The Month That Was - April 2010: You have, by now, noticed the minor changes in the site. A full discussion is below for those who are concerned with the totality of the housekeeping, but this is really just an interim state of affairs. This hassle was about the last thing I needed this month.
I got a fair amount of work done on Misspent Youth, but it's a three steps forward two steps back process. I am still convinced it will see the light of day before the year is out. Again, more below.
My paperwork deluge from last month has chilled significantly, but no sooner did I get my father's taxes done and submitted than what arrived in the mail but a "corrected 1099". Great. Luckily it was immaterial, so I was spared making amendments. And I closed on my condo refinance on the very last day of the month. It's been a very strange experience. I am so scrupulous about my use of credit that I'm pretty sure my rating is so good that I have made banks suspicious. They asked me to document all kinds of miscellaneous crap, odd and ends, the sorts of things that appear on bank statements which they would have never seen had it not been a certain time of year, but they said they needed complete source documentation. Pointless busywork. And then, because the title company and Bank of America were in such a rush to close before the end of the month, I went to closing not knowing what my payoff was, so they gave me three business days to get them a certified check so instead of getting everything done at closing I had to deliver a certified check to the title company 30 miles away the following week. Just a complete bureaucratic jerk around.
So I'm on facebook now. Yes, I broke down. Time for me to step into the 21st century, only a decade late. I've been slowly friending people and trying to assure that only my actual friends get friended. It's an interesting process. If I have a critical evaluation I'll post it here. Or maybe on I'll just put it on facebook. Next up: Twitter. (No, not really.)
As any regular readers know, I never post anything terribly personal on this site. I am not a big fan of emotional expositions in public. In fact, I rarely discuss personal stuff in private. But, just in case it shows through, I feel the need to say these last few weeks have been extraordinarily difficult on a personal level. I'm not sure reminding myself that life is marathon, not a sprint, is going to be much of a comfort. It is getting closer to a sprint with each passing year.
[Rant] Slogging Blogger
[Travel] Island of Tropical Breezes
[Travel] Madness on the Mall
[Books] Run With the Hunted, by Charles Bukowski
[Misspent Youth] Three Steps Forward, Two Back
Sunday, May 02, 2010
[Rant] Slogging Blogger
Slogging Blogger: I have been keeping a blog now for over ten years. Originally I did everything myself, updated the pages and all the history manually, as often as every other day. After a few months of that, I took advantage of the free blogspot domain name that came with a Blogger account and switched over to Blogger, which automates a lot of this stuff. This was still long before Google bought Blogger.
In the course of this process, while I struggled with self-learning HTML and JavaScript, I made some decisions about the site design. Most notably, I decided that I would keep graphics to a bare minimum for the sake of fast loading. Nothing is more annoying to me than waiting for page to load that contains 5 megs of ads and graphics when all that is really important is 5k of text information. As a matter of scruple I would manage bandwidth efficiently. (This was back in the days of dial-up.)
So Google takes over Blogger; things get a lot faster, more reliable, and functional advancements come. They offer some basic templates and a few other tools, but I'm not interested because I just want to get my words up there so I continue with my more or less hand-coded site. In time Google offers more advanced templates, more complicated to edit and maintain, but with a wealth of flashy capabilities. Over time many bloggers switch to these templates (an onerous process) and most new bloggers use them from the get go. Not me, though -- no need.
Then, suddenly, about a month or two ago, Google gets the bright idea that they need to cut down on bandwidth. Too many bloggers are sending too much info through their servers. So they generate some advanced formula to limit how many posts of each site can go on the front page. Some folks who overload their sites with all sorts of gaudy visual crap barely get more than one post at a time. Others, like me, now get 20 posts, or roughly four months, whereas I was used to getting about two years worth of posts. Not good, in my view.
They attempted to mitigate this regression by automatically placing next and previous page links at the bottom of the page so that even if you couldn't get the number of posts you wanted on the front page, you could at least page through them in order. EXCEPT, the next page links only work on new templates. Those of us old-timers on old-style or handmade templates were left out in the cold, the only thing we can do is make sure archives are enabled -- which is what you see over to the right -- so that older posts can be accessed. So now if you want to look at older posts than what you see here on the front page, you have to troll through the archives to find them. Sheesh.
Anyway, the solution for me is to either bite the bullet and covert to a new template, or move to another service such as Wordpress. I'll sort it out in time, and I'm sure this is less annoying to you than it is to me. But it's my blog so I'll rant if I want to. I'm so happy to have another stupid maintenance task hovering over my head.
In the course of this process, while I struggled with self-learning HTML and JavaScript, I made some decisions about the site design. Most notably, I decided that I would keep graphics to a bare minimum for the sake of fast loading. Nothing is more annoying to me than waiting for page to load that contains 5 megs of ads and graphics when all that is really important is 5k of text information. As a matter of scruple I would manage bandwidth efficiently. (This was back in the days of dial-up.)
So Google takes over Blogger; things get a lot faster, more reliable, and functional advancements come. They offer some basic templates and a few other tools, but I'm not interested because I just want to get my words up there so I continue with my more or less hand-coded site. In time Google offers more advanced templates, more complicated to edit and maintain, but with a wealth of flashy capabilities. Over time many bloggers switch to these templates (an onerous process) and most new bloggers use them from the get go. Not me, though -- no need.
Then, suddenly, about a month or two ago, Google gets the bright idea that they need to cut down on bandwidth. Too many bloggers are sending too much info through their servers. So they generate some advanced formula to limit how many posts of each site can go on the front page. Some folks who overload their sites with all sorts of gaudy visual crap barely get more than one post at a time. Others, like me, now get 20 posts, or roughly four months, whereas I was used to getting about two years worth of posts. Not good, in my view.
They attempted to mitigate this regression by automatically placing next and previous page links at the bottom of the page so that even if you couldn't get the number of posts you wanted on the front page, you could at least page through them in order. EXCEPT, the next page links only work on new templates. Those of us old-timers on old-style or handmade templates were left out in the cold, the only thing we can do is make sure archives are enabled -- which is what you see over to the right -- so that older posts can be accessed. So now if you want to look at older posts than what you see here on the front page, you have to troll through the archives to find them. Sheesh.
Anyway, the solution for me is to either bite the bullet and covert to a new template, or move to another service such as Wordpress. I'll sort it out in time, and I'm sure this is less annoying to you than it is to me. But it's my blog so I'll rant if I want to. I'm so happy to have another stupid maintenance task hovering over my head.
[Travel] Island of Tropical Breezes
Island of Tropical Breezes: [[San Juan photos on smugmug]] Here we go: Travel Tirade Alert. You have to admit, I haven't gone off on a full-on travel tirade in years. Well, goodbye to all that.
My relationship with Delta Airlines had been pretty good so far. My relationship had actually been with Northwest, but all through the transition to Delta things had been going fairly smoothly, at least by airline industry standards. Until now...
I knew there was going to be trouble when I couldn't pick my seat online 24 hours before the flight. You see, very often online seat assignment is locked down when you make the reservation, but at the time you check-in, which is 24 hours before takeoff, you can almost always get an assigned seat. For my flight to Puerto Rico I couldn't - nothing was available. OK, I thought, I'll be conscientious about getting to the airport with enough time to deal with it. Once at the airport the next day, the check-in kiosks were down so I ended up a half-hour in line get checked in, and at that point the ticket counter agent couldn't assign a seat either (still nothing available), he sent me to the gate without one on my boarding pass. This was getting bad; my biggest fear was spending the five hour flight in a middle seat between two behemoths with questionable hygiene.
At the gate, the agent explained that every seat had been assigned and they were asking for volunteers (standard overbooking situation; been there, done that). I still had hope. There are always volunteers, right? The problem was that the soonest flight was the same one the next day; volunteers would have to wait twenty four hours. Now I am in real trouble. No one is going to do that. Half these folks had cruise ships to catch.
In the end, it came down to me and one other person for the last available seat. The other person was a minor whose parent already had a seat assigned. They would have had to spend the night in a hotel, whereas I could relatively easily drive home. I was toast. No way was I going to get the last ticket. I got bumped involuntarily. First time that has ever happened to me. Just like that, my vacation is going to be exactly one day shorter.
Nothing to do but get in line at the help desk. In front of me were a couple of redneck families that didn't know their gate had been changed and suddenly realized it ten minutes after the flight had left. They got on stand-by but they kept pestering the agents for a guaranteed seat and asking to speak to supervisors, which is utterly pointless. Behind me was a guy pacing back and forth, moaning and sighing, sweating and panting, looking for all the world like he was going to vapor lock right on the spot. I let him go ahead of me. Air travel is a bubbling cauldron of condensed human nature. Yuck.
There was a bright side for me, however. A) My bag went on ahead, so it was there waiting for me when I arrived the next day -- very convenient. B) They put me in first class the next day -- I do love first class. C) They gave me $800. A cashable check -- not a voucher. I don't know if it's Delta policy or FAA regs or what, but there is some formula that is followed regarding reimbursing folks who are involuntarily bumped and it's fairly generous. (Note: it does not apply to flight cancellations. It only comes into play when the flight goes as planned but you had no seat due to overbooking and you didn't volunteer.) Not that I didn't deserve it. After all, they are solely responsible for me missing a day's vacation. I deposited the check immediately.
Note this, just in case you ever find yourself in a similar situation: If you do not have an assigned seat and they are asking for volunteers -- DO NOT volunteer for the sake of the voucher. That just lets them off the hook. If they have to bump you involuntarily you should get much better compensation than one of those stupid vouchers (which are often more trouble to use than they are worth).
The next day I got to Puerto Rico without a hitch and hopped a cab to the Caribe Hilton in San Juan. This Hilton is everything they said it is (and by "they" I mean the reviews on Tripadvisor). It's not shiny and new, but the rooms are good Hilton quality. There are a three or four restaurants on site, including a Morton's Steakhouse. A beach bar. Two or three pools, with plenty of lounge chairs. A fair sized private beach with a shallow bay that's well protected from the crashing waves off shore. It's nicely located -- a 2.5 mile walk or $12 cab ride into Old San Juan. That's really all you need for a fine vacation right there.
