not isolated, but I am disconnected. Maybe that's a by-product of aging: so much of the day-to-day of the world seems to be a rerun that it doesn't seem worth commenting on. Or maybe I am just in a funk over putting away my bike and getting out fall jackets and shutting up the windows and turning on the heat at night. It could be a long winter.
Tube Notes
The Life and Times of Frank Bascombe
Money Honey
Quotables
I am struggling with what to write in this update, primarily because I am very disconnected from most everything of common interest these days. The presidential campaign dominates everything, and I have zero interest. I have no doubt the nation will continue whatever the outcome and, more likely than not, anyone's expectations about the effect of a particular candidate on the world is probably wrong. The financial meltdown is somewhat troubling, but luckily I am not a struggling young man anymore and I have been fairly wise with my money so I am not in a position to be fiscally devastated by anything short of a depression.
My life pretty much revolves around going to work (which I never blog about on principle), staying healthy and fit (boring, and annoying to listeners), travelling, and consuming art. The last two dominate this site. Oh, and football, which I am not writing about for blogcritics for the first time in three years. (Maybe I should post stuff here instead?) I am doing a fair amount of writing on my top secret new project, which may never amount anything. And I am still working on Misspent Youth, which may never amount to anything.
I am not a hermit. I see friends regularly. Stay involved with family and my father's finances (he can no longer do so himself). I am not isolated, but I am disconnected. Maybe that's a by-product of aging: so much of the day-to-day of the world seems to be a rerun that it doesn't seem worth commenting on. Or maybe I am just in a funk over putting away my bike and getting out fall jackets and shutting up the windows and turning on the heat at night. It could be a long winter.
Tube Notes
The Life and Times of Frank Bascombe
Money Honey
Quotables
Tube Notes
Tube Notes: Lots of interesting, if not necessarily good, TV these days.
True Blood - An exercise in heavy-handed irony, this is the story of a world where fake blood has been invented and, as such, vampires can come out of the crypt and try to "mainstream" with regular folk. The too-clever premise is to use this to look at human bigotry through a different lens. Throw out that gimmick and it's just another action/mystery style TV show but with vampires mixed in. From Alan Ball, the mind behind Six Feet Under, I expected more. It is arch and obvious and borderline lurid. The characters are all rather annoying, the plot is a garden-variety murder mystery, the dialog is banal.
Anna Paquin is a standout as the lead, but that's about all that is worth mentioning. So far. I'll see it through to the end of the season before final judgment is passed.
Entourage - Remains a wispy, pointless, mildly humorous little diversion. Hell, it's only a half hour -- that's not much a time waster. There's nothing to it, but because of the good natured chemistry of the characters, I still tune in. It goes without saying that the show is carried by The Piven, with an occasional over the top assist from Kevin Dillon. Interestingly, it has much less substance than True Blood yet I'm more interested in how Vince's career turns out than any vampire mischief. Best dialogue this year:
Q: "Where are we gonna get magic mushrooms?"
A: "Eric Roberts, of course."
Dexter - My favorite guilty pleasure just returned for season 3. Dexter remains creepy with just a touch of dark poetry. It attempts to shine a light on different behaviors by placing them in the extreme context of a murderer -- one who can and will take his desires, which are well-reasoned and noble, to the ultimate conclusion. Thoughtful concept, but it's still a guilty pleasure. Michael Hall is utterly amazing as the sweet, slightly nerdy, baby-faced monster.
Mad Men - The last great drama left on TV. To think that only a few years ago we had The Sopranos, Deadwood, and The Wire all in active production. Now only Mad Men is left in the drama-for-the-ages category.
Things are falling apart in 1962. (I had this pegged erroneously as 1964 in a previous post.) And as things fall apart for Don he seems to grow more and more narcissistic. The interesting comparison to draw is between Don Draper and Tony Soprano (The creator of Mad Men was a producer of The Sopranos). Both of them could perform kind and even noble acts, but at their core they are nobody's heroes. Tony was of course, a vicious killer. Don is nothing like that, but he is simply not a good person.
Virtually every character is getting what they want this season and coming to have regrets. Who will learn what, is the question. Snap judgement: if anything Mad Men has improved from last year. Which is remarkable.
True Blood - An exercise in heavy-handed irony, this is the story of a world where fake blood has been invented and, as such, vampires can come out of the crypt and try to "mainstream" with regular folk. The too-clever premise is to use this to look at human bigotry through a different lens. Throw out that gimmick and it's just another action/mystery style TV show but with vampires mixed in. From Alan Ball, the mind behind Six Feet Under, I expected more. It is arch and obvious and borderline lurid. The characters are all rather annoying, the plot is a garden-variety murder mystery, the dialog is banal.
Anna Paquin is a standout as the lead, but that's about all that is worth mentioning. So far. I'll see it through to the end of the season before final judgment is passed.
Entourage - Remains a wispy, pointless, mildly humorous little diversion. Hell, it's only a half hour -- that's not much a time waster. There's nothing to it, but because of the good natured chemistry of the characters, I still tune in. It goes without saying that the show is carried by The Piven, with an occasional over the top assist from Kevin Dillon. Interestingly, it has much less substance than True Blood yet I'm more interested in how Vince's career turns out than any vampire mischief. Best dialogue this year:
Q: "Where are we gonna get magic mushrooms?"
A: "Eric Roberts, of course."
Dexter - My favorite guilty pleasure just returned for season 3. Dexter remains creepy with just a touch of dark poetry. It attempts to shine a light on different behaviors by placing them in the extreme context of a murderer -- one who can and will take his desires, which are well-reasoned and noble, to the ultimate conclusion. Thoughtful concept, but it's still a guilty pleasure. Michael Hall is utterly amazing as the sweet, slightly nerdy, baby-faced monster.
Mad Men - The last great drama left on TV. To think that only a few years ago we had The Sopranos, Deadwood, and The Wire all in active production. Now only Mad Men is left in the drama-for-the-ages category.
Things are falling apart in 1962. (I had this pegged erroneously as 1964 in a previous post.) And as things fall apart for Don he seems to grow more and more narcissistic. The interesting comparison to draw is between Don Draper and Tony Soprano (The creator of Mad Men was a producer of The Sopranos). Both of them could perform kind and even noble acts, but at their core they are nobody's heroes. Tony was of course, a vicious killer. Don is nothing like that, but he is simply not a good person.
Virtually every character is getting what they want this season and coming to have regrets. Who will learn what, is the question. Snap judgement: if anything Mad Men has improved from last year. Which is remarkable.
The Life and Times of Frank Bascombe
The Life and Times of Frank Bascombe: Frank Bascombe is the protagonist in a trio of books by author Richard Ford. He is a suburban everyman. Throughout the three books we follow Frank through a few select days of his life and effectively live inside his head. In the first book, The Sportswriter, we are introduced to him as a New jersey based fiction writer turned sports writer (as Ford once was, before resuming fiction) (oh, and, remind you in a small way of anyone else?). He is living a tenuous life in the shadow of the death of his 9-year old son and the subsequent divorce which may or may not have been due to grief over their lost son. In this book Frank is separated emotionally from everyone and everything -- trying desperately not to suffer any more pain. In the course of the book, he seems to accept that pain and tragedy are unavoidable byproducts of living.
Book 2, Independence Day, is at least partially about that re-engagement with the world. Frank has given up sports writing and become a realtor. His aim is to not find his place in the world but make it by attaching to his community and especially reconnecting with his wayward son whose is living with his mother and her new husband, and who may be half crazy (the son). The main theme is the complex relationship between independence and connectivity. In the end Frank seems to have moved from desiring mere engagement to desiring true connection.
Book 3 (and final, according to Ford) is The Lay of the Land wherein we find Frank in the third quarter of his life. His second wife has left him. His children are grown. He is a something of minor real estate mogul in seaside New Jersey. He has prostate cancer. Although he still finds himself fantasizing about all the things he's never done and he hasn't lost hope that at least some of them could happen, but they would have to come to him, he will not go to them. He believes he has achieved something he calls "permanence", but over the course of a Thanksgiving weekend all that changes. His attitude and situation take turns he couldn't have dreamed of. He faces death (somewhat improbably, and not from his prostate) and finally comes to terms with ancient relationships -- friends, children, ex-wives. Coming through it, he realizes permanence is perhaps not so permanent.
The preceding description is dry and dreary but that is not the impression to take of these books. That's just the high concept stuff. The real magic of these books for me was the treat of seeing everything through Frank's eyes. And I mean everything. You follow along with his days from start to finish, including all the boring mindless stuff people do every day. Like I said, for me, that's something special.
Most regular readers know that one of my hobby horses is the lack of fictional documentation of the normal life of the majority of us. Novelists, when they look at the typical middle-class life and the people that lead it, which is rarely, treat it with utter disdain. Mindless, soulless, shallow shells we are, with our selfish, amoral, even evil, tendencies rationalized and concealed (just ask Raymond Carver). Yet there's a reason a majority of us live that way, and a reason many who can't wish they could. It is a good, comfortable, secure life where dramatics are rare and there is time for reflection and examination. It's the best deal for raising a family by a long shot. Most of those who treat it with disdain can only do so because they already live it.
But the bottom line is that it is our life. It is the way we live today. It has unique contemporary, yet still primal, conflicts and resonance. Why not do what novelists are supposed to do and tell the story of it artfully? Ford does exactly that.
Frank Bascombe lives vaguely, full of day-to-day contradiction. He is an admirer of commerce, speaks and participates enthusiastically in it, but dislikes any development that may cause commerce to disrupt his comfortable world. He is a loyal Democrat, but it appears to be a tribal loyalty, rather than the result of serious political philosophy. He seeks comfort and certainty, but tells himself change is good and necessary. He takes half steps and quarter steps. He freely admits that he has lived a smaller life than he could have, but also a happier one. When one of his exs -- the one he cheated on -- offers an olive branch, he realizes he hates her. When the other -- the one who ran out on him for her first husband and may or may not have subsequently driven the first husband to suicide -- wants to come back, he's delighted. He prefers to keep an open mind, but hates his daughter's boyfriend at first sight. He loves is son, but can't tolerate him. Despite all his endless rumination and good intentions, his life is a confusing mess that he can barely understand, never mind explain. In short, he is exactly like you, me, and everyone we know.
