"Then the...whispers began"

From the Amazon.com review section, you MUST READ these reviews.  The product in question is a set of 6000 dollar speaker cables.  (Yeah, I said cables--not speakers.)  At a minimum, read both the "most positive" and "most negative"--both are inspired.

It makes me have hope in human kind, stuff like this....

Hat Tip: Browser

Gland On The Run

I haven't posted in a long time because a large part of what I've been doing and thinking about for the last few months has been my health.  Which has been sketchy.  Well, not sketchy, maybe--but not good.  I've had these sort of mental...lacunae, maybe, for lack of a better term.  (Okay, there's almost certainly a better term.)  They're a little the feeling you have when your blood sugar level suddenly spikes--like how it feels when you drink way too much coffee and suddenly feel like you're going to pass out.  Dizzy, and disoriented, and sort of... dazed.  Anyway, that kind of feeling has been coming on over me, at seemingly randomly intervals for the last several months.

There have been other things too... listlessness, an inability to concentrate, steady weight gain (despite not really ever being hungry)...all sorts of little problems with my otherwise Greek God-like body.  None is debilitating; by themselves, most are things to just shrug off.   But, coming all together for as long as they have, it seems more probably they're all part of some general... condition.  (Lycanthrophy, perhaps?)

Because I'm an idiot, I put off seeing a doctor until last week.  (In my defense, the episodes have been, at times, sporadic enough to at least make it seem reasonable that I was on the mend.)  Now, the results are in.  What my blood work seems to suggest is that my thyroid is the problem.  (It's weak, my thyroid.  Or at least lazy.)  If this is, in fact, the case, (we won't know for sure until I start medication) it's actually good news.  Hypothyroidism is said to be easily treated.  Of all the things I might have had, of all the things I've been worried that I had, this actually is one of the least worrisome.

Hopefully I'll be on medication within the next few weeks and the bright chipper smiling ANCIANT that you all know and tolerate will be back on point, posting not-all-that frequently about a narrow range of esoteric personal topics which maybe fifteen people in the whole world actually want to read about.

Until then, good luck, and good night.

London Calling

In a few hours, I leave for London with my wife.  There, we'll dine at two, three-star Michelin restaurants.  We'll see some plays (Deathtrap and An Ideal Husband).  We'll go to museums, stroll along the Thames, and generally recharge.  It should be wonderful.

And yet my heart is dark and full.  Leaving here means leaving behind the small white dog.  He will be surrounded by other dogs--mean dogs for all I know!--for ten days.  He won't have his own bed, or his own window, or his own mailman.  Worst, he won't know if we're coming back.  (But we are, Binks!  We are!)

Right now he's asleep, blissfully unaware of the fate that lies in store.  All the sorrow and worrying is left to us, his soon-to-desolate parents....

Halloween costume

After a walk in the dirt

Calm and wooly

Happy and shorn

Obi-Wan KeBink

"John Adams is a hideous, hermaphroditical character..."

An awesomely funny look at campaign rhetoric of old.  Must-see viewing for anyone interested in American history.  Or really anyone who wants to laugh....

Inky Lives

Over at ASWOBA, my friend John has a thoughtful, touching post about watching the Texas Rangers play baseball.  Worth a read, for sports fans and Texans especially.

Journal 10/19/10

Sweet lord it makes me happy to watch the Yankees lose. To see them lose to a team from Texas  (Texas!) makes it all the sweeter. Gratifying, also. The work Cliff Lee and I did on his knuckle-curve is really paying dividends. He still hasn’t mastered it to the degree I’d like, of course, but it’s enough to beat the Yankees. And that’s enough for me.

* * *

The month has not been a good one. I’ve had a sinus issue of some sort, with the result that I’ve been having dizzy spells on and off for the last several weeks. I can’t concentrate, I can’t read, and I can’t write. After trying out a variety of cures, I’ve finally managed to get the matter in hand. Sinuses are draining, dizziness has diminished, and my brain no longer feels like it’s been encased in an inch and a half of dirty bulletproof glass. At long last I can resume work on I Heard A Fly—an opera based on the sexual politics of Emily Dickinson. Before I can write the libretto, I need to learn Dutch (this I use to underline her philosophical affinities to Erasmus, William of Orange, and that woman who was the lead singer of Roxette. I think she was Dutch, wasn’t she?) Man, this opera is going to rock.

* * *

The Bink celebrated my wife’s return from New York (she’s trying to expand her Louis Vuitton knock-off smuggling ring to the East Coast) by staying up all night chewing on a cardboard box we have in our kitchen. When we awoke this morning, the entire kitchen floor was strewn with small shredded bits of cardboard. Why did he do this? Who knows. We think it might have been the rain. It rained here last night and the Bink, though wonderful and sweet and cute, is not what you would call hardened. Rain is very scary. I guess. I don’t know. He’s a weird dog.

This Will Bring You JOY

...unless you don't like The Muppets.

In which case, frankly, joy is not a thing that you deserve.

Journal 9/20/10

Last week I got a job that involves working with a student in Arizona.  It's all going to be conducted over the internet, via Skype (or some such equivalent).  I have no idea what that will entail.  Nor do I fully understand why the mother (who lives in a large city) couldn't find an English tutor who lives in the same state.  Not that I'm complaining: a job's a job.  Still, it seems bizarre.  I guess maybe we are moving toward the day when no one needs to leave their house to learn or do anything. We can go into our holodecks and be taught by people on Pluto (we've also colonized Pluto, in this new world) and be the better for it.  Right?