The down side is the prices are truly outrageous. Wynn-Las-Vegas-level-$11-mixed-drinks-in-a-plastic-cup expensive. The smart thing to do, should you ever decide to visit, is to head into Old San Juan and stop at the Walgreen's to load up on whatever small items you can -- there is a fridge in the room.
In a year when Florida pretty much froze over, it's smart to keep in mind that Puerto Rico is roughly on the same latitude as the Virgin Islands. If you simply cannot risk going without warmth and sunshine, Puerto Rico is a safe bet. Lounging about at the Hilton while working on a nice dark tan is a great way to spend a lazy afternoon. I love the sensation when the heat of the sun finally reaches into the core of your body, just before you start to overheat and begin the sense that desire to hop in the pool to cool off.
But beyond the resort, there is little in the immediate vicinity, so Old San Juan is where you want to be -- in the morning for photography and exploring, and the evening for dinner. Old San Juan doubles as a tourist center and cruise ship port; however, it is much geared toward historic preservation rather than t-shirt kiosks. Founded in 1508 by Juan Ponce De Leon, it is one of the oldest European settlements in the New World. It consists of narrow streets, many paved in cobblestones, criss-crossing between flat-roofed stone buildings, painted in the soft pastels of the Caribbean. True, many of these buildings now contain things like Walgreen's and Starbucks and Guess, but beyond the store signs you wouldn't know it. Bling is clearly not encouraged.
In the morning, when the light is oblique and soft and the temperature comfortable, it's loaded with rewarding sights. Peppered throughout the town are the stone remains of the Spanish fortresses from centuries past, the most complete being El Morro on the far northwest point. In front of El Morro is a vast lawn which was serendipitously covered by masses of kite-flying children, like a Latino Norman Rockwell scene. The fort of El Morro itself is a National Historic Landmark and worth the $3 entry fee for the views alone. From El Morro you can walk along a coastal path to the San Juan Main Gate, the point of entry for sea travelers in days of yore, since one could walk through the gate and straight up the hill to the lovely Cathedral De San Juan and give thanks for surviving a sea journey.
Old San Juan is also the spot for food and nightlife. There are all manner of restaurants, from common fast food chains to high-toned ultra lounges. Our evening forays involved a substandard tapas joint one night (that shall remain nameless), followed the next night by an outstanding 5-course prix fixe at the sharply-styled Marmalade. Highly recommended, but it will stress your credit card limit.
Old San Juan is worth a day or two of exploration. It's a fine destination for a long weekend -- you are visiting the Caribbean without dealing with customs -- and if you find yourself with a cruise out of San Juan, I suggest booking a couple of days extra in front of you embarkation to enjoy the enjoy the old port.
The only other adventure of note in Puerto Rico was nighttime kayaking to one of the three "bio-bays." These are the bays where the bio-luminescent plankton light up at any disturbance, so running your hand through the water causes swirls of light to form around it. Puerto Rico has three bio-bays, the nearest one to San Juan is and hour and a half away. So along with a group of about ten or so others, were bussing it to Fajardo, about 40 miles east of San Juan. After a few minutes of prep and safety instruction we hopped into two-man kayaks and were paddling to a narrow mangrove canal just as dusk was upon us.
If you ever want to explain the word 'spooky' to someone, take them kayaking through a thick mangrove forest at night. Each kayaker was given a glow stick as a marker and you could barely follow the outline the other kayaks around you once the mangroves -- which are spooky looking enough: like slithering walls on either side of the canal -- block out what little light there is. After about 20 minutes you emerge from the canal into the broader bay with the faintest shards left from the fully set sun backlighting the landscape around you into a simple black outline.
Once the sun completely sets you are given ten minutes to paddle about while pestering with the microbial bio-critters, then it's an even darker trip back through the canal (this time with two way traffic causing all sorts of slapstick mishaps) eventually emerging on the other side to a beautiful tropical full moon.
It's a sweet trip and a fine experience. My only complaint would be that after an hour and half on the bus and another hour of paddling, it would have been nice to have a reasonable bathroom to clean up in. The ones on site were more scary that darkest of mangrove swamps.
And that was about it for Puerto Rico. Every time you hear a description of some tropical island, you always seem to hear about how friendly the natives were. Often, when you actually get there, your experience is not quite that. Frankly, especially when it comes to the Caribbean islands, I haven't found the locals to be particularly pleasant anywhere. More often than not, they seem pretty much disinterested -- not exactly what you'd call a good service culture. Puerto Rico, on the other hand, was filled with friendly helpful souls, from cabbies to cops. Honestly, not a single negative vibe did I feel and many folks went out of their way to be kind. A shuttle drive later told us that, while that is certainly the attitude most Puerto Ricans take to visitors, to each other -- not so much. Outside the main tourist areas, there is a good deal of crime and squalor, but inside the tourist areas, they try to keep a firm grip on things. It's pretty clear Stephen Sondheim had it down right -- lovely and ugly -- but as a visitor, all you can ask for is a share of the lovely.
I would rate Puerto Rico above a number of islands that have glowing reputations. I would take it over St. Martin, for instance. Certainly over St. Thomas. It's not a sleepy, laid back backwater, but it's got what's needed for a good time in the sun.
Just like that I was back on a plane. The plan for the residual of the trip was to fly into DC to catch up with my D.C. crew and spend a couple of days on the Mall for the annual Cherry Blossom Festival. But Delta Airlines would not make it that easy...
My relationship with Delta Airlines had been pretty good so far. My relationship had actually been with Northwest, but all through the transition to Delta things had been going fairly smoothly, at least by airline industry standards. Until now...
I knew there was going to be trouble when I couldn't pick my seat online 24 hours before the flight. You see, very often online seat assignment is locked down when you make the reservation, but at the time you check-in, which is 24 hours before takeoff, you can almost always get an assigned seat. For my flight to Puerto Rico I couldn't - nothing was available. OK, I thought, I'll be conscientious about getting to the airport with enough time to deal with it. Once at the airport the next day, the check-in kiosks were down so I ended up a half-hour in line get checked in, and at that point the ticket counter agent couldn't assign a seat either (still nothing available), he sent me to the gate without one on my boarding pass. This was getting bad; my biggest fear was spending the five hour flight in a middle seat between two behemoths with questionable hygiene.
At the gate, the agent explained that every seat had been assigned and they were asking for volunteers (standard overbooking situation; been there, done that). I still had hope. There are always volunteers, right? The problem was that the soonest flight was the same one the next day; volunteers would have to wait twenty four hours. Now I am in real trouble. No one is going to do that. Half these folks had cruise ships to catch.
In the end, it came down to me and one other person for the last available seat. The other person was a minor whose parent already had a seat assigned. They would have had to spend the night in a hotel, whereas I could relatively easily drive home. I was toast. No way was I going to get the last ticket. I got bumped involuntarily. First time that has ever happened to me. Just like that, my vacation is going to be exactly one day shorter.
Nothing to do but get in line at the help desk. In front of me were a couple of redneck families that didn't know their gate had been changed and suddenly realized it ten minutes after the flight had left. They got on stand-by but they kept pestering the agents for a guaranteed seat and asking to speak to supervisors, which is utterly pointless. Behind me was a guy pacing back and forth, moaning and sighing, sweating and panting, looking for all the world like he was going to vapor lock right on the spot. I let him go ahead of me. Air travel is a bubbling cauldron of condensed human nature. Yuck.
There was a bright side for me, however. A) My bag went on ahead, so it was there waiting for me when I arrived the next day -- very convenient. B) They put me in first class the next day -- I do love first class. C) They gave me $800. A cashable check -- not a voucher. I don't know if it's Delta policy or FAA regs or what, but there is some formula that is followed regarding reimbursing folks who are involuntarily bumped and it's fairly generous. (Note: it does not apply to flight cancellations. It only comes into play when the flight goes as planned but you had no seat due to overbooking and you didn't volunteer.) Not that I didn't deserve it. After all, they are solely responsible for me missing a day's vacation. I deposited the check immediately.
Note this, just in case you ever find yourself in a similar situation: If you do not have an assigned seat and they are asking for volunteers -- DO NOT volunteer for the sake of the voucher. That just lets them off the hook. If they have to bump you involuntarily you should get much better compensation than one of those stupid vouchers (which are often more trouble to use than they are worth).
The next day I got to Puerto Rico without a hitch and hopped a cab to the Caribe Hilton in San Juan. This Hilton is everything they said it is (and by "they" I mean the reviews on Tripadvisor). It's not shiny and new, but the rooms are good Hilton quality. There are a three or four restaurants on site, including a Morton's Steakhouse. A beach bar. Two or three pools, with plenty of lounge chairs. A fair sized private beach with a shallow bay that's well protected from the crashing waves off shore. It's nicely located -- a 2.5 mile walk or $12 cab ride into Old San Juan. That's really all you need for a fine vacation right there.
The down side is the prices are truly outrageous. Wynn-Las-Vegas-level-$11-mixed-drinks-in-a-plastic-cup expensive. The smart thing to do, should you ever decide to visit, is to head into Old San Juan and stop at the Walgreen's to load up on whatever small items you can -- there is a fridge in the room.
In a year when Florida pretty much froze over, it's smart to keep in mind that Puerto Rico is roughly on the same latitude as the Virgin Islands. If you simply cannot risk going without warmth and sunshine, Puerto Rico is a safe bet. Lounging about at the Hilton while working on a nice dark tan is a great way to spend a lazy afternoon. I love the sensation when the heat of the sun finally reaches into the core of your body, just before you start to overheat and begin the sense that desire to hop in the pool to cool off.
But beyond the resort, there is little in the immediate vicinity, so Old San Juan is where you want to be -- in the morning for photography and exploring, and the evening for dinner. Old San Juan doubles as a tourist center and cruise ship port; however, it is much geared toward historic preservation rather than t-shirt kiosks. Founded in 1508 by Juan Ponce De Leon, it is one of the oldest European settlements in the New World. It consists of narrow streets, many paved in cobblestones, criss-crossing between flat-roofed stone buildings, painted in the soft pastels of the Caribbean. True, many of these buildings now contain things like Walgreen's and Starbucks and Guess, but beyond the store signs you wouldn't know it. Bling is clearly not encouraged.