We spend time with Frank and his thoughts as he goes about his days. We observe with him the malls and bars and roads and neighborhoods he passes through and we recognize it. He might describe the traffic jams he gets caught in; or the careful-not-to-sound-guilty conversations he has with cops; or having to urinate urgently behind a hardware store, getting caught by security, and garnering sympathy because of his prostate cancer; or of happening to encounter his dentist on the street and realizing half-way through the conversation that he wasn't been recognized -- all the kinds of mundane things that happen to all of us in one form or another. It's hard not to see this as a document of what we do through our days and how it intermingles seamlessly with our fears and dreams and hopes and failures.
Perhaps it's worthwhile to note that the primary criticism of these books is that they are overfull with observational minutiae, either geographical or philosophical. They move slowly, to seemingly trivial ends. The resolutions in Frank's development you do get are marginal and likely to be discarded in the next chapter. All that may be, but Ford's intent, it seems to me, is to simply lay it out there as it actually is. Here is contemporary life. Do you find it dull? Do you find it fascinating? Empty? Rich? Small? Scary? Brave? Sad? Comic? The spiritual precedents here are Updike's Rabbit Angstrom and Walker Percy's Binx Bollinger, but it is even a step closer to naked, tedious reality. These books serve as the finest fictional documents of the way of our lives at the turn of the millennium. It's likely that future generations will look at them for understanding of our hour-to-hour existence. Might be worth seeing what they'll see.
Book 2, Independence Day, is at least partially about that re-engagement with the world. Frank has given up sports writing and become a realtor. His aim is to not find his place in the world but make it by attaching to his community and especially reconnecting with his wayward son whose is living with his mother and her new husband, and who may be half crazy (the son). The main theme is the complex relationship between independence and connectivity. In the end Frank seems to have moved from desiring mere engagement to desiring true connection.
Book 3 (and final, according to Ford) is The Lay of the Land wherein we find Frank in the third quarter of his life. His second wife has left him. His children are grown. He is a something of minor real estate mogul in seaside New Jersey. He has prostate cancer. Although he still finds himself fantasizing about all the things he's never done and he hasn't lost hope that at least some of them could happen, but they would have to come to him, he will not go to them. He believes he has achieved something he calls "permanence", but over the course of a Thanksgiving weekend all that changes. His attitude and situation take turns he couldn't have dreamed of. He faces death (somewhat improbably, and not from his prostate) and finally comes to terms with ancient relationships -- friends, children, ex-wives. Coming through it, he realizes permanence is perhaps not so permanent.
The preceding description is dry and dreary but that is not the impression to take of these books. That's just the high concept stuff. The real magic of these books for me was the treat of seeing everything through Frank's eyes. And I mean everything. You follow along with his days from start to finish, including all the boring mindless stuff people do every day. Like I said, for me, that's something special.
Most regular readers know that one of my hobby horses is the lack of fictional documentation of the normal life of the majority of us. Novelists, when they look at the typical middle-class life and the people that lead it, which is rarely, treat it with utter disdain. Mindless, soulless, shallow shells we are, with our selfish, amoral, even evil, tendencies rationalized and concealed (just ask Raymond Carver). Yet there's a reason a majority of us live that way, and a reason many who can't wish they could. It is a good, comfortable, secure life where dramatics are rare and there is time for reflection and examination. It's the best deal for raising a family by a long shot. Most of those who treat it with disdain can only do so because they already live it.
But the bottom line is that it is our life. It is the way we live today. It has unique contemporary, yet still primal, conflicts and resonance. Why not do what novelists are supposed to do and tell the story of it artfully? Ford does exactly that.
Frank Bascombe lives vaguely, full of day-to-day contradiction. He is an admirer of commerce, speaks and participates enthusiastically in it, but dislikes any development that may cause commerce to disrupt his comfortable world. He is a loyal Democrat, but it appears to be a tribal loyalty, rather than the result of serious political philosophy. He seeks comfort and certainty, but tells himself change is good and necessary. He takes half steps and quarter steps. He freely admits that he has lived a smaller life than he could have, but also a happier one. When one of his exs -- the one he cheated on -- offers an olive branch, he realizes he hates her. When the other -- the one who ran out on him for her first husband and may or may not have subsequently driven the first husband to suicide -- wants to come back, he's delighted. He prefers to keep an open mind, but hates his daughter's boyfriend at first sight. He loves is son, but can't tolerate him. Despite all his endless rumination and good intentions, his life is a confusing mess that he can barely understand, never mind explain. In short, he is exactly like you, me, and everyone we know.
We spend time with Frank and his thoughts as he goes about his days. We observe with him the malls and bars and roads and neighborhoods he passes through and we recognize it. He might describe the traffic jams he gets caught in; or the careful-not-to-sound-guilty conversations he has with cops; or having to urinate urgently behind a hardware store, getting caught by security, and garnering sympathy because of his prostate cancer; or of happening to encounter his dentist on the street and realizing half-way through the conversation that he wasn't been recognized -- all the kinds of mundane things that happen to all of us in one form or another. It's hard not to see this as a document of what we do through our days and how it intermingles seamlessly with our fears and dreams and hopes and failures.
Perhaps it's worthwhile to note that the primary criticism of these books is that they are overfull with observational minutiae, either geographical or philosophical. They move slowly, to seemingly trivial ends. The resolutions in Frank's development you do get are marginal and likely to be discarded in the next chapter. All that may be, but Ford's intent, it seems to me, is to simply lay it out there as it actually is. Here is contemporary life. Do you find it dull? Do you find it fascinating? Empty? Rich? Small? Scary? Brave? Sad? Comic? The spiritual precedents here are Updike's Rabbit Angstrom and Walker Percy's Binx Bollinger, but it is even a step closer to naked, tedious reality. These books serve as the finest fictional documents of the way of our lives at the turn of the millennium. It's likely that future generations will look at them for understanding of our hour-to-hour existence. Might be worth seeing what they'll see.
Money Honey
Money Honey: As I mentioned the financial meltdown has not adversely affected my life so far. Yes, it's a down year for my 401k and IRA. And my regular stock trading has taken about the same hit as everyone else's, but I was not counting on that money so what I'll probably do is sell off a bunch for the tax benefit and immediate buy up some index funds and wait for the next bull market. Actually, with prices so depressed I should probably buy a new house and a new car.
Housing is obviously cheap now. Judging from recent nearby sales, I think I'm still ahead on my condo. Of course, I've been here quite a few years (is it already 10?) so even the real estate crash couldn't entirely wipe out my gains. I am a creditor's dream, so getting financing wouldn't be a problem. Of course, there is the hassle of moving; the hassle of finding a place and completing a sale; the potential that the real estate market may not recover in my lifetime, or at least not in Michigan. Couple all that with the fact that I am fine living where I am. My condo fees are higher than I would like, but I have quiet, non-nosy neighbors, a safe, low-traffic neighborhood, and I am five minutes drive from anything I need (including work) and about twenty minutes to Ann Arbor for anything I want. Suffice to say, my motivation is low.
A car is a more interesting proposition. In the past 24 years I have owned exactly three cars, all of them Toyotas. I had an '84 Celica that I drove for 9 years, a '93 Camry that I drove for 9 years, and my current '02 Camry (well into 6 years). If I stay true to form, my next car will be a '11 Toyota of some sort, but cars are awfully cheap right now. Especially American cars. You can get enormous discounts on SUVs and Minivans since nobody wants them, and though I hate SUVs (driven by cretinous view-blockers) and have little use for a minivan (not generally associated with bachelors), I love a good deal. They are not particularly fuel efficient, but gas prices are coming back down a bit and the money you save goes a long way to paying for gas.
My choice at the moment would be a Jeep Patriot, with a (relatively) easy on fuel four-cylinder engine. Modern four-cylinder engines easily out-perform many V-8 models from back in the day. Yes, there are other, nicer rides to tempt me, but it's so much car for the money it would be hard to resist.
But we run into the fact that I am happy with my current, paid-for Camry. It hasn't been as trouble free as my previous Toyotas, but whenever I get back into it after a few days in a rental, I realize how quiet and smooth it really is. Once again, motivation to change is insufficient.
I'll probably be kicking myself when it comes time to upgrade (either house or ride) and whining that I should have bought when things were cheap. On the other hand, if I did buy now would I regret spending money on something I don't need instead of, say, flying off to Hawaii sometime soon? Not to decide is to decide.
Housing is obviously cheap now. Judging from recent nearby sales, I think I'm still ahead on my condo. Of course, I've been here quite a few years (is it already 10?) so even the real estate crash couldn't entirely wipe out my gains. I am a creditor's dream, so getting financing wouldn't be a problem. Of course, there is the hassle of moving; the hassle of finding a place and completing a sale; the potential that the real estate market may not recover in my lifetime, or at least not in Michigan. Couple all that with the fact that I am fine living where I am. My condo fees are higher than I would like, but I have quiet, non-nosy neighbors, a safe, low-traffic neighborhood, and I am five minutes drive from anything I need (including work) and about twenty minutes to Ann Arbor for anything I want. Suffice to say, my motivation is low.
A car is a more interesting proposition. In the past 24 years I have owned exactly three cars, all of them Toyotas. I had an '84 Celica that I drove for 9 years, a '93 Camry that I drove for 9 years, and my current '02 Camry (well into 6 years). If I stay true to form, my next car will be a '11 Toyota of some sort, but cars are awfully cheap right now. Especially American cars. You can get enormous discounts on SUVs and Minivans since nobody wants them, and though I hate SUVs (driven by cretinous view-blockers) and have little use for a minivan (not generally associated with bachelors), I love a good deal. They are not particularly fuel efficient, but gas prices are coming back down a bit and the money you save goes a long way to paying for gas.
My choice at the moment would be a Jeep Patriot, with a (relatively) easy on fuel four-cylinder engine. Modern four-cylinder engines easily out-perform many V-8 models from back in the day. Yes, there are other, nicer rides to tempt me, but it's so much car for the money it would be hard to resist.
But we run into the fact that I am happy with my current, paid-for Camry. It hasn't been as trouble free as my previous Toyotas, but whenever I get back into it after a few days in a rental, I realize how quiet and smooth it really is. Once again, motivation to change is insufficient.
I'll probably be kicking myself when it comes time to upgrade (either house or ride) and whining that I should have bought when things were cheap. On the other hand, if I did buy now would I regret spending money on something I don't need instead of, say, flying off to Hawaii sometime soon? Not to decide is to decide.
Quotables
Quotables: Smart sentences and clever comments I've encountered.