* * *

All the hubbub about David Mitchell's new book got me interested in reading his last book.  For anyone who has the time, Cloud Atlas is, as reported, extremely excellent.  Because it's a book where the less you know going in the better, I'll say about it only that it manages to be both narratively compelling and formally complex.   Also, that it's main character is a wookie stevedore named Bomb.  (Okay, the last part's a lie.  But if there is a book with such a character, I want to read it).

Another recommendation: Out of Sheer Rage by Geoff Dyer.  A book about NOT writing--a topic you might think would get tiresome.  In fact, it ends up being at the same time funny and profound, insightful and engaging.

* * *

"The Problem With Incentives"

When we first got the Bink, my wife and I decided to try and train him to go to the bathroom indoors.  My wife ordered a large quantity of poster-sized absorbent medical pads from a hospital supply company, and we set about teaching him to direct his excretions.  Our first strategy involved negative reinforcement.  Any time he went to the bathroom somewhere other than his medical pad (which we taped down, each day, on the tile floor of a bathroom in our old apartment) we told him he was bad.  "No.  No!" we would say, over and over, while he looked up at us with a hopeful, fully uncomprehending expression.

Of course, this method worked not at all.  We neither of us could muster up all that much anger at his mistakes; even if we had, it wouldn't have mattered.  Dogs apparently do not usually respond to negative reinforcement.  Beyond that, it was hard to explain to him what, in fact, we were trying to negatively reinforce.  Even on the few occasions that we caught the Bink directly in the act of messing up our rug, it didn't obtain.  We told him he was bad, he looked confused, and that was it.  The mistakes continued.

Finally, one of us hit on a solution.  Instead of negatively reinforcing bad behavior, we decided to positively reinforce the actions that we wanted.  This entailed following the Binks around for most of the day, and giving him a treat whenever he went to the bathroom on his pad.   This worked almost at once.  Within a week we went from about a 65% success rate to one in the high nineties.  Even when we left off monitoring him, Binks figured out a way to come and tell us when he'd gone to the bathroom and deserved a treat.  (He walks up to where we are, stares into our eyes, and wags his tail until we get up and inspect the pee pad.  It looks a little like this:

Everything was wonderful; we'd just moved into our new house, and the newly finished hard wood floors were staying pristine.   To compensate for the fact that we were now giving our eight pound dog four or five extra snacks a day, my wife reduced the size of his meals.  We also reduced the size of the treats.  At this point, the usual reward is a maybe a single Cheerio.

What's interesting, though (and part of why I recount the story) is that without intending it, we've taught  the Bink that he should go to the bathroom as often as possible.   Every time he pees, he gets a Cheerio-so why not do it as often as he can?  Instead of holding it in, and waiting till he has to he goes whenever he has the slightest urge.  He also knows that it's better to go when one of us is at home: if no one's here, who will give him a treat?  (We have a rough two-hour statute of limitations on the bathroom reward process.)  So insofar as it's possible, when we're not not home, he waits--saving all his...activity up till one of us gets back.  Then, it all comes out.

It's not that I see our 'pay for play' treat formula as a mistake: I'd rather have him pee a few more times a day and have it all be in the right place than have him going on our rugs.  It does, however, illustrate one problem with incentives.  Inevitably, you'll get some of the behavior that you're trying to encourage, but you won't get all of it.  You'll get the surface of what you want, but not the underlying form.  There's a valuable, valuable lesson here for people currently trying to craft a new economic stimulus.  I don't know exactly what it is.  But the Bink, I'm fairly certain, does.

"It's finished when it no longer belongs to you"

Brian Eno has always been an artistic hero of mine.  (I think he's the Ezra Pound of our generation).  This interview with him, which I just found on Pitchfork, is well worth reading, containing as it does so many insights like the one below:

I'm old enough to remember exactly what happened to ABBA. When ABBA were around, to admit that you liked them would have condemned you to absolute coventry. No one would talk to you because you liked ABBA, because they were considered to be hopelessly pointless pop. Now, of course, everyone likes ABBA. Everyone realizes that they made some great music, and you're allowed to like them now. Kitsch is a way that posh people admit to themselves that they like things that ordinary people like. In my opinion.

A Favorite Haiku

Even in Kyoto--
hearing the cuckoo's cry--
I long for Kyoto.


-Basho
(trans. Robert Hass)

Fiona Shaw Performs Part of The Waste Land

...better than I could have ever imagined it could be done.  This is the real mojo.

"Do Not Speak To Me When You See Me"

This is for all my peoples from Texas, and for anyone interested in the life of a Texas oil man in the wild and wooly 1970s....

A Little Nabokov

 Is Pnin Nabokov’s best book?   Passages like this one make me think it is:

How should we diagnose his sad case?  Pnin, it should be particularly stressed, was anything but the type of that good-natured German platitude of last century, der zerstreute Professor.  On the contrary, he was perhaps too wary, too persistently on the lookout for diabolical pitfalls, too painfully alert lest his erratic surroundings (unpredictable America) inveigle him into some bit of preposterous oversight.  It was the world that was absent-minded and it was Pnin whose business it was to set it straight.  His life was a constant war with insensate objects that fell apart, or attacked him, or refused to function, or viciously got themselves lost as soon as they entered the sphere of his existence.  He was inept with his hands to a rare degree; but because he could manufacture in a twinkle a one-note mouth organ out of a pea pod, make a flat pebble skip ten times on a the surface of a pond, shadowgraph with his knuckles a rabbit (complete with blinking eye), and perform a number of other tame tricks that Russians have up their sleeves, he believed himself endowed with considerable manual and mechanical skill.  On gadgets he doted with a kind of dazed, superstitious delight.  Electric devices enchanted him.  Plastics swept him off his feet.  He had a deep admiration for the zipper….