In the morning, when the light is oblique and soft and the temperature comfortable, it's loaded with rewarding sights. Peppered throughout the town are the stone remains of the Spanish fortresses from centuries past, the most complete being El Morro on the far northwest point. In front of El Morro is a vast lawn which was serendipitously covered by masses of kite-flying children, like a Latino Norman Rockwell scene. The fort of El Morro itself is a National Historic Landmark and worth the $3 entry fee for the views alone. From El Morro you can walk along a coastal path to the San Juan Main Gate, the point of entry for sea travelers in days of yore, since one could walk through the gate and straight up the hill to the lovely Cathedral De San Juan and give thanks for surviving a sea journey.
Old San Juan is also the spot for food and nightlife. There are all manner of restaurants, from common fast food chains to high-toned ultra lounges. Our evening forays involved a substandard tapas joint one night (that shall remain nameless), followed the next night by an outstanding 5-course prix fixe at the sharply-styled Marmalade. Highly recommended, but it will stress your credit card limit.
Old San Juan is worth a day or two of exploration. It's a fine destination for a long weekend -- you are visiting the Caribbean without dealing with customs -- and if you find yourself with a cruise out of San Juan, I suggest booking a couple of days extra in front of you embarkation to enjoy the enjoy the old port.
The only other adventure of note in Puerto Rico was nighttime kayaking to one of the three "bio-bays." These are the bays where the bio-luminescent plankton light up at any disturbance, so running your hand through the water causes swirls of light to form around it. Puerto Rico has three bio-bays, the nearest one to San Juan is and hour and a half away. So along with a group of about ten or so others, were bussing it to Fajardo, about 40 miles east of San Juan. After a few minutes of prep and safety instruction we hopped into two-man kayaks and were paddling to a narrow mangrove canal just as dusk was upon us.
If you ever want to explain the word 'spooky' to someone, take them kayaking through a thick mangrove forest at night. Each kayaker was given a glow stick as a marker and you could barely follow the outline the other kayaks around you once the mangroves -- which are spooky looking enough: like slithering walls on either side of the canal -- block out what little light there is. After about 20 minutes you emerge from the canal into the broader bay with the faintest shards left from the fully set sun backlighting the landscape around you into a simple black outline.
Once the sun completely sets you are given ten minutes to paddle about while pestering with the microbial bio-critters, then it's an even darker trip back through the canal (this time with two way traffic causing all sorts of slapstick mishaps) eventually emerging on the other side to a beautiful tropical full moon.
It's a sweet trip and a fine experience. My only complaint would be that after an hour and half on the bus and another hour of paddling, it would have been nice to have a reasonable bathroom to clean up in. The ones on site were more scary that darkest of mangrove swamps.
And that was about it for Puerto Rico. Every time you hear a description of some tropical island, you always seem to hear about how friendly the natives were. Often, when you actually get there, your experience is not quite that. Frankly, especially when it comes to the Caribbean islands, I haven't found the locals to be particularly pleasant anywhere. More often than not, they seem pretty much disinterested -- not exactly what you'd call a good service culture. Puerto Rico, on the other hand, was filled with friendly helpful souls, from cabbies to cops. Honestly, not a single negative vibe did I feel and many folks went out of their way to be kind. A shuttle drive later told us that, while that is certainly the attitude most Puerto Ricans take to visitors, to each other -- not so much. Outside the main tourist areas, there is a good deal of crime and squalor, but inside the tourist areas, they try to keep a firm grip on things. It's pretty clear Stephen Sondheim had it down right -- lovely and ugly -- but as a visitor, all you can ask for is a share of the lovely.
I would rate Puerto Rico above a number of islands that have glowing reputations. I would take it over St. Martin, for instance. Certainly over St. Thomas. It's not a sleepy, laid back backwater, but it's got what's needed for a good time in the sun.
Just like that I was back on a plane. The plan for the residual of the trip was to fly into DC to catch up with my D.C. crew and spend a couple of days on the Mall for the annual Cherry Blossom Festival. But Delta Airlines would not make it that easy...
[Travel] Madness on the Mall
Madness on the Mall: [[photos on Smugmug]] I was scheduled to fly from San Juan to Atlanta and then on to Reagan-National. I made it to Atlanta, but the ongoing flight was cancelled due to mechanical issues. Wonderful. So Delta rebooks me from Atlanta to NYC, then back down to DC. Wonderful. Except the flight to NYC was delayed (mechanical again) and I missed the connection back down to DC. Too late to reschedule the flight that day -- I would be spending the night in an airport hotel outside LaGuardia with no change of clothes, no razor or toothbrush. Wonderful. Meanwhile, it took the gate agent a full hour to schedule me on a flight the flowing day because the flight I missed was on US Airways not Delta and Delta needed to "take the reservation back". After an hour she finally told me she had accomplished this and handed me a stack of papers, but once I got to the hotel I realized the papers did not have a ticket or boarding pass. She had outright lied to me, but by then all I wanted to do was get to bed. The next morning, despite the fact that I needed sleep badly, I am up early and at the Delta Shuttle terminal with plenty of time to spare, which was wise because as expected, when I got to the ticket counter they had no idea what I was talking about. Wonderful. So for the umpteenth time I had to go through the whole story and had to push through the reflexive "There's nothing I can do" responses. It took the poor woman another hour and untold phone calls to get me on a flight back to DC.
This experience was even more maddening than getting bumped on my way down, because there was no reason I had to hang around in limbo while they went through whatever bizarre machinations they went through to change the reservation for US Airways back to Delta. There is no reason they couldn't have just punched up ticket for me on the next shuttle and dealt with the paperwork and hassle off-line, once I was safely on my way.
Delta really really hamfisted my itinerary this time out. They should be ashamed of themselves for having such moronic policies in place. Yet, Delta is my home hub, so if I want a direct flight, I have little choice. Actually, I do have a choice. Years ago, when they were Northwest, they got so terrible that I began to take indirect flights just to avoid them. I may have to do that again.
Finally in DC, I checked into the Hilton Garden Inn in Arlington, VA. At 10AM, not only did they not charge me for the night I missed at the last minute, they held the room open for me for early check-in the next day. Complete opposite end of the service spectrum from Delta. It is because of this that I have been a Hilton loyalist for years. They are like the Toyota of hotels -- nothing flashy, but dead reliable (and without the unintended acceleration).
After taking some time to clean up after my arduous journey, I hopped the metro to the Mall. The Mall, for those not up on their DC parlance, is the generic name for the area between the Capitol and the Washington Monument, where the major Smithsonian museums reside. Here's a long-ish guide to The Mall that I wrote up some years ago:
That description holds up pretty well. I should note that a) the American History museum has been completely renovated since then, not, I think, to its benefit, b) I did, in fact, have my camera this time, and, c) I didn't come close to portraying how busy it is during Cherry Blossom Festival.
My plan for this day was to stick primarily to the art museums. There were two things I wanted to see in the non-art monsters. There was an IMAX about the Hubble telescope at Air and Space that everyone was raving about, and there was an exhibit on the deepest ocean at Natural History which looked interesting. (I've been interested in that ever since the Deep Sea episode of the Planet Earth series a couple of years ago.)
I made for Air and Space, but the line to buy IMAX tickets doubled back on itself two or three times. I decided it was unlikely I would be able to get a ticket for that day. Air and Space is one of, if not the, most popular museums in the world with respect to number of visitors, but I never seen it so packed as it was that day. So I hoofed it out of there and across the Mall to Natural History which was even more packed -- I mean literally Bourbon-Street-during-Mardi-Gras packed. I was not going to get near any exhibit. Since it was lunch time, I made my way to the cafeteria to get something to eat and contemplate my next move, but lines for the food stations were almost as long as the lines for the IMAX, and there was not a table to be had. Again, I bolted.
This was getting ugly. I looked around The Mall -- there were tour busses parked end to end as far as the eye could see. It was Spring Break across much of the country. It was the prime blooming weekend for the cherry blossoms. I'm generally OK with reasonable crowds, but there is a tipping point where they become unmanageable. It's the same phenomena as going to an amusement park and having to wait 45 minutes in line for a 3 minute ride. Or maybe sitting on the tarmac for three hours for a one hour flight. The payoff eventually comes, but the waste of one's short life to achieve it is too high a price.
Luckily, you can always count on the tastes of the masses: The National Gallery was pretty much empty. I rewarded them by purchasing an overpriced lunch from their caf‚ then wandered about, engaging in my petit habit of taking close up pictures of interesting details of paintings. Especially notable were a couple of special exhibits. One was the art of Hendrick Avercamp who painted almost cartoonishly happy scenes from the early 17th century, a time that was known in Europe as the "Little Ice Age" (they had to play golf on ice -- yes, really), and a fairly intense exhibit called The Sacred Made Real, also from the 17th century, concerning a movement of Spanish artists to bring realism -- even if a bit gory -- to Catholic themed art.
From there a quick visit over to what has to be the least visited but most underrated art museum, the Freer-Sackler, which specializes in Asian art (although there is much more) and had a stunning exhibit on Tibetan Buddhist works of various species.
Once I was done art trolling, it was about 3 pm and it would still be over an hour before the light would turn oblique and soften for optimal cherry blossom photos, so I strolled over to the WWII memorial, attempted to get a panoramic shot, then lay down in grass and fell asleep. When the sun dropped low enough to make for interesting images I headed over to do a circle hike of the Tidal Basin, the shores of which are blanketed with blossoming cherry trees. All the other tourists had the same idea and the path was filled with photographer foot traffic. Everyone was angling for that perfect shot of swaths of pink petals with either the Washington or Jefferson monuments in the background. Painters had set up easels at a number of points. Peddle-boaters swarmed over the water. The weather was absolutely perfect. You couldn't have asked for a better day.
I finished my circle over by the Mandarin Orient where hangs a curious painting called the Mandarin Princess, featuring an Oriental princess of old sitting in a swing high above Washington DC with monkeys flying all around her. I posted a low res picture of this some years ago and it generated quite a bit of email interest. I took the time to snap a better one this time.