Stephen Fry on travel -- "Travel is about two things, and two things only. Bowels and laundry." (source)
Haruki Murakami on fitness -- "I think that one...condition for being a gentleman would be keeping quiet about what you do to stay healthy. A gentleman shouldn't go on and on about what he does to stay fit." (source: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running)
P.J. O'Rourke on his encounter with cancer -- "I have, of all things, a malignant hemorrhoid. What color bracelet does one wear for that?" (source)
Stephen Fry on travel -- "Travel is about two things, and two things only. Bowels and laundry." (source)
Haruki Murakami on fitness -- "I think that one...condition for being a gentleman would be keeping quiet about what you do to stay healthy. A gentleman shouldn't go on and on about what he does to stay fit." (source: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running)
P.J. O'Rourke on his encounter with cancer -- "I have, of all things, a malignant hemorrhoid. What color bracelet does one wear for that?" (source)
Sunday, September 07, 2008
The Month That Was - August 2008
The Month That Was - August 2008: As I get older the months get shorter. Remember when summer vacation was, like, forever? Now I look around and all I see is stuff I had planned on doing but didn't get done. I hereby officially extend summer to include September, because I need another thirty days.
I let the summer pass without putting together an off-season review and conference preview columns for the 2008 NFL season. I suppose that pretty much means I am not going to do the column this year, although I could still hop in mid-season and reboot my usual shtick. A lot of changes took place at blocritics.org. The sports editor, who I liked and liked working with, moved on. Then blogcritics.org got sold to technorati.com, not that it really changes anything. I guess the big thing was that it was a lot of work and I didn't see anything really coming from it. It was at the point where I had to decide if I was going to quit it or really start pushing on it and making something of myself as a sportswriter.
For the time being, it's one less excuse for not keeping up the excruciatingly slow progress on my novel, or the ongoing work on other writing project (top secret, still). Of course every time I read predictions or comments about the upcoming season or see some player acting like an idiot my desire to editorialize nearly overcomes me, so I guess the real test will come around week 7.
No travel again this month. The fact is, my day job has been a bit of bear lately -- lots of scary deadlines and so forth. Getting away for any extended length has been tricky. That will certainly be different come September.
Readings
Viewings
Alien Olympics
Running Man
Detroit Follies
I let the summer pass without putting together an off-season review and conference preview columns for the 2008 NFL season. I suppose that pretty much means I am not going to do the column this year, although I could still hop in mid-season and reboot my usual shtick. A lot of changes took place at blocritics.org. The sports editor, who I liked and liked working with, moved on. Then blogcritics.org got sold to technorati.com, not that it really changes anything. I guess the big thing was that it was a lot of work and I didn't see anything really coming from it. It was at the point where I had to decide if I was going to quit it or really start pushing on it and making something of myself as a sportswriter.
For the time being, it's one less excuse for not keeping up the excruciatingly slow progress on my novel, or the ongoing work on other writing project (top secret, still). Of course every time I read predictions or comments about the upcoming season or see some player acting like an idiot my desire to editorialize nearly overcomes me, so I guess the real test will come around week 7.
No travel again this month. The fact is, my day job has been a bit of bear lately -- lots of scary deadlines and so forth. Getting away for any extended length has been tricky. That will certainly be different come September.
Readings
Viewings
Alien Olympics
Running Man
Detroit Follies
Readings
Readings: No major works read this month, but still much of interest.
Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson -- There have been about 4 movies made based on this long-ish short story and probably a dozen others that borrowed heavily. A psychic investigator gathers a group of folks in a haunted house. Spooky things occur. Personal inter-dynamics mash-up with the psyches of the group. In time, one of them falls under control of the house or is lost to insanity, your call. Tragic ending (in the story anyway -- the movies tend to have Hollywood endings).
Jackson is all about dialogue as a tool. She is exceptionally skilled at moving the plot along and developing the characters simply by letting the conversations do the heavy work. Much of the dialogue is unadorned with adjectives, leaving the reader to fix the voice, it's a tricky task if you are trying to portray madness and it takes some getting used to.
Though a ghost story on the surface, the pleasure in reading this comes not from any suspense or action but in the sharply drawn characters and how they react to each other in the ambiguity of their situation. It goes without saying that it is not about the ghost.
Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius by Jorge Juis Borges -- A real jaw dropper, this short story. A man stumbles across an obscure reference to a long defunct country in central Asia called Uqbar, from whence came an encyclopedia called Orbis Tertius. Orbis Terius is the sum of the efforts of the finest minds of Uqbar to create a fictional world called Tlon.
In the worldview of imaginary Tlon, reality itself is denied. Everything exists only in so far as it affects one through one's senses. For example, in one of Tlon's languages there are no nouns. Instead of "The moon rose over the water" you would have "Upward beyond the onstreaming it mooned." More such examples of the strange epistemology of Tlon are described.
Eventually, it is revealed that Uqbar as well as Tlon, is an invented place, devised sometime in the 17th century by a secret society of intellectuals. By the mid 1800s it had fallen into the hands of a wealthy industrialist who was financing the completion of the encyclopedia, under orders that it have no moral underpinnings (this is related in the form of the project having "no truck with that impostor, Jesus Christ"). By contemporary times (the story was first published in 1940) the encyclopedia was well known and the precepts of the unrealism practiced in fictional Tlon were rapidly subsuming the real world.
This is certainly the best short story I have ever read, and certainly one of the finest pieces of literature of any genre. Borges prose is constructed with the greatest care, as one would suspect of an old master, but the real mind blower is the depth of imagination. Fiction and non-fiction is blended. Levels of reality are created, destroyed, then re-created. It's a detective story. It's an alternate history. Top it all off with the underlying critique of relative morality and post-modernism in general and you can't help but wonder how it all can be done in a little under 6000 words.
You can read it here in translation, side by side with the original Spanish, provided you can put up with white letters on a purple background. Probably better to pick up hard copy somewhere.
Lay of the Land (preview) by Richard Ford -- This is the third in the multi-decade trilogy (The Sportswriter and Independence Day are the first and second) of the life of Frank Bascombe, regular guy. I am only about a third of the way through this but when I picked it up at the tail end of August I dropped everything else I was reading at the time. Often thought of as a more contemporary counterpart to John Updike's Rabbit books, there is nothing in these books but a quiet suburban life, richly told. As such, many people dismiss these as boring. But they were no small inspiration to me when I was writing novels about the absurd shenanigans of normal people, without belittling them or the drama of their lives. Anyone can take a dump on normalcy. Few people can see the beauty in it.
Anyway, I'll have more to say about this next month when I'm finished.
Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson -- There have been about 4 movies made based on this long-ish short story and probably a dozen others that borrowed heavily. A psychic investigator gathers a group of folks in a haunted house. Spooky things occur. Personal inter-dynamics mash-up with the psyches of the group. In time, one of them falls under control of the house or is lost to insanity, your call. Tragic ending (in the story anyway -- the movies tend to have Hollywood endings).
Jackson is all about dialogue as a tool. She is exceptionally skilled at moving the plot along and developing the characters simply by letting the conversations do the heavy work. Much of the dialogue is unadorned with adjectives, leaving the reader to fix the voice, it's a tricky task if you are trying to portray madness and it takes some getting used to.
Though a ghost story on the surface, the pleasure in reading this comes not from any suspense or action but in the sharply drawn characters and how they react to each other in the ambiguity of their situation. It goes without saying that it is not about the ghost.
Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius by Jorge Juis Borges -- A real jaw dropper, this short story. A man stumbles across an obscure reference to a long defunct country in central Asia called Uqbar, from whence came an encyclopedia called Orbis Tertius. Orbis Terius is the sum of the efforts of the finest minds of Uqbar to create a fictional world called Tlon.
In the worldview of imaginary Tlon, reality itself is denied. Everything exists only in so far as it affects one through one's senses. For example, in one of Tlon's languages there are no nouns. Instead of "The moon rose over the water" you would have "Upward beyond the onstreaming it mooned." More such examples of the strange epistemology of Tlon are described.
Eventually, it is revealed that Uqbar as well as Tlon, is an invented place, devised sometime in the 17th century by a secret society of intellectuals. By the mid 1800s it had fallen into the hands of a wealthy industrialist who was financing the completion of the encyclopedia, under orders that it have no moral underpinnings (this is related in the form of the project having "no truck with that impostor, Jesus Christ"). By contemporary times (the story was first published in 1940) the encyclopedia was well known and the precepts of the unrealism practiced in fictional Tlon were rapidly subsuming the real world.
This is certainly the best short story I have ever read, and certainly one of the finest pieces of literature of any genre. Borges prose is constructed with the greatest care, as one would suspect of an old master, but the real mind blower is the depth of imagination. Fiction and non-fiction is blended. Levels of reality are created, destroyed, then re-created. It's a detective story. It's an alternate history. Top it all off with the underlying critique of relative morality and post-modernism in general and you can't help but wonder how it all can be done in a little under 6000 words.
You can read it here in translation, side by side with the original Spanish, provided you can put up with white letters on a purple background. Probably better to pick up hard copy somewhere.
Lay of the Land (preview) by Richard Ford -- This is the third in the multi-decade trilogy (The Sportswriter and Independence Day are the first and second) of the life of Frank Bascombe, regular guy. I am only about a third of the way through this but when I picked it up at the tail end of August I dropped everything else I was reading at the time. Often thought of as a more contemporary counterpart to John Updike's Rabbit books, there is nothing in these books but a quiet suburban life, richly told. As such, many people dismiss these as boring. But they were no small inspiration to me when I was writing novels about the absurd shenanigans of normal people, without belittling them or the drama of their lives. Anyone can take a dump on normalcy. Few people can see the beauty in it.
Anyway, I'll have more to say about this next month when I'm finished.
Viewings
Viewings: Caught three interesting films, all good and all foreign.
Kontroll is a Hungarian dark comedy about life among a team of subway ticket inspectors. They are, generally, slackers in various shapes and sizes, and are essentially charged with ensuring everyone riding the train has a ticket. Of course they have no real power to enforce the rules, other than threats, and they are defied at every turn by moronic commuters of all sorts. They form cliques to guard against the disdain of the world. They engage in shadowy after-hours shenanigans. Essentially, it is a comic window on an undistinguished little subculture built on a pointless dead end service job. Set the scene, add a love interest, a serial killer, and stir vigorously. A nicely done take on the genre. Funny, engaging and entertaining. It's also a cute novelty to see another country's take on honoring their unambitious serving class.