Virtue Ethics and Taste

If you have any interest in ethics, morality, or philosophy, you should read this.  Excellent excellent stuff.

Journal 7.29.10

Thinking about the movie Tristram Shandy (A Cock And Bull Story) which I saw last night.  A darling of the humor cognoscenti, Steve Coogan, the movie’s star, has never done that much for me.  The Alan Partridge Show especially (the chief vehicle of his fame) I found obvious and mean.  But I in general dislike the new trend toward humor of embarrassment, the cringe-inducing Borat stuff.  (To me The Office, e.g, is at best 50% unwatchable.  I fast forward through all of Steve Carrell’s tedious mugging). 

Tristram Shandy, however, turned out to be excellent.  Realizing the book is both too large and various to readily submit to adaptation, the producers aimed instead for a translation.  The movie is a thing unto itself, but one related in aim and method to the book.  So, for example, thirty minutes in, the “movie” of the book (characters in eighteenth century garb acting out the story of the novel) essentially stops.  From then on, focus switches to the actors.  Their story dominates.  Coogan, the director, and the producers worry about how the film should end; they try to drum up money for a large-scale battle; debate the merits of doing a battle; consider having a love interest (eventually bringing in Gillian Anderson).  Coogan’s girlfriend shows up with their infant son and fatherhood—a big theme of the novel—is gone into.  Just as the book in many ways ends up a book about a book, so too the movie is movie about making movies.

It all sounds wearingly ‘post-modern,’ I know, but like the book, the movie’s disassembled, self-referential, endlessly digressive nature feels necessary--even exciting.  Both in their way try to tell a coherent story.  They aim towards meaning—they just can’t get there.  So, in the book, the world is too expansive, too chaotic, for Sterne to contain it within one story.  Thus the endless stops and restarts, the metastasizing plots—everything has to be fit in.  Every story needs another twenty to explain it.  But in all this excess, there’s joy, richness, a sense of overabundance, which keeps the reader more or less content.  (Not all readers.  Samuel Johnson famously hated it).  A ninety-minute can’t approach that same abundance, so humor becomes their approximation of joy.  And it is, generally, very funny (though in a dark dry British way).  Coogan, like Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm, plays a caraicature of himself.   Vain, selfish and petty, he hovers on the edge of complete jerk-iness for most of the movie.  All sorts of excellent minor roles, as well—the aforementioned assistant, the simultaneously insecure and patronizing second lead (Uncle Toby), and, my favorite, a historical expert brought in to advise the crew on how to stage the battle of Namur, a shaggy gentle man whose rumpled sheepdog look belies a ferocious contempt for the tendency in modern film to get the details of their battles wrong.  (Cold Mountain comes in for some great savaging.)

  *  *  *

Slowing down on Vineland, another post-mod hallmark, though one whose digressions feel much less necessary.  Now deep into the backstory of a secondary character, which is both unfunny and tedious.  Interesting that in Vineland as in Lot 49 the central figure is a woman.  Not sure how well either’s ‘femaleness’ is rendered (having no way to compare) but my sense is: not very well.  Zoyd is by far the most interesting figure in Vineland.  What’s NOT that interesting is the super familiar badass female ninja woman, DL.  What is it with adolescent-ish men and ass-kicking women?  (Tarantino, Joss Wheeden, whoever writes all of Angelina Jolie’s crap-ass stuff….)  As soon as you start to build a story around the ability of someone to administer instant death via touch, you’re done.  Or so I feels….

 *  *  * 

To limit: my use of the word ‘interesting.’  One of the emptiest the language provides….

 *  *  *

Two TV shows that have become almost unwatchable: Entourage and So You Think You Can Dance.  The former has exhausted itself of stories; I think its time is up.  The latter has merely made terrible choices this season, both in its contestants and its format.  The cast now is filled with craftsmen but devoid of artists.  Everybody's young and bland, and their inabilities only register more sharply in proximity to the All-Stars.  Dispiriting stuff. 

Journal 7.25.10

The Dead Weather - Die By The Drop

Since watching It Might Get Loud a few months ago, my wife has developed a mild obsession with Jack White.  His new band, The Dead Weather, played in LA last week at the Palladium.  We like to see at least one live band per year and so we ended up going out on a Wednesday night (crazy!), acting like we were both still in our twenties.

The music was fine, I thought, if unexceptional (over-distorted blues with a lot of attitude, songwriting highly variable, lead singer from The Kills who has kind of a nice Shirley Manson thing going) but the experience itself was, as they say, banging.  (I know: no one says that.)  Jack White plays drums, mostly, --a mistake, I think. His natural showmanship and charisma don't lend themselves to staying penned up at the back of the stage, and he ended up coming out from behind the drums a half-dozen times over the course of the night.  Generally these were the best moments.

Something new for me: many concertgoers holding up their smartphones, making live video recordings throughout the concert.  Looking down from the balcony we saw the many glowing screens held overhead, like the white tops of waves on the sea.  Next to me, during the encore, a girl wrote on her Facebook page.  The horror of always being connected....

