Toob Notes: I have cut back a good deal on TV since returning to Misspent Youth in earnest, but let's do a quick round-up, since I haven't in a while.
House may have jumped the shark. The plots of the episodes have always been embarrassingly absurd -- throwaways, afterthoughts, mere props for the character's interaction with House. Years ago I predicted House wouldn't last because they could keep such a one trick pony going for more than a couple of years. I was quite wrong. They got quite a few years out of it, mostly owing to elevating Robert Sean Leonard, a remarkably fine actor, to almost a co-star level with Hugh Laurie. But ever since rehab, with House trying to be somewhat more human, things have gotten weak. Time to wrap it up. Maybe use the time slot to re-run Hugh Laurie's old Jeeves and Wooster series.
I don't expect much from USA's "characters welcome" shows beyond cotton candy for my brain, but the fluffy blue swirls were on the thin side this year. Burn Notice needed to go somewhere and it decided to try somewhere more emotionally serious. Wrong! Opposite direction would work better; nobody wants to take it seriously. We want to have fun. Hell, you got Bruce Campbell, and the hotness that is Gabrielle Anwar, why would you delude yourself that you're John LeCarre -- go lowbrow. In contrast, Psych remains comedy gold, in perpetual wisecrackery overdrive, although the plots were increasingly nonsensical and season finale was nearly incoherent.
My latest happy discovery is It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, for which I am late to the party, I know. An ensemble of characters of dubious morality and smoldering narcissism involved in highly contrived misadventures of daily life, making it similar to Seinfeld -- albeit a totally deranged and twisted version of Seinfeld, but still. This one's not for the kiddies. The underappreciated Danny Devito is sublime (rivaling his Louie from Taxi).
In the realm of good drama, Breaking Bad has just started but it's looking good. I'll cover it in full once the season's over.
Also happy was my second viewing of the entire Sopranos series at about a six-shows-a-month pace. As a hallmark of its quality, my appreciation of it deepened. I saw new aspects of its depth and knowing the ending didn't diminish it in any way. I remain firm in my judgment of it as the second best TV drama of all time, the last word on the mob story genre, and one of the very few TV shows that goes beyond entertainment to real art.
Since then, HBO drama has slipped unconscionably; their current flagship being the deplorable True Blood. But things may be looking up. The Pacific might actually to be worthy of its Band of Brothers predecessor, which is saying something. And no less than Martin Scorcese is kicking off what is sure to be a gritty series set in the '20's in Atlantic City called Boardwalk Empire. Could be outright awesome.
But the most uplifting news is The Return of the Milch. David Milch -- the man behind the Deadwood, the best TV show ever, and John from Cincinnati, the misguided but entertaining as hell experiment -- will be back with a series called Luck, about the world of horse racing. Presumably this will be about horse racing in the same way Deadwood was about the Old West. It will likely touch on metaphysics of chance and fortune. Two phenomenal actors have signed up: Dustin Hoffman and Nick Nolte. That's some serious horsepower. This is reason-to-live level news.
Sunday, April 04, 2010
Monday, March 01, 2010
The Month That Was - February 2010
The Month That Was - February 2010: It's March -- the point where I finally get to thinking, hey, maybe winter really will end. Maybe, just maybe, I'll survive another one. This one being my fiftieth, it should count for something. I am casting around for a good 50th birthday trip, not exactly sure what it should be. Half a century implies something epic, but often the most enjoyable trips I've had have been fairly casual road trips in some remote part of the U.S. So do I a) try to manufacture the journey of a lifetime, or b) go with high percentage chance of a positive experience? How about both? Can I manage both?
I'm not even going to bother to write about my sole bit of travel so far this year -- a long (very cold) weekend in upstate NY, which feature a single notable day trip to the terrific town of Ithaca, home of Robert Treman State Park and Cornell U., both of which were photo-worthy. I only had my little point and shoot, so the pics are on the noisy side, but you can see them at Smugmug. Ithaca is a sweet place. I could totally see myself living there; it's Ann Arbor + Mountains.
I kinda got that whole Super Bowl thing a bit wrong didn't I? Yeah. I allot myself one football post for the year and I couldn't have mangled it any worse. Lucky I didn't make good on my notion to drive down to Indianapolis to watch the game. That would have been a royal tragedy.
[Cars, Rambles] Toyotapocalypse
[Music] Talkin' 'Bout Pop Music
[Detroit, New Orleans] New Orleans is the New Detroit
[Books] Book Look: Hindoo Holiday
[Misspent Youth] What's it All About
I'm not even going to bother to write about my sole bit of travel so far this year -- a long (very cold) weekend in upstate NY, which feature a single notable day trip to the terrific town of Ithaca, home of Robert Treman State Park and Cornell U., both of which were photo-worthy. I only had my little point and shoot, so the pics are on the noisy side, but you can see them at Smugmug. Ithaca is a sweet place. I could totally see myself living there; it's Ann Arbor + Mountains.
I kinda got that whole Super Bowl thing a bit wrong didn't I? Yeah. I allot myself one football post for the year and I couldn't have mangled it any worse. Lucky I didn't make good on my notion to drive down to Indianapolis to watch the game. That would have been a royal tragedy.
[Cars, Rambles] Toyotapocalypse
[Music] Talkin' 'Bout Pop Music
[Detroit, New Orleans] New Orleans is the New Detroit
[Books] Book Look: Hindoo Holiday
[Misspent Youth] What's it All About
[Cars, Rant] Toyotapocalypse
Toyotapocalypse: The Toyota recall theatrics have officially become full-on hysteria. What the actual facts might be are not even worth discussing, except for the sake of pedantry. Like currency in Zimbabwe, the truth no longer has value or meaning. Toyota has entered a world of pure feeling -- where impression, mood, spin, and emotional validation are all that matters.
There may or may not be a real problem with unintended acceleration. We will never know this now. But we will know that every time some jerk-off slams his Camry into a tree because he was composing a text message at 60 mph, it will be due to a diabolical accelerator pedal. We'll never know if the brake problems ever manifested in real world danger because every half-wit who dents his Prius on the way to the recycling center will have a scapegoat. It doesn't matter anymore. Facts and details and plain old perspective are as obsolete tail fins.
The loathsome sanctimony of two-bit congressional paper-pushers when they have the spotlight is deeply nauseating. The only thing I can think of that's more disgusting is that they will likely get rewarded for their pomposity at the ballot box. Then, in what would be high comedy if people in power weren't taking it seriously, one Rhonda Smith tearfully testified that her runaway Lexus kept accelerating beyond 100 mph, despite the fact that she had engaged the parking brake and shifted into reverse. It was only when God intervened that it finally slowed down. I'm surprised the radio didn't start shouting "Satan is Lord" while green puke sprayed form the vents. God may indeed have intervened, but all He did was nudge her panic-spasmed foot off the gas pedal. You know, some day in the far future, people will read these transcripts and be as astounded at our stupidity and we are at the Salem witch trials. The shameless ignorance on display at these hearings will define us as hapless tools and laughable morons for all eternity. Thanks for that, Legislative Branch.
(Oh, by the way, according to the WSJ, Ms. Smith sold the Lexus to another family for whom it has since been trouble free for 27,000 miles. One wonders whether Ms. Smith informed this family of the car's possessed soul and adjusted the price accordingly.)
The only thing that matters now is how well Toyota reads and manipulates public opinion. They have chosen to play the humility card -- apologizing, making huge public sacrifices, vowing to regain trust, blah, blah, blah. This is probably a wise move. Indignation is the coin of the realm and the best way to defuse moral self-righteousness is to be contrite and humble. The "populist" politicians and pundits can slam Toyota once, twice, maybe three times, but if you keep kicking a man when he's not fighting back, you become the bad guy.
When the news cycle rolls on and when the running shriek of consumer advocates dies down, there will be plenty of time to play hardball in actual court where actual arguments can be made and appealed and hopefully judged in some semblance of reason. But for now, play the game; weep in shame like you were facing the audience on Oprah -- because effectively, you are.
Some will mistakenly think themselves winners in this folly -- politicians scrambling for popular recognition, the UAW, folks who decry the loss of blue collar America, auto companies who had to beg for a bailout -- to these folks Toyota is symbolic of all their self-inflicted woes. They will rejoice as if it were a great comeuppance, but when their glee recedes they will still be in the toilet.
Some might actually be winners. Lawyers, checking up on Toyota's balance sheet and gearing up for class action suits all across the fruited plain, may garner good payouts, with some little percentage going to their clients. I may also be a winner if Toyota has to drop their prices to keep their sales up, because I am in the market for a new car and wouldn't hesitate to buy even a recalled Toyota on the cheap.
Story: Decades ago I owned a hand-me-down 1978 Ford Pinto. I was driving a friend to the airport on a viciously cold and snowy day when all of sudden the accelerator stuck. I tried to tap it couple of times to loosen it up but each tap just revved me higher. I started riding the brakes to keep my speed down. Things were getting dicey with a busy intersection coming up fast. So, at great risk to my engine I shifted into neutral, the engine screamed as the revs shot up quickly, but I managed to slow to where I could safely pull to the side of the road and kill the ignition. My friend, having no idea what was going on, just looked at me like I was on meth. I mumbled some sort of explanation and carefully restarted the car. The accelerator pedal worked fine. Never had that problem again. It was obviously some ice or snow or something on the cable. I saw no evidence of divine intervention, nor am I weeping from the traumatic memory as I write this. Regretfully, I didn't think to hire a lawyer.
The point: Things can go wrong when you're driving. All sorts of things. What happens if your engine seizes when you are in the middle of a crowded freeway? What happens if you are rounding a tight turn and a tire blows out? What happens if brake fluid leaks out while you're descending a steep hill? Any of those mishaps is probably more likely to happen than one of these Toyota recall issues.
Driving is not "safe," ever. In fact, it's one of the most dangerous things you do regularly. Whenever there is a plane crash or a disease outbreak or a shark attack or an underwear bomber, people often cite the number of annual auto fatalities as a comparison, so as to put the relative minor fatalities of a tragedy in perspective. And in that perspective, any problems that might have been caused by sticky accelerator pedals is tiny.
But why bother to dwell on that? It just frustrates the rational mind. It doesn't matter. We are not in the world of reason and rationality now. We have packed our bags and taken up long-term residence in the demon-haunted world of sentiment and greed. Good luck Toyota, travelling that world is sure to be a harrowing journey.
Oh, and there is at least one certain winner: Hyundai.
There may or may not be a real problem with unintended acceleration. We will never know this now. But we will know that every time some jerk-off slams his Camry into a tree because he was composing a text message at 60 mph, it will be due to a diabolical accelerator pedal. We'll never know if the brake problems ever manifested in real world danger because every half-wit who dents his Prius on the way to the recycling center will have a scapegoat. It doesn't matter anymore. Facts and details and plain old perspective are as obsolete tail fins.
The loathsome sanctimony of two-bit congressional paper-pushers when they have the spotlight is deeply nauseating. The only thing I can think of that's more disgusting is that they will likely get rewarded for their pomposity at the ballot box. Then, in what would be high comedy if people in power weren't taking it seriously, one Rhonda Smith tearfully testified that her runaway Lexus kept accelerating beyond 100 mph, despite the fact that she had engaged the parking brake and shifted into reverse. It was only when God intervened that it finally slowed down. I'm surprised the radio didn't start shouting "Satan is Lord" while green puke sprayed form the vents. God may indeed have intervened, but all He did was nudge her panic-spasmed foot off the gas pedal. You know, some day in the far future, people will read these transcripts and be as astounded at our stupidity and we are at the Salem witch trials. The shameless ignorance on display at these hearings will define us as hapless tools and laughable morons for all eternity. Thanks for that, Legislative Branch.
(Oh, by the way, according to the WSJ, Ms. Smith sold the Lexus to another family for whom it has since been trouble free for 27,000 miles. One wonders whether Ms. Smith informed this family of the car's possessed soul and adjusted the price accordingly.)
The only thing that matters now is how well Toyota reads and manipulates public opinion. They have chosen to play the humility card -- apologizing, making huge public sacrifices, vowing to regain trust, blah, blah, blah. This is probably a wise move. Indignation is the coin of the realm and the best way to defuse moral self-righteousness is to be contrite and humble. The "populist" politicians and pundits can slam Toyota once, twice, maybe three times, but if you keep kicking a man when he's not fighting back, you become the bad guy.
When the news cycle rolls on and when the running shriek of consumer advocates dies down, there will be plenty of time to play hardball in actual court where actual arguments can be made and appealed and hopefully judged in some semblance of reason. But for now, play the game; weep in shame like you were facing the audience on Oprah -- because effectively, you are.
Some will mistakenly think themselves winners in this folly -- politicians scrambling for popular recognition, the UAW, folks who decry the loss of blue collar America, auto companies who had to beg for a bailout -- to these folks Toyota is symbolic of all their self-inflicted woes. They will rejoice as if it were a great comeuppance, but when their glee recedes they will still be in the toilet.
Some might actually be winners. Lawyers, checking up on Toyota's balance sheet and gearing up for class action suits all across the fruited plain, may garner good payouts, with some little percentage going to their clients. I may also be a winner if Toyota has to drop their prices to keep their sales up, because I am in the market for a new car and wouldn't hesitate to buy even a recalled Toyota on the cheap.
Story: Decades ago I owned a hand-me-down 1978 Ford Pinto. I was driving a friend to the airport on a viciously cold and snowy day when all of sudden the accelerator stuck. I tried to tap it couple of times to loosen it up but each tap just revved me higher. I started riding the brakes to keep my speed down. Things were getting dicey with a busy intersection coming up fast. So, at great risk to my engine I shifted into neutral, the engine screamed as the revs shot up quickly, but I managed to slow to where I could safely pull to the side of the road and kill the ignition. My friend, having no idea what was going on, just looked at me like I was on meth. I mumbled some sort of explanation and carefully restarted the car. The accelerator pedal worked fine. Never had that problem again. It was obviously some ice or snow or something on the cable. I saw no evidence of divine intervention, nor am I weeping from the traumatic memory as I write this. Regretfully, I didn't think to hire a lawyer.
The point: Things can go wrong when you're driving. All sorts of things. What happens if your engine seizes when you are in the middle of a crowded freeway? What happens if you are rounding a tight turn and a tire blows out? What happens if brake fluid leaks out while you're descending a steep hill? Any of those mishaps is probably more likely to happen than one of these Toyota recall issues.