President Last Bang is another black comedy, this time Korean and dramatizing the final day of President Park Chung Hee who was assassinated by the head of the Korean CIA in 1979. Park is portrayed as a letch and his cronies are ass-kissing cretins. The decision to kill the president is spur of the moment. The head of the KCIA makes noises about a goal of preserving democracy, but it is clear he is simply annoyed and disgusted from serving with these idiots and, frankly, he's having a bad day. The act itself as an exercise in bungled confusion and only succeeds because the security forces more confused and inept than the assassins. Comedy is mixed with chaos and violence. The effect is almost surreal.
The film works especially well because no characters are shown as irredeemable. The KCIA head seems like a decent person who is wounded by the shameful duties of his job, but also a deep cynic. His aid is a first class douchebag, but he has had to suffer constant physical and mental abuse from his superiors. The president is a dirtbag, but at the moment he is about to be killed he looks into his assassin's face not with cowardice or defiance, but befuddlement. I don't know how factual this portrayal actually is, but it strikes me as the sort of film that will define the event going forward in the popular mind.
Lives of Others is a German thriller set in East Berlin before the fall of the Wall. No comedy here. This is the story of a Gerd Wiesler, a Stasi agent assigned to monitor the activities of a dissident playwright and his actress wife. Wiesler is a dour, lonely man leading an empty, loveless life. As he listens in and follows the couple he is assigned to, he becomes more and more attached to them and sympathetic to their lives. Events lead to him being ordered to destroy the lives and work of the couple he now cares for. He does everything in his power to avoid doing so. He lies and falsifies documents to the extent he feels safe doing so. He manipulates events to whatever extent he can, but in the end he has no choice but to break the actress during an interrogation under the eye of his superior. Still, he makes one last desperate and futile act to prevent their total destruction.
In the end he succeeds, marginally, but for his trouble he becomes suspect himself and gets assigned to the Stasi mailroom doing pointless unimportant tasks. Redemption only comes some years later after the Wall comes down.
William F. Buckley declared this film to be the greatest ever made, which is overstating the case a bit. But it is certainly a profound piece of work. For most people, the picture of resistance to the East German regime probably contains a picture of an earnest Solzhenitsyn-esque protestor diligently and famously fighting the good fight, getting imprisoned and tortured but never giving in, sacrificing all liberty and life itself for a higher cause. But the majority of people in the world are not of that stripe. The majority are not ready or brave or unselfish enough to completely sacrifice the one life they have to a cause, however worthy. But maybe they would make the safe compromises and take the small risks to save someone here or there. Were I to be caught in a similar situation, I have no illusion that I would be a Solzhenitsyn, but I hope I would at least be a Wiesler.
Kontroll is a Hungarian dark comedy about life among a team of subway ticket inspectors. They are, generally, slackers in various shapes and sizes, and are essentially charged with ensuring everyone riding the train has a ticket. Of course they have no real power to enforce the rules, other than threats, and they are defied at every turn by moronic commuters of all sorts. They form cliques to guard against the disdain of the world. They engage in shadowy after-hours shenanigans. Essentially, it is a comic window on an undistinguished little subculture built on a pointless dead end service job. Set the scene, add a love interest, a serial killer, and stir vigorously. A nicely done take on the genre. Funny, engaging and entertaining. It's also a cute novelty to see another country's take on honoring their unambitious serving class.
President Last Bang is another black comedy, this time Korean and dramatizing the final day of President Park Chung Hee who was assassinated by the head of the Korean CIA in 1979. Park is portrayed as a letch and his cronies are ass-kissing cretins. The decision to kill the president is spur of the moment. The head of the KCIA makes noises about a goal of preserving democracy, but it is clear he is simply annoyed and disgusted from serving with these idiots and, frankly, he's having a bad day. The act itself as an exercise in bungled confusion and only succeeds because the security forces more confused and inept than the assassins. Comedy is mixed with chaos and violence. The effect is almost surreal.
The film works especially well because no characters are shown as irredeemable. The KCIA head seems like a decent person who is wounded by the shameful duties of his job, but also a deep cynic. His aid is a first class douchebag, but he has had to suffer constant physical and mental abuse from his superiors. The president is a dirtbag, but at the moment he is about to be killed he looks into his assassin's face not with cowardice or defiance, but befuddlement. I don't know how factual this portrayal actually is, but it strikes me as the sort of film that will define the event going forward in the popular mind.
Lives of Others is a German thriller set in East Berlin before the fall of the Wall. No comedy here. This is the story of a Gerd Wiesler, a Stasi agent assigned to monitor the activities of a dissident playwright and his actress wife. Wiesler is a dour, lonely man leading an empty, loveless life. As he listens in and follows the couple he is assigned to, he becomes more and more attached to them and sympathetic to their lives. Events lead to him being ordered to destroy the lives and work of the couple he now cares for. He does everything in his power to avoid doing so. He lies and falsifies documents to the extent he feels safe doing so. He manipulates events to whatever extent he can, but in the end he has no choice but to break the actress during an interrogation under the eye of his superior. Still, he makes one last desperate and futile act to prevent their total destruction.
In the end he succeeds, marginally, but for his trouble he becomes suspect himself and gets assigned to the Stasi mailroom doing pointless unimportant tasks. Redemption only comes some years later after the Wall comes down.
William F. Buckley declared this film to be the greatest ever made, which is overstating the case a bit. But it is certainly a profound piece of work. For most people, the picture of resistance to the East German regime probably contains a picture of an earnest Solzhenitsyn-esque protestor diligently and famously fighting the good fight, getting imprisoned and tortured but never giving in, sacrificing all liberty and life itself for a higher cause. But the majority of people in the world are not of that stripe. The majority are not ready or brave or unselfish enough to completely sacrifice the one life they have to a cause, however worthy. But maybe they would make the safe compromises and take the small risks to save someone here or there. Were I to be caught in a similar situation, I have no illusion that I would be a Solzhenitsyn, but I hope I would at least be a Wiesler.
Running Man
Running Man: You may recall my adventures getting a bike from a couple of months back. It's worked out well. I've spent more than a few afternoons tooling around on it in addition to taking a number of more serious rides. But summer is winding down, and that means I need to turn to something else. Luckily running has re-emerged as a viable alternative thanks to some wonderful new shoes from Nike.
I used to run a fair amount. Even did some 5k and 5 mile races. But the years took their toll on my poor feet and legs. Technically speaking, I have high arches and I suppinate (tend to walk or run with too much emphasis on the out edges of my feet). Non-technically, that means I am simply not well constructed for bearing weight or absorbing impact. The fact is I never in my life got beyond five miles and the fact that my legs are on the short side meant that I never really increased my speed all that much.
So decades went by and the only running I did was a brief warm ups and maybe some interval drills in a boot camp class -- never much over a mile, and even then I felt the impact pretty seriously. But I was thinking I probably should give running longer distances one last shot before I get to old, so on a recommendation from a friend I tried a pair of Nike Vomeros. Easily the most comfortable shoe I have ever put on. They feel like you have pillows on your feet.
First test: I hop on treadmill figuring I'll knock off a mile or so just to see how I feel. Next thing I know I've covered 5k without a stitch of pain. I had to make myself stop. Next test: I tell myself I'll burn off another 5k this time out on the road and see how they do. Zoom, I ripped off four miles just because I was having such a good and easy run. Imagine that: no running for many, many years and suddenly I can knock off three or four miles without a second thought. That's incredible. I would have thought I would be working my way back up to my previous five mile limit but I can get there almost instantly.
If you run and your feet are like mine, or you just want a nice comfy cushioned shoe, you need Nike Vomeros. They list for about $125 but I have found them at Nike Outlet stores for $89. I bought two pair, just in case. Seriously, go out and buy them now. They're that good. You can thank me later.
I used to run a fair amount. Even did some 5k and 5 mile races. But the years took their toll on my poor feet and legs. Technically speaking, I have high arches and I suppinate (tend to walk or run with too much emphasis on the out edges of my feet). Non-technically, that means I am simply not well constructed for bearing weight or absorbing impact. The fact is I never in my life got beyond five miles and the fact that my legs are on the short side meant that I never really increased my speed all that much.
So decades went by and the only running I did was a brief warm ups and maybe some interval drills in a boot camp class -- never much over a mile, and even then I felt the impact pretty seriously. But I was thinking I probably should give running longer distances one last shot before I get to old, so on a recommendation from a friend I tried a pair of Nike Vomeros. Easily the most comfortable shoe I have ever put on. They feel like you have pillows on your feet.
First test: I hop on treadmill figuring I'll knock off a mile or so just to see how I feel. Next thing I know I've covered 5k without a stitch of pain. I had to make myself stop. Next test: I tell myself I'll burn off another 5k this time out on the road and see how they do. Zoom, I ripped off four miles just because I was having such a good and easy run. Imagine that: no running for many, many years and suddenly I can knock off three or four miles without a second thought. That's incredible. I would have thought I would be working my way back up to my previous five mile limit but I can get there almost instantly.
If you run and your feet are like mine, or you just want a nice comfy cushioned shoe, you need Nike Vomeros. They list for about $125 but I have found them at Nike Outlet stores for $89. I bought two pair, just in case. Seriously, go out and buy them now. They're that good. You can thank me later.
Alien Olympics
Alien Olympics: I was entirely unmoved by the Olympics. Olympians are, by and large, inhuman. 12-year old Chinese gymnasts aside, even the older gymnasts are outliers. Grow much higher than five feet, or find that your spine doesn't quite curve into a perfect semi-circle? You're better off trying out as a Cirque du Soleil extra. Swimming, volleyball, basketball? If you're under 6'4", you're a dwarf. The skills and talents they display are impressive, but it can be like watching science fiction about a race of superior aliens.
There are some holdout sports. Certainly the ones that don't specialize so heavily -- decathletes are fairly normally structured because they can't afford to be to freakily specialized for one thing. Boxers are still boxers (I would argue that boxing is the most physically challenging sport) and their weight classes keep them looking fairly pretty normal. Sports that require rackets or more complex machines such as archery, rowing, or sailing are still accessible folks of normal dimensions, but those aren't big ticket events. The glory events are the domain of those in the 99.999th percentile of certain genetic predispositions. I realize that they put enormous effort into training and they wouldn't be there without all the hard work, but the freak-of-nature aspect makes it a spectacle rather than something to identify with.
But that's hypocritical of me. I am a huge NFL fan, and those guys are not exactly everyday ordinary specimens are they? So what is it? Why don't I care about the Olympics? Maybe because it seems so manufactured. Maybe because of all the treacley superlatives that emanate from every corner. Maybe simply because the whole mess seems like a multi-year PR campaign to make everyone stand up and shout "This is a beautiful and important thing!!!" and actually believe it. Then at the very end, we set the stage for the next one in four years by making Jimmy Page look like a doofus.