The next day, my last day of vacation, I spent the morning at Arlington National Cemetery, a mere mile and a half from my hotel but the Hilton shuttle driver was happy to make a special trip to drop me there. From a childhood visit here, I remembered the verdant pastoral beauty juxtaposed with haunting reverence of the endless white crosses; the same feelings returned. Even loud, obnoxious teenagers unloaded from tour busses tone it down here. The changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier remains impressive. There is a ghostliness to the slow soft-footed steps of the guards and the unerring precision of the manual of arms that is entirely fitting to the place and proceedings. The audience maintains the requested silence, which I find remarkable in such an uncouth age.
A walk through the city of Arlington (nothing all that special) back to the hotel and then into Old Town Alexandria for dinner. Old Town Alex is a good general location, that is to say, you can go there without a specific destination in mind and find activities, shopping and restaurants. The waterfront is cleaner and more well developed that I remember it from years past. We had a substandard dinner at a place called Bilbo Baggins, but it was a fine evening for a brief walkabout.
Up the next day and off to the airport. In a shocking turn of events, Delta got me home without any drama whatsoever. I even snagged an exit row. The airlines giveth and the airlines taketh away.
This experience was even more maddening than getting bumped on my way down, because there was no reason I had to hang around in limbo while they went through whatever bizarre machinations they went through to change the reservation for US Airways back to Delta. There is no reason they couldn't have just punched up ticket for me on the next shuttle and dealt with the paperwork and hassle off-line, once I was safely on my way.
Delta really really hamfisted my itinerary this time out. They should be ashamed of themselves for having such moronic policies in place. Yet, Delta is my home hub, so if I want a direct flight, I have little choice. Actually, I do have a choice. Years ago, when they were Northwest, they got so terrible that I began to take indirect flights just to avoid them. I may have to do that again.
Finally in DC, I checked into the Hilton Garden Inn in Arlington, VA. At 10AM, not only did they not charge me for the night I missed at the last minute, they held the room open for me for early check-in the next day. Complete opposite end of the service spectrum from Delta. It is because of this that I have been a Hilton loyalist for years. They are like the Toyota of hotels -- nothing flashy, but dead reliable (and without the unintended acceleration).
After taking some time to clean up after my arduous journey, I hopped the metro to the Mall. The Mall, for those not up on their DC parlance, is the generic name for the area between the Capitol and the Washington Monument, where the major Smithsonian museums reside. Here's a long-ish guide to The Mall that I wrote up some years ago:
Technically, The Mall is the roughly 1 1/4 x 1/4 mile stretch between the Capitol in the east and Washington Monument in the west. Within that span are a number of museums, which I will get to in a moment. For the larger picture, if you consider the Washington Monument as the center of a cross, to the east as I said, is The Mall. To the north, there is a large lawn in the shape of an ellipse, called The Ellipse, immediately past which is a stately white house called, The White House. Clever, eh?
To the South is the Tidal Basin. Think of it as an oversized pond about a mile in circumference surrounded by a serene pathway that leads through the heart of cherry blossom country. The blooming of the cherry blossoms in the spring is a cause for a nice big festival. At the far end of the Tidal Basin stands the Jefferson Memorial.
To the west, at the opposite end of a large reflecting pool, called The Reflecting Pool, is the Lincoln Memorial. Surrounding The Reflecting Pool are The Vietnam Memorial, The Korean War Memorial, and the new World War II Memorial.
The area in its entirely is called The National Mall and Memorial Park and you do not want to try to cover all of this in a single day; maybe not even in a single weekend, depending on your stamina and the cushioning in your shoes; although for a price you can ride a sightseeing bus that trolls the area. If you wanted to cover everything in detail -- Capitol and White House tours, hit all the museums including IMAX movies, go to the top of the Washington Monument, guided tours of the National Gallery, and so forth, you may be looking at full work week. You would also have to reserve post-trip time to have your head examined.
The Reflecting Pool area and the Tidal Basin are really only for wandering. The memorials and the monuments in those areas are just that -- structures you see, contemplate briefly, take a snapshot to bore your friends with, then walk on. It is a lovely area to stroll around in; although you should best to avoid high summer heat and low winter freeze. Spring is ideal, if crowded, during Cherry Blossom time. Fall is very nice too. You can get food from one of the vendors and have yourself a little picnic.
If you have rugrats in tow, your options are probably more limited. You could try to drag them through the White House and the Capitol in the interest of civic education because, dammit, they'll thank you later. Bad idea. See above re: head examination. There will be plenty of time for them to reflect on the nature and majesty of their government after they start filing tax returns.
For the sake of the children, it's best to stick to the big three on The Mall -- the Air and Space Museum, the American History Museum, and the Natural History Museum.
Air and Space is the one kids seem to get most excited about seeing. In truth, it's not all that. If your kids (or you) are aerospace geeks, you'll do fine. Actually, they'll do fine even if they're not. What they'll do is barrel through every exhibit at a breakneck pace, then beg to see IMAX, then beg for some overpriced, Apollo 13 branded crap from the gift shop, then beg for some double-priced junk food from McDonalds, then get bored and tired and start whining. Keep in mind: you're making memories.
You see, these museums aren't remotely what you would call "hands-on". In the case of Air and Space, that means you are left looking at planes, spaceships, mock-ups and such. Nothing really all that fascinating unless you have an abiding interest in that stuff.
The Natural History museum comes off a bit better. Lots of reconstructed imitation dinosaur bones -- actual size and so rather impressive. There is the Hope diamond and some interesting animated displays in the geology section. There is a live insect zoo. More IMAX. A good, if unsurprisingly overpriced cafe, making it a good place to be around lunch time.
Contrary to what may be popular impression, the American History Museum is probably the most vibrant of the three. They do a great job of not simply rehashing dry tales of the Founding Fathers, the Civil War. They have a good grip on pop culture -- now that pop culture is old enough to have a history -- Dorothy's ruby slippers, Indiana Jones' jacket and hat, and so forth. It will probably be the most relatable one for your kids.
There is no admission cost for any Smithsonian museum. IMAX cost extra. Get maps, locate the displays of importance, and don't try to see any museum in its entirety. Target your points of interest, get to them, and then move on. Don't underestimate the wear and tear on your soles. If you are driving in, don't try to save a few dollars by parking far away.
Since the key activity on The Mall is wandering through stately buildings and looking at things, if you have no scaled-down humanoids with you, you may as well look at stuff that is pleasing to see. My interest in politics is approximately zero, but if you are all about Hardball and How A Bill Becomes A Law, tours of the White House or the Capitol and a visit to the nearby National Archives might be right for you. For my money (which is nothing since all this is free, at least to the extent that any partially taxpayer financed enterprise is), the very best place on The Mall is the National Gallery of Art.
Even if you have only a passing familiarity with great art, you will see pieces you recognize in the National Gallery. You will probably come across a Monet or Renoir or Van Gogh that you have a print of on your wall at home or in the office. You will almost certainly discover something new and interesting to you. There are works from the Italian Renaissance that seem almost photorealistic in their use of perspective. There is a terrific set of early twentieth century American painting by George Bellows that portray a noir-ish New York City that show how little some things have changed. Also, there is a good cafe, making it another good place to be at lunch time.
Across from the National Gallery is the Hirshhorn Museum of Modern Art. With any "modern" art museum, you can count on running into a good bit of rubbish -- conceptual stuff about which the best that can be said is that it is inaccessible. Fortunately, the Hirshhorn is light on that kind of stuff. There is a solid collection of excellent sculptures; in fact, the most interesting one is on a small lawn outside the building near the entrance. A set of life sized people, seemingly involved in some sort of gossip, whose lower halves are shaped like those bean bag toys you had when you were a kid -- you know, knock'em over and they come right back up. It's really a very fascinating thing to see, very comical. You can wander in between them and see it from different angles. For the first time; I wished I had my camera. In contrast to the other stuff, trolling the art museums can actually be relaxing.
That description holds up pretty well. I should note that a) the American History museum has been completely renovated since then, not, I think, to its benefit, b) I did, in fact, have my camera this time, and, c) I didn't come close to portraying how busy it is during Cherry Blossom Festival.
My plan for this day was to stick primarily to the art museums. There were two things I wanted to see in the non-art monsters. There was an IMAX about the Hubble telescope at Air and Space that everyone was raving about, and there was an exhibit on the deepest ocean at Natural History which looked interesting. (I've been interested in that ever since the Deep Sea episode of the Planet Earth series a couple of years ago.)
I made for Air and Space, but the line to buy IMAX tickets doubled back on itself two or three times. I decided it was unlikely I would be able to get a ticket for that day. Air and Space is one of, if not the, most popular museums in the world with respect to number of visitors, but I never seen it so packed as it was that day. So I hoofed it out of there and across the Mall to Natural History which was even more packed -- I mean literally Bourbon-Street-during-Mardi-Gras packed. I was not going to get near any exhibit. Since it was lunch time, I made my way to the cafeteria to get something to eat and contemplate my next move, but lines for the food stations were almost as long as the lines for the IMAX, and there was not a table to be had. Again, I bolted.
This was getting ugly. I looked around The Mall -- there were tour busses parked end to end as far as the eye could see. It was Spring Break across much of the country. It was the prime blooming weekend for the cherry blossoms. I'm generally OK with reasonable crowds, but there is a tipping point where they become unmanageable. It's the same phenomena as going to an amusement park and having to wait 45 minutes in line for a 3 minute ride. Or maybe sitting on the tarmac for three hours for a one hour flight. The payoff eventually comes, but the waste of one's short life to achieve it is too high a price.
Luckily, you can always count on the tastes of the masses: The National Gallery was pretty much empty. I rewarded them by purchasing an overpriced lunch from their caf‚ then wandered about, engaging in my petit habit of taking close up pictures of interesting details of paintings. Especially notable were a couple of special exhibits. One was the art of Hendrick Avercamp who painted almost cartoonishly happy scenes from the early 17th century, a time that was known in Europe as the "Little Ice Age" (they had to play golf on ice -- yes, really), and a fairly intense exhibit called The Sacred Made Real, also from the 17th century, concerning a movement of Spanish artists to bring realism -- even if a bit gory -- to Catholic themed art.