Driving is not "safe," ever. In fact, it's one of the most dangerous things you do regularly. Whenever there is a plane crash or a disease outbreak or a shark attack or an underwear bomber, people often cite the number of annual auto fatalities as a comparison, so as to put the relative minor fatalities of a tragedy in perspective. And in that perspective, any problems that might have been caused by sticky accelerator pedals is tiny.
But why bother to dwell on that? It just frustrates the rational mind. It doesn't matter. We are not in the world of reason and rationality now. We have packed our bags and taken up long-term residence in the demon-haunted world of sentiment and greed. Good luck Toyota, travelling that world is sure to be a harrowing journey.
Oh, and there is at least one certain winner: Hyundai.
[Music] Talkin' Bout, Pop Music
Talkin' Bout, Pop Music: I have, since my earliest encounter with The Monkees at age 6, been a complete sucker for the tightly crafted energetic pop songs. So I was saddened to hear of the death of Doug Feiger, leader of the early eighties pop band The Knack, and my suburban Detroit homey. (For those familiar: Feiger grew up in Oak Park around Nine Mile and Coolidge, I grew up in Southfield around Eleven Mile and Greenfield. Figure a couple of miles separated as the crow flies.)
Most people think of the Knack as a one hit wonder because radio stations played "My Sharona" until ears were bleeding coast to coast. In reality, that first album they released in 1979, Get the Knack was an absolute masterpiece. "My Sharona" and it's single follow up "Good Girls Don't" were top notch FM fodder, but the album is loaded down with pop gems as catchy and as tightly woven as anything on A Hard Day's Night or Help. My personal favorite: "That's What the Little Girls Do" which could be a yard stick for any two and a half minute power pop song. (Also, The Knack were clearly the most sexually frustrated band that ever lived, which probably struck a chord with many young men my age.)
Their next two follow up albums were fine too, but fashion is fickle and there was so much backlash against the success of the first and the ungodly repetition on the radio that nobody was really listening anymore. Various comebacks in the '90s got mixed reviews. Anyway, no pop collection is complete without Get the Knack. It holds up well musically -- really, really well; not just as nostalgia.
Speaking of not-nostalgia pop, a hearty recommendation goes to Vinyl Candy's 2009 release, Land. Here's the band and album description from their website:
The album is higher in concept than most pop, and it draws a bit on the baroque tradition of Pink Floyd, but infectious melodies and soaring harmonies in strongly written three minute songs are front and center throughout. Great stuff. I get the sense that this is a band that has the potential to go ballistic and kick out an album with like eight top ten hits. That is, if albums were relevant anymore, or there were such things as top ten hits.
Most people think of the Knack as a one hit wonder because radio stations played "My Sharona" until ears were bleeding coast to coast. In reality, that first album they released in 1979, Get the Knack was an absolute masterpiece. "My Sharona" and it's single follow up "Good Girls Don't" were top notch FM fodder, but the album is loaded down with pop gems as catchy and as tightly woven as anything on A Hard Day's Night or Help. My personal favorite: "That's What the Little Girls Do" which could be a yard stick for any two and a half minute power pop song. (Also, The Knack were clearly the most sexually frustrated band that ever lived, which probably struck a chord with many young men my age.)
Their next two follow up albums were fine too, but fashion is fickle and there was so much backlash against the success of the first and the ungodly repetition on the radio that nobody was really listening anymore. Various comebacks in the '90s got mixed reviews. Anyway, no pop collection is complete without Get the Knack. It holds up well musically -- really, really well; not just as nostalgia.
Speaking of not-nostalgia pop, a hearty recommendation goes to Vinyl Candy's 2009 release, Land. Here's the band and album description from their website:
Vinyl Candy is a Southern California indie rock outfit with features a richly talented young quartet whose seamless sound welds a mix of influences from The Beatles to Jellyfish to Oasis to Butch Walker. July of 2009 ushered in the release of Vinyl Candy's second album "Land". A concept album which takes the listener on a whirlwind journey from one rock stars rise to demise.I also got a strong hint of Beach Boys from Land; it brought to mind Pet Sounds and Smiley Smile, which is stratospheric company.
The album is higher in concept than most pop, and it draws a bit on the baroque tradition of Pink Floyd, but infectious melodies and soaring harmonies in strongly written three minute songs are front and center throughout. Great stuff. I get the sense that this is a band that has the potential to go ballistic and kick out an album with like eight top ten hits. That is, if albums were relevant anymore, or there were such things as top ten hits.
[Detroit, New Orleans] New Orleans is the New Detroit
New Orleans is the New Detroit: First, I swear I am not writing this because I am bitter about my Super Bowl prediction. I am writing this as a caution -- as a counterbalance to all the New Orleans feel-good wankery going on in the press (especially the sports press, in their Quixotic endeavor to be "relevant"). My case in point is an article at World Hum by Adam Karlin. After a post-Super Bowl visit, Adam came to the conclusion that New Orleans has turned a corner and was now on track for a better future. This immediately triggered my BS detector, which is finely tuned in such circumstances having been subjected to nearly 50 years of articles about Detroit turning a corner. To wit:
I am just too overwhelmed by the similarities between this article, and others like it, and the apologies for the city of Detroit that I have read regularly for nearly a half century, to be anything remotely optimistic about New Orleans. In fact, you can compare this to a Detroit article I deconstructed a couple of months ago. In both cases a journalist has had good times in the city in question and decided that's the proof that things are on the upswing. Sentimental fantasy.
This is going to be a bitter pill to swallow, but a Lombardi Trophy will not save a city. Neither will a lazy Saturday in the Quarter scarfing Beignets and Muffalettas; a killer jazz combo in Faubourg Marigny; an easy afternoon stroll through the Garden District; or a deliriously drunken hurricane-snarfer in a green afro wig. I know it is heartbreaking, but reality is reality: Hope Don't Feed The Bulldog.
To prosper a city needs a good climate for commerce. At a minimum that means a low crime rate, so entrepreneurs and customers and employees don't flee for their safety, and an absence of corruption, so they can make business decisions without wondering who they'll have to stroke and for how much just to stay afloat. To my knowledge, New Orleans has neither of those. In fact, the lack of them is a point of pride with some locals and virtually all visiting journalists (who don't have to hang around and deal with the consequences) as an example of the colorful native culture. New Orleans apologists, like their Detroit forefathers, are nothing more than enablers of this dysfunction.
Look, I hope New Orleans has turned a corner and maybe this Landrieu fellow can pull something off, but NOLA was crime ridden and corrupt long before Katrina and I see no reason to expect otherwise in the future. I would very much like to be proven wrong, not by another glowing restaurant review or a Drew Brees photo op, but in some objective measure of day-to-day reality.
Until then, just keep a path open for me from the airport to the French Quarter. I like the local color too, but only for a day or so.
The city is at 80 percent pre-Katrina population levels. Those still gone very likely aren't coming back. A generation of go-getters, artists, musicians, writers, cooks, bartenders and policy pioneers, plus an influx of Central Americans (particularly Hondurans), attracted by the prospect of not just rebuilding but recreating the city, have, to a degree, filled the hole.Starts off pretty well. Sadly, he makes the paradigm racial mistake of his generation, conflating the lack of multi-culturalism with vaguely defined socio-economic ills. But he properly senses that massive change is required and describes some anecdotal evidence of it, which is where it falls of a cliff. Here is the evidence of New Orleans turning a corner:
Then: White candidate Mitch Landrieu garners a majority vote from both white and black New Orleanians, a first in city history, and wins the February 6 mayoral election. At Landrieu's election party, there is the sense/hope politics in New Orleans have transcended old racial paradigms.
The Saints [winning the Super Bowl]...caused the Crescent City to collectively and absolutely--please excuse the technical terminology--flip its goddamn sh*t. Which then turned the remaining weeks of the carnival season--oh yeah, Mardi Gras was happening during all this--into, of course, Lombardi Gras.This is the formula. This is how basket cases are enabled by the press and in the popular mind. Talk about the good time you had, the happy optimism you saw everywhere, the humanistic success story, what fine and spirited people you saw everywhere you looked. Hell, you can even go over the top:
...
Eating oysters and cheese and bread and ribs and drinking wine and listening to music in my favorite restaurant here this week, a place that mixes dishevelment, indulgence and comfort into one space that perfectly microcosms the city, and looking at a mixed race family dine next to a man in white body paint with a pink beehive wig, I realized New Orleans was practically bleeding happiness.
...
Everywhere, folks say: This is what we've been waiting for. They're specifically referring to the Lombardi trophy, but I think they know deep down the 2010 carnival season marks when, at long last, post-Katrina New Orleans became, again, just New Orleans.
...
A kid jumped onto a car under the bridge at Claiborne and Esplanade and danced with his ass in the air until the people in the car got out and joined him.
I'm not New Orleanian by birth or residence, but in my heart I claim this town. It inspires me like a lover, and does so for many others. I'll say this: I've intermittently wept my whole time here whenever life's randomness conspires to remind me how Nola is, as Bob Dylan said, One Very Long Poem. Like when at the Candlelight Lounge, the Treme Brass Band started playing and Miss Angelina served me white beans and ham hocks off a hot brick and called me baby and then everyone was dancing so fresh it was like they were transformed into light and air, like happiness and the human spark, caught in some Kabbalistic back-tide, was made manifest in every person and note they danced to. They were dancing like the rhythm was always there and they'd been given new legs.Wow. Waiter, I'll have a small order of prose, fluorescent purple, please.
I am just too overwhelmed by the similarities between this article, and others like it, and the apologies for the city of Detroit that I have read regularly for nearly a half century, to be anything remotely optimistic about New Orleans. In fact, you can compare this to a Detroit article I deconstructed a couple of months ago. In both cases a journalist has had good times in the city in question and decided that's the proof that things are on the upswing. Sentimental fantasy.
This is going to be a bitter pill to swallow, but a Lombardi Trophy will not save a city. Neither will a lazy Saturday in the Quarter scarfing Beignets and Muffalettas; a killer jazz combo in Faubourg Marigny; an easy afternoon stroll through the Garden District; or a deliriously drunken hurricane-snarfer in a green afro wig. I know it is heartbreaking, but reality is reality: Hope Don't Feed The Bulldog.
To prosper a city needs a good climate for commerce. At a minimum that means a low crime rate, so entrepreneurs and customers and employees don't flee for their safety, and an absence of corruption, so they can make business decisions without wondering who they'll have to stroke and for how much just to stay afloat. To my knowledge, New Orleans has neither of those. In fact, the lack of them is a point of pride with some locals and virtually all visiting journalists (who don't have to hang around and deal with the consequences) as an example of the colorful native culture. New Orleans apologists, like their Detroit forefathers, are nothing more than enablers of this dysfunction.
Look, I hope New Orleans has turned a corner and maybe this Landrieu fellow can pull something off, but NOLA was crime ridden and corrupt long before Katrina and I see no reason to expect otherwise in the future. I would very much like to be proven wrong, not by another glowing restaurant review or a Drew Brees photo op, but in some objective measure of day-to-day reality.
Until then, just keep a path open for me from the airport to the French Quarter. I like the local color too, but only for a day or so.
[Books] Book Look: Hindoo Holiday, by J.R. Ackerley
Book Look: Hindoo Holiday, by J.R. Ackerley: I doubt you could find a travel memoir more loaded down in local color. Ackerley, and English writer, accepts a position as the private secretary to an Indian Maharaja in the 1920s, then under British rule. The bulk of the book consists of Ackerley's description of interactions with the people he encounters regularly and his semi-comic attempts to come to terms with the confusions of a way of life bizarre to an Englishman.
It is not clear to me that Ackerley is deeply affected by his time in India, he ends the memoir as roughly the same person he started. In that sense, Hindoo Holiday is almost ephemeral -- an amalgam of brief reminisces. It's all about the characters. And they are quite a set.
Ackerley has little use for the Anglo-Indians (English in permanent residence in India). They are uniformly described as horrible, ill-mannered racists (although they are the source of some comic moments). Perhaps true in general, but certainly not all of them. Could Ackerley find no shades of gray? The single-mindedness of this stereotype caused me, at first, to questions Ackerley's honesty. But encounters with these folks fade fast.
The primary personality he deals with is the Maharaja himself. He constantly peppers Ackerley with philosophic and spiritual questions. As with many of the Indians he encounters, there seems to be a supposition that, as a European, he is the bearer of some sort of wisdom. The Maharaja is indecisive, ineffectual, child-like, and outright silly -- but not unsympathetic. Ackerley realizes that his value as a private secretary was secondary to the status the Maharaja gained from having an Englishman in his employ. He also realizes that what the Maharaja really wanted was someone to love him. I mean that platonically and it is important to make that distinction.
At this point I should pause to mention that this memoir is intimate with respect to sexuality, to the point of being grotesquely lurid in parts. Ackerley is openly homosexual and he and the Maharaja share an appreciation for beautiful young boys. The Maharaja maintains a stable of entertainers and on at least once occasion purchases an attractive boy to join his troupe. It is not clear whether the boy has bedroom duties, but it stinks of sexual slavery to the contemporary mind. Ackerley himself makes erotic connections with a couple of young men in his personal service, again it's unclear the extent to which this is carried, but at least in Ackerley's case it appears to be consensual.
This is as off-putting as it sounds, but it is probably important to remember that in Edwardian England, homosexual attraction to young boys was viewed more as a kind of eccentricity, rather than with the level of moral approbation we assign to it today. Also, with respect to Indian customs, it is just one of many instances of culture shock.
Ackerley spends a good deal of time trying to come to an understanding of the labyrinthine ethnic, religious, and caste relationships among his acquaintances. In many interactions he has to start with an explanation of why there are complications in doing what comes most naturally to him, generally because the expected interactions are not possible because of the conflicting stature of the parties. Simple courtesies like offering food or drink to guests are awkward since only certain castes can accept certain types of food from certain other castes, a process that grows more complicated once religion and ethnic differences come into play. As a European, despite the assumption of his wisdom, he is considered unclean in some respects.
Although most Indians are quite patient with his cultural awkwardness, his main guide in this topic is Babaji Rao, a Muslim who acts as the Maharaja's chauffeur and general assistant. Calm and thoughtful, Babaji Rao seems to be the only one who appreciates how complex and contradictory are the culture and customs, often defying them himself in small ways. Ackerley comes to trust and admire him greatly. Indeed, it is through his discussions with Babaji Rao and his more intimate observations of other Indians that one gets the sense that (as in any culture) many of the sacred rules and laws are , pace Jack Sparrow, more like guidelines.