I do hope that Dexter, MI never wins an Olympic bid.
There are some holdout sports. Certainly the ones that don't specialize so heavily -- decathletes are fairly normally structured because they can't afford to be to freakily specialized for one thing. Boxers are still boxers (I would argue that boxing is the most physically challenging sport) and their weight classes keep them looking fairly pretty normal. Sports that require rackets or more complex machines such as archery, rowing, or sailing are still accessible folks of normal dimensions, but those aren't big ticket events. The glory events are the domain of those in the 99.999th percentile of certain genetic predispositions. I realize that they put enormous effort into training and they wouldn't be there without all the hard work, but the freak-of-nature aspect makes it a spectacle rather than something to identify with.
But that's hypocritical of me. I am a huge NFL fan, and those guys are not exactly everyday ordinary specimens are they? So what is it? Why don't I care about the Olympics? Maybe because it seems so manufactured. Maybe because of all the treacley superlatives that emanate from every corner. Maybe simply because the whole mess seems like a multi-year PR campaign to make everyone stand up and shout "This is a beautiful and important thing!!!" and actually believe it. Then at the very end, we set the stage for the next one in four years by making Jimmy Page look like a doofus.
I do hope that Dexter, MI never wins an Olympic bid.
Detroit Follies
Detroit Follies: Documenting the ultimate demise of the city of my birth...
•The dead are fleeing Detroit along with everybody else. No, zombification has not occurred, but people are moving their deceased loved ones out to the suburbs mostly so they don't have to go into Detroit to visit their graves. That is how desperate people around here are to never have to set foot in Detroit.
•Our black-Irish mayor Kwame Kilpatrick finally got tossed into the pokey for real. He admitted to lying under oath, which is probably the least of his actual crimes, got a 120-day sentence, and resigned as Mayor, claiming that he was now set up for a comeback. Despite destroying the careers of numerous people and wasting tens of millions in public money, I have no doubt the people of Detroit will re-elect him in the next election. They deserve him.
•Every NFL season comes along with a healthy dose of unintentional comedy, but it's entirely possible that this season has peaked early. Rudi Johnson signed as a running back with the Lions just before the start of the season. So he shows up at camp, drops his bag outside GM Matt Millen's office and goes inside to meet with the boss. He comes out and his bag is missing. Well, the place is watched by surveillance cameras so they just go to the tape to see what happened. It turns out the guy he was replacing, one Tatum Bell, stole his bag. So they get in contact with him and explain that they have him on tape taking the bag and he claims it was a mistake, he thought it was someone else's and he dropped it as his girlfriends house. They retrieve the bag, minus Rudi's ID, Credit Cards, Cash and "some undergarments." Bell makes a public statement in response: "I ain't no thief!" but the double negative speaks volumes. You can't make this stuff up.
•One bit of good news. Detroit Metro Airport is getting a new terminal. Detroit Metro (DTW) is a Northwest hub and a few years back to built a brand new terminal for them, which turned things around 180 degrees. The previous terminal was horrendous -- like some kind of third world hell hole transplanted into the Midwest. The new terminal in contrast was a stunner. Really one of the finest airport terminals I've been in, and I've been in a few. Now they have new one for the non-hub airlines set to open mid-September. This is great news for all travelers around these parts, which includes me.
By the way, DTW is not even near the city; it's a good 20 miles west so even if you fly into Detroit Metro, you still don't have to go into Detroit. So we got that going for us.
•The dead are fleeing Detroit along with everybody else. No, zombification has not occurred, but people are moving their deceased loved ones out to the suburbs mostly so they don't have to go into Detroit to visit their graves. That is how desperate people around here are to never have to set foot in Detroit.
•Our black-Irish mayor Kwame Kilpatrick finally got tossed into the pokey for real. He admitted to lying under oath, which is probably the least of his actual crimes, got a 120-day sentence, and resigned as Mayor, claiming that he was now set up for a comeback. Despite destroying the careers of numerous people and wasting tens of millions in public money, I have no doubt the people of Detroit will re-elect him in the next election. They deserve him.
•Every NFL season comes along with a healthy dose of unintentional comedy, but it's entirely possible that this season has peaked early. Rudi Johnson signed as a running back with the Lions just before the start of the season. So he shows up at camp, drops his bag outside GM Matt Millen's office and goes inside to meet with the boss. He comes out and his bag is missing. Well, the place is watched by surveillance cameras so they just go to the tape to see what happened. It turns out the guy he was replacing, one Tatum Bell, stole his bag. So they get in contact with him and explain that they have him on tape taking the bag and he claims it was a mistake, he thought it was someone else's and he dropped it as his girlfriends house. They retrieve the bag, minus Rudi's ID, Credit Cards, Cash and "some undergarments." Bell makes a public statement in response: "I ain't no thief!" but the double negative speaks volumes. You can't make this stuff up.
•One bit of good news. Detroit Metro Airport is getting a new terminal. Detroit Metro (DTW) is a Northwest hub and a few years back to built a brand new terminal for them, which turned things around 180 degrees. The previous terminal was horrendous -- like some kind of third world hell hole transplanted into the Midwest. The new terminal in contrast was a stunner. Really one of the finest airport terminals I've been in, and I've been in a few. Now they have new one for the non-hub airlines set to open mid-September. This is great news for all travelers around these parts, which includes me.
By the way, DTW is not even near the city; it's a good 20 miles west so even if you fly into Detroit Metro, you still don't have to go into Detroit. So we got that going for us.
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
The Month That Was - July 2008
The Month That Was - July 2008: A couple of short trips this month. NYC is described below. I also assisted in the annual ritual of dropping Miss Anna off at camp in Cheboygan, MI with the requisite trip to Mackinac Island which I probably won't describe since it was a very short and relatively uneventful trip. It's amazing how efficient we have become at the annual Mac Island trips. We know which ferry to take, we know where to stay, we know what to do on the island, we know where to stop for last minute camp supplies, it's really become a no brainer. Kind of a shame this could be the last year for it.
More importantly you can finally read about my Newfoundland adventure. Some of the pics are great.
Lastly, check out this (somewhat slow loading) picture of a moth that spent a couple of days on the wall just outside my door. It's freaky looking, yes, but the real kicker is that the thing was enormous. Wingspan of 7 inches easily. It took up residence in that spot and literally didn't move for two days. I took to calling it Mothra and offering a friendly greeting as I passed. After a couple of days, it just disappeared in the dark of night, never to be seen again. Vaya con Dios, Mothra.
Chelsea Schmelsea (an NYC 4th)
Quickie Reviews
It's Not Happening in Detroit
The Return of the Little Black Book (or The Horror of Motorola Phone Tools)
More importantly you can finally read about my Newfoundland adventure. Some of the pics are great.
Lastly, check out this (somewhat slow loading) picture of a moth that spent a couple of days on the wall just outside my door. It's freaky looking, yes, but the real kicker is that the thing was enormous. Wingspan of 7 inches easily. It took up residence in that spot and literally didn't move for two days. I took to calling it Mothra and offering a friendly greeting as I passed. After a couple of days, it just disappeared in the dark of night, never to be seen again. Vaya con Dios, Mothra.
Chelsea Schmelsea (an NYC 4th)
Quickie Reviews
It's Not Happening in Detroit
The Return of the Little Black Book (or The Horror of Motorola Phone Tools)
Chelsea Schmelsea (an NYC 4th)
Chelsea Schmelsea (an NYC 4th): It had been a couple of years since I was in Manhattan so I went back for the 4th. Rather than my usual midtown locale, I stayed in Chelsea -- dirty and smelly, like NYC from the 70s, I can only assume. Back to midtown next time.
I didn't really have much of a plan. I wanted to see the Waterfalls. I had hoped to catch the fireworks. Beyond that, I figured a bit of time in Central Park, a visit to one or two museums, and some foodie stuff.
I started with a mistake: The Empire State Building. As soon as I checked in I hit the street and got all excited about being in Manhattan again so I went in the ESB on impulse. I should have known better. It's a ridiculous wait (45 minutes in my case, which is relatively short) for a few minutes of a pretty view among a thick crowd of people. Totally annoying -- like waiting an hour for a two minute roller coaster ride, only not as exciting. I would have been better off finding a jazz club.
The next morning I cabbed it to the Seaport early for a harbor boat tour on the Zephyr. A+. Highly recommended. A full measure of local history and it passes all the Waterfalls. The boat is big and comfy with plenty of room. (I have heard plenty of good things from a number of sources about the various boat tours around Manhattan. Just FYI.)
From then on, it was one head-slapper after another as I tried to find some lunch. You see, on the rare occasions I am in Manhattan, I like my meals to be something special. Not necessarily expensive or fancy. Just something I can't do elsewhere. In my head I have a litany of places I have liked in the past and a few I have heard of to try. These experiences are key to an NYC visit for me.
From the Seaport I walked back to Chinatown hoping to get a Bahn Mi at Saigon Bakery. It was closed for the 4th. Since when are Vietnamese restaurants closed on the 4th? Every other place in Chinatown was open. Fine. Screw the Bahn Mi. I hopped the subway to midtown for my traditional greasy lunch at the Hidden Burger Joint in Le Parker Meridien. The line was out the door and into the lobby -- not so hidden after all. All right, forget the cheap eats. Over to the MOMA and get something high-end at The Moderne. Sorry sir, we're closed for the afternoon, open again at 5:30. OK, well, I'll just go in the MOMA at troll around for a couple of hours until you're open. Can't do that either because it's just turned 4 o'clock and the MOMA is free on Fridays from 4-8 and the line is literally (yes, literally) around the block.
By this time lunch has turned into dinner and I am getting really cranky. What I should have done was hit the falafel cart across the street for some lamb and rice. Instead, I darted over to Columbus Circle and the Blue Ribbon Sushi Bar and Grill. Finally. I got a nice glass of wine and some delicious, if seriously expensive, Korean Fried Chicken. I spent an entire afternoon ping-ponging around Manhattan looking for the right grub. There's something very wrong with me.
Then I headed back to MOMA, with the crowd thinned out I was able to get to the Dali exhibit, which was only so-so, although I may have been spoiled by the Dali Museum in St. Pete, FL. Otherwise the MOMA remains the MOMA.
Lastly back in the subway and down to the South Pier in the hopes of catching the fireworks. Crowd was ridiculous -- millions and millions. Then it started to rain. I watched about 15 minutes then beat a hasty retreat and called it a night -- exhausted. A full day, if frustrating.