* * * 

A realization I had rereading Crying of Lot 49: we as readers ARE Oedipa (its protagonist).  We are in exactly her situation.  We believe there is some hidden order undergirding what we experience but we can’t fully fathom it.  We can’t make the pieces all connect.  As a result we suspect, perhaps, that whatever order we are learning to apprehend is not truly there.  It has been concocted, made up as a kind of joke.  For her, the "order" is the private mail conspiracy and the joker is (may be) the man whose will she executes, Inveriarty (‘not true.’) For the reader, the joker is Pynchon himself.  The novel is either a map to the hidden order of the universe (as art tries to be, exposing the hidden girders, hinting at meanings we can’t fully appreciate) or a beautiful lie (Plato’s phrase)—a sham put in place to keep us amused, to help us pass the time.

Also now rereading Vineland (I have a tendency to keep starting new books without finishing old), whose softer tone I prefer I think to Lot 49.  Still paranoia, still the giant conspiracies, but they’re less ferocious and claustrophobic.   Lot 49 like being in a cell with the O2 being extracted slowly, mol by mol. 

I highly recommend The Quickening Maze (just finished).  Less so Laughter on the 23^rd Floor.  Neil Simon, a master craftsman, does lack some…something.  I want Simon to be Norman Rockwell, someone both popular and profound, a popular artist whose popularity and seeming simplicity makes him an easy target for intellectuals who mistrust pleasure in their art.  But Simon doesn’t do that, at least not the Simon I’ve read.  More like a very very good TV writer.  What you see is what you get.  

Journal: 7.16.10

Summer in the Valley in July.  100 degrees among the strip malls.  Carl’s Jr, my wife’s boss says: that’s what the Valley is, at its heart.  In a way that’s true.  Supermarket has no chard for me today so I’ll use collard green instead.  I’ve been cooking insane amounts of chard recently.  Wife’s probably sick of it.  I’m probably sick of it.  But I cook it still.  Easy, delicious, goes with everything.  How will the collards work?  Probably not as well, but I have uncooked sausage left over from dinner last night, and they seem to pair well with greens.

Bink, newly shorn, is back to his old health.  After we got back from Houston in July he had some bowel issues; we ended up taking him to a Vet ER at one in the morning the day we got back.  (My wife described the situation to the nurse on the phone.  She said we didn’t need to take him in.  We took him in anyway.  Because that’s how we are, where BinkHealth goes).  After thirty minutes of having people probe his anal areas, he was pronounced okay.  Apparently pets can develop mild colitis when they’re in high-stress situations.  The four nights he’d spent being boarded seems to qualify.  Bink’s like his parents; he doesn’t do well with change, new environments, or other people (well, dogs).  Picking him up from the boarder I always think of the way my brother and I were when we were picked up from Camp.  He’s dirty, he’s too thin, and he’s exhausted.

An understandably disgruntled Bink has his hindparts tended.

A few days ago I had the startling realization that the (tele)play I’ve been working on is, of all things, Pynchonesque.   Pynchon meets Dante, maybe, but still (both are great makers of and would-be believers in systems).  Pynchon’s not an author I thought I admired.  Now, rereading Lot 49 for the third time, I grow ever more impressed.  Vineland next.  (I read it 10 years ago, but remember it only vaguely).  Should I attempt another assault on Gravity’s Rainbow?  The last one was repulsed with all malice.   We’ll see.  Point is, it’s a breakthrough: knowing where to go to learn to write the thing I’m writing.  My thing far less paranoid and ominous than Pynchon, but the overall sense of some massive hidden order undergirding what seems chaos, as well as the way in which all my characters can seem, in some ways, to be completely insane—in those, at least, they are the same.  A line somewhere involves someone commenting on the hero’s remarkable speed in going to the heart of another man’s madness.  Maybe what it’s about?  Everybody basically crazy, in amusing and frightening ways. 

Ordered about a dozen books in the last week.  Joined a book club which I’ll probably not attend (other people will be there).  The book being discussed is something I’ve never read, by Yukio Mishima.  Also checked out, from library, a number of books about animals.  I have this vague idea that all justifications in the end, in fiction, involve metaphor, and that many of those involve animals, their behavior.  In a letter I just wrote to agents I had this prolonged discussion of Emperor Penguins, comparing myself to them.  Going with my usual strategy (if it is that) for writing to strangers: be completely myself, bizarre and even frightening as that may come off.  Easier, in its way.  Has drawbacks, of course—no one I wrote has yet responded, for example (though I’m not sure how much of that is content, how much is my status as unknown, random, vagrant).  But it was this approach that convinced my wife to date me.   Well, that and my ferocious, penguin-like, good looks….

Google?

I have a love-strong dislike relationship with Charlie Rose.  Briefly: I wish he talked less and didn't constantly call attention to his own, often fairly shallow, understanding of the issues being discussed.  This clip doesn't doesn't really speak to what's frustrating about watching his show, but it's still pretty great.

Either More--Or Maybe Less?--Than Meets The Eye

I'm reading Samuel Beckett's novel Molloy.  It's the first novel in a trilogy that continues on with Malone Dies and The Unnamable.  I've read the first two books in the trilogy before; the third I couldn't finish.  Here's how it's described in the inside jacket of the Everyman's Library edition:

The third novel consists of the fragmented monologue--delivered, like the monologues of the previous novels, in a mournful rhetoric that possesses the utmost of splendor and beauty--of what might or might not be an armless and legless creature living in an urn outside an eating house.

Enticing, isn't it?  (My favorite part: "might or might not be.") Also, is it just me, or is that almost an exact, word-for-word description of the plot of  Police Academy V?  Just saying...