Much of the humor originates with Abdul, Ackerley's Hindi tutor. He is a shameless, manipulative toady who does little to try to hide the fact that his aim is to use Ackerley's stature as leverage for personal gain. He is also the single most passive-aggressive character I have ever read of. At first Ackerley attempts to help Abdul out of simple politeness, but again and again he finds himself put in embarrassing situations by doing so. He grows increasingly intolerant of Abdul, and finally, in defiance of civilized manners, takes to briskly ordering him to leave when he tires of him, something Abdul only does after extensive blubbering.
Should you read Hindoo Holiday? Sure. Provided the distastefully intimate portions won't bother you too much. You'll need to have the right expectations, though. This is, as I said, a series of lighthearted remembrances, not really much of a narrative in the sense of a man going on a journey with a clear beginning and end. Think of entries in a diary. No plot is built, it is just a series of events in temporal order. The writing is mostly quite taut, although on occasion Ackerley gets a little carried away with descriptions of the plants and birds and such. You may come away at the end thinking it was entertaining, but you're really not sure what it was all about. That's OK. I don't think Ackerley was either.
It is not clear to me that Ackerley is deeply affected by his time in India, he ends the memoir as roughly the same person he started. In that sense, Hindoo Holiday is almost ephemeral -- an amalgam of brief reminisces. It's all about the characters. And they are quite a set.
Ackerley has little use for the Anglo-Indians (English in permanent residence in India). They are uniformly described as horrible, ill-mannered racists (although they are the source of some comic moments). Perhaps true in general, but certainly not all of them. Could Ackerley find no shades of gray? The single-mindedness of this stereotype caused me, at first, to questions Ackerley's honesty. But encounters with these folks fade fast.
The primary personality he deals with is the Maharaja himself. He constantly peppers Ackerley with philosophic and spiritual questions. As with many of the Indians he encounters, there seems to be a supposition that, as a European, he is the bearer of some sort of wisdom. The Maharaja is indecisive, ineffectual, child-like, and outright silly -- but not unsympathetic. Ackerley realizes that his value as a private secretary was secondary to the status the Maharaja gained from having an Englishman in his employ. He also realizes that what the Maharaja really wanted was someone to love him. I mean that platonically and it is important to make that distinction.
At this point I should pause to mention that this memoir is intimate with respect to sexuality, to the point of being grotesquely lurid in parts. Ackerley is openly homosexual and he and the Maharaja share an appreciation for beautiful young boys. The Maharaja maintains a stable of entertainers and on at least once occasion purchases an attractive boy to join his troupe. It is not clear whether the boy has bedroom duties, but it stinks of sexual slavery to the contemporary mind. Ackerley himself makes erotic connections with a couple of young men in his personal service, again it's unclear the extent to which this is carried, but at least in Ackerley's case it appears to be consensual.
This is as off-putting as it sounds, but it is probably important to remember that in Edwardian England, homosexual attraction to young boys was viewed more as a kind of eccentricity, rather than with the level of moral approbation we assign to it today. Also, with respect to Indian customs, it is just one of many instances of culture shock.
Ackerley spends a good deal of time trying to come to an understanding of the labyrinthine ethnic, religious, and caste relationships among his acquaintances. In many interactions he has to start with an explanation of why there are complications in doing what comes most naturally to him, generally because the expected interactions are not possible because of the conflicting stature of the parties. Simple courtesies like offering food or drink to guests are awkward since only certain castes can accept certain types of food from certain other castes, a process that grows more complicated once religion and ethnic differences come into play. As a European, despite the assumption of his wisdom, he is considered unclean in some respects.
Although most Indians are quite patient with his cultural awkwardness, his main guide in this topic is Babaji Rao, a Muslim who acts as the Maharaja's chauffeur and general assistant. Calm and thoughtful, Babaji Rao seems to be the only one who appreciates how complex and contradictory are the culture and customs, often defying them himself in small ways. Ackerley comes to trust and admire him greatly. Indeed, it is through his discussions with Babaji Rao and his more intimate observations of other Indians that one gets the sense that (as in any culture) many of the sacred rules and laws are , pace Jack Sparrow, more like guidelines.
Much of the humor originates with Abdul, Ackerley's Hindi tutor. He is a shameless, manipulative toady who does little to try to hide the fact that his aim is to use Ackerley's stature as leverage for personal gain. He is also the single most passive-aggressive character I have ever read of. At first Ackerley attempts to help Abdul out of simple politeness, but again and again he finds himself put in embarrassing situations by doing so. He grows increasingly intolerant of Abdul, and finally, in defiance of civilized manners, takes to briskly ordering him to leave when he tires of him, something Abdul only does after extensive blubbering.
Should you read Hindoo Holiday? Sure. Provided the distastefully intimate portions won't bother you too much. You'll need to have the right expectations, though. This is, as I said, a series of lighthearted remembrances, not really much of a narrative in the sense of a man going on a journey with a clear beginning and end. Think of entries in a diary. No plot is built, it is just a series of events in temporal order. The writing is mostly quite taut, although on occasion Ackerley gets a little carried away with descriptions of the plants and birds and such. You may come away at the end thinking it was entertaining, but you're really not sure what it was all about. That's OK. I don't think Ackerley was either.
[Misspent Youth] What's It All About
What's It All About: The first draft of the jacket copy for Misspent Youth. Not sure it scans all that well -- words like "inscrutable" and "normalcy" may scare readers. It needs revision, but there's time for that. The key thing is that it's accurate and catches the tone and concept of the book exactly.
With his homeland turning cold and indifferent before his eyes, Billy sets off on an intrepid journey that leads him to a strange and baffling world; a world of inscrutable codes and icons; a world where honesty and maturity are turned inside out; a world that will test his reason and spirit to the limit; a world called...Suburbia.Does it pique your interest? That's the primary goal.
Misspent Youth is a sharp-eyed, comic, and ultimately affectionate look at the insanity of normalcy.
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
The Month That Was - January 2010
The Month That Was - January 2010: It is viciously cold. The thermometer reads 8, but the wind swats away those eight degrees like Rosie O'Donnell swatting away a dinner salad. Only an idiot would live in this climate and I am that idiot.
Any readers who visited this site on or around the 29th may have been freaked out a bit by the layout here. I was messing around with updated Blogger templates. There are a couple of bad habits I have developed over the years that have not played out well. Specifically, the way I have incorporated the post title in the body of the post means that the title appears twice in the RSS feed (once as the title and once in the post). I also cannot easily reformat the labels post footers now that I have finally started using labels. Anyway, an updated layout would sort that out, but I was unable to get one looking right (something with margins or padding, I'm not sure which) so I backed off. I may give it another shot next month.
No travel this month. I am writing this during a long weekend in Binghamton, NY (with a side trip to Ithaca) which I'll discuss next month. It's viciously cold here, too. In the meantime I did get photos from Valley of Fire, Zion, and Bryce Canyon up over at Smugmug. Some very cool ones. Take a look.
Misspent Youth is currently in the hands a known and trusted professional editor. I should be using this time to do things like writing the jacket copy and various synopses and such, a thing I hate doing and so am procrastinating. But generally I feel cautiously positive about have a genuine tactile retail copy in my hands by the end of 2010, then I have already got thoughts on a couple of other projects and novel number four in my head. God help me.
[Movies] Flick Check: Throw Momma From the Train
[Football] My Self-indulgent Super Bowl Post
[Rambles] No Apologies
[Books] Book Look: The Mezzanine
[Good Links] It's All Fun nd Games Until...
Any readers who visited this site on or around the 29th may have been freaked out a bit by the layout here. I was messing around with updated Blogger templates. There are a couple of bad habits I have developed over the years that have not played out well. Specifically, the way I have incorporated the post title in the body of the post means that the title appears twice in the RSS feed (once as the title and once in the post). I also cannot easily reformat the labels post footers now that I have finally started using labels. Anyway, an updated layout would sort that out, but I was unable to get one looking right (something with margins or padding, I'm not sure which) so I backed off. I may give it another shot next month.
No travel this month. I am writing this during a long weekend in Binghamton, NY (with a side trip to Ithaca) which I'll discuss next month. It's viciously cold here, too. In the meantime I did get photos from Valley of Fire, Zion, and Bryce Canyon up over at Smugmug. Some very cool ones. Take a look.
Misspent Youth is currently in the hands a known and trusted professional editor. I should be using this time to do things like writing the jacket copy and various synopses and such, a thing I hate doing and so am procrastinating. But generally I feel cautiously positive about have a genuine tactile retail copy in my hands by the end of 2010, then I have already got thoughts on a couple of other projects and novel number four in my head. God help me.
[Movies] Flick Check: Throw Momma From the Train
[Football] My Self-indulgent Super Bowl Post
[Rambles] No Apologies
[Books] Book Look: The Mezzanine
[Good Links] It's All Fun nd Games Until...
[Movies] Flick Check: Thorw Momma From the Train
Flick Check: Throw Momma From the Train: It had been years since I'd seen this film when I stumbled across it on one of the 937 TV channels I get. I know I liked it back in the day, but my esteem has risen greatly. It is that rarest of things, a quality comedy for grown-ups. The majority of film comedy is in the toilet, at least with respect to its subject matter. Stupid gross-outs and infantile pranksterisms abound; that includes films from the likes of Sasha Baron Cohen or Seth Rogan. There are plenty of teen comedies, but even the good ones are, well, for teens. The rest of what passes for comedies are formulaic chick flicks. Sharp, exquisitely crafted originals like Throw Momma... are true treasures.
A satire based on the excellent Hitchcock film, Strangers on a Train, Throw Momma... is one of the very few spoofs that is even finer than the original. (Airplane!, as a spoof of the low grade Zero Hour and Airport '75, comes to mind, but those films aren't remotely as high quality as Throw Momma/Strangers.)
Billy Crystal is Larry, a two-bit novelist who had his manuscript stolen by his ex-wife and nemisis, played to perfection by Kate Mulgrew. She is now rich and famous and he is stuck teaching creative writing to a class full of dweebs and dolts, one of whom is Danny DeVito's Owen, a slow-witted nebbish who is constantly bullied by his horrible, hideous and hostile momma, Anne Ramsey. At one point, when discussing mystery writing, Larry suggests Owen go see a Strangers on a Train to understand the need to eliminate the motive. Owen mistakes this as an offer from Larry to kill his mother, if Owen kills Larry's ex-wife. Criss cross. Hilarity ensues.
Above all else in this film, the humor itself is near perfection. The script from Stu Silver is just dripping in high comedy all of it delivered with impeccable timing from Crystal and Devito. Seriously, this stuff is worthy of Phil Silvers or Mel Brooks. Beyond that, the characterizations of Larry and Owen are fully formed. As slightly absurd caricatures in a comedy, most scripts would probably pay lip service to fleshing them out. But it's the telling little scenes that humanize them and make us care, despite the fact that they are borderline cartoonish. Larry's hopeless ineffectuality is highlighted when his best friend is being interviewed by the police. "So you don't think Larry killed his wife?" "No way." "Why?" "Larry never did anything." There's your character. Or Owen showing Larry his coin collection, which consists entirely of change that his lost beloved father let him keep as a child. Perfectly understated yet effective characterization.
DeVito also directed and gives the film a pace that Billy Wilder would envy, all the while managing to lovingly use Hitchcockian visual devices without going overboard. As far as I know Throw Momma... won no awards but if you look at IMDB's list of films from 1987, it measures up to the best of them. If there is any justice, retrospective should give us a new appreciation of it. If you haven't seen it, treat yourself via Netflix or whatever.
Oh, and if you find a copy of Pinsky's book. Please forward the link.
A satire based on the excellent Hitchcock film, Strangers on a Train, Throw Momma... is one of the very few spoofs that is even finer than the original. (Airplane!, as a spoof of the low grade Zero Hour and Airport '75, comes to mind, but those films aren't remotely as high quality as Throw Momma/Strangers.)
Billy Crystal is Larry, a two-bit novelist who had his manuscript stolen by his ex-wife and nemisis, played to perfection by Kate Mulgrew. She is now rich and famous and he is stuck teaching creative writing to a class full of dweebs and dolts, one of whom is Danny DeVito's Owen, a slow-witted nebbish who is constantly bullied by his horrible, hideous and hostile momma, Anne Ramsey. At one point, when discussing mystery writing, Larry suggests Owen go see a Strangers on a Train to understand the need to eliminate the motive. Owen mistakes this as an offer from Larry to kill his mother, if Owen kills Larry's ex-wife. Criss cross. Hilarity ensues.
Above all else in this film, the humor itself is near perfection. The script from Stu Silver is just dripping in high comedy all of it delivered with impeccable timing from Crystal and Devito. Seriously, this stuff is worthy of Phil Silvers or Mel Brooks. Beyond that, the characterizations of Larry and Owen are fully formed. As slightly absurd caricatures in a comedy, most scripts would probably pay lip service to fleshing them out. But it's the telling little scenes that humanize them and make us care, despite the fact that they are borderline cartoonish. Larry's hopeless ineffectuality is highlighted when his best friend is being interviewed by the police. "So you don't think Larry killed his wife?" "No way." "Why?" "Larry never did anything." There's your character. Or Owen showing Larry his coin collection, which consists entirely of change that his lost beloved father let him keep as a child. Perfectly understated yet effective characterization.
DeVito also directed and gives the film a pace that Billy Wilder would envy, all the while managing to lovingly use Hitchcockian visual devices without going overboard. As far as I know Throw Momma... won no awards but if you look at IMDB's list of films from 1987, it measures up to the best of them. If there is any justice, retrospective should give us a new appreciation of it. If you haven't seen it, treat yourself via Netflix or whatever.
Oh, and if you find a copy of Pinsky's book. Please forward the link.
[Football] My Self-Indulgent Super Bowl Post
My Self-Indulgent Super Bowl Post: I've done good until now. I have resisted the urge to inflict a football post on you all year. No matter how badly I wanted to lambaste Brett Favrerer for his tomfoolery I held my tongue. No matter how desperately I wanted excoriate the bad plays, moronic coaching, and lame officiating, I stayed reticent. No matter how stupid I thought the decision to abandon the undefeated season was for the Colts, I...well, since we're talking about a team in the Super Bowl, I'll start there. Move on now if you have no interest in the NFL.