The next day I wanted to rent a bike and ride though Central Park, but it was raining of course. It has rained, or threatened to rain so as to alter my plans, during all of my travels this summer (Newfoundland, Chicago, NY, Mackinac). Next vacation will have to be the desert. Sheesh.
I stopped for a bagel and lox breakfast at Lindy's, but it was clear the rain was not going to let up so I subwayed over to the Met Museum. There is a rather well-publicized Jeffery Koons exhibit on the rooftop. Naturally, it was closed thanks to the weather. So I wandered around a bit -- there was a cute exhibit on superhero costumes: interesting and fun, but not exactly art. I spent some time in the Contemporary Asian galleries, mostly because fewer people were there. I kept checking for a break in the rain so I could at least hang in Central Park for a while, but no.
At this point I was frustrated as hell because I couldn't seem to get done anything that I wanted to do. Worse, every failure was starting to grind on my poor feet as I ended up standing around and walking from subway stop to stop. So I decide to treat myself to a straight razor shave and a little pampering. There was a new high-end barber shop/spa-for-men, called Spiff, that had just opened this year so I made the hoof over to 3rd avenue to see if they'd take a walk in. Guess what? They were closed. Their hours on the door said they were open on Saturday until 4. It was Saturday and well before 4, yet the place was closed. This was getting ridiculous. Art of Shaving was just around the corner, so I checked with them: Sorry, no openings until Monday. We'd gone beyond ridiculous to absurd.
Now I was hungry again, so I walked a couple blocks further and hit Zenburger for a burger fix since since I couldn't get near the Hidden Burger joint the previous day. Closed. They decided to close July 4th and 5th. I swore an oath never to visit NYC on a holiday again. Un-freakin'-believable.
It so happens that right next door to Zenburger is a place called Homme Spa, a very nice looking day spa. It had to be a sign. Instantly, I decided that I deserved a massage. Dammit, I did.
Homme Spa was, well, interesting -- an Asian-run very stylish space, with extremely attentive staff. Unlike most spas where you are handed a robe slippers and given a few minutes to undress and shower, an attendant (a nice middle aged Asian fellow) undresses you, and drys you off after the shower (fortunately he does not soap you up or scrub you down). The massage was excellent, best Swedish style massage I have ever had. I was going use the sauna and shower again afterwards but suddenly the place became coed -- there was only one set of showers and lockers -- and the nice middle-aged Asian fellow was trying to arrange activities so me and a female guest were not exposed to each other. I decided to leave -- good massage, but very strange place. (By the way, in case you are wondering, I got no vibe that is was the sort of place you could get a "happy ending".)
Feeling somewhat better I made my way over to Columbus Circle and snagged a delicious dinner at Robuchon Bakery -- a casual alternative to Joel Robuchon's 8-star (or whatever) restaurant. I had a cheesesteak knockoff -- a Panini made with Waygu - which was awesome. I finished the evening with a Jamba Juice nightcap in Times Square on the way back and got my evening's entertainment by watching the baristas try to fend off a pigeon that decided to roost inside the shop.
The next day I had to fly out around dinner time so I took the opportunity for a visit to the JCC gym on the Upper West Side for a class called "Melting." Melting involves using hard plastic foam rollers to apply serious, even painful, pressure to the connective tissue (ligaments and tendons and such). The theory is that this stuff can get loosened up through what is effectively a form of massage and that leads to generally improved flexibility and ease of movement. If you have ever heard of something called Rolfing, it is essentially a poor man's version of that. It was worth a try. I am always looking for things that will stop me from becoming a hunched up old man, and this definite goes into the bag of tricks. In truth, it was just nice to be off my feet for a while.
With only a couple hours left, and sunny skies at last, I took a quick walk through Central Park, snagged a pretzel, and chilled out for a while on the lawn outside Tavern on the Green.
And that was that. I stupidly scheduled my flight out from Newark and so faced an hour long, $70 cab ride to get out. A good weekend in retrospect, but frustrating. But New York isn't supposed to be easy is it?
A smattering of pics:
•Waterfall under the Brooklyn Bridge
•Same waterfall up close
•The Manhattan skyline beyond the Brooklyn Bridge
•The Staten Island Ferry
•Ellis Island
•A classic schooner sailing under the Statue of Liberty
•Statue of Liberty
•The Manhattan skyline from the southwest
•I found this light fixture to be oddly fascinating
•Little Italy in full swing (no sign of Don Fanucci)
•For some reason, the Chinatown Starbucks makes me smile
I didn't really have much of a plan. I wanted to see the Waterfalls. I had hoped to catch the fireworks. Beyond that, I figured a bit of time in Central Park, a visit to one or two museums, and some foodie stuff.
I started with a mistake: The Empire State Building. As soon as I checked in I hit the street and got all excited about being in Manhattan again so I went in the ESB on impulse. I should have known better. It's a ridiculous wait (45 minutes in my case, which is relatively short) for a few minutes of a pretty view among a thick crowd of people. Totally annoying -- like waiting an hour for a two minute roller coaster ride, only not as exciting. I would have been better off finding a jazz club.
The next morning I cabbed it to the Seaport early for a harbor boat tour on the Zephyr. A+. Highly recommended. A full measure of local history and it passes all the Waterfalls. The boat is big and comfy with plenty of room. (I have heard plenty of good things from a number of sources about the various boat tours around Manhattan. Just FYI.)
From then on, it was one head-slapper after another as I tried to find some lunch. You see, on the rare occasions I am in Manhattan, I like my meals to be something special. Not necessarily expensive or fancy. Just something I can't do elsewhere. In my head I have a litany of places I have liked in the past and a few I have heard of to try. These experiences are key to an NYC visit for me.
From the Seaport I walked back to Chinatown hoping to get a Bahn Mi at Saigon Bakery. It was closed for the 4th. Since when are Vietnamese restaurants closed on the 4th? Every other place in Chinatown was open. Fine. Screw the Bahn Mi. I hopped the subway to midtown for my traditional greasy lunch at the Hidden Burger Joint in Le Parker Meridien. The line was out the door and into the lobby -- not so hidden after all. All right, forget the cheap eats. Over to the MOMA and get something high-end at The Moderne. Sorry sir, we're closed for the afternoon, open again at 5:30. OK, well, I'll just go in the MOMA at troll around for a couple of hours until you're open. Can't do that either because it's just turned 4 o'clock and the MOMA is free on Fridays from 4-8 and the line is literally (yes, literally) around the block.
By this time lunch has turned into dinner and I am getting really cranky. What I should have done was hit the falafel cart across the street for some lamb and rice. Instead, I darted over to Columbus Circle and the Blue Ribbon Sushi Bar and Grill. Finally. I got a nice glass of wine and some delicious, if seriously expensive, Korean Fried Chicken. I spent an entire afternoon ping-ponging around Manhattan looking for the right grub. There's something very wrong with me.
Then I headed back to MOMA, with the crowd thinned out I was able to get to the Dali exhibit, which was only so-so, although I may have been spoiled by the Dali Museum in St. Pete, FL. Otherwise the MOMA remains the MOMA.
Lastly back in the subway and down to the South Pier in the hopes of catching the fireworks. Crowd was ridiculous -- millions and millions. Then it started to rain. I watched about 15 minutes then beat a hasty retreat and called it a night -- exhausted. A full day, if frustrating.
The next day I wanted to rent a bike and ride though Central Park, but it was raining of course. It has rained, or threatened to rain so as to alter my plans, during all of my travels this summer (Newfoundland, Chicago, NY, Mackinac). Next vacation will have to be the desert. Sheesh.
I stopped for a bagel and lox breakfast at Lindy's, but it was clear the rain was not going to let up so I subwayed over to the Met Museum. There is a rather well-publicized Jeffery Koons exhibit on the rooftop. Naturally, it was closed thanks to the weather. So I wandered around a bit -- there was a cute exhibit on superhero costumes: interesting and fun, but not exactly art. I spent some time in the Contemporary Asian galleries, mostly because fewer people were there. I kept checking for a break in the rain so I could at least hang in Central Park for a while, but no.
At this point I was frustrated as hell because I couldn't seem to get done anything that I wanted to do. Worse, every failure was starting to grind on my poor feet as I ended up standing around and walking from subway stop to stop. So I decide to treat myself to a straight razor shave and a little pampering. There was a new high-end barber shop/spa-for-men, called Spiff, that had just opened this year so I made the hoof over to 3rd avenue to see if they'd take a walk in. Guess what? They were closed. Their hours on the door said they were open on Saturday until 4. It was Saturday and well before 4, yet the place was closed. This was getting ridiculous. Art of Shaving was just around the corner, so I checked with them: Sorry, no openings until Monday. We'd gone beyond ridiculous to absurd.
Now I was hungry again, so I walked a couple blocks further and hit Zenburger for a burger fix since since I couldn't get near the Hidden Burger joint the previous day. Closed. They decided to close July 4th and 5th. I swore an oath never to visit NYC on a holiday again. Un-freakin'-believable.
It so happens that right next door to Zenburger is a place called Homme Spa, a very nice looking day spa. It had to be a sign. Instantly, I decided that I deserved a massage. Dammit, I did.
Homme Spa was, well, interesting -- an Asian-run very stylish space, with extremely attentive staff. Unlike most spas where you are handed a robe slippers and given a few minutes to undress and shower, an attendant (a nice middle aged Asian fellow) undresses you, and drys you off after the shower (fortunately he does not soap you up or scrub you down). The massage was excellent, best Swedish style massage I have ever had. I was going use the sauna and shower again afterwards but suddenly the place became coed -- there was only one set of showers and lockers -- and the nice middle-aged Asian fellow was trying to arrange activities so me and a female guest were not exposed to each other. I decided to leave -- good massage, but very strange place. (By the way, in case you are wondering, I got no vibe that is was the sort of place you could get a "happy ending".)
Feeling somewhat better I made my way over to Columbus Circle and snagged a delicious dinner at Robuchon Bakery -- a casual alternative to Joel Robuchon's 8-star (or whatever) restaurant. I had a cheesesteak knockoff -- a Panini made with Waygu - which was awesome. I finished the evening with a Jamba Juice nightcap in Times Square on the way back and got my evening's entertainment by watching the baristas try to fend off a pigeon that decided to roost inside the shop.