World Cup So Far

I've watched about ten of the games in the World Cup so far; I've seen all the major teams play at least once and am therefore more than qualified to competently assess the entire tournament, and, in fact, all of World Football.

Some random thoughts:

- The Team To Beat for me, is Argentina.  They made a fairly solid South Korean team look like amateurs. The score finished 4-1, but it could have been much higher.  Their defense is average, at best, but oh my God can they score.  Exciting; electric--if you watch any games from now on out, try and watch theirs.  Even if they lose, it won't be a 0-0 draw.

- I read an article last week comparing Ronaldo to ARod; at the time I thought it was unfair to Ronaldo.  Now I think it's unfair to ARod.  Whiny, pouty, and given to flopping on the ground in "pain" whenever an opposing player even breathes on him, he is by far my least favorite player in the game today.  Luckily, I think the Portuguese are probably not getting out of group play.  At least, I hope.

-The US were obviously robbed of a victory today against Slovenia.  All the articles I've read about it thus far have said something along the lines of "Well, it was a bad call, but these things happen."  To which I say: YEAH WELL THEY#)@$* SHOULDN'T.  Taking away that victory from us is very likely to cost advancing beyond the first round.  Can't there be replays on goal kicks?  Can't it be reviewed after the match?  And why oh why was such a terrible ref allowed to work our game?

Yes, I know: we shouldn't have let the Slovenes get two goals in the first place.  Well, we did.  And then--we scored three more.  THREE MORE.  Three is more than two.  Therefore, we should have won.  Check that: we did win.  Okay?  We won.  WE WON.  So why are we only getting credit for a draw?  Why?   Somebody tell me??

GOD I HATE SPORTS.

-Except Argentine football.  That, I do not hate.  Maradona (who, by the way, my wife and I once saw in person, in the Lima airport) gives a press conference like no one else.  It's like...if Rasheed Wallace were made a coach, and given the freedom to say anything he liked, whenever he liked, that's what Maradona is.  The man is totally out of his mind.  But in the best possible way.  And, he's got his team playing well.  That must mean something.  Right?  

"...to get some printer toner or to take the cat to the vet..."

The best sitcom on TV right now is called Peep Show.  It's on BBC America and is, as you would assume, Albanian.

Wait, no.  It's British.  There's no Albanian TV network broadcast in America.  Although if there were, I'd watch it.  (Assuming it were shown in English.  Which seems unlikely.  More unlikely than the existence of an all-Albanian TV network broadcast in America, even.)

Peep Show has two stars.  David Mitchell is one of them.  The clip above is written and performed by David Mitchell.  It is, I think, hi-larious.  Also smart.  Much like the show.  And, while we're making lists, the British themselves.

"I Want To Be You When I Grow Up"

I've watched this three times today.  It's made me cry every single time.  If you're not watching So You Think You Can Dance....you should be. You really should be.

"Gay Men Playing With Barbie Dolls"

Lindy's West's take-down of Sex In The City Two is one of the sharpest and funniest film reviews I've read in a long time.  Warning: bad language abounds....

An End To Being Lost?

I've been following the countdown to the end of Lost with mounting interest. As friends and readers may know, I've long maintained that the show's creators would never in a million years be able to resolve even a small percentage of the many many contradictions, questions, and impossibilities the show's employed throughout the years to keep viewers watching.

Bear in mind that almost from the start, they promised just the opposite. They had a plan, they said.  It would all tie together.  Just keep tuning in.  Trust them: it would all cohere.  THEY would never be so cynical or lazy as to trick their viewers into watching by dangling before their all-too trusting eyes a carrot they could never, ever reach....

The video above shows all the questions that the show didn't answer.  There are, you'll note, a lot of them.

Contradiction, mystery, paradox, impossiblity...they don't necessarily give your writing depth.  They don't necessarily give it power.  They don't necessarily give it meaning.  Sometimes all they do is make you look ridiculous.

It's Almost Here

Unlike John over at ASWOBA, I always get excited about the World Cup. I don't pretend to be a die-hard soccer fan, but I have watched most of the major matches from the last two World Cups and I've gotten a lot out of them. (Having a DVR, by the way, makes this a LOT easier).

I feel a little bit ambivalent about putting up an ad on this site, but, well, this one's pretty great. It considers the consequences for a handful of the world's best soccer players of what they do and don't do on the pitch. The section with Wayne Rooney is particular memorable, although my favorite moment right now is the insane lounge singer guy that appears about a minute in. (Anyone know who that is?) Okay, enjoy.

BTW: Hawaii pics and recap coming up in a few days....

It's Been A Long Time Since I Bink And Rolled

I got an iPhone a few months ago. Thus far the thing I like best about it is that it allows me take pictures of my dog whenever I want. Is this useful? Of course not. Does it justify the outrageous 30$/month surcharge AT&T charges customers for 'data transfer?' No it does not. On the other hand, I now have over 100 pictures of The Bink at my fingertips whenever I need them. And that is pretty great.

My wife and I depart tomorrow on vacation (we're going to Kauai). We're going to lie in the sun, hike in the rain forest, and (maybe) surf in the ocean. The only thing we're not going to do is see our dog. Luckily I'll have my photos. Here are some of my faves....

Here he looks like both wise and ancient. I call it my Tolstoy shot.

Dramatic, huh? Every hour or so he comes up to my chair and turns that look upon me. I'm never quite sure what it means.

Nothing fancy here: just straight-up cute.