The call to take a dive had to come in from Colts team President Bill Polian. Had to. Peyton was livid about it and there is no way coach Jim Caldwell made that call because if he did Peyton would have just laughed his ass off and went back in the game. It's an open secret that Peyton is actually running the team and Caldwell is a cardboard cut-out they dust off and set up on the sideline every Sunday. It had to come from higher up and it was a horrendous decision because:
And I think they will win. Back in Super Bowl XLI, the Colts came in with a newbie running back, riding a wave of late-season defensive resurgence that came from nowhere, and took the crown. This year they have a pair of newbie wide receivers and are riding a wave of late-season defensive resurgence that came from nowhere. Peyton is just too good to only have one ring.
For their part, the Saints can bite me. Oh I'm OK with Drew Brees from back when he was with San Diego and got his pants dissed off, first by a futile attempt to draft Eli Manning, then a successful attempt to get Philip Rivers. Then the Dolphins picked Daunte Culpepper over him (as a Fins fan, my eye still twitches when I write that). Brees didn't complain, didn't whine to the press, didn't ask for a government bailout. He just picked things up with New Orleans and hit the heights beyond anyone's imagination. Great work from a class act. The perfect way to make people eat crow -- by your actions on the field.
But the rest of the team, come on. Reggie Bush? Way to hammer your alma mater for years to come. Jeremy Shockey? Needs lessons from Peyton on how to be a lovable character instead of just annoying. That and a haircut. Then their defensive coordinator, Gregg Williams, goes off on a live mike as to how they are hoping to give Peyton some memorable hits and if they have to take a roughing the passer call, well, he just hopes it knocks Peyton out of the game. The only thing that statement achieved was to put the refs on high alert. Any Saints pass rusher who neglects to genuflect before tackling Peyton is going to get flagged now. Good thinking, Einstein.
Worst of all, why are we still talking about Hurricane Katrina? New Orleans has had five years and untold piles of money thrown at them and they still cry about being victims. Remember that asinine wank-fest for the first post-Katrina home game in New Orleans, starring Bono? Wretch-inducing, but apparently that was just the start. A couple of years ago I went down for Mardi Gras and they were still wandering around wearing anti-FEMA t-shirts. OK, we get it. It was bad. You had a rough time. But you've had half a decade and well into the billions in aid to sort yourselves out. Why are we being subjected to this city-revives-through-its-football-team schlock? Will your football team really be your ultimate savior? It makes me long for a story about how Jerome Bettis is from Detroit. Maybe they are just setting themselves up to plead for government assistance to recover from Peyton.
Colts for the win is what I'm driving at here.
Topic change: A brief comment about the other end of the NFL spectrum. Bill Simmons recently posted a list of "tortured" sports franchises, the Chicago Cubs rightly at number one. But there is one team conspicuous by its absence: The Detroit Lions. Yep, in his list of the top twelve tortured franchises he completely omitted the single worst sport franchise extant. I don't blame Simmons. The Lions are so awful that they have simply slipped out of the consciousness of sports fans. They don't really exist. If they are on your schedule it is like bye week, you just don't even think about it as an actual game. Remember that episode of the Twilight Zone where the punishment for a crime was to be completely ignored by everyone and everything. That's what it's like to be the Lions. You don't even make Worst Of lists. You're not even good enough to be bad.
The call to take a dive had to come in from Colts team President Bill Polian. Had to. Peyton was livid about it and there is no way coach Jim Caldwell made that call because if he did Peyton would have just laughed his ass off and went back in the game. It's an open secret that Peyton is actually running the team and Caldwell is a cardboard cut-out they dust off and set up on the sideline every Sunday. It had to come from higher up and it was a horrendous decision because:
- A team wins the Super Bowl every year but a chance to go undefeated comes along once in the lifetime of a franchise. You have to go for it. Look how long the '72 Dolphins have milked their perfect season. The Super Bowl is a career pinnacle. Going undefeated sets you up for life.
- The NFL has a huge problem with phony games. When I wrote my football column I referred to the final week of the season as the Week of Shame -- when locked in teams lay down and played their scrubs, screwing fans and gamblers in the process. It was especially awful this year as teams like the Colts were locked in to playoff positions weeks in advance. (A related symptom is the long-running joke that is the Pro Bowl. David Garrard played in the Pro Bowl this year. David Garrard. Think about that.) This is really undermining the integrity of the NFL. If I was Roger Goodell, this would be job one...after a new labor agreement, anyway. This was a remarkably high profile example of a phony game. Ugly for a league that supposedly values integrity.
- Worst of all, if the Colts win, it is ruined it for everybody. In the uber-cautious, superstitious NFL, every time the chance for an undefeated season comes up, every coach will take the secure way out and lay down in a late season game because it worked for the Colts where as it failed for the Patriots a couple of years earlier. Sample size = 2, but that's all you need for NFL coaches. It will be etched in stone that if you try to go undefeated you will not win the Super Bowl. "Lay down for a loss as soon as you can" will be the decision that won't get a coach fired and that's that. The '72 Dolphins are set for life and well beyond.
And I think they will win. Back in Super Bowl XLI, the Colts came in with a newbie running back, riding a wave of late-season defensive resurgence that came from nowhere, and took the crown. This year they have a pair of newbie wide receivers and are riding a wave of late-season defensive resurgence that came from nowhere. Peyton is just too good to only have one ring.
For their part, the Saints can bite me. Oh I'm OK with Drew Brees from back when he was with San Diego and got his pants dissed off, first by a futile attempt to draft Eli Manning, then a successful attempt to get Philip Rivers. Then the Dolphins picked Daunte Culpepper over him (as a Fins fan, my eye still twitches when I write that). Brees didn't complain, didn't whine to the press, didn't ask for a government bailout. He just picked things up with New Orleans and hit the heights beyond anyone's imagination. Great work from a class act. The perfect way to make people eat crow -- by your actions on the field.
But the rest of the team, come on. Reggie Bush? Way to hammer your alma mater for years to come. Jeremy Shockey? Needs lessons from Peyton on how to be a lovable character instead of just annoying. That and a haircut. Then their defensive coordinator, Gregg Williams, goes off on a live mike as to how they are hoping to give Peyton some memorable hits and if they have to take a roughing the passer call, well, he just hopes it knocks Peyton out of the game. The only thing that statement achieved was to put the refs on high alert. Any Saints pass rusher who neglects to genuflect before tackling Peyton is going to get flagged now. Good thinking, Einstein.
Worst of all, why are we still talking about Hurricane Katrina? New Orleans has had five years and untold piles of money thrown at them and they still cry about being victims. Remember that asinine wank-fest for the first post-Katrina home game in New Orleans, starring Bono? Wretch-inducing, but apparently that was just the start. A couple of years ago I went down for Mardi Gras and they were still wandering around wearing anti-FEMA t-shirts. OK, we get it. It was bad. You had a rough time. But you've had half a decade and well into the billions in aid to sort yourselves out. Why are we being subjected to this city-revives-through-its-football-team schlock? Will your football team really be your ultimate savior? It makes me long for a story about how Jerome Bettis is from Detroit. Maybe they are just setting themselves up to plead for government assistance to recover from Peyton.
Colts for the win is what I'm driving at here.
Topic change: A brief comment about the other end of the NFL spectrum. Bill Simmons recently posted a list of "tortured" sports franchises, the Chicago Cubs rightly at number one. But there is one team conspicuous by its absence: The Detroit Lions. Yep, in his list of the top twelve tortured franchises he completely omitted the single worst sport franchise extant. I don't blame Simmons. The Lions are so awful that they have simply slipped out of the consciousness of sports fans. They don't really exist. If they are on your schedule it is like bye week, you just don't even think about it as an actual game. Remember that episode of the Twilight Zone where the punishment for a crime was to be completely ignored by everyone and everything. That's what it's like to be the Lions. You don't even make Worst Of lists. You're not even good enough to be bad.
[Rant] No Apologies
No Apologies: An article in the WSJ highlights a new internet phenomenon: finding a long lost acquaintance to whom you have done some wrong and making an unsolicited apology decades after the fact. (I'm not sure this is a phenomenon in any serious sense of the word. That's more likely just journalistic hyperbole.) The author seems to think it's the result of our over-therapised, self-help loving, navel-gazing culture, but I'm not so sure. Although I haven't joined this phenomenon I think I understand the regret one can carry over what were probably minor slights from childhood or early adulthood, and the desire to right the wrong; and nobody would accuse me of being a new age namby-pamby. Hell, I refuse to wear a bike helmet and I still dive head first into the pool.
First, let's point out we are talking about small cruelties here. Petty stuff. The sort of thoughtless and mean-spirited slights that young people habitually dole out, intentionally or not. I think I can honestly say, as I look back on my younger days, that I truly regret inflicting this minor pain on others. In a larger sense, I have come to truly regret any unwarranted pain in have caused in my life. On balance, I think I'm OK on this score; I've probably received more cruelties than I've given (although as I think further, that's quite possibly self-delusion). Still, the older I get the more I have come to realize how much the little cruelties inflicted on me added up. Little injustices, insults, exclusions, bullying -- I certainly suffered my share of it. And I remember it to this day, without smiling. Such occurrences are inevitable; they are part of everyday life for Homo sapiens and probably always will be. But when you are young and just building your picture of the world, they are fresh and infuriating. Think of the first time you were ever laughed at or excluded or belittled. This could have been any point from your childhood to your twenties depending on how long you were able to stay in a bubble of loved ones or ingratiate yourself with the cool kids. In adulthood this pettiness is no big deal because you are more self-possessed and you know there are really no such thing as cool kids, but the first few times it happened -- when you had to face the possibility that you could be treated unjustly without consequence or that you were of lesser value than some others -- was gut-wrenching. The first time I remember experiencing this, I didn't leave my room for two days.
Have I ever been the one to inflict this on some poor soul? I don't recall, but it's possible; in fact, it's probable. And though it was going to happen to the poor soul eventually, I would absolutely hate the idea that I was the one that caused that kind of pain. And I feel that way only now, after seeing and feeling the full consequences and understanding that the pain doesn't necessarily disappear over time, it just gets re-situated in your psyche. I'm not a parent, but I can only imagine that re-living these feelings through your own children would be harrowing. When faced with that realization, the impetus to apologize seems natural. So I would argue that such regrets are timeless. I'm not so quick to dismiss this as a by-product of the wussification of contemporary society or an "Internet phenomena," although the Internet makes it more possible and visible. But it does beg the question of the purpose of apologies in general.
Let's point out that we are talking about actual, sincere apologies. Not customer service-style "I'm sorry there was a dead rat on your pizza, here's a coupon" apologies. And not "Forgive me for embezzling your life savings, please give me a reduced sentence" apologies. We are talking about apologies that truly stem from remorse.
The model exchange is apology and acceptance. The apology, in theory, mitigates the pain inflicted upon the victim by acknowledging the injustice and signaling that the apologizer feels he was degraded by his own act (and implicitly elevating the injured party in a moral sense). The injured party accepts the apology, tacitly acknowledging that, as the moral superior with respect the incident at hand, the apologizer has suffered sufficient guilt.
What a complicated dance of emotion. I can't imagine that ever working in any methodical sense. Upon receiving an apology, the victim has to:
The apologizer is in a somewhat better position. From the article:
The practical absurdity of the entire process causes me think of it as evidence that the need for justice, and therefore a form of morality, is intrinsic to human nature. I just can't imagine such behavior developing as a learned trait, because there is so little measurable, observable evidence to provide a positive feedback loop for apologies over the course of one person's life. When simply assessing the pluses and minus of apologies as one walks through life, it would be a rare person who felt as though they balanced out to a net individual benefit on a regular basis. Yet we still dance the apology dance. Why? Presumably, because apologies are our somewhat irrational attempt to maintain a fa‡ade of fairness for the good of the human race as a whole. Without it a much larger portion of our lives would be given over to revenge and suspicion, our circle of trusted contacts would be smaller. Having a mechanism such that there is an innate disincentive to those who would simply march thru life domineering and offending others at will encourages cooperation which permits us to progress despite the fact that we are all constantly jostling conflict for status and position. You could take a religious stand on this and say we have been given this sense of justice by God and in our souls we know we will be judged on it. Or you could take a biological stand and say the evolution has selected a sense of justice as a benefit to survival or the species. Either way, apologies are clearly of time-tested value.
In any event, just in case anyone from my past does a Google search on that assclown David Mazzotta who picked on him many years ago, as I said above, I sincerely regret any unwarranted pain I have caused in my life. If it helps you know that, great. But, despite the risk to civilized humanity, please don't accept my apology. Things would work better if apologies were not to be accepted and we did not assuage our guilt by apologizing. We are not small tribes anymore; much better to go forward being careful not to accumulate any more contacts to whom we need to apologize. That will require us to keep our regrets alive and clear in our minds to guide our actions going forward.
And if you are one of the assclowns who picked on me, don't bother to apologize. I already feel morally superior to you and really just don't care enough about you to accept it. That is, unless you are offering money.
First, let's point out we are talking about small cruelties here. Petty stuff. The sort of thoughtless and mean-spirited slights that young people habitually dole out, intentionally or not. I think I can honestly say, as I look back on my younger days, that I truly regret inflicting this minor pain on others. In a larger sense, I have come to truly regret any unwarranted pain in have caused in my life. On balance, I think I'm OK on this score; I've probably received more cruelties than I've given (although as I think further, that's quite possibly self-delusion). Still, the older I get the more I have come to realize how much the little cruelties inflicted on me added up. Little injustices, insults, exclusions, bullying -- I certainly suffered my share of it. And I remember it to this day, without smiling. Such occurrences are inevitable; they are part of everyday life for Homo sapiens and probably always will be. But when you are young and just building your picture of the world, they are fresh and infuriating. Think of the first time you were ever laughed at or excluded or belittled. This could have been any point from your childhood to your twenties depending on how long you were able to stay in a bubble of loved ones or ingratiate yourself with the cool kids. In adulthood this pettiness is no big deal because you are more self-possessed and you know there are really no such thing as cool kids, but the first few times it happened -- when you had to face the possibility that you could be treated unjustly without consequence or that you were of lesser value than some others -- was gut-wrenching. The first time I remember experiencing this, I didn't leave my room for two days.
Have I ever been the one to inflict this on some poor soul? I don't recall, but it's possible; in fact, it's probable. And though it was going to happen to the poor soul eventually, I would absolutely hate the idea that I was the one that caused that kind of pain. And I feel that way only now, after seeing and feeling the full consequences and understanding that the pain doesn't necessarily disappear over time, it just gets re-situated in your psyche. I'm not a parent, but I can only imagine that re-living these feelings through your own children would be harrowing. When faced with that realization, the impetus to apologize seems natural. So I would argue that such regrets are timeless. I'm not so quick to dismiss this as a by-product of the wussification of contemporary society or an "Internet phenomena," although the Internet makes it more possible and visible. But it does beg the question of the purpose of apologies in general.