The next day I had to fly out around dinner time so I took the opportunity for a visit to the JCC gym on the Upper West Side for a class called "Melting." Melting involves using hard plastic foam rollers to apply serious, even painful, pressure to the connective tissue (ligaments and tendons and such). The theory is that this stuff can get loosened up through what is effectively a form of massage and that leads to generally improved flexibility and ease of movement. If you have ever heard of something called Rolfing, it is essentially a poor man's version of that. It was worth a try. I am always looking for things that will stop me from becoming a hunched up old man, and this definite goes into the bag of tricks. In truth, it was just nice to be off my feet for a while.
With only a couple hours left, and sunny skies at last, I took a quick walk through Central Park, snagged a pretzel, and chilled out for a while on the lawn outside Tavern on the Green.
And that was that. I stupidly scheduled my flight out from Newark and so faced an hour long, $70 cab ride to get out. A good weekend in retrospect, but frustrating. But New York isn't supposed to be easy is it?
A smattering of pics:
•Waterfall under the Brooklyn Bridge
•Same waterfall up close
•The Manhattan skyline beyond the Brooklyn Bridge
•The Staten Island Ferry
•Ellis Island
•A classic schooner sailing under the Statue of Liberty
•Statue of Liberty
•The Manhattan skyline from the southwest
•I found this light fixture to be oddly fascinating
•Little Italy in full swing (no sign of Don Fanucci)
•For some reason, the Chinatown Starbucks makes me smile
Quickie Reviews
Quickie Reviews: Just some short comments on recently consumed art.
Superbad: There is raunch -- which I usually hate, for instance I didn't much care for Something about Mary or American Pie -- and there is Superbad which is brilliant. Seriously, one of the few teen comedies worth watching in the long and pathetic history of teen comedies. Funny, but with a purpose. Great nerd performances. The awkward raunch and profanity is sourced from adolescent pain, not from pointless toilet humor. Please do NOT make a sequel.
Mad Men: The new season just started and it could be awesome. Clearly this season is going to be about change and age vs. youth. As much as I loathe sentimental '60s hippie worship, it was a time of great change (not all for the better). As Gregg Easterbrook once pointed out, American Grafitti was made in 1971 out of nostalgia for 1960 (11 years in the past). Would anyone notice much different between today and 1997, never mind have nostalgia about it? At this point, it looks like we are going to get a take on that change from Mad Men. I hope this season moves me enough to write about it in full when it's over.
Burn Notice: Nothing but lightweight entertainment coolness. A throwback to '80s shows like Magnum, P.I. -- vacuous pseudo-action/detective-style plots, but perfect paced and executed with good humor. The shows are contrived especially to not require any thought (and if you did think about them, they probably wouldn't make any sense). It gets by on the good natured charisma and chemistry of the lead actors, including the redoubtable Bruce Campbell and the insanely hot Gabrielle Anwar. It's good to eat healthy, but sometimes you just need some ice cream. Burn Notice is perfect Pecan Praline.
Devil May Care: This book has been heralded as the return of "literary" James Bond. Sebastian Faulks, a well respected mainstream novelist, took up the mantle of Ian Fleming in an attempt to reboot the book series as Casino Royale did for the movie series. It works, to a point. First off, having read a number of Fleming's Bond novels I don't know that I would consider them "literary". They are exceedingly well crafted thrillers -- there isn't a thriller writer alive who couldn't benefit from Fleming's economy and sentence craftsmanship -- but it's a stretch, I think to call the "literary" if the implication of literary is something like "artistic insight into humanity". Anyway, what Faulks has done is write a Bond novel that Fleming would be proud of, in the style of Fleming himself. (In fact the cover says "Sebastian Faulks writing as Ian Fleming," which is precisely what is going on.) It is set in 1967, just after the last Fleming novel. It makes use of all the trappings of Fleming -- in fact, many of the events can be thought of as variations on Fleming-penned scenes -- without stepping into the cartoonism that so few can resist with Bond (although the pat ending where the arch villain returns to get his revenge for Bond foiling his plan plays out very over-the-top). Worth reading if you like the original Bond series. Not a reason to start if you don't.
Beautiful Jazz: Written in the Stars and Live from the Village Vanguard from the unbelievable Bill Charlap, are perhaps the most beautiful piano performances I have ever heard. Throw in Hey, Look Me Over by the Harry Allen-Joe Cohn Quartet for some exquisite saxophone and guitar work and it adds up to some of wonderful jazz listening. The thing about these two performers is that they have not forsaken beauty as the ultimate goal of music. So much music (especially jazz) seems to exist just to prove how far out of the mainstream it can go. Aesthetics are sacrificed for boundary pushing or technical flash, mopstly for the sake of self-definition. Both these performers find ways to be creative within the context of making beautiful melodious music and being true to the soul of the standards they play. The song comes first. Awesome. I hope it becomes a trend.
Superbad: There is raunch -- which I usually hate, for instance I didn't much care for Something about Mary or American Pie -- and there is Superbad which is brilliant. Seriously, one of the few teen comedies worth watching in the long and pathetic history of teen comedies. Funny, but with a purpose. Great nerd performances. The awkward raunch and profanity is sourced from adolescent pain, not from pointless toilet humor. Please do NOT make a sequel.
Mad Men: The new season just started and it could be awesome. Clearly this season is going to be about change and age vs. youth. As much as I loathe sentimental '60s hippie worship, it was a time of great change (not all for the better). As Gregg Easterbrook once pointed out, American Grafitti was made in 1971 out of nostalgia for 1960 (11 years in the past). Would anyone notice much different between today and 1997, never mind have nostalgia about it? At this point, it looks like we are going to get a take on that change from Mad Men. I hope this season moves me enough to write about it in full when it's over.
Burn Notice: Nothing but lightweight entertainment coolness. A throwback to '80s shows like Magnum, P.I. -- vacuous pseudo-action/detective-style plots, but perfect paced and executed with good humor. The shows are contrived especially to not require any thought (and if you did think about them, they probably wouldn't make any sense). It gets by on the good natured charisma and chemistry of the lead actors, including the redoubtable Bruce Campbell and the insanely hot Gabrielle Anwar. It's good to eat healthy, but sometimes you just need some ice cream. Burn Notice is perfect Pecan Praline.
Devil May Care: This book has been heralded as the return of "literary" James Bond. Sebastian Faulks, a well respected mainstream novelist, took up the mantle of Ian Fleming in an attempt to reboot the book series as Casino Royale did for the movie series. It works, to a point. First off, having read a number of Fleming's Bond novels I don't know that I would consider them "literary". They are exceedingly well crafted thrillers -- there isn't a thriller writer alive who couldn't benefit from Fleming's economy and sentence craftsmanship -- but it's a stretch, I think to call the "literary" if the implication of literary is something like "artistic insight into humanity". Anyway, what Faulks has done is write a Bond novel that Fleming would be proud of, in the style of Fleming himself. (In fact the cover says "Sebastian Faulks writing as Ian Fleming," which is precisely what is going on.) It is set in 1967, just after the last Fleming novel. It makes use of all the trappings of Fleming -- in fact, many of the events can be thought of as variations on Fleming-penned scenes -- without stepping into the cartoonism that so few can resist with Bond (although the pat ending where the arch villain returns to get his revenge for Bond foiling his plan plays out very over-the-top). Worth reading if you like the original Bond series. Not a reason to start if you don't.
Beautiful Jazz: Written in the Stars and Live from the Village Vanguard from the unbelievable Bill Charlap, are perhaps the most beautiful piano performances I have ever heard. Throw in Hey, Look Me Over by the Harry Allen-Joe Cohn Quartet for some exquisite saxophone and guitar work and it adds up to some of wonderful jazz listening. The thing about these two performers is that they have not forsaken beauty as the ultimate goal of music. So much music (especially jazz) seems to exist just to prove how far out of the mainstream it can go. Aesthetics are sacrificed for boundary pushing or technical flash, mopstly for the sake of self-definition. Both these performers find ways to be creative within the context of making beautiful melodious music and being true to the soul of the standards they play. The song comes first. Awesome. I hope it becomes a trend.
It's Not Happening in Detroit
It's Not Happening in Detroit: It's been awhile since we looked in on Detroit's black Irish mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick. As if he wasn't in enough trouble already for perjury, corruption, and generally modeling himself after Robert Mugabe, he has now (allegedly) assaulted a state trooper who was in the course of delivering a subpoena. Most interesting to me is that in the story the cop is trying to serve a warrant to some clown named Bobby Ferguson who is a friend of the Mayor (distantly related through marriage) and a big time city contractor. He is also a felon. So outside of the assault charges, we have a felon who just happens to be a close to the mayor, getting major city contracts. And that is not even the issue everyone is concerned with. Apparently, that's par for the course.
Detroit is a lost cause. Its ultimate destruction is inevitable now, partially because no force for good governance could possibly resist the degenerate culture of the city administration. Oh you may get a brief respite occasionally, but then it will start sliding down the side of toilet bowl again in short order. Detroit's ultimate fate will come when the city consists of a couple dozen loin-clothed inhabitants waging war on each other with stone knives and clubs only to find there are not enough of them left to form a viable gene pool.
I can sit back and say that with a certain bemusement because, despite Detroit being the place of my birth, I got out before any emotional attachment was formed. Others can't do that. Detroit Blog, for example, is dedicated to telling stories of the city out of affection. They are fine little vignettes of the city from the beautiful architecture in the abandoned buildings to the people left desperately clinging to hope and memory. The fellow behind Detroit Blog clearly has a love for the city and is a talented writer. But I can't help but see Detroit Blog as a deathbed memoir. Try this one, for example.
If you don't see the connection between Kwame Kilpatrick feeding taxpayer money to his felon friends and these folks barely breathing on Michigan Avenue, you need to clean your glasses.
Detroit is a lost cause. Its ultimate destruction is inevitable now, partially because no force for good governance could possibly resist the degenerate culture of the city administration. Oh you may get a brief respite occasionally, but then it will start sliding down the side of toilet bowl again in short order. Detroit's ultimate fate will come when the city consists of a couple dozen loin-clothed inhabitants waging war on each other with stone knives and clubs only to find there are not enough of them left to form a viable gene pool.
I can sit back and say that with a certain bemusement because, despite Detroit being the place of my birth, I got out before any emotional attachment was formed. Others can't do that. Detroit Blog, for example, is dedicated to telling stories of the city out of affection. They are fine little vignettes of the city from the beautiful architecture in the abandoned buildings to the people left desperately clinging to hope and memory. The fellow behind Detroit Blog clearly has a love for the city and is a talented writer. But I can't help but see Detroit Blog as a deathbed memoir. Try this one, for example.