Of all of the many arch-villians who plague our neighborhood, there's only one who's evil enough to agitate the Bink like this. The Mailman has drawn nigh....

When you nap as hard as Bink does, it's important that you stretch when you get done. Otherwise, you risk a serious injury.

Sleeping for the Bink is not a stationary experience.

Cities and The Sky

My recent rereading kick has lead me back to Italo Calvino's wondrous Invisible Cities. Below I excerpt a passage from near the end of the book.

* * *

Summoned to lay down the rules for the foundation of Perinthia, the astronomers established the place and the day according to the position of the stars; they drew the intersecting lines of the decumanus and the cardo, the first oriented on the passage of the sun and the other like the axis on which the heavens turn. They divided the map according to the twelve houses of the zodiac so that each temple and each neighborhood would receive the proper influence of the favoring constellations; they fixed the point in the walls where gates should be cut, foreseeing how each would frame an eclipse of the moon in the next thousand years. Perinthia--they guaranteed--would reflect the harmony of the firmament; nature's reason and the gods' benevolence would shape the inhabitants' destinies.

Following the astronomers' calculations precisely, Perinthia was constructed; various peoples came to populate it; the first generation born in Perinthia began to grow within its walls; and these citizens reached the age to marry and have children.

In Perinthia's streets and square today you encounter cripples, dwarfs, hunchbacks, obese men, bearded women. But the worse cannot be seen; guttural howls are heard from cellars and lofts, where families hide children with three heads or with with six legs.

Perinthia's astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong and their figures are unable to describe the heavens, or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters.

Zero Point Four Grams??

That Mitchell and Webb Look is a skit show on BBC America. Well worth checking out. The clip below should be especially appreciated by the Bond fans among you.

The Wombats are Revealed

First passage: My Antonia by Willa Cather.

Second passage: Keats's letters.

I reread Willa Cather a few months ago. I'm going through a rereading phase. Rereading's the only way to understand a book. That's what I say. You only read so you can reread. Who said that? Someone. But it's true. True-ish, anyway.

Anyway: My Antonia. Much better than I remembered. I read it first in Iowa, where I felt the need to read books about settlers and the prairie. But it holds up. Holds up well. I then read O Pioneers, thinking I might go on a Willa Cather kick. (Good band name). O Pioneers didn't do as much for me. Though oddly it was at about this time that Levi's Jeans started showing those adds where pagan worship in blue jeans was accompanied by some prophet-sounding dude reading aloud from Whitman's poem "O Pioneers", which of course is where the Cather book takes its title from.

Now I'm reading my American History textbook from 11th grade pretty much exclusively. Because I have many students right now in AP US History. Which is pretty cool.

By the way, I've decided on my two favorite periods in US History. They are:

1) 1795-1815: Adams' presidency up to War of 1812. (XYZ affair. Rush-Bagot treaty. YES!)

2) 1890-1915

Maybe something to do with the national mood as the centuries turn? Not sure.

I'm kind of reading Wolf Hall, though I'm not making much progress.

Keats was a poet by the way. French. A Parnassian. He wrote Les Fleurs du Mal. Also, a few early episodes of Hawaii Five-O. (Little known but true).

Wombat The Second

Okay, here's the second passage. (Identity of the first to be revealed forthwith).

"I compare human life to a large Mansion of Many Apartments, two of which I can only describe, the doors of the rest being as yet shut upon me - The first we step into we call the infant or thoughtless Chamber, in which we remain as long as we do not think - We remain there a long while, and notwithstanding the doors of the second Chamber remain wide open, showing a bright appearance, we care not to hasten to it; but are at length imperceptibly impelled by awakening of the thinking principle - within us - we no sooner get into the second Chamber, which I shall call the Chamber of Maiden-Thought, than we become intoxicated with the light and the atmosphere, we see nothing but pleasant wonders, and think of delaying there for ever in delight: However among the effects this breathing is father of is that tremendous one of sharpening one's vision into the nature and heart of Man — of convincing one's nerves that the World is full of misery and Heartbreak, Pain, sickness and oppression — whereby This Chamber of Maiden Thought becomes gradually darken'd and at the same time on all sides of it many doors are set open - but all dark - all leading to dark passages — We see not the balance of good and evil. We are in a Mist - We are now in that state — We feel the burden of the Mystery."

60 New Pence For A Bottle Of Maltese Claret!

Another of my favorites. Its genius wanes a bit towards the end, but the first three minutes are well worth your time.

Name That Wombat: Passage One

Here's the first passage.:

At the university I had the good fortune to come immediately under the influence of a brilliant and inspiring young scholar. Gaston Cleric had arrived in Lincoln only a few weeks earlier than I, to begin his work as head of the Latin Department. He came West at the suggestion of his physicians, his health having been enfeebled by a long illness in Italy. When I took my entrance examinations, he was my examiner, and my course was arranged under his supervision.

.…When I sat at work I half-faced a deep, upholstered chair which stood at the end of my table, its high back against the wall. I had bought it with great care. My instructor sometimes looked in upon me when he was out for an evening tramp, and I noticed that he was more likely to linger and become talkative if I had a comfortable chair for him to sit in, and if he found a bottle of Benedictine and plenty of the kind of cigarettes he liked, at his elbow. He was, I had discovered, parsimonious about small expenditures—a trait absolutely inconsistent with his general character. Sometimes when he came he was silent and moody, and after a few sarcastic remarks went away again, to tramp the streets of Lincoln, which were almost as quiet and oppressively domestic as those of Black Hawk. Again, he would sit until nearly midnight, talking about Latin and English poetry, or telling me about his long stay in Italy.