From there a quick visit over to what has to be the least visited but most underrated art museum, the Freer-Sackler, which specializes in Asian art (although there is much more) and had a stunning exhibit on Tibetan Buddhist works of various species.
Once I was done art trolling, it was about 3 pm and it would still be over an hour before the light would turn oblique and soften for optimal cherry blossom photos, so I strolled over to the WWII memorial, attempted to get a panoramic shot, then lay down in grass and fell asleep. When the sun dropped low enough to make for interesting images I headed over to do a circle hike of the Tidal Basin, the shores of which are blanketed with blossoming cherry trees. All the other tourists had the same idea and the path was filled with photographer foot traffic. Everyone was angling for that perfect shot of swaths of pink petals with either the Washington or Jefferson monuments in the background. Painters had set up easels at a number of points. Peddle-boaters swarmed over the water. The weather was absolutely perfect. You couldn't have asked for a better day.
I finished my circle over by the Mandarin Orient where hangs a curious painting called the Mandarin Princess, featuring an Oriental princess of old sitting in a swing high above Washington DC with monkeys flying all around her. I posted a low res picture of this some years ago and it generated quite a bit of email interest. I took the time to snap a better one this time.
The next day, my last day of vacation, I spent the morning at Arlington National Cemetery, a mere mile and a half from my hotel but the Hilton shuttle driver was happy to make a special trip to drop me there. From a childhood visit here, I remembered the verdant pastoral beauty juxtaposed with haunting reverence of the endless white crosses; the same feelings returned. Even loud, obnoxious teenagers unloaded from tour busses tone it down here. The changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier remains impressive. There is a ghostliness to the slow soft-footed steps of the guards and the unerring precision of the manual of arms that is entirely fitting to the place and proceedings. The audience maintains the requested silence, which I find remarkable in such an uncouth age.
A walk through the city of Arlington (nothing all that special) back to the hotel and then into Old Town Alexandria for dinner. Old Town Alex is a good general location, that is to say, you can go there without a specific destination in mind and find activities, shopping and restaurants. The waterfront is cleaner and more well developed that I remember it from years past. We had a substandard dinner at a place called Bilbo Baggins, but it was a fine evening for a brief walkabout.
Up the next day and off to the airport. In a shocking turn of events, Delta got me home without any drama whatsoever. I even snagged an exit row. The airlines giveth and the airlines taketh away.
[Books] Book Look: Run With the Hunted, by Charles Bukowski
Book Look: Run With the Hunted, Charles Bukowski: Confession: I did not read the entirety of this book. It's an extensive collection of short stories and poems spanning Bukowski's full career. I read about 70% of it so I'm pretty sure I got the flavor.
The works in this collection are heavily autobiographical, which is a problem in itself. Bukowski's characters, including himself, are low-lifes. Unrelentingly so. If he is spinning mostly fiction you would have to say his imagination is a bit limited. If it is himself transcribed relatively truthfully, then you have to read this as autobiography which adds a certain voyeuristic impact. I tend to lean toward the latter because the world of degenerates he describes is so comprehensive and genuine sounding. But you never know -- all writers are liars. Anyway, I will refer to the main character in these stories/poems as Bukowski, for expediency sake, even though he generally takes the pseudonym Henry Chianski in the narratives.
Everything bad happens to Bukowski. He is an ugly, maladaptive boy with an abusive father. He is loathed by his classmates and only succeeds at bullying. His adolescence is scarred by his severe acne that eventually requires hospitalization. He spends his adulthood as a drinking, fighting, whoring, self-destructive shit heel. He gets dead-end jobs only when he needs booze money or is about to get kicked out of his room, then picks fights at work to get himself fired. A consummate alcoholic, he wakes with the thought of drinking and spends endless hours in dive bars bumming drinks whenever he can, then goes off to wherever he is flopping for the night semi-conscious. He is, frankly, disgusting.
There is a saving grace here, though. He knows he's disgusting. He puts on no airs about noble poverty or principled rebellion. He accepts that he lives as he does and commits the acts he does because he is a dirt bag. He does not blame our sick society, brand marketers, the police state, government socialism, or global warming for his pathetic life. His view of the world is personal not sociological or political. He is a wastrel because it's his nature. People are contemptuous and contemptible because they are human beings and that's their nature. He makes no excuses. Honestly, that's a refreshing change. It put me in mind of Wild Bill's line in Deadwood: "Can you let me go to hell the way I want to?"
There is an aspect to Bukowski's appeal that is the worst sort of cultishness. He is idolized by the sorts of celebrities that fancy themselves anti-establishment or agents of societal awareness -- Sean Penn, Bono, etc. The more enthusiastic of his readers are almost indignantly devoted to him, as a perusal of the forums at bukowski.net will evidence.
But it's not all a matter of counter-cultural fashion. Bukowski is quite a good writer. Blunt and unforgiving; think of Hemmingway ignobly distilled through a filter of hostility and malt liquor. His short stories and novel excerpts were the focus of my reading and they were invariably clear, unadorned narratives -- a drunk's life, straight with no chaser. His poetry was also quite readable, although I am out of my element when it comes to critical evaluation there. It held to the same themes, but the poems often seemed the same as the stories, just with the prose parsed. His resentment of authority is palpable. His pain his heightened by his tacit acknowledgement that he is to blame for himself. His writing is certainly more honest and genuine than his fans. There is probably meaning in that.
Still, he's a one trick pony in a certain sense. He writes of his life on the margins. That's it. You can only take so much of that before you start to feel like you're in a conversation with someone who keeps rehashing their experiences to validate their worldview. More so because his later writings, when he had achieved notability, if not success, and the attention of Hollywood are of considerably less interest.
All this presents a problem. It is a fairly well documented phenomenon of American bourgeoisie that they have a voyeuristic fascination the fringes and outcasts of society, often elevating them to a higher status than their own -- but only from a safe distance. Tom Wolfe most clearly identified this phenomena in Radical Chic. You can see it today in the fascination with reality TV such as Jersey Shore and lives of thug rappers. Even the popularity of The Wire is at least partly due to this inclination. Bukowski's sledgehammer portrayal of a degenerate alcoholic life invites this same sort of fascination, and the cultural and critical baggage that goes with it.
Should you read Running With the Hunted? If it seems the sort of thing that attracts you, there is nothing better than Bukowski. I cannot say that you would be better off reading this collection as opposed to one of the novels from which it draws -- Factotum or Post Office or Ham on Rye, but that may jut reflect my prejudice towards novels. If you are more lazy-minded you may want to just rent one of the movies based on his writings. Factotum, starring Matt Dillon and Lili Taylor, or Barfly, starring Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunaway, are both good, if not great, films. They will give you a feel for the material, but to get the full gut-punch of a brutally ugly life, you'll need to do your reading.
The works in this collection are heavily autobiographical, which is a problem in itself. Bukowski's characters, including himself, are low-lifes. Unrelentingly so. If he is spinning mostly fiction you would have to say his imagination is a bit limited. If it is himself transcribed relatively truthfully, then you have to read this as autobiography which adds a certain voyeuristic impact. I tend to lean toward the latter because the world of degenerates he describes is so comprehensive and genuine sounding. But you never know -- all writers are liars. Anyway, I will refer to the main character in these stories/poems as Bukowski, for expediency sake, even though he generally takes the pseudonym Henry Chianski in the narratives.
Everything bad happens to Bukowski. He is an ugly, maladaptive boy with an abusive father. He is loathed by his classmates and only succeeds at bullying. His adolescence is scarred by his severe acne that eventually requires hospitalization. He spends his adulthood as a drinking, fighting, whoring, self-destructive shit heel. He gets dead-end jobs only when he needs booze money or is about to get kicked out of his room, then picks fights at work to get himself fired. A consummate alcoholic, he wakes with the thought of drinking and spends endless hours in dive bars bumming drinks whenever he can, then goes off to wherever he is flopping for the night semi-conscious. He is, frankly, disgusting.
There is a saving grace here, though. He knows he's disgusting. He puts on no airs about noble poverty or principled rebellion. He accepts that he lives as he does and commits the acts he does because he is a dirt bag. He does not blame our sick society, brand marketers, the police state, government socialism, or global warming for his pathetic life. His view of the world is personal not sociological or political. He is a wastrel because it's his nature. People are contemptuous and contemptible because they are human beings and that's their nature. He makes no excuses. Honestly, that's a refreshing change. It put me in mind of Wild Bill's line in Deadwood: "Can you let me go to hell the way I want to?"
There is an aspect to Bukowski's appeal that is the worst sort of cultishness. He is idolized by the sorts of celebrities that fancy themselves anti-establishment or agents of societal awareness -- Sean Penn, Bono, etc. The more enthusiastic of his readers are almost indignantly devoted to him, as a perusal of the forums at bukowski.net will evidence.
But it's not all a matter of counter-cultural fashion. Bukowski is quite a good writer. Blunt and unforgiving; think of Hemmingway ignobly distilled through a filter of hostility and malt liquor. His short stories and novel excerpts were the focus of my reading and they were invariably clear, unadorned narratives -- a drunk's life, straight with no chaser. His poetry was also quite readable, although I am out of my element when it comes to critical evaluation there. It held to the same themes, but the poems often seemed the same as the stories, just with the prose parsed. His resentment of authority is palpable. His pain his heightened by his tacit acknowledgement that he is to blame for himself. His writing is certainly more honest and genuine than his fans. There is probably meaning in that.
Still, he's a one trick pony in a certain sense. He writes of his life on the margins. That's it. You can only take so much of that before you start to feel like you're in a conversation with someone who keeps rehashing their experiences to validate their worldview. More so because his later writings, when he had achieved notability, if not success, and the attention of Hollywood are of considerably less interest.