Let's point out that we are talking about actual, sincere apologies. Not customer service-style "I'm sorry there was a dead rat on your pizza, here's a coupon" apologies. And not "Forgive me for embezzling your life savings, please give me a reduced sentence" apologies. We are talking about apologies that truly stem from remorse.
The model exchange is apology and acceptance. The apology, in theory, mitigates the pain inflicted upon the victim by acknowledging the injustice and signaling that the apologizer feels he was degraded by his own act (and implicitly elevating the injured party in a moral sense). The injured party accepts the apology, tacitly acknowledging that, as the moral superior with respect the incident at hand, the apologizer has suffered sufficient guilt.
What a complicated dance of emotion. I can't imagine that ever working in any methodical sense. Upon receiving an apology, the victim has to:
- Believe that it is sincere.
- Determine that the apologizer has suffered sufficiently.
- Value some kind of emotional closure more than the leverage that the moral high ground would provide in current or future interactions.
The apologizer is in a somewhat better position. From the article:
When an old high-school rival of Kathy Somes contacted her through Classmates.com last March, Ms. Somes, 46, apologized for her behavior years ago, which included putting gum in the girl's hair, shooting her with a rubber-pellet gun and blowing a trumpet into her ear during band practice.I suspect most people would agree with Ms. Somes and say they would feel better anyway. So even if the injured party doesn't come through with acceptance, it's still a plus for the apologizer. Isn't there a problem with that? If you are going to feel better anyway, really what is the cost for you in apologizing? What is the value of your apology if there is no downside? You feel better because by your judgment you have done enough, but who are you to decide that? The other guy is the one who was in pain.
"I didn't really care if she accepted my apology or not," says Ms. Somes, an investment analyst in Kirtland, Ohio. "I felt better." (And, she says, her classmate did accept her apology.)
The practical absurdity of the entire process causes me think of it as evidence that the need for justice, and therefore a form of morality, is intrinsic to human nature. I just can't imagine such behavior developing as a learned trait, because there is so little measurable, observable evidence to provide a positive feedback loop for apologies over the course of one person's life. When simply assessing the pluses and minus of apologies as one walks through life, it would be a rare person who felt as though they balanced out to a net individual benefit on a regular basis. Yet we still dance the apology dance. Why? Presumably, because apologies are our somewhat irrational attempt to maintain a fa‡ade of fairness for the good of the human race as a whole. Without it a much larger portion of our lives would be given over to revenge and suspicion, our circle of trusted contacts would be smaller. Having a mechanism such that there is an innate disincentive to those who would simply march thru life domineering and offending others at will encourages cooperation which permits us to progress despite the fact that we are all constantly jostling conflict for status and position. You could take a religious stand on this and say we have been given this sense of justice by God and in our souls we know we will be judged on it. Or you could take a biological stand and say the evolution has selected a sense of justice as a benefit to survival or the species. Either way, apologies are clearly of time-tested value.
In any event, just in case anyone from my past does a Google search on that assclown David Mazzotta who picked on him many years ago, as I said above, I sincerely regret any unwarranted pain I have caused in my life. If it helps you know that, great. But, despite the risk to civilized humanity, please don't accept my apology. Things would work better if apologies were not to be accepted and we did not assuage our guilt by apologizing. We are not small tribes anymore; much better to go forward being careful not to accumulate any more contacts to whom we need to apologize. That will require us to keep our regrets alive and clear in our minds to guide our actions going forward.
And if you are one of the assclowns who picked on me, don't bother to apologize. I already feel morally superior to you and really just don't care enough about you to accept it. That is, unless you are offering money.
[Books] Book Look: The Mezzanine, by Nicholson Baker
Book Look: The Mezzanine, by Nicholson Baker: I have often complained about how novelists have pretty much abandoned the idea of documenting life, instead resorting to various magic realist fantasies or, worse, lurid tales of societal outliers. (I feel less strongly about this than I used to.) As if in response, fate -- by way of assorted Internet recommendations -- brought me to The Mezzanine, which I have come to see as a reductio ad absurdum of a response.
There isn't really any story going on here. A young-ish, male semi-professional, Howie, is returning from lunch and riding an escalator to his workplace on the mezzanine of a sizable office building. We are given 130 pages of every single thought that goes through his head, a stream of consciousness only broken by brief moments where he must actively think about the actions he is going to take in the external world. Basically, it amounts to few minutes immersed inside this man's head.
The reflections are minutiae -- utterly mundane, with long footnotes cascading off as he follows his thought chains. His thoughts are centered on how he has just spent his lunch hour -- quick and superficial interactions with co-workers, a quick snack of popcorn, buying and eating a hot dog, cookie and milk, stopping at CVS to get replacements for his broken shoe laces, subtly awkward encounters with co-workers in the men's room, trying to read a bit of his Penguin Classic paperback copy of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. Seemingly the stuff of nothing, most of which chains off into equally nothing memories from his past.
Baker has an ungodly capacity for description and the precision in vocabulary to pull it off. For example, he refers to the covering of an un-popped Jiffy Pop pan as a "maelstrom" of aluminum foil and describes the perfection of its design of a self contained cooking vessel whose handle doubles as a loop for hanging in stores. He laments the degradation of milk delivery as it went from capped glass bottles, to plastic containers, to paper quarts, to nonexistence, documenting the aesthetic losses at each step, yet also praising the wax paper carton that replaced it and how in opening it creates its own spout.
Here's a long passage regarding shampoo:
And, yes, it was a commercial for Prell.
After a hundred and thirty pages of this, the dominant impression is one of wonder at the strange world we have created where even the most basic items and transparent actions are boundlessly complex and rife with hidden meanings, and what oddly gifted creatures we are that, through nature or conditioning, we navigate this world without a second thought. In that sense, The Mezzanine can be thought of as a very indirect work of sociology.
The question I always try to answer for my readers is Should you read this book? The answer for most people is going to be no. There is no plot, no action, and no characters in the conventional sense. The sentences are long and elaborate. There is no dramatic payoff or closure of any sort. I suspect many (if not most) would give it a furrowed brow and a loud "Who cares?" after a few pages. On the other hand it works well for aesthetic folks with an actively curious intellect and a strong tendency to live inside their own heads. (Clearly I fit that category.)
My favorite blogger, Robin Hanson of Overcoming Bias, has argued that in a time frame of tens or hundreds of thousands of years, humanity will almost necessarily return to a subsistence-level (though not unhappy) lifestyle, and that these folks will look back on our inscrutable and elaborate world as a sort of dreamtime. The Mezzanine is a distilled document of a moment in that world. It is the internal monologue of dreamtime.
There isn't really any story going on here. A young-ish, male semi-professional, Howie, is returning from lunch and riding an escalator to his workplace on the mezzanine of a sizable office building. We are given 130 pages of every single thought that goes through his head, a stream of consciousness only broken by brief moments where he must actively think about the actions he is going to take in the external world. Basically, it amounts to few minutes immersed inside this man's head.
The reflections are minutiae -- utterly mundane, with long footnotes cascading off as he follows his thought chains. His thoughts are centered on how he has just spent his lunch hour -- quick and superficial interactions with co-workers, a quick snack of popcorn, buying and eating a hot dog, cookie and milk, stopping at CVS to get replacements for his broken shoe laces, subtly awkward encounters with co-workers in the men's room, trying to read a bit of his Penguin Classic paperback copy of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. Seemingly the stuff of nothing, most of which chains off into equally nothing memories from his past.
Baker has an ungodly capacity for description and the precision in vocabulary to pull it off. For example, he refers to the covering of an un-popped Jiffy Pop pan as a "maelstrom" of aluminum foil and describes the perfection of its design of a self contained cooking vessel whose handle doubles as a loop for hanging in stores. He laments the degradation of milk delivery as it went from capped glass bottles, to plastic containers, to paper quarts, to nonexistence, documenting the aesthetic losses at each step, yet also praising the wax paper carton that replaced it and how in opening it creates its own spout.
Here's a long passage regarding shampoo:
Yet emotional analogies were not hard to find between the history of civilization on the one hand and the history within the CVS pharmacy on the other, when you caught sight of a once great shampoo like Alberto VO5 or Prell now in sorry vassalage on the bottom shelf of aisle 1B, overrun by later waves of Mongols, Muslims, and Chalukyas -- Suave; Clairol Herbal Essence; Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific; Silkience; Finesse; and bottle after bottle of Arabesque Flex. Prell's green is toosimple a green for us now; the false French of its name seems kitschy, not chic, and where once it was enveloped in my TV-soaked mind by the immediacy and throatiness of womanly voice-overs, it is now late in its decline, lightly advertised, having descended year by year through the thick by hydroscopic emulsions of our esteem, like the large descending pearl that was used in one of its greatest early ads to prove how rich and luxurious it was. (I think that ad was for Prell -- or was it Breck, or Alberto VO5?) I remember friends' older sisters who used those old shampoos -- one sister especially, fresh from using Alberto VO5 and Dippity-do, with her hair rolled up in a number of small pink foam curlers and three RC cola cans, sitting down at the kitchen table to eat breakfast while we (nine years old) ate raw Bermuda onions from lunch, reading Fester Bestertester paperbacks. I think of the old product managers staring out the window like Proust, reminiscing about the great days when they had huge TV budgets and everything was hopping, now reduced to leafing through trade magazines to keep up with late breaking news in hair care like outsiders. Soon, nobody would know they had introduced a better kind of plastic for their shampoo bottle, a kind with a slight matte gunmetal dullness to it instead of the unpleasant patent-leathery reflectivity of then existing efforts at transparency; that with it they had taken their product straight to the top! In time, once everyone had died who had used a certain discontinued brand of shampoo, so that it passed from living memory, it no longer would be understood properly, correctly situated in the felt periphery of life; instead it would be one of many quaint vials of plastic in country antique stores -- understood no better than a ninth century trinket unearthed on the Coromandel coast.This is an especially wonderful passage as it draws a contrast between the relatively short set of memories young Howie has, mostly concerning self-discovery, and the more elegiac, reflective memories of an "old product manager". But more broadly, all this extended observational trivia works because of the recognition it triggers: the bits where the reader thinks "I know exactly what you mean," or "I remember that."
And, yes, it was a commercial for Prell.
After a hundred and thirty pages of this, the dominant impression is one of wonder at the strange world we have created where even the most basic items and transparent actions are boundlessly complex and rife with hidden meanings, and what oddly gifted creatures we are that, through nature or conditioning, we navigate this world without a second thought. In that sense, The Mezzanine can be thought of as a very indirect work of sociology.
The question I always try to answer for my readers is Should you read this book? The answer for most people is going to be no. There is no plot, no action, and no characters in the conventional sense. The sentences are long and elaborate. There is no dramatic payoff or closure of any sort. I suspect many (if not most) would give it a furrowed brow and a loud "Who cares?" after a few pages. On the other hand it works well for aesthetic folks with an actively curious intellect and a strong tendency to live inside their own heads. (Clearly I fit that category.)
My favorite blogger, Robin Hanson of Overcoming Bias, has argued that in a time frame of tens or hundreds of thousands of years, humanity will almost necessarily return to a subsistence-level (though not unhappy) lifestyle, and that these folks will look back on our inscrutable and elaborate world as a sort of dreamtime. The Mezzanine is a distilled document of a moment in that world. It is the internal monologue of dreamtime.
[Good Links] It's All Fun and Games Until...
It's All Fun and Games Until...: For your reading pleasure, check out this Wikipedia entry on the late, great Action Park, a New Jersey-based amusement park that redefined amusement -- redefined it to mean horrific and life threatening. Some choice quotes:
Many of Action Park's attractions were unique. They gave patrons more control over their experience than they would have at most other amusement parks' rides, but for the same reason were considerably riskier.Even to a bare-headed cycler/head-first pool-diver like me, some of that stuff seems just a tad ill-considered.
Its popularity went hand in hand with a reputation for poorly-designed, unsafe rides; inattentive, underaged, underpaid and sometimes under-the-influence employees; equally intoxicated and underprepared visitors...
---
The park's fortunes began to turn with two deaths in summer 1984 and the legal and financial problems that stemmed from the lawsuits. A state investigation of improprieties in the leasing of state land to the resort led to a 110-count grand jury indictment against the nine related companies that ran the resort and their executives for operating an unauthorized insurance company.
---
Action Park's alpine slide descended the mountain roughly below one of the ski area's chairlifts, resulting in much verbal harassment and sometimes spitting from passengers going up for their turn, who would often be entertained by the accidents they witnessed while at the same time hoping to avoid similar fates.
The sleds themselves were a large factor in the injuries. A stick that was supposed to control speed led, in practice, to just two options on the infrequently maintained vehicles: extremely slow, and a speed described by one former employee as "death awaits."
---
[Go karts] were meant to be driven around a small loop track at a speed of about 20 mph (32 km/h) set by the governor devices on them. But park employees knew how to circumvent the governors by wedging tennis balls into them, and were known to do so for parkgoers. As a result, an otherwise standard small-engine car ride became a chance to play bumper cars at 50 mph (80 km/h)...
---
[LOLA Cars] were miniature open-cockpit race cars on a longer track. Extra money was charged to drive them, and they, too, could be adjusted for speed by knowledgeable park employees, with similarly harmful consequences to riders... [A]fter the park management briefly set up a microbrewery nearby, employees looking for after-hours fun would break into it, steal the beer, and then ride the cars on Route 94.
---
Super Speedboats: These were set up in a small pond, known by staff to be heavily infested with snakes.
---
Tank Ride was one of the most popular... In a chain link fence-enclosed area, small tanks could be driven around, for a fee, for five minutes at a time, with tennis ball cannons that enabled riders to shoot at a sensor prominently mounted on each tank. If hit, the tank stopped operating for 15 seconds, while other tankers often took advantage of the delay to pepper the stricken vehicle with more fire. Visitors on the outside could also join in the fun through less costly cannons mounted on the inside of the fence. When workers had to enter the cage to attend to a stuck or crashed tank, which usually happened several times a day, they were often pelted with tennis balls from every direction despite prohibitions against such behavior that could result in expulsion from the park.