I can give no idea of the peculiar charm and vividness of his talk. In a crowd he was nearly almost silent. Even for his classroom he had no platitudes, no stock of professorial anecdotes. When he was tired, his lectures were clouded, obscure, elliptical; but when he was interested they were wonderful. I believe that Gaston Cleric narrowly missed being a great poet, and I have sometimes thought that his bursts of imaginative talk were fatal to his poetic gift. He squandered too much in the heat of personal communication.

Name That Wombat

I'm starting a new feature, one which I'm sure will finally allow this blog to compete with Time, ESPN and The New York Times. It's called "Name That Wombat." The way it works is simple. I excerpt a passage of prose taken from some canonical writer. Anyone who likes may guess who wrote it. Whoever gets it right, wins a Ferrari.

That's right. A Ferrari. I've been saving up.

One rule: you can't just search the passage on the internet.

I hope to choose passages which seem to me representative of not only the writer in question, but also (at least some of the time) the style of the time. Or, one of the (dominant) styles of the time. So even if you haven't read the passage, there should be enough clues to make it possible to guess.

First passage coming soon.

High Stakes Madness

The last hand on this video, in which Tom Dwan attempts to run a massive bluff against Phil Ivey, is one of the best single hands of poker I have ever seen--on both sides. Enjoy.

The Hockey Stick That Wasn't

A fascinating review of what appears to be a fascinating book. The book, The Hockey Stick Illusion, describes the efforts of one man to double-check the data used to create the (apparently) famous "hockey stick" graph--THE core piece of evidence for those that assert that mean temperature on Earth has risen sharply in the 20th century. Turns out, the graph, as well as most of the subsequent data sets taken from that graph, are mostly wrong. This is a book I would like to read. So, if any of you want to buy me anything, here's your chance.

And while you're at it, I'd also like a credenza. And lawn furniture. And some 1982 Bordeaux.

But I'll settle for the book. Read the review--at minimum because it contains this sentence: "I never thought I would find myself unable to put a book down because—sad, but true—I wanted to know what happened next in an r-squared calculation."

Who The Real Heroes Are

I spent almost a week in Greece about ten years ago and found the country fascinating. Hugely and inexorably antithetical to everything that I, an uptight Anglo Saxon, am and will ever be--but fascinating nonetheless. Maybe that's why I've been tracking the tension between Greece and the rest of Europe (particularly Germany) with special interest.

This article in the Times offers some excellent insight into why the Greek government is so financially imperiled. The opening is particularly noteworthy:

ATHENS — Vasia Veremi may be only 28, but as a hairdresser in Athens, she is keenly aware that, under a current law that treats her job as hazardous to her health, she has the right to retire with a full pension at age 50.".....“I use a hundred different chemicals every day — dyes, ammonia, you name it,” she said. “You think there’s no risk in that?”

“People should be able to retire at a decent age,” Ms. Veremi added. “We are not made to live 150 years.”

Impossible To Resist

I found this here. It's one of the many, many pages on Wikipedia dedicated to explicating all the various ins and outs of Cthulu, the deranged mythic reality created by HP Lovecraft.

Pretty much every entry on this page is similarly awesome.

L'gy'hx

The planet Uranus. It is inhabited by metallic, cube-shaped beings with multiple legs. These creatures worship a minor deity known as L'rog'g (possibly another aspect of Nyarlathotep), whose rituals require a yearly sacrifice in the form of the excising of the legs from a native.

"As For The Fruit, It Had No Taste At All"

I've had this poem (especially the line above) in my head for the last few days. Donald Justice wrote it as a graduate student at Iowa. His teacher, John Berryman, was blown away.

The Wall

The wall surrounding them they never saw;
The angels, often. Angels were as common
As birds or butterflies, but looked more human.
As long as the wings were furled, they felt no awe.
Beasts, too, were friendly. They could find no flaw
In all of Eden: this was the first omen.
The second was the dream which woke the woman.
She dreamed she saw the lion sharpen his claw.

As for the fruit, it had no taste at all.
They had been warned of what was bound to happen.
They had been told of something called the world.
They had been told and told about the wall.
They saw it now; the gate was standing open.

-Donald Justice

Something I Have To Share

So I'm driving home from work yesterday and I end up listening to a radio interview with Douglas Brinkley about a new book he's written about Teddy Roosevelt and his contributions to the American environmental movement. The book (Wilderness Warrior) sounded reasonably interesting, and I'm sort of mildly paying attention when Brinkley lets fly with what I think may be the single greatest bit of presidential trivia ever: Theodore Roosevelt owned a pet badger named...

...wait for it...

...Josiah.

!

!

!

!

After further research I learned Josiah was "tossed on to the Presidential train as it traveled through Kansas in 1903 by a little girl, who shouted the animal's name to the President. Josiah was bottle-fed until he cut his teeth, at which point he started to nip at any legs available."

My estimation of Theodore Roosevelt--already fairly high--just went through the roof.

After searching the web, I've not been able to find any actual photos of Josiah, so instead I'll just put up a picture of a non-presidential badger. (By the way, "Presidential Badger"--fantastic band name).

Wombats and Ends

Little has happened round here of late. That's a big change from the norm; usually very little happens.

Last night we saw Fences at the South Coast Rep. Prior to this, I'd read only one of August Wilson's plays (Ma Rainey's Black Bottom) which did a lot more for me than I thought it would. I expected a doctrinaire, agenda-driven piece of rhetoric, but I got a lot more.