All this presents a problem. It is a fairly well documented phenomenon of American bourgeoisie that they have a voyeuristic fascination the fringes and outcasts of society, often elevating them to a higher status than their own -- but only from a safe distance. Tom Wolfe most clearly identified this phenomena in Radical Chic. You can see it today in the fascination with reality TV such as Jersey Shore and lives of thug rappers. Even the popularity of The Wire is at least partly due to this inclination. Bukowski's sledgehammer portrayal of a degenerate alcoholic life invites this same sort of fascination, and the cultural and critical baggage that goes with it.
Should you read Running With the Hunted? If it seems the sort of thing that attracts you, there is nothing better than Bukowski. I cannot say that you would be better off reading this collection as opposed to one of the novels from which it draws -- Factotum or Post Office or Ham on Rye, but that may jut reflect my prejudice towards novels. If you are more lazy-minded you may want to just rent one of the movies based on his writings. Factotum, starring Matt Dillon and Lili Taylor, or Barfly, starring Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunaway, are both good, if not great, films. They will give you a feel for the material, but to get the full gut-punch of a brutally ugly life, you'll need to do your reading.
[Misspent Youth] Three Steps Forward, Two Back
Three Steps Forward, Two Back: I continue to find myself at the start of the end game for Misspent Youth. I have seen the first version of the formatted pdf -- with pages appearing as they will in the final book, not as a Word doc. The formatting is a disaster. Also, in re-reading it if final layout I've noticed a bunch of things I don't like, including stuff beyond copy edits, so I'm back in minor revision mode. None of this is unexpected. It's just a matter effort and diligence to get through it.
Anyway, here is the first draft of the long description -- what you will see as the description presented by booksellers and probably, with some slight variation, what will appear on the back cover.
Anyway, here is the first draft of the long description -- what you will see as the description presented by booksellers and probably, with some slight variation, what will appear on the back cover.
David Mazzotta's third novel continues his comic exploration of the benign absurdity of normal life. His first, Apple Pie, looked at questions of identity and ethnicity in a college setting. The second, Business As Usual, took on topics of mortality and fortune amidst a corporate meltdown. Painting with his broadest brush yet, Misspent Youth presents an interconnected ensemble of all ages meandering through a few months of daily life in a leafy suburban community.You just can't wait, can you?
Billy, a weary lothario, is taking the plunge into standard domestic life -- although it's not really a plunge, more of a toe-by-toe wade into the shallow end. This tentative behavior is the source of great anxiety to Marlene, his do-it-all, single-mom girlfriend. Her impossibly precocious but behaviorally troubled daughter, Missy, is a concern for both of them.
Billy's life gets entangled with other denizens of the neighborhood veldt. Adults indulging their half-understood impulses; children bent by the burdens of the world. Without a native's understanding of communal norms and manners, Billy shuffles and sidesteps through carnal temptations, civil disobedience, and outright criminality before finding his place, sort of.
Misspent Youth lovingly satirizes the happy desperation of 21st century middle America.
Sunday, April 04, 2010
The Month That Was - March 2010
The Month That Was - March 2010: Slow death by paper. I have been swamped this month doing my taxes (fairly straightforward), my incapacitated father's taxes (wearyingly complicated), and refinancing my condo (tiresome and trying). Taxes are, of course, inscrutable. They don't bother me because I don't cheat, I have a certain stoicism towards paperwork, and I accept that the correctness of a return or the possibility of getting audited cannot be known -- it is not a deterministic matter. If I get one of those notices about a problem, it's not scary; it only means I have some level of annoyance in my future to get things sorted out.
Refinancing is an astounding exercise in lowest-common-denominator bureaucracy. I think I signed two separate documents explaining that the mortgage company had to inform me if they were doing anything illegal and three informing me of my civil right not to be discriminated against on whatever basis. I'm surprised they didn't make me wear a bike helmet. This is why I pay taxes, so there will be laws forcing mortgage lenders to treat me like an infant. Ho-hum: life in the twenty-first century.
As a result I made little progress on Misspent Youth. That must change immediately. I am at the moment involved coming up with a long-ish description of the book. Part of the prep work for publishing is coming up with various length descriptions for assorted purposes. At a minimum you need a back cover blurb, a short description - say, 20-25 words -- when space only allows for a line or two, and a longer description - say 150 to 200 words for when you have more space. For non-fiction you probably want a multi-page abstract for some sort. I have also found suitable graphics to demonstrate the feel I want for the cover design, which makes it much easier to describe to a graphic artist. Anyway, all this has come in fits and starts this month because of the paperwork pox.
Posts are a little thin this month. Sorry 'bout that. I did manage to get a trip in this month, just barely. I met up with the crew down in San Juan for Miss Anna's 18th birthday, Puerto Rico being a place she would be able to drink legally at that age. The trip spilled into the first days of April (which is I am so late in posting this month) so the report will have to wait until next month.
One last thing: At the moment you can only see about the last 20 posts on this page, whereas you used to be able to see 200. This is a new pain-in-the-ass blogger policy about how much content can be on the front page in an effort to save bandwidth. It is especially annoying to me since I go to great effort to post only text -- no pictures on the front page so that it will load fast. That's what I get for trying to be a good citizen. I'll get archive links up when I get a couple fo hours to re-aquaint myself with the system. Sheesh.
[Movies] All kinds of Funny
[Books] Book Look: The Razor's Edge, by Somerset Maugham
[Rambles, Health and Fitness] A Diet So Easy a Caveman Could Do It
[TV] Toob Notes
Refinancing is an astounding exercise in lowest-common-denominator bureaucracy. I think I signed two separate documents explaining that the mortgage company had to inform me if they were doing anything illegal and three informing me of my civil right not to be discriminated against on whatever basis. I'm surprised they didn't make me wear a bike helmet. This is why I pay taxes, so there will be laws forcing mortgage lenders to treat me like an infant. Ho-hum: life in the twenty-first century.
As a result I made little progress on Misspent Youth. That must change immediately. I am at the moment involved coming up with a long-ish description of the book. Part of the prep work for publishing is coming up with various length descriptions for assorted purposes. At a minimum you need a back cover blurb, a short description - say, 20-25 words -- when space only allows for a line or two, and a longer description - say 150 to 200 words for when you have more space. For non-fiction you probably want a multi-page abstract for some sort. I have also found suitable graphics to demonstrate the feel I want for the cover design, which makes it much easier to describe to a graphic artist. Anyway, all this has come in fits and starts this month because of the paperwork pox.
Posts are a little thin this month. Sorry 'bout that. I did manage to get a trip in this month, just barely. I met up with the crew down in San Juan for Miss Anna's 18th birthday, Puerto Rico being a place she would be able to drink legally at that age. The trip spilled into the first days of April (which is I am so late in posting this month) so the report will have to wait until next month.
One last thing: At the moment you can only see about the last 20 posts on this page, whereas you used to be able to see 200. This is a new pain-in-the-ass blogger policy about how much content can be on the front page in an effort to save bandwidth. It is especially annoying to me since I go to great effort to post only text -- no pictures on the front page so that it will load fast. That's what I get for trying to be a good citizen. I'll get archive links up when I get a couple fo hours to re-aquaint myself with the system. Sheesh.
[Movies] All kinds of Funny
[Books] Book Look: The Razor's Edge, by Somerset Maugham
[Rambles, Health and Fitness] A Diet So Easy a Caveman Could Do It
[TV] Toob Notes
[Movies] All Kinds of Funny
All Kinds of Funny: My movie watching is sporadic and random. Usually it's done in some nondescript hotel room on the company expense account, or at home during bouts of insomnia. (I remind myself once again to write an extended essay on why TV is better than movies.) Recently, though, I've re-seen three funny movies that couldn't be more different.
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum -- The film version of one of the most successful musical comedies in the history of Broadway, almost 40 years old now. Terrific Stephen Sondheim fare with some of the most phenomenal comic actors in history -- Zero Mostel, Jack Gifford, and Phil Silvers put on a clinic in comic timing. Really, this movie could serve as a comedic actor's school. Yet the final product is uneven. Oh it's funny and madcap, but director Richard Lester does everything in his power to cheapen it by adding third-rate sight gags and camera effects that one would expect on a Saturday morning kids show. He can't ruin it, the material is too strong and the actors to damn good, but he does drag it down a notch or two. Still very much worth seeing. I remember seeing this as a child and I'd be willing to bet that my life-long appreciation of comedy stems in no small part from it the unbridled good humor of it.
Deconstructing Harry -- I am very close to declaring this the most outright funny Woody Allen movie. I've lost track of Woody's characters over the years, but this may be the only one where he lets himself be an outright sonofabitch; a depressive, misogynist, uncharacteristically vulgar jerk of an anti-hero. In fact he's so good at it makes me think that it is the Yang to his neurotic nebbish good guy Yin, long hidden and finally given free reign. A couple of fine performances from Billy Crystal and Alan Alda, and a show stopping scene from Kirstie Allie when she discovers husband Woody's infidelity. In the end, it's a story about how happiness does not always appear in a recognizable form.
Used Cars -- This was one of Steven Spielberg's early efforts back in the age of the Great American Farce -- Animal House, Caddyshack, etc. -- although it never received the recognition it deserved. And like the other G.A.F.'s you have to wonder whether it could be made today. In fact, there was a recent attempt to remake it, sort of: The Goods, with Jeremy Piven. It sounded promising, but it stunk. I don't know how you could take the premise of Used Cars and mix in the Piven and not score, but they managed. Actually, I do know, they were hamstrung by making Piven and his compadres good guys at heart, which is presumably what you've got to do in Hollywood now. In Used Cars everyone is a lying, opportunistic scumbag, even the hero -- especially the hero. In fact the one honest character comes around to seeing the light of dishonesty at the very end. Could you have that in a movie today? Spielberg certainly couldn't. Dirty, cold-hearted, slam-bang funniness. Kurt Russell at his best. Nearly thirty years on and it's still a riot. Yes sir! Did ya hear what I said!
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum -- The film version of one of the most successful musical comedies in the history of Broadway, almost 40 years old now. Terrific Stephen Sondheim fare with some of the most phenomenal comic actors in history -- Zero Mostel, Jack Gifford, and Phil Silvers put on a clinic in comic timing. Really, this movie could serve as a comedic actor's school. Yet the final product is uneven. Oh it's funny and madcap, but director Richard Lester does everything in his power to cheapen it by adding third-rate sight gags and camera effects that one would expect on a Saturday morning kids show. He can't ruin it, the material is too strong and the actors to damn good, but he does drag it down a notch or two. Still very much worth seeing. I remember seeing this as a child and I'd be willing to bet that my life-long appreciation of comedy stems in no small part from it the unbridled good humor of it.