---
The first patron death occurred [at the Tidal Wave Pool] in 1982; another visitor would drown in this common water-park attraction five years later. It was, however, the number of people the lifeguards saved from a similar fate that made this the only Waterworld attraction to gain its own nickname, "The Grave Pool."
---
[The Tarzan Swing] was a steel arch hanging from a 20-foot-long cable over a spring-fed pool. Patrons used the ride properly, but then were surprised to find out the water underneath was very cold. It was cold enough, in fact, that the lifeguards sometimes had to rescue people who were so surprised by the sudden chill they couldn't swim out.
---
[The Surf hill] ride, common to other water parks at the time, allowed patrons to slide down a water-slick sloped surface on mats into small puddles, until they reached a foam barrier after an upslope at the end. The seventh lane was known as the "back breaker," due to its special kicker two-thirds of the way down intended to allow jumps and splashdowns into a larger puddle. Employees at the park used to like eating at a nearby snack bar with a good view of the attraction, since it was almost guaranteed that they could see some serious injuries, lost bikini tops, or both.
---
Super Speed Water Slides: Those who made it to the bottom found their progress arrested by water, which made a large splash, and then a small pool. The speed at which riders met the end resulted in many getting wedgies and enemas from the experience.
---
The Looping Water Slide [is] the one ride that has come to symbolize Action Park and its extreme thrill-seeking was almost never used.
In the mid-1980s GAR built an enclosed water slide, not unusual for that time, and indeed the park already had several. But for this one they decided to build, at the end, a complete vertical loop of the kind more commonly associated with roller coasters. Employees have reported they were offered hundred-dollar bills to test it.
It was opened for one month in summer 1985 before it was closed at the order of the state's Advisory Board on Carnival Amusement Ride Safety, a highly unusual move at the time. One worker told a local newspaper that "there were too many bloody noses and back injuries" from riders, and it was widely rumored, and reported in Weird NJ, that some of the test dummies sent down before it was opened had been dismembered. A rider also reportedly got stuck at the top of the loop due to insufficient water pressure, and a hatch had to be built at the bottom of the slope to allow for future extrications.
Saturday, January 02, 2010
The Month That Was - December 2009
The Month That Was - December 2009: Kiss another decade goodbye. I almost certainly have fewer ahead than behind at this point. I'm still waiting for that mortality vaccine, and really, what is the hold up on that?
I finished yet another revision of the manuscript that will become Misspent Youth and now it's time to set it aside again and clear my mind of current preconceptions. Perhaps one more revision before we get to the final publishing sequence (which in itself will require at least two revisions beyond that). Until I'm ready, I'll go back to working on some ancillary writing projects that may or may not ever see the light of day.
As promised, I'm laying off the city of Detroit for this month. Detroit...lay off...there is a joke in there somewhere, but making it would break my vow. I finally finished Cloud Atlas; you can find my extensive comments about it below. I've since moved on to The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker, which appears to consist entirely of the thoughts going through a man's head as he rides an escalator back to his office after lunch. "Oddly compelling" is an insufficient description. More next month. My one bit of travel was to spend the long Christmas weekend at The Greenbrier -- a seriously high-end resort in the West Virginia Appalachians. I'm still way behind in photos; I got Tulum and Delray Beach up, but I haven't yet started Valley of Fire/Zion/Bryce Canyon, and now I have Greenbrier to do. I may never catch up.
Oh by the way, I have gone back and added labels to all the posts I made for 2009. At the end of every post you will now see the assigned label(s), such as 'Travel' or 'Books'. If you want to read more of that type, just click the label and they will all come up. I figure this brings me up to about 2003, technologically speaking.
Now bravely onward to 2010.
[Books] Book Look: Cloud Atlas
[Travel] Dressing for Dinner
[Movies] Suburban Samuel Clemens
[Cars] Automachinations
[Movies] Last Word on The Phantom Menace
I finished yet another revision of the manuscript that will become Misspent Youth and now it's time to set it aside again and clear my mind of current preconceptions. Perhaps one more revision before we get to the final publishing sequence (which in itself will require at least two revisions beyond that). Until I'm ready, I'll go back to working on some ancillary writing projects that may or may not ever see the light of day.
As promised, I'm laying off the city of Detroit for this month. Detroit...lay off...there is a joke in there somewhere, but making it would break my vow. I finally finished Cloud Atlas; you can find my extensive comments about it below. I've since moved on to The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker, which appears to consist entirely of the thoughts going through a man's head as he rides an escalator back to his office after lunch. "Oddly compelling" is an insufficient description. More next month. My one bit of travel was to spend the long Christmas weekend at The Greenbrier -- a seriously high-end resort in the West Virginia Appalachians. I'm still way behind in photos; I got Tulum and Delray Beach up, but I haven't yet started Valley of Fire/Zion/Bryce Canyon, and now I have Greenbrier to do. I may never catch up.
Oh by the way, I have gone back and added labels to all the posts I made for 2009. At the end of every post you will now see the assigned label(s), such as 'Travel' or 'Books'. If you want to read more of that type, just click the label and they will all come up. I figure this brings me up to about 2003, technologically speaking.
Now bravely onward to 2010.
[Books] Book Look: Cloud Atlas
[Travel] Dressing for Dinner
[Movies] Suburban Samuel Clemens
[Cars] Automachinations
[Movies] Last Word on The Phantom Menace
[Books] Book Look: Cloud Atlas
Book Look: Cloud Atlas: If you troll for book reviews on the web, looking to fill out your reading list, you will inevitably stumble across a lot recommendations for Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell. As a monumental work of imaginative fiction that garnered short listings for the Nebula and Arthur C. Clarke sci-fi awards, it's not surprising that it would appeal to webheads. But it also won the British Book Award for literary fiction and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, so it's no genre baby either.
The book consists of a set of six novellas in a structure that is most aptly described as a Russian Matryoshka doll. You get the first halves of novellas 1-5 in order, then the entirety of novella 6, followed by the second halves of novellas 5-1 (reverse order). The effect is like a palindrome, or the winding and unwinding of a yo-yo, or perhaps the expansion and contraction of the universe. A short description of the six novellas:
Cloud Atlas is a tour-de-force of writing skill, as I will get to briefly. But it is marred -- jarringly so -- by one serious flaw. The morality behind it is utterly infantile. Mitchell has stated that the primary theme of Cloud Atlas is predation; individual on individual, tribe on tribe, race on race, culture on culture. Fair enough, but every predatory situation is portrayed as perfectly black and white. The bad guys are all violent, conniving, and unremorseful and pretty much avowedly evil or nihilistic or narcissistic. The good guys are all victims and underdogs and prone to hand-over-the-heart nobility.
Before I go further, I'm going to start to get a little more detailed into the stories and there is the possibility of spoilers, although I will try to be circumspect. I should also note that this isn't a thriller with a secret twist at the end; even if I generate some spoilage it will not likely diminish your reading experience, but if you want to be especially careful stop reading now.
Story by story, let's briefly describe the bad guys and good guys.
Not a shade of gray in that list. Snidely Whiplash and Dudley Doo-right would fit in perfectly. The bad guys have no redeeming qualities, and the good guys are all noble, righteous, and pure. Not only are the normative ethics simplistic, but some of the cliches are so long in the tooth they're only worthy of MST3K.
Now, while the core morality of a work of fiction is very important, a book can succeed without a solid one, and Cloud Atlas does. But that is precisely the reason the childish philosophy behind it is so jarring. With respect to any other aspect of fiction, Cloud Atlas is a masterpiece.
The sequencing of the stories through history and into the future, something that most writers would have ham-fisted, is handled elegantly: implicit reincarnation, both subtle and direct repetitions from one story to another, circuitous returns to familiar places. The plot structure is surpassingly excellent.
For me, the most impressive aspect of Cloud Atlas is the mastery of writing styles. And not just the writing styles in themselves, but capturing the transformation of the English language as a by-product. From historic styles of 19th century formality, to Edwardian insouciance, to hardboiled potboiler, to irony and satire, then into the future through the dystopian corporate speak, and further to post-apocalyptic pidgin -- this transformation, happening as it does at the point of communication between writer and reader, adds a primal sense of realism that informs the experience of reading at a very deep level. This, to my mind, qualifies as genius. (Long time readers know how enthralled I am by contemporary attempts to use language in something other than a purely utilitarian way.)
Despite the formulaic nature of the characters, I cared about some of them. Frobisher was fun; and Cavendish. And despite the horrors and tragedies that are inflicted upon the good guys in "Sloosha's Crossin'..." and the unadulterated, shameless emotional button pushing, I found this story the most affecting of all. It may have been button pushing, but it was awesome button pushing. (I actually had to set the book aside and spend some time with the deliriously happy characters in Misspent Youth, to clear my palate before going on.)
So, as with all my book reviews, that leaves the question of whether you should read the book. Let me draw an analogy.
Suppose it was discovered that Rembrandt went off into his studio and began working on a new portrait. It was a work of astounding creativity. It drew on everything before it, but also looked to the future and used materials in ways they had never been used before. The quality craftsmanship was unprecedented. The vision and scope was as broad as humanity itself. It was a work likely to profoundly affect you for a long, long time. But the subject...well, the subject was: a velvet Elvis. A shatteringly beautiful velvet Elvis. Would you still want to see it?
By the way, the film rights have been locked up by the Wachowski Brothers, the duo behind another mind-blowing ride with a simpleton's core: The Matrix. Hmm.
The book consists of a set of six novellas in a structure that is most aptly described as a Russian Matryoshka doll. You get the first halves of novellas 1-5 in order, then the entirety of novella 6, followed by the second halves of novellas 5-1 (reverse order). The effect is like a palindrome, or the winding and unwinding of a yo-yo, or perhaps the expansion and contraction of the universe. A short description of the six novellas:
- The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing. The time is the mid-nineteen century and story that of an American notary trying to make his way back across the Pacific to his home in San Francisco, written in the style Herman Melville. Along the way Ewing encounters savagery from both native and civilized men and experiences a brutal shipboard existence.
- Letters from Zedelghem. We move forward in time to Europe between the wars. This one is written in a droll Edwardian style. Driven, talented, but unknown and ne'er-do-well English composer Robert Frobisher flees debt and family shame in England by weaseling his way into becoming the assistant to a world renowned composer in Belgium. What starts out as the good humored, narcissistic romp of a young rake, turns serious. All this is told in the form of a series of letters written by Frobisher to his best friend back in England, Rufus Sixsmith. During his time in Zedelghem, Frobisher discovers and reads Adam Ewing's published journal and finds some sad poignancy.
- Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery. Set in the '70s and told in the flat, unadorned style of a flavor-of-the-month mystery. Crusading reporter Luisa Rey is investigating an uber-powerful nuclear power company that is covering up how unsafe their latest reactor is. Nefarious conspiracies, dastardly assassination attempts, death defying action, and criminal corruption clash in this pulse-pounding potboiler. You get the picture. The connection is that Luisa Rey's inside source is none other than Rufus Sixsmith. In the process, Luisa finds herself in possession of Sixsmith's most cherished possession, the letters Robert Frobisher sent him decades earlier.
- The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish. We have reached roughly contemporary times (maybe y2k) and so are given a big ol' dose of irony and satire. Cavendish runs a small-time vanity publishing house which has produced the autobiography of a powerful mobster. Things go sour, as they will when mobsters are involved, and Cavendish must flee for his life. He goes to his brother for help and his brother seems to contrive to have him committed to some sort of asylum, possibly as retribution for cuckolding him some years past. While trapped in the asylum, Cavendish suffers a stroke and struggles to simultaneously escape the institution and regain control of his body. All along, Cavendish, is evaluating 'Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey' mystery for publication.
- An Orison of Somni-451. We are now in the future where we find a Blade Runner-esque dystopia. The prevailing culture is a Korean Corporatism that has environmentally trashed the world and created a slave race of highly specialized clones. This story is told in the form of a final confession and explanation of a rebel clone, Somni-451, given to her legal representative before her execution. In the course of Somni-451's transformation from subservient clone to self-valuing humanity, she is exposed to a holographic movie of The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish.
- Sloosha's Crossin' and Ev'rythin' After. Now we move yet further into the future and have gone from dystopia to full-on post-apocalypse. We are back in the Pacific at a time when the world has almost totally fallen back to tribalism and subsistence living. The story centers on Zach'ry, a young member of one of the more advanced tribes (although still quite primitive). His family and tribe, along with others, live in constant threat from the Kona, a savage tribe that hunts, kills, and enslaves others. Zach'ry's tribe takes in a strange visitor from the final remnants of a technologically advanced civilization (which maintains a Star Trek-ian prime directive of sorts). Things go from bad to worse for Zach'ry and humanity. We discover that Zach'ry's tribe worships a deity based on Somni-451.
Cloud Atlas is a tour-de-force of writing skill, as I will get to briefly. But it is marred -- jarringly so -- by one serious flaw. The morality behind it is utterly infantile. Mitchell has stated that the primary theme of Cloud Atlas is predation; individual on individual, tribe on tribe, race on race, culture on culture. Fair enough, but every predatory situation is portrayed as perfectly black and white. The bad guys are all violent, conniving, and unremorseful and pretty much avowedly evil or nihilistic or narcissistic. The good guys are all victims and underdogs and prone to hand-over-the-heart nobility.
Before I go further, I'm going to start to get a little more detailed into the stories and there is the possibility of spoilers, although I will try to be circumspect. I should also note that this isn't a thriller with a secret twist at the end; even if I generate some spoilage it will not likely diminish your reading experience, but if you want to be especially careful stop reading now.
Story by story, let's briefly describe the bad guys and good guys.
- The Pacific Journal...Bad guys: Native slaveholders, corrupt British profiteers, a nihilistic murderer, greedy Christian missionaries, shipboard child rapists; Good guy: A na‹ve, purehearted American who falls victim to his own trusting nature.
- Letters...Bad guys: a plagiaristic domineering composer, his amoral wife, upper crust society in general by scornfully eschewing talented bad boy. Good guy: the bad boy talent, his brother who died in WW1 to no good purpose.
- Half-Lives...Bad guys: Greedy capitalists, corrupt politicians, hired assassins. Good guys: Stalwart whistleblowers, a crusading reported who fights corruption in the memory of her father -- a good cop who stood up to bad ones.
- The Ghastly Ordeal...Bad guys: a mob boss (cut straight from a Guy Ritchie film) and a Nurse Ratched knock off. Good guys: a mildly disabled third rate book publisher and a pack off sweet oldsters who only want to be treated with respect.