If you don't see the connection between Kwame Kilpatrick feeding taxpayer money to his felon friends and these folks barely breathing on Michigan Avenue, you need to clean your glasses.
Return of the Little Black Book? (or The Horror of Motorola Phone Tools)
The Return of the Little Black Book?: (This is a long cathartic rant. Consider yourself warned.) Just in case any search engines are paying attention, let me say this: Motorola Phone Tools is a festering pile of crap. Here's the story.
I have a Motorola RAZR V3. All I wanted to do was back up my phone book. I don't use the phone for any other nonsense except to make calls and text, and I have a bunch of numbers in there that I have nowhere else. If I dropped the thing in the lake or something, I would be days trying to round up all the numbers I'd lost. Doesn't seem like an unreasonable request. I can't imagine everyone not wanting to do this. I'm not looking for anything special, just a dump to a text file would be fine. So how does one back-up a RAZR?
Well, you have to buy a copy of Motorola Phone Tools (MPT) which costs in excess of $30. That will give you everything you need to sync your contacts, manage you MP3 library, and fiddle with your ringtones. Oh and it will backup your phone book too, if that's the sort of thing you're into.
Now the phone itself cost me $99 so essentially we are talking about a 30% premium just to back up the phone numbers I have stored. I'd take the time to write them out by hand before I'd pay that. Fortunately, MPT is selling for a couple of bucks on eBay (which says something right there), so I ordered a copy.
It arrives. I load up the CD and do the install. Fire up the program and it asks if I want to get any updates. I do. So it downloads the updates. I now have the latest verison of MPT. So far so good. But no farther.
Now I fire it up and it tells me to plug in the phone so it can configure it. I do so, but after a minute it tells me it can't identify the phone, and asks if I want to check for updates to the software. Since it's either that or nothing, I tell it to check for the software updates. It comes back and tells me I am up to date, which I already know, and then asks me if I would like to try to set my phone up manually. Now, the RAZR V3 has to be one of the most common, if not the most common, phones in existence, but the Motorola's own phone tools cannot identify it. OK, fine. I'll try to configure it manually. Except any attempt to do so causes the app to simply crash. Sheesh.
So I do the usual: uninstall, reintstall, reboot, etc. No good: it still doesn't recognize the phone, still makes me check for updates, and still crashes on any attempt to manually configure.
So it's out to the Motorola site for support where I find Motorola has outsourced the creation of MPT to a company called Avanquest. So I hit the Avanquest site. Avanquest doesn't seem to reference its affiliation with MPT and simply offers a completely useless FAQ.
Great. Next up: Google. I start trolling the various page results from Google and I begin to piece together the situation from a variety of different pages on a variety of different internet forums filled with MPT complaints.
The first thing to do is to get the latest handset drivers from Motorola. So I go back to the Motorola site and stagger through pages until I find the driver downloads. Except you can't download the drivers unless you are registered as a Motorola Developer. I have no idea what it means to be a Motorola Developer and I certainly never will be one in my life, but registration is free so I register, meaning Motorola gets to send me some sort of spam now I suppose. In a few minutes, the registration information arrives via email and I go back to the Motorola site with my login credentials and download the latest handset driver.
Sadly, no change in my results when trying to run the app. Still doesn't identify the phone, still crashes when I try to configure manually. So, more forum trolling. I find one sharp-eyed poster has discovered that the Avanquest software installation omits downloading two essential files. You have to go to the CD and copy them over to your installation folder yourself. So I do that. Still no change.
Yet more trolling turns up the suggestion that instead of just running the app, right-click it and "Run as Administrator". Bingo! It doesn't blow up. It still doesn't recognize the phone still (the most common freakin' phone in the world) but at least it's allowing me to do a manual configuration. The manual configuration requires me to identify the phone model by some sort of model number designations that I don't understand. Luckily I manage to guess the right answer. I now have the actual MPT software up and running.
The software itself is abysmal. The interface is inscrutable. It is slow. The messages are cryptic. Fortunately, I just need to do the one task, back-up my phone book entries, and then I can pretend it doesn't exist until I build up some new phone numbers to save.
Finally, I have my phone book entries in a file (.csv) so I can reconstruction them in case of disaster.
Speaking as someone who is a 15-year professional software developer, I am absolutely stunned that this situation can exist in this day and age. 1) I understand the charging your customers for bells and whistles and extras, but a simple back up of your sim card should not cost any money. This is just responsible computing 101. Managing Mp3s mixing ringtones, syncing contacts, sure -- but simply backing up data? What kind of business expects its users to pay extra for the ability to back up their data? 2) The utter lack attention to user experience blows my mind. That anyone would think that Motorola Phone Tools is useable piece of software is unthinkable. If I tried to release software like this I would be cleaning toilets in McDonalds in about two seconds flat. 3) The complete lack of anything resembling support is outright negligence, plain and simple.
It took me a couple of hours to get software running for the simple purpose of backing up phone data. Never, even in the darkest days of MS-DOS config.sys files, did I ever have such an experience before. They made me, their customer, feel like an idiot for using their product instead of just taking the twenty minutes or so it would have taken to copy the numbers into a little black book.
Imagine what this would have been like for someone who payed the $30+ dollars to Motorola for this. Or even for someone without the experience and resources I have. Motorola should be deeply, deeply ashamed of themselves. I will remember this experience whenever I see the Motorola name on any product in the future.
I have a Motorola RAZR V3. All I wanted to do was back up my phone book. I don't use the phone for any other nonsense except to make calls and text, and I have a bunch of numbers in there that I have nowhere else. If I dropped the thing in the lake or something, I would be days trying to round up all the numbers I'd lost. Doesn't seem like an unreasonable request. I can't imagine everyone not wanting to do this. I'm not looking for anything special, just a dump to a text file would be fine. So how does one back-up a RAZR?
Well, you have to buy a copy of Motorola Phone Tools (MPT) which costs in excess of $30. That will give you everything you need to sync your contacts, manage you MP3 library, and fiddle with your ringtones. Oh and it will backup your phone book too, if that's the sort of thing you're into.
Now the phone itself cost me $99 so essentially we are talking about a 30% premium just to back up the phone numbers I have stored. I'd take the time to write them out by hand before I'd pay that. Fortunately, MPT is selling for a couple of bucks on eBay (which says something right there), so I ordered a copy.
It arrives. I load up the CD and do the install. Fire up the program and it asks if I want to get any updates. I do. So it downloads the updates. I now have the latest verison of MPT. So far so good. But no farther.
Now I fire it up and it tells me to plug in the phone so it can configure it. I do so, but after a minute it tells me it can't identify the phone, and asks if I want to check for updates to the software. Since it's either that or nothing, I tell it to check for the software updates. It comes back and tells me I am up to date, which I already know, and then asks me if I would like to try to set my phone up manually. Now, the RAZR V3 has to be one of the most common, if not the most common, phones in existence, but the Motorola's own phone tools cannot identify it. OK, fine. I'll try to configure it manually. Except any attempt to do so causes the app to simply crash. Sheesh.
So I do the usual: uninstall, reintstall, reboot, etc. No good: it still doesn't recognize the phone, still makes me check for updates, and still crashes on any attempt to manually configure.
So it's out to the Motorola site for support where I find Motorola has outsourced the creation of MPT to a company called Avanquest. So I hit the Avanquest site. Avanquest doesn't seem to reference its affiliation with MPT and simply offers a completely useless FAQ.
Great. Next up: Google. I start trolling the various page results from Google and I begin to piece together the situation from a variety of different pages on a variety of different internet forums filled with MPT complaints.
The first thing to do is to get the latest handset drivers from Motorola. So I go back to the Motorola site and stagger through pages until I find the driver downloads. Except you can't download the drivers unless you are registered as a Motorola Developer. I have no idea what it means to be a Motorola Developer and I certainly never will be one in my life, but registration is free so I register, meaning Motorola gets to send me some sort of spam now I suppose. In a few minutes, the registration information arrives via email and I go back to the Motorola site with my login credentials and download the latest handset driver.
Sadly, no change in my results when trying to run the app. Still doesn't identify the phone, still crashes when I try to configure manually. So, more forum trolling. I find one sharp-eyed poster has discovered that the Avanquest software installation omits downloading two essential files. You have to go to the CD and copy them over to your installation folder yourself. So I do that. Still no change.
Yet more trolling turns up the suggestion that instead of just running the app, right-click it and "Run as Administrator". Bingo! It doesn't blow up. It still doesn't recognize the phone still (the most common freakin' phone in the world) but at least it's allowing me to do a manual configuration. The manual configuration requires me to identify the phone model by some sort of model number designations that I don't understand. Luckily I manage to guess the right answer. I now have the actual MPT software up and running.
The software itself is abysmal. The interface is inscrutable. It is slow. The messages are cryptic. Fortunately, I just need to do the one task, back-up my phone book entries, and then I can pretend it doesn't exist until I build up some new phone numbers to save.
Finally, I have my phone book entries in a file (.csv) so I can reconstruction them in case of disaster.
Speaking as someone who is a 15-year professional software developer, I am absolutely stunned that this situation can exist in this day and age. 1) I understand the charging your customers for bells and whistles and extras, but a simple back up of your sim card should not cost any money. This is just responsible computing 101. Managing Mp3s mixing ringtones, syncing contacts, sure -- but simply backing up data? What kind of business expects its users to pay extra for the ability to back up their data? 2) The utter lack attention to user experience blows my mind. That anyone would think that Motorola Phone Tools is useable piece of software is unthinkable. If I tried to release software like this I would be cleaning toilets in McDonalds in about two seconds flat. 3) The complete lack of anything resembling support is outright negligence, plain and simple.
It took me a couple of hours to get software running for the simple purpose of backing up phone data. Never, even in the darkest days of MS-DOS config.sys files, did I ever have such an experience before. They made me, their customer, feel like an idiot for using their product instead of just taking the twenty minutes or so it would have taken to copy the numbers into a little black book.
Imagine what this would have been like for someone who payed the $30+ dollars to Motorola for this. Or even for someone without the experience and resources I have. Motorola should be deeply, deeply ashamed of themselves. I will remember this experience whenever I see the Motorola name on any product in the future.
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
The Month That Was -- June 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
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
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.
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
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.)
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
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:
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.
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."
Unknown Quantity
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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:
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.
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.
The End of The End of The Sopranos
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
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?"
Saturday, June 07, 2008
The Month That Was - May 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
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!
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.
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
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.
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.
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