Deconstructing Harry -- I am very close to declaring this the most outright funny Woody Allen movie. I've lost track of Woody's characters over the years, but this may be the only one where he lets himself be an outright sonofabitch; a depressive, misogynist, uncharacteristically vulgar jerk of an anti-hero. In fact he's so good at it makes me think that it is the Yang to his neurotic nebbish good guy Yin, long hidden and finally given free reign. A couple of fine performances from Billy Crystal and Alan Alda, and a show stopping scene from Kirstie Allie when she discovers husband Woody's infidelity. In the end, it's a story about how happiness does not always appear in a recognizable form.
Used Cars -- This was one of Steven Spielberg's early efforts back in the age of the Great American Farce -- Animal House, Caddyshack, etc. -- although it never received the recognition it deserved. And like the other G.A.F.'s you have to wonder whether it could be made today. In fact, there was a recent attempt to remake it, sort of: The Goods, with Jeremy Piven. It sounded promising, but it stunk. I don't know how you could take the premise of Used Cars and mix in the Piven and not score, but they managed. Actually, I do know, they were hamstrung by making Piven and his compadres good guys at heart, which is presumably what you've got to do in Hollywood now. In Used Cars everyone is a lying, opportunistic scumbag, even the hero -- especially the hero. In fact the one honest character comes around to seeing the light of dishonesty at the very end. Could you have that in a movie today? Spielberg certainly couldn't. Dirty, cold-hearted, slam-bang funniness. Kurt Russell at his best. Nearly thirty years on and it's still a riot. Yes sir! Did ya hear what I said!
[Books] Book Look: The Razor's Edge, by Somerset Maugham
Book Look: The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham: I chose to read this for two reasons. First, I know that early in his career, Bill Murray fell in love with this book and agreed to play the lead in Ghostbusters provided the studio would let him (and his cohort John Bynum) make a movie of it. The movie got mixed reviews and I haven't seen it, but since I'm a fan of Murray's work I was curious what he saw in the book that so affected him.
The other reason is that in the course of my web wanderings I ran into a comment to the effect of, "When I was young I thought I wanted to be Larry Darrell, but then I chose to be Dick Diver instead." Now, Larry Darrell is the lynchpin character of The Razor's Edge, I'll get to him in a second. Dick Diver is the protagonist in F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night. I would put Tender is the Night up against any novel, and Dick Diver against any character, in literature. So if this Larry Darrell was a comparable sketch, it was worth a shot.
Well, it was bound to fall short of my high expectations, but it hung in there pretty well. First off, let me say the Maugham is an extremely skilled at drawing characters. There are five or six major ones in this work and their images are clear as a bell. In fact, I would say the characters are almost all there are. We follow them across many years, and through hardships, and each subsequent encounter with them cements who they are and how they act, each staying true to form for the situation. But that's also part of the problem. They don't really change all that much; nobody really goes on a journey here. Not even the aforementioned Larry Darrell, although I can see why it might seem like he does.
We first meet Larry as a young man having just returned from a fairly traumatic stretch in WW1. He has none of the usual ambitions of a young man; no interest in a career, though he's had offers. He has a small stipend and is content to while away the hours in intellectual and philosophical pursuits, activities he refers to as "loafing." His diva of a fianc‚, Isabel, keeps hoping he'll snap out of it and join her in the material high-life, but he can't bring himself to do it. Waiting the wings is his friend Gray, goodhearted to his family but hardhearted in business. It is an open secret that Gray is in love with Isabel. Under the influence of her uncle Elliot, an incorrigible old world socialite with aristocratic delusions but a deep love of family, she accepts the practicality of the situation, breaks with Larry, and marries Gray. However, she continues to carrying something of torch for Larry.
Over the course of the narrative, Gray goes bust in the Great Depression, but keeps himself intact, with some help from Larry and his love of his family. By the end of the book he's back in the saddle, about to begin new predations in business. Isabel, sticks by Gray through the hard times and learns to live with less, perhaps making her wonder if she wouldn't have been happy with the life Larry offered. In time, the money begins to return and she slides back into her diva-esque ways, to a harrowing point with respect to her possessiveness of Larry. Elliot continues on, barely touched by the economic collapse around him, bobbing the swirling in the waves of European high society. His petty battles with the blue-blooded contrast with his kindness in providing for Isabel and Gray when they go bust. And Larry...
Well, Larry turns into a friggin' hippie. Of sorts. Larry, it turns out, is on a quest for Meaning or God. Perhaps traumatized over his war experiences, he is overwhelmed with the need to seek knowledge and metaphysical understanding. He does a stint in a coal mine in Bonn. Takes a job on a freighter and eventually ends up in India, where he lodges for a couple of years with a yogi and gains great mystical insights. In time he returns and hooks up with the old gang in Paris. He even, perhaps somewhat arrogantly, acquires a new fianc‚; this one a childhood friend who has turned to drink and opium, and whom he thinks he can heal. It doesn't end well. At the close, Larry is on a steamer bound for the States, planning to work as a mechanic and drive a taxi in New York and do other sorts of manual labor while quietly spreading the word about beauty and knowledge and the enlightenment of the East. Or something like that.
Here's the thing. Apart from being annoying, people who find themselves on grand spiritual quests that dominate their lives are crushingly tedious. And they generally lack irony or lightheartedness (which makes it odd to me that Bill Murray would be attracted to such a character). Maugham goes to great pains to explain the Larry is not the least didactic and that his spiritual comments seem weightless as though he were talking about the weather, but that doesn't work. You can't have a character go on for pages of high-minded rhetoric the turn around a say, "but it didn't come off as high minded." It does.
It's probably true that when Maugham wrote this (early '40s), there were fewer of these types around. It probably took Kerouac or Castenada or Then Came Bronson to generate swarms of people in pursuit of this wandering enlightenment and make them living into clich‚s. Such people were more of a novelty back then. But the real-life value of ultimate spiritual journeys aside, people on them just aren't that interesting. You go down a couple of paths of conversation and then all the steam runs out. The trappings of the sorry material world make up most of the stuff of conversation and human interaction. "OK, well, it was good talking to you. Look me up when you have your next holy revelation." The other characters in The Razor's Edge are much more interesting, striving to succeed in their own shallow milieus, making the best of their lives in the face of their flawed humanity. Saintliness doesn't make for good fiction.
Getting back to my original point, in the end everyone is pretty much the same person when they started. Isabel is snooty and true to Gray, while still loving Larry, just like at the outset. And Larry is the same as when we first met him as a young man; although much more worldly, he is still on a single-minded quest for spiritual enlightenment. Elliot is in pursuit of societal status while readily making monetary sacrifices for those he cared about to the very end. (For this Maugham narrow-mindedly implies he wasted his life on such shallow notions, when in fact, he was the one who kept the world together and grounded in reality. Sounds successful to me. I found Elliot to be the most interesting character of all.) The character arcs are trifling. It is a fistful of portraits through time. This may have been what Maugham was going for. At the end, in his role as narrator, he's seems to indicate that he sees no lessons learned either.
Should you read The Razor's Edge? Probably. I may have come off negative on it but I am not at all. I suppose I am mostly reacting to the contrast between what I have heard and read about it and the experience of reading it. It is a wonderful book. Maugham writes with great clarity. He places himself in it by name as the narrator and doesn't hesitate to break the third wall by directly addressing the reader or offering reminders of what came before. It is not a "hard" read by any stretch. And it is compelling. I blew through it pretty enthusiastically. Although not on much of a journey, the characters are interesting and I cared about them. I should also point out that I am definitely in the minority with respect to my somewhat muted reaction. There are plenty who have this on their reading bucket-list. No harm in putting it on yours.
The other reason is that in the course of my web wanderings I ran into a comment to the effect of, "When I was young I thought I wanted to be Larry Darrell, but then I chose to be Dick Diver instead." Now, Larry Darrell is the lynchpin character of The Razor's Edge, I'll get to him in a second. Dick Diver is the protagonist in F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night. I would put Tender is the Night up against any novel, and Dick Diver against any character, in literature. So if this Larry Darrell was a comparable sketch, it was worth a shot.
Well, it was bound to fall short of my high expectations, but it hung in there pretty well. First off, let me say the Maugham is an extremely skilled at drawing characters. There are five or six major ones in this work and their images are clear as a bell. In fact, I would say the characters are almost all there are. We follow them across many years, and through hardships, and each subsequent encounter with them cements who they are and how they act, each staying true to form for the situation. But that's also part of the problem. They don't really change all that much; nobody really goes on a journey here. Not even the aforementioned Larry Darrell, although I can see why it might seem like he does.
We first meet Larry as a young man having just returned from a fairly traumatic stretch in WW1. He has none of the usual ambitions of a young man; no interest in a career, though he's had offers. He has a small stipend and is content to while away the hours in intellectual and philosophical pursuits, activities he refers to as "loafing." His diva of a fianc‚, Isabel, keeps hoping he'll snap out of it and join her in the material high-life, but he can't bring himself to do it. Waiting the wings is his friend Gray, goodhearted to his family but hardhearted in business. It is an open secret that Gray is in love with Isabel. Under the influence of her uncle Elliot, an incorrigible old world socialite with aristocratic delusions but a deep love of family, she accepts the practicality of the situation, breaks with Larry, and marries Gray. However, she continues to carrying something of torch for Larry.
Over the course of the narrative, Gray goes bust in the Great Depression, but keeps himself intact, with some help from Larry and his love of his family. By the end of the book he's back in the saddle, about to begin new predations in business. Isabel, sticks by Gray through the hard times and learns to live with less, perhaps making her wonder if she wouldn't have been happy with the life Larry offered. In time, the money begins to return and she slides back into her diva-esque ways, to a harrowing point with respect to her possessiveness of Larry. Elliot continues on, barely touched by the economic collapse around him, bobbing the swirling in the waves of European high society. His petty battles with the blue-blooded contrast with his kindness in providing for Isabel and Gray when they go bust. And Larry...