- Orison...Bad guys: owners of McDonalds style restaurant, spoiled and carelessly murderous well off college kids; Good guys: A clone fighting for human rights, members of secret society dedicated to the same cause, a poverty swamped society of outcasts living outside the culture and on their own terms.
- Sloosha's Crossin'...Bad guys: Sadistic genocidal enslavers; Good guys: a peaceful and idyllic tribe; the last remnants of civilization fighting to preserve itself.
Not a shade of gray in that list. Snidely Whiplash and Dudley Doo-right would fit in perfectly. The bad guys have no redeeming qualities, and the good guys are all noble, righteous, and pure. Not only are the normative ethics simplistic, but some of the cliches are so long in the tooth they're only worthy of MST3K.
Now, while the core morality of a work of fiction is very important, a book can succeed without a solid one, and Cloud Atlas does. But that is precisely the reason the childish philosophy behind it is so jarring. With respect to any other aspect of fiction, Cloud Atlas is a masterpiece.
The sequencing of the stories through history and into the future, something that most writers would have ham-fisted, is handled elegantly: implicit reincarnation, both subtle and direct repetitions from one story to another, circuitous returns to familiar places. The plot structure is surpassingly excellent.
For me, the most impressive aspect of Cloud Atlas is the mastery of writing styles. And not just the writing styles in themselves, but capturing the transformation of the English language as a by-product. From historic styles of 19th century formality, to Edwardian insouciance, to hardboiled potboiler, to irony and satire, then into the future through the dystopian corporate speak, and further to post-apocalyptic pidgin -- this transformation, happening as it does at the point of communication between writer and reader, adds a primal sense of realism that informs the experience of reading at a very deep level. This, to my mind, qualifies as genius. (Long time readers know how enthralled I am by contemporary attempts to use language in something other than a purely utilitarian way.)
Despite the formulaic nature of the characters, I cared about some of them. Frobisher was fun; and Cavendish. And despite the horrors and tragedies that are inflicted upon the good guys in "Sloosha's Crossin'..." and the unadulterated, shameless emotional button pushing, I found this story the most affecting of all. It may have been button pushing, but it was awesome button pushing. (I actually had to set the book aside and spend some time with the deliriously happy characters in Misspent Youth, to clear my palate before going on.)
So, as with all my book reviews, that leaves the question of whether you should read the book. Let me draw an analogy.
Suppose it was discovered that Rembrandt went off into his studio and began working on a new portrait. It was a work of astounding creativity. It drew on everything before it, but also looked to the future and used materials in ways they had never been used before. The quality craftsmanship was unprecedented. The vision and scope was as broad as humanity itself. It was a work likely to profoundly affect you for a long, long time. But the subject...well, the subject was: a velvet Elvis. A shatteringly beautiful velvet Elvis. Would you still want to see it?
By the way, the film rights have been locked up by the Wachowski Brothers, the duo behind another mind-blowing ride with a simpleton's core: The Matrix. Hmm.
[Travel] Dressing for Dinner
Dressing for Dinner: What's most astounding about this trip is that nothing went wrong. The travel plans were to fly out to DC on Christmas Eve (Thursday), drive 4 hours into the West Virginia mountains on Christmas Day, drive back then fly home on Sunday. In that span of days, apart from the standard holiday madness, there was a terrorist bombing attempt and a quasi-riot at JFK airport yet I skated through both ends of my air travels with nary an incident. That includes flying Delta (the airline in both the attempted bombing and riot incidents) in and out of Detroit (the destination of the would-be bomber). I must say, I noticed no security histrionics except for a polite TSA officer checking IDs and boarding passes at the gate, with an obvious goal of visibility rather than any sort of rule enforcement. I'm may be in the minority, but I think TSA did OK this time around.
The Greenbrier is a storied and venerable luxury resort in the Appalachians just across the border form regular Virginia into West Virginia, in the remote town of White Sulphur Springs. The name should tell you that mineral baths were how the town got its start back all the way back in the late 18th century. It's a small town; approximately two-thirds of the local residents are employed by The Greenbrier which was, and probably still is, the most high-society destination in the South and it is consistently revered by eminent luminaries and various species of the Southern hoi-polloi.
There's a fascinating social dynamic behind this long-term hospitality excellence. It's not easy for an organization to maintain stratospheric levels of service for decades on end. You can probably count the number of such places in the world on your fingers (and maybe toes). One strategy for doing so is to create an entire community, including history and culture, dedicated to the mission. Think of Disney essentially building Orlando in their image of service and magic (although the city has progressed way beyond just Disney). The relationship between the Greenbrier and White Sulphur Springs is almost the same, except that it arose organically and locally over more than a century. Generations of solid West Virginians in the area have devoted healthy portions of their lives to The Greenbrier and have never misstepped to the point of allowing it decay or even fall out of favor. That's a remarkable achievement.
This motivation to service apparently extends beyond the functioning of the resort since the Greenbrier was retasked as an Army hospital throughout WW2 and subsequently was the site of a top secret fallout shelter during the Cold War years (more on that later).
What's it like to stay at Greenbrier? It's nice. Very nice. But you must be comfortable with a certain old world formality in the atmosphere. This is reinforced from the moment you enter the grounds. The main building is an enormous antebellum castle of a structure. Horse drawn carriages would not be out of place pulling up to the entrance. The furnishings are ornate, gilded, and garishly colorful. The interior was designed by Dorothy Draper, who also did the similar Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island. You won't see a lot of plastic or aluminum or kid safe decor.
Like most historic properties, the rooms are outdated and a bit worn; there is only so much you can do to renovate centuries-old architecture and plumbing. Water pressure is anemic and electrical outlets are dear. But unlike some such rooms I have stayed in, the heat functions well and there doesn't seem to be a problem with noise (although that may be because of the high-end patronage). The bed is plush and comfortable and there is a walk-in closet. All in all, about as good as you can expect from a historic property.
The indoor pool is another beauty. (There is an outdoor infinity pool too, but of no use in December.) It is Olympic-sized with a deep-end depth of nine feet. And it is tiled -- not concrete, with stair step platforms into the water. The only thing missing for a full-on 1930's era swim experience were full coverage bathing suits and shower caps on the women. That and a diving board. I absolutely hate that lawyers have done away with diving boards and criminalized diving in general, so I took the opportunity for a few head first plunges into the nine foot end when the lifeguard's back was turned. There is a sort of faux sun-deck with lounge chairs and a separate area for patio furniture style chairs and tables where you can dine from the uncharacteristically substandard snack bar. There are fine locker room facilities available, associated with the spa, which is important because the idea is to bring your swimwear to the pool area and change there as opposed to wandering through the lobby in your bathing suit like common rabble. Anyway, I was really digging on the pool.
The grounds are lovely and roll gently through the Old South round-top mountains with footbridges across broad and shallow streams. One suspects fall and spring are stunning. In the current day, that spells real estate opportunity and the surrounding areas are filling up with tasteful rental properties starting at around $2 million and going up as high as you like from there. What real estate crash are you talking about?
I can easily see the attraction of a home in the area, especially a vacation home or summer estate, thanks to the activities available at The Greenbrier. These include: fly-fishing, skeet shooting, wing shooting, off-road driving, falconry (yes, the big scary birds that can peck your eyes out), hiking, biking...all offered with tours and instruction as needed. Tennis is big, but even bigger is golf, what with the Greenbrier hosting a PGA tournament. It is clearly a place you could go year after year to get your recreational fix. The Snowshoe skiing resort is a little over an hour away, but I suspect the warm months are prime time here. For an empty nester with means, not only would this be a fine semi-retirement but it would serve as a draw to get a far-flung family together every now and then.
Sadly, holiday scheduling and time constraints kept us from doing any of the activities, but we were able to take a fascinating tour of the bunker. What is the bunker you ask? The story is that back in the duck-and-cover fifties, President Ike determined that in the event of a nuclear attack, an effort should be made to save the legislative branch of government and keep it functioning in the post-apocalyptic world. Nowadays we know better and would readily offer them up as sacrificial lambs, but it was a simpler time. Plans were laid and palms were greased and construction of said fallout shelter began at the Greenbrier under the auspices of adding a new wing to the resort.
It was quite an undertaking and scores of Greenbrier employees had to be in on the secret to keep it going. After it was complete the fallout shelter's service staff doubled as Greenbrier staff to maintain the charade. Cover was finally blown in 1992 in a hubristic report in the Washington Post that justified itself by claiming the shelter was insufficient and needed to be exposed as such. The tour guides proudly point out that no Greenbrier employees had broken under questioning, it was a unnamed former government functionary who coughed up the validation.
The tour itself is interesting as a window on to how the government thought about survival back then. There was only room for legislators -- no families, and the military was empowered to forcibly remove the legislators and leave their families to deal with the apocalypse on their own if need be. The congresscritters would then be ensconced in dormitory style bunks, 60 to a room, fed military rations, and be serviced by a single assistant each until it was presumed safe to exit. Tellingly, at some point in the seventies, the leaders of both chambers contrived to have VIP suites where they could stay in a modicum of comfort while the rest lived on like college freshmen. No reason status symbolism should be affected by a little thing like nuclear war, after all.
The tour is loaded with little gems of information, especially for those of us who lived through those times. (It remains unsettling for me to hear events I have lived through and recall referred to in historic tones.) I highly recommend the tour. It's an interesting little distillation of a Cold War vignette.
One question that can be reasonably asked about The Greenbrier is whether it is timeless, or merely nostalgic. I'm not sure, but I'm leaning toward timeless. I don't think they set their policies based on a desire to reproduce the thirties, either 19- or 18-, they just seem to like the genteel formality of it all. Dressing for dinner is a perfect example. There is no attempt as far as I can see to generate some sort of old school dining experience. The waiters don't display any antebellum affectations and they don't force their employees into any of those embarrassing historically accurate costumes. Wi-fi is ubiquitous, though there are draconian filters in place. The main bar is no different from a nice comfy lounge you might find in any better hotel in NYC, except everyone is wearing coat and tie instead of metrosexual gear. They certainly don't stop folks from getting tipsy. One particularly sloshed woman attempted to engage me in conversation by asking, "So what's your fancy pants?" I plan to use that question on future job interviewees to see how they react to confusion. Turns out this woman was drinking herself silly in the bar while her husband was off in the casino losing a small fortune. Oh yes, there's a casino (coat and tie recommended). What could be more timeless?
One area where they keep scrupulously modern is food prices. Sweet Fancy Moses! You'd think you were at Wynn Las Vegas. A bottle of water is $2.50, entrees in the cheapest restaurant start at $20, and a mixed drink will run you around $15. And there is really no opportunity to be fugal since the nearest restaurants outside the resort are a significant drive off. I would rate the food good (in the cafe) to excellent (the main dining room), the service average but consistent.
Between the price and the formality, Greenbrier will only appeal to a select audience. If you can afford it, Greenbrier is a fine experience. It would work best if you could sync it up with your love of golf or tennis or fishing or wing shooting. Or at least you should give yourself enough time to sample the activities. It makes a great respite from the commotion and strife of the uncouth modern world. Just don't forget your Sunday go-to-meeting clothes. And your wallet.
The Greenbrier is a storied and venerable luxury resort in the Appalachians just across the border form regular Virginia into West Virginia, in the remote town of White Sulphur Springs. The name should tell you that mineral baths were how the town got its start back all the way back in the late 18th century. It's a small town; approximately two-thirds of the local residents are employed by The Greenbrier which was, and probably still is, the most high-society destination in the South and it is consistently revered by eminent luminaries and various species of the Southern hoi-polloi.
There's a fascinating social dynamic behind this long-term hospitality excellence. It's not easy for an organization to maintain stratospheric levels of service for decades on end. You can probably count the number of such places in the world on your fingers (and maybe toes). One strategy for doing so is to create an entire community, including history and culture, dedicated to the mission. Think of Disney essentially building Orlando in their image of service and magic (although the city has progressed way beyond just Disney). The relationship between the Greenbrier and White Sulphur Springs is almost the same, except that it arose organically and locally over more than a century. Generations of solid West Virginians in the area have devoted healthy portions of their lives to The Greenbrier and have never misstepped to the point of allowing it decay or even fall out of favor. That's a remarkable achievement.
This motivation to service apparently extends beyond the functioning of the resort since the Greenbrier was retasked as an Army hospital throughout WW2 and subsequently was the site of a top secret fallout shelter during the Cold War years (more on that later).
What's it like to stay at Greenbrier? It's nice. Very nice. But you must be comfortable with a certain old world formality in the atmosphere. This is reinforced from the moment you enter the grounds. The main building is an enormous antebellum castle of a structure. Horse drawn carriages would not be out of place pulling up to the entrance. The furnishings are ornate, gilded, and garishly colorful. The interior was designed by Dorothy Draper, who also did the similar Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island. You won't see a lot of plastic or aluminum or kid safe decor.
Like most historic properties, the rooms are outdated and a bit worn; there is only so much you can do to renovate centuries-old architecture and plumbing. Water pressure is anemic and electrical outlets are dear. But unlike some such rooms I have stayed in, the heat functions well and there doesn't seem to be a problem with noise (although that may be because of the high-end patronage). The bed is plush and comfortable and there is a walk-in closet. All in all, about as good as you can expect from a historic property.
The indoor pool is another beauty. (There is an outdoor infinity pool too, but of no use in December.) It is Olympic-sized with a deep-end depth of nine feet. And it is tiled -- not concrete, with stair step platforms into the water. The only thing missing for a full-on 1930's era swim experience were full coverage bathing suits and shower caps on the women. That and a diving board. I absolutely hate that lawyers have done away with diving boards and criminalized diving in general, so I took the opportunity for a few head first plunges into the nine foot end when the lifeguard's back was turned. There is a sort of faux sun-deck with lounge chairs and a separate area for patio furniture style chairs and tables where you can dine from the uncharacteristically substandard snack bar. There are fine locker room facilities available, associated with the spa, which is important because the idea is to bring your swimwear to the pool area and change there as opposed to wandering through the lobby in your bathing suit like common rabble. Anyway, I was really digging on the pool.
The grounds are lovely and roll gently through the Old South round-top mountains with footbridges across broad and shallow streams. One suspects fall and spring are stunning. In the current day, that spells real estate opportunity and the surrounding areas are filling up with tasteful rental properties starting at around $2 million and going up as high as you like from there. What real estate crash are you talking about?
I can easily see the attraction of a home in the area, especially a vacation home or summer estate, thanks to the activities available at The Greenbrier. These include: fly-fishing, skeet shooting, wing shooting, off-road driving, falconry (yes, the big scary birds that can peck your eyes out), hiking, biking...all offered with tours and instruction as needed. Tennis is big, but even bigger is golf, what with the Greenbrier hosting a PGA tournament. It is clearly a place you could go year after year to get your recreational fix. The Snowshoe skiing resort is a little over an hour away, but I suspect the warm months are prime time here. For an empty nester with means, not only would this be a fine semi-retirement but it would serve as a draw to get a far-flung family together every now and then.
Sadly, holiday scheduling and time constraints kept us from doing any of the activities, but we were able to take a fascinating tour of the bunker. What is the bunker you ask? The story is that back in the duck-and-cover fifties, President Ike determined that in the event of a nuclear attack, an effort should be made to save the legislative branch of government and keep it functioning in the post-apocalyptic world. Nowadays we know better and would readily offer them up as sacrificial lambs, but it was a simpler time. Plans were laid and palms were greased and construction of said fallout shelter began at the Greenbrier under the auspices of adding a new wing to the resort.
It was quite an undertaking and scores of Greenbrier employees had to be in on the secret to keep it going. After it was complete the fallout shelter's service staff doubled as Greenbrier staff to maintain the charade. Cover was finally blown in 1992 in a hubristic report in the Washington Post that justified itself by claiming the shelter was insufficient and needed to be exposed as such. The tour guides proudly point out that no Greenbrier employees had broken under questioning, it was a unnamed former government functionary who coughed up the validation.
The tour itself is interesting as a window on to how the government thought about survival back then. There was only room for legislators -- no families, and the military was empowered to forcibly remove the legislators and leave their families to deal with the apocalypse on their own if need be. The congresscritters would then be ensconced in dormitory style bunks, 60 to a room, fed military rations, and be serviced by a single assistant each until it was presumed safe to exit. Tellingly, at some point in the seventies, the leaders of both chambers contrived to have VIP suites where they could stay in a modicum of comfort while the rest lived on like college freshmen. No reason status symbolism should be affected by a little thing like nuclear war, after all.
The tour is loaded with little gems of information, especially for those of us who lived through those times. (It remains unsettling for me to hear events I have lived through and recall referred to in historic tones.) I highly recommend the tour. It's an interesting little distillation of a Cold War vignette.
One question that can be reasonably asked about The Greenbrier is whether it is timeless, or merely nostalgic. I'm not sure, but I'm leaning toward timeless. I don't think they set their policies based on a desire to reproduce the thirties, either 19- or 18-, they just seem to like the genteel formality of it all. Dressing for dinner is a perfect example. There is no attempt as far as I can see to generate some sort of old school dining experience. The waiters don't display any antebellum affectations and they don't force their employees into any of those embarrassing historically accurate costumes. Wi-fi is ubiquitous, though there are draconian filters in place. The main bar is no different from a nice comfy lounge you might find in any better hotel in NYC, except everyone is wearing coat and tie instead of metrosexual gear. They certainly don't stop folks from getting tipsy. One particularly sloshed woman attempted to engage me in conversation by asking, "So what's your fancy pants?" I plan to use that question on future job interviewees to see how they react to confusion. Turns out this woman was drinking herself silly in the bar while her husband was off in the casino losing a small fortune. Oh yes, there's a casino (coat and tie recommended). What could be more timeless?
One area where they keep scrupulously modern is food prices. Sweet Fancy Moses! You'd think you were at Wynn Las Vegas. A bottle of water is $2.50, entrees in the cheapest restaurant start at $20, and a mixed drink will run you around $15. And there is really no opportunity to be fugal since the nearest restaurants outside the resort are a significant drive off. I would rate the food good (in the cafe) to excellent (the main dining room), the service average but consistent.
Between the price and the formality, Greenbrier will only appeal to a select audience. If you can afford it, Greenbrier is a fine experience. It would work best if you could sync it up with your love of golf or tennis or fishing or wing shooting. Or at least you should give yourself enough time to sample the activities. It makes a great respite from the commotion and strife of the uncouth modern world. Just don't forget your Sunday go-to-meeting clothes. And your wallet.
[Movies] Suburban Samuel Clemens
Suburban Samuel Clemens: I didn't post anything the month John Hughes died because everybody else in the world already did, but he was always one of my favorites. Lost in the standard view of his films as sweet-and-sour adolescent comedies was his oblique appreciation of suburban middle-class life. It's not obvious what a radical concept this is until you give some consideration to how middle-class life is constantly portrayed in art as empty and phony. If you live in a nice middle-class neighborhood Hollywood will portray you as closet sexual deviant or a secretly violent criminal, or, God help you, a Christian. At best you'll be a repressed corporate stooge in dire need of some spiritual enlightenment.
I would guess at least 90% of the current inhabitants of the world, and probably 99.9999% of everyone who ever lived at any time in human history, would view middle-class suburban life as an outright utopia just on the basis of safety alone, never mind comfort and convenience and economic opportunity. But we sneer at it. We refuse to believe we are safe, expecting our children to be kidnapped at any moment or fall and bump their heads if they are not wearing a helmet. We spend our time perfecting the aesthetics of our yards or shuttling kids to soccer games or running home businesses on the side because we can grab a quick bite of fast food and find everything we need in one trip to Costco, but we decry the consumerist society that makes that possible.
There's a reason our culture has organically evolved the middle-class as it has, and it is because it's the exactly the life we have wanted; the best that flawed human nature has ever achieved. Appreciate it. Celebrate it. Enjoy it. John Hughes did. He laughed at it because, as a product flawed humanity, it will have its' share of absurd irrationalities. He found drama in it because, as a product of flawed humanity, there will be conflict -- pain and pleasure. But he also saw what a great achievement it is.
You certainly don't see a lot of that in the arts. The old TV show Wonder Years (oddly unavailable on DVD) comes to mind. And more recently the wonderful pop band Fountains of Wayne seems to take that tack, especially on their Utopia Parkway album. I am trying to hit that chord also in Misspent Youth; we'll see if I succeed. But for the most part cynicism and negatively rule the day.
All this came to mind when I happened to stumble on Sixteen Candles for the nine-millionth time, but the first time in ages uncut with no commercials -- 25 years old and it hasn't aged a day. And I saw that a new documentary about Hughes and his abrupt disappearance from Hollywood in 1991, Don't You Forget About Me, recently hit cable (haven't seen it, reviews mixed). For some reason, they neglected to interview me for it, but if they did I would have told them that I think Ferris Buellar's place in the Pantheon is right next to Huckleberry Finn, and the suburbs and the Mississippi aren't all that different.
I would guess at least 90% of the current inhabitants of the world, and probably 99.9999% of everyone who ever lived at any time in human history, would view middle-class suburban life as an outright utopia just on the basis of safety alone, never mind comfort and convenience and economic opportunity. But we sneer at it. We refuse to believe we are safe, expecting our children to be kidnapped at any moment or fall and bump their heads if they are not wearing a helmet. We spend our time perfecting the aesthetics of our yards or shuttling kids to soccer games or running home businesses on the side because we can grab a quick bite of fast food and find everything we need in one trip to Costco, but we decry the consumerist society that makes that possible.
There's a reason our culture has organically evolved the middle-class as it has, and it is because it's the exactly the life we have wanted; the best that flawed human nature has ever achieved. Appreciate it. Celebrate it. Enjoy it. John Hughes did. He laughed at it because, as a product flawed humanity, it will have its' share of absurd irrationalities. He found drama in it because, as a product of flawed humanity, there will be conflict -- pain and pleasure. But he also saw what a great achievement it is.
You certainly don't see a lot of that in the arts. The old TV show Wonder Years (oddly unavailable on DVD) comes to mind. And more recently the wonderful pop band Fountains of Wayne seems to take that tack, especially on their Utopia Parkway album. I am trying to hit that chord also in Misspent Youth; we'll see if I succeed. But for the most part cynicism and negatively rule the day.
All this came to mind when I happened to stumble on Sixteen Candles for the nine-millionth time, but the first time in ages uncut with no commercials -- 25 years old and it hasn't aged a day. And I saw that a new documentary about Hughes and his abrupt disappearance from Hollywood in 1991, Don't You Forget About Me, recently hit cable (haven't seen it, reviews mixed). For some reason, they neglected to interview me for it, but if they did I would have told them that I think Ferris Buellar's place in the Pantheon is right next to Huckleberry Finn, and the suburbs and the Mississippi aren't all that different.
[Cars] Automachinations
Automachinations: It's getting close to my traditional car buying year. The first new car I ever bought was a bright red stripper 1984 Toyota Celica (no a/c, power nothing, manual trans) -- an awesome little scootmobile in comparison to the hand-me-down domestics I had been driving up until then. It locked me in as a Toyota loyalist for a quarter century. Historic note: I was not allowed to drive it to a UAW presentation given at Solidarity House for a business school class outing back around '88, as they believed drivers of foreign cars were moral criminals. They got the pusillanimous pleasure of causing me inconvenience and in return never even considered buying a union built car for over 25 years. I guess they showed me.
After nine Michigan winters and countless road trips to Florida and DC, I gave it up and bought a new '93 Camry. It was a car more fitting my 30-something lifestyle. It had a/c and power and even a CD player, but the amazing revelation I got from it was the quiet. It was absolutely dead silent. A gas-powered tomb. I would go on long Saturday afternoon drives to little out of the way Michigan towns just to enjoy the existential peace of the smooth, easy ride.
Next time, again nine years later, I was a home-owner and had a little discretionary income and so decided to upgrade to a new Camry, an '02, purchased over the web. It has been a good car, perhaps a few more squeaks and rattles than the previous, but reliability has been literally perfect. Yet unlike the previous two, it hasn't been a revelation. Other than the creature comforts I could afford, it does nothing better than the previous Camry as far as I can tell. No shame in that for Toyota -- I mean, how much more seamless can the act of driving be.
So with my unplanned, but now traditional, nine year cycle coming up, I am informally in the market, but not absolutely locked into buying Toyota again. One option is Hyundai, what with them being the new Toyota and all. Both my Mom and my little brother have Hyundais and like them a lot. The other option is Ford. I know all the domestic makers have gotten government aid in one way or another, but at least Ford didn't participate in that hideous bailout. The new Taurus is getting good reviews and will likely be cheaper that the comparative 'yota, and the scuttlebutt is that Ford quality is now comparable to Toyota and Honda.
If I was really keyed in on the best deal I would likely be looking at a Saturn or Pontiac right now since GM is offering huge incentives to clear the lots of these now obsolete brands. But since I have a policy of paying outright for the car then keeping it for nearly a decade, saving a few bucks up front is not my primary concern. For now the Camry is still running fine, and I am putting miles on it at a much slower pace than previously. I guess I don't feel any hurry to keep to my nine-year plan, but I will likely be getting more familiar with the market and that means you'll be hearing about it.
By the way, if I had a single piece of advice to give to a young person starting out in life it would be: Do Not Have a Car Payment. I have seen people graduate from college and the first thing they do when they finally get a job is lock themselves into a five-year car loan for 20% of their take home pay. Avoid this any way you can. Buy used. If you must get a loan, buy a car you can drive for ten years but have it paid off after two. Remember, you might be dropping $1500 a year on insurance anyway (and maybe parking, too). Not having a car payment is a huge source of peace of mind and lifestyle flexibility when you are just starting out.
Oh, and one other thing: Get Off My Lawn! Damn Kids.
After nine Michigan winters and countless road trips to Florida and DC, I gave it up and bought a new '93 Camry. It was a car more fitting my 30-something lifestyle. It had a/c and power and even a CD player, but the amazing revelation I got from it was the quiet. It was absolutely dead silent. A gas-powered tomb. I would go on long Saturday afternoon drives to little out of the way Michigan towns just to enjoy the existential peace of the smooth, easy ride.
Next time, again nine years later, I was a home-owner and had a little discretionary income and so decided to upgrade to a new Camry, an '02, purchased over the web. It has been a good car, perhaps a few more squeaks and rattles than the previous, but reliability has been literally perfect. Yet unlike the previous two, it hasn't been a revelation. Other than the creature comforts I could afford, it does nothing better than the previous Camry as far as I can tell. No shame in that for Toyota -- I mean, how much more seamless can the act of driving be.
So with my unplanned, but now traditional, nine year cycle coming up, I am informally in the market, but not absolutely locked into buying Toyota again. One option is Hyundai, what with them being the new Toyota and all. Both my Mom and my little brother have Hyundais and like them a lot. The other option is Ford. I know all the domestic makers have gotten government aid in one way or another, but at least Ford didn't participate in that hideous bailout. The new Taurus is getting good reviews and will likely be cheaper that the comparative 'yota, and the scuttlebutt is that Ford quality is now comparable to Toyota and Honda.
If I was really keyed in on the best deal I would likely be looking at a Saturn or Pontiac right now since GM is offering huge incentives to clear the lots of these now obsolete brands. But since I have a policy of paying outright for the car then keeping it for nearly a decade, saving a few bucks up front is not my primary concern. For now the Camry is still running fine, and I am putting miles on it at a much slower pace than previously. I guess I don't feel any hurry to keep to my nine-year plan, but I will likely be getting more familiar with the market and that means you'll be hearing about it.
By the way, if I had a single piece of advice to give to a young person starting out in life it would be: Do Not Have a Car Payment. I have seen people graduate from college and the first thing they do when they finally get a job is lock themselves into a five-year car loan for 20% of their take home pay. Avoid this any way you can. Buy used. If you must get a loan, buy a car you can drive for ten years but have it paid off after two. Remember, you might be dropping $1500 a year on insurance anyway (and maybe parking, too). Not having a car payment is a huge source of peace of mind and lifestyle flexibility when you are just starting out.
Oh, and one other thing: Get Off My Lawn! Damn Kids.
[Movies] Last Word on The Phantom Menace
Last Word on The Phantom Menace: It's been making the rounds on numerous web sites but I would be remiss if I didn't recommend this seven-part video takedown of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) over at YouTube. (There is some naughty language and a hint of perversion, so be advised.) Narrated by a tightly twisted and deeply disturbed geek character, they are a total stitch. It bogs down in the middle but the start and the end are priceless, and behind the over-the-top psycho-nerd shtick is a truly righteous understanding of why the movie sucked so awfully. Yes, it's an old film from a previous century, but its continuing place in pop culture makes it relevant. Enjoy.
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