Well, Larry turns into a friggin' hippie. Of sorts. Larry, it turns out, is on a quest for Meaning or God. Perhaps traumatized over his war experiences, he is overwhelmed with the need to seek knowledge and metaphysical understanding. He does a stint in a coal mine in Bonn. Takes a job on a freighter and eventually ends up in India, where he lodges for a couple of years with a yogi and gains great mystical insights. In time he returns and hooks up with the old gang in Paris. He even, perhaps somewhat arrogantly, acquires a new fianc‚; this one a childhood friend who has turned to drink and opium, and whom he thinks he can heal. It doesn't end well. At the close, Larry is on a steamer bound for the States, planning to work as a mechanic and drive a taxi in New York and do other sorts of manual labor while quietly spreading the word about beauty and knowledge and the enlightenment of the East. Or something like that.
Here's the thing. Apart from being annoying, people who find themselves on grand spiritual quests that dominate their lives are crushingly tedious. And they generally lack irony or lightheartedness (which makes it odd to me that Bill Murray would be attracted to such a character). Maugham goes to great pains to explain the Larry is not the least didactic and that his spiritual comments seem weightless as though he were talking about the weather, but that doesn't work. You can't have a character go on for pages of high-minded rhetoric the turn around a say, "but it didn't come off as high minded." It does.
It's probably true that when Maugham wrote this (early '40s), there were fewer of these types around. It probably took Kerouac or Castenada or Then Came Bronson to generate swarms of people in pursuit of this wandering enlightenment and make them living into clich‚s. Such people were more of a novelty back then. But the real-life value of ultimate spiritual journeys aside, people on them just aren't that interesting. You go down a couple of paths of conversation and then all the steam runs out. The trappings of the sorry material world make up most of the stuff of conversation and human interaction. "OK, well, it was good talking to you. Look me up when you have your next holy revelation." The other characters in The Razor's Edge are much more interesting, striving to succeed in their own shallow milieus, making the best of their lives in the face of their flawed humanity. Saintliness doesn't make for good fiction.
Getting back to my original point, in the end everyone is pretty much the same person when they started. Isabel is snooty and true to Gray, while still loving Larry, just like at the outset. And Larry is the same as when we first met him as a young man; although much more worldly, he is still on a single-minded quest for spiritual enlightenment. Elliot is in pursuit of societal status while readily making monetary sacrifices for those he cared about to the very end. (For this Maugham narrow-mindedly implies he wasted his life on such shallow notions, when in fact, he was the one who kept the world together and grounded in reality. Sounds successful to me. I found Elliot to be the most interesting character of all.) The character arcs are trifling. It is a fistful of portraits through time. This may have been what Maugham was going for. At the end, in his role as narrator, he's seems to indicate that he sees no lessons learned either.
Should you read The Razor's Edge? Probably. I may have come off negative on it but I am not at all. I suppose I am mostly reacting to the contrast between what I have heard and read about it and the experience of reading it. It is a wonderful book. Maugham writes with great clarity. He places himself in it by name as the narrator and doesn't hesitate to break the third wall by directly addressing the reader or offering reminders of what came before. It is not a "hard" read by any stretch. And it is compelling. I blew through it pretty enthusiastically. Although not on much of a journey, the characters are interesting and I cared about them. I should also point out that I am definitely in the minority with respect to my somewhat muted reaction. There are plenty who have this on their reading bucket-list. No harm in putting it on yours.
[Health and Fitness, Rambles] A Diet So Easy a Caveman Could Do It
A Diet So Easy a Caveman Could Do It: I ate way too much while on vacation last week. I dread getting on the scale because I fully expect to be up a handful of pounds. For me, that means going hungry: cut down my portions significantly, go to bed with an achingly empty stomach. It is the most effective way.
See, I am of the opinion that anywhere but in the extremes of diet, the source of your calories is not that important. Homo sapiens is remarkably omnivorous. Our bodies have a marked ability to extract usable energy from an astounding variety of foods. Fish and rice in Japan, tortillas and pig flesh in Oxaca, red wine and cheese in the Latin Quarter, yogurt and granola in Haight-Ashbury. Unless you are subsisting on a diet of mainly lard, losing weight for you is going to mean eating fewer calories. Unless you can significantly alter the makeup your diet you will have to eat less of the stuff you eat.
I have given up attempting to make major adjustments in my diet. I am too weak willed for that. So all this equals hunger. Oh I have made small scale changes, replacing some fried foods with veggies and fruits here and there, but I just don't have it in me to go on a wholesale diet. It's simpler for me to embrace hunger. Here is my mantra: I am happy to be hungry. Hunger is not painful, it is a pleasant feeling. Hunger is what it feels like to be thin. Go to sleep hungry you have a reason to get up the next day: breakfast.
But that's just me. For most people, losing weight means dieting. The latest fashionable diet is called eating Paleo or Primal. The notion is that human metabolism evolved over millennia to optimally react to a hunter-gatherer diet. Along came agriculture, then centuries later, processed foods. This made foods that would have been rare treats our primal selves plentiful, but we are slaves to our evolutionary tendencies to want to load up on these things as if they were still rare. So we over-indulge and get fat. Or something like that, I confess I am not fully versed on the philosophy. Nor is there one true paleo-diet theory to rule them all.
The notion that it's healthier to eat like a primitive is really nothing new, as has been pointed out by the Freakonomics folks. Like other diet philosophies (low-fat, South Beach, etc.), it is not proven or documented to be fact, it lives in the realm of plausibility, with a pile of likely-biased anecdotal evidence in its favor and a pile of skeptics pointing out anecdotes are not science. Yes, as usual, you will find me in the skeptics corner.
But. It wouldn't surprise me at all to find that paleo dieting will work for a lot of people. Not because it matches up with our caveman physiology -- that seems a bit speculative (and remember what I said re: omnivores) -- but simply because it cuts down on the sort of foods our culture (Western culture) over emphasizes. In Paleo, you must either drop or cut way down on (among other things) bread, dairy and sugar. This is especially effective for people who eat on the go a lot. Everything you can quickly buy and eat will have bread and cheese in some form, especially bread. Everything you snack on will have sugar; we even treat something like a blueberry muffin as an acceptable breakfast. Once you start to drop or cut down on these things, you cut down on a lot of calories, and you should slowly start to lose weight. Or at least stop gaining.
Another good thing I have seen regarding paleo diets is that the gurus are less psychotic. Mark Sisson is a good one (book: The Primal Blueprint); he doesn't get all OCD about his diet and understands it's all about compromise and moderation, and he doesn't pass up a nice piece of chocolate when the opportunity presents itself. If you are going to try this, I'd recommend starting with his blog.
So I guess my take is that paleo diets are right for the wrong reasons. But who cares as long as it works. Of course, so does hunger. And I'm pretty sure cavemen were familiar with that too.
See, I am of the opinion that anywhere but in the extremes of diet, the source of your calories is not that important. Homo sapiens is remarkably omnivorous. Our bodies have a marked ability to extract usable energy from an astounding variety of foods. Fish and rice in Japan, tortillas and pig flesh in Oxaca, red wine and cheese in the Latin Quarter, yogurt and granola in Haight-Ashbury. Unless you are subsisting on a diet of mainly lard, losing weight for you is going to mean eating fewer calories. Unless you can significantly alter the makeup your diet you will have to eat less of the stuff you eat.
I have given up attempting to make major adjustments in my diet. I am too weak willed for that. So all this equals hunger. Oh I have made small scale changes, replacing some fried foods with veggies and fruits here and there, but I just don't have it in me to go on a wholesale diet. It's simpler for me to embrace hunger. Here is my mantra: I am happy to be hungry. Hunger is not painful, it is a pleasant feeling. Hunger is what it feels like to be thin. Go to sleep hungry you have a reason to get up the next day: breakfast.
But that's just me. For most people, losing weight means dieting. The latest fashionable diet is called eating Paleo or Primal. The notion is that human metabolism evolved over millennia to optimally react to a hunter-gatherer diet. Along came agriculture, then centuries later, processed foods. This made foods that would have been rare treats our primal selves plentiful, but we are slaves to our evolutionary tendencies to want to load up on these things as if they were still rare. So we over-indulge and get fat. Or something like that, I confess I am not fully versed on the philosophy. Nor is there one true paleo-diet theory to rule them all.
The notion that it's healthier to eat like a primitive is really nothing new, as has been pointed out by the Freakonomics folks. Like other diet philosophies (low-fat, South Beach, etc.), it is not proven or documented to be fact, it lives in the realm of plausibility, with a pile of likely-biased anecdotal evidence in its favor and a pile of skeptics pointing out anecdotes are not science. Yes, as usual, you will find me in the skeptics corner.
But. It wouldn't surprise me at all to find that paleo dieting will work for a lot of people. Not because it matches up with our caveman physiology -- that seems a bit speculative (and remember what I said re: omnivores) -- but simply because it cuts down on the sort of foods our culture (Western culture) over emphasizes. In Paleo, you must either drop or cut way down on (among other things) bread, dairy and sugar. This is especially effective for people who eat on the go a lot. Everything you can quickly buy and eat will have bread and cheese in some form, especially bread. Everything you snack on will have sugar; we even treat something like a blueberry muffin as an acceptable breakfast. Once you start to drop or cut down on these things, you cut down on a lot of calories, and you should slowly start to lose weight. Or at least stop gaining.
Another good thing I have seen regarding paleo diets is that the gurus are less psychotic. Mark Sisson is a good one (book: The Primal Blueprint); he doesn't get all OCD about his diet and understands it's all about compromise and moderation, and he doesn't pass up a nice piece of chocolate when the opportunity presents itself. If you are going to try this, I'd recommend starting with his blog.
So I guess my take is that paleo diets are right for the wrong reasons. But who cares as long as it works. Of course, so does hunger. And I'm pretty sure cavemen were familiar with that too.
[TV] Toob Notes
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.
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.
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.
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