Fences did not live up to Ma Rainey. Acting was excellent but both the directing and the writing let us down. The first act did everything a good first act should, but the second act let it all fall apart.

The moral is: don't ever leave your house.

* * *

There's a new TV show on BBC America that all you need to watch. It's called the In-Betweeners. It's about a group of semi-misfit high school boys and their attempts to find...all the things that high school boys attempt to find. It's crude, and funny, and vulnerable and strangely sweet. Well-written, well-acted--excellent all around. It's on Wednesdays, I believe.

* * *

The wife leaves tomorrow for a medical conference. A week of loneliness is on the horizon. I'll watch Yes, Minister, and finish rereading Vanity Fair and maybe subject myself to Last Year at Marienbad. (Why am I such a Europhile where art is concerned?) The long-awaited movie list is on hold until I cross about ten more names off the list of "Films I Need to See." Marienbad is one (barely). Last week I watched Sans Soleil, which makes a lot of critics' top ten lists for the best ever. Tarkovsky-esque, surreal, poetic and mindbending though it was, I doubt it makes my Top Fifty. (There's not much room on there to be honest--all of the Police Academy Movies take up most of the space).

* * *

The big trip for the year has been planned. In May we're going to Kauai (Hawaiian for "Island." No, not really). Apparently near where we'll be staying served as the Bali Hai in the film version of South Pacific. I am determined to take a surfing lesson while there. Because if there is one single group of people in THIS WORLD with whom I identify, it's surfers.

"I'd Better Go and Have A Bath I Suppose"

I was pleasantly surprised to find this clip on YouTube. It is, I think, one of Python's highest achievements, but it's one most people don't know. It appeared in their fourth season, after John Cleese left--when they were only Monty Python (no Flying Circus).

Shows I Watch

Undoubtedly I watch too much TV. And yet, with the advent of DVR, I have come to feel confident that, at least now, the TV I watch is the TV I want to watch--not just what's on. DVR has also allowed the wife and I to try out shows that are on at odd times, on stations we would never watch otherwise. As a result, I believe I'm something of a connoisseur (sadly) of TV. Here are some shows we watch.

Comedy

30 Rock, Modern Family, Parks and Recreation, The Office
The best episodic comedies on TV. 30 Rock is not as good as it once was. Modern Family is the best new show of the season. The Office gets less funny and more depressing every season. Parks and Rec is hit or miss (but more the former than the latter).

Bravo

Project Runway, Top Chef, Millionaire Matchmaker, Launch My Line

Project Runway's last season (in LA) was terrible, but now that they're back in New York it's gotten back its old mojo. Top Chef continues to be great. (This season's winner, Michael Voltaggio, has a restaurant in LA that the wife and I are trying to go to. It's booked up for months in advance, of course). Millionaire Matchmaker is vulgar and depressing. A great way to remind yourself how lucky you are to be married and no longer going on blind dates. (By the way, I've concluded that blind dates are much harder on women than men. At least, they are on this show). Launch My Line is just horrible, but it's a competition show on Bravo, so by law I have to watch it.

Cooking

Chopped

On the Food Network. Four contestants have to cook a three-course meal. They are given random ingredients for each course and a set time. Example: for the appetizer, they MUST use scallops, goji berries, and pimentos. For the entree: bacon, kiwi, cornish hen, and ramps. Etc etc. After each course they're judged and one of the contestants is kicked off. Surprisingly great TV, especially because at least one of the ingredients in each course is way outside the comfort zone of just about everyone competing. ("I have to make a dessert using kale? What the @#)$*!")

Next Iron Chef

Not on very often, but an entertaining competition in which the winner is added to the Iron Chef cooking pantheon. Far better than the actual Iron Chef (at least the American version).

The Worst Cooks In America

Almost over, but incredibly entertaining. Twelve would-be cooks are chosen for their complete lack of cooking talent. (The first episode, in which each chef has a 'signature dish' evaluated by professional cooks is absolutely hilarious. A woman makes Mac and Cheese using cottage cheese, etc.) Then, the chefs are trained in rudimentary and not-so-rudimentary skills, with the best moving on each week. At the end (coming up next week) the two best chefs compete in a cook-off in front of professional food critics.

BBQ Pitmasters

A new fave, (I believe it's on TLC?) BBQ Pitmasters follows a crew of competitive BarBQue cooking teams as they travel the country facing off against each other in high-intensity BarBQue Cookoffs. The prize money is niggling, but the competitors don't care. Intense people, intense judges--intense food. The unwitting star is a good old boy from Georgia named Myron Mixon, a man constitutionally incapable of uttering a single sentence that doesn't incorporate at least five swear words and one reference to his own status as best BarBQue pitmaster ever. (A claim he can generally back up). Good stuff.

Home and Decor

Before buying a house and getting married, I never imagined I would actually choose to watch shows about buying houses or decorating them, but I have and I do. Most of these are on HGTV and they follow one of three formats:

1) A person tries to buy a house

2) A person tries to sell a house

3) A person tries to redecorate a house

The best of these shows is called House Hunters International, which documents the efforts of people living abroad to buy or rent homes in foreign countries. A couple buying a home in Amsterdam first has to deal with the squatters who have taken up residence there (legal in Holland). A man in Tokyo hopes to find a bathtub large enough to actually lie down in. A couple in Malta debates the hassle of a commute from (some random town I haven't heard of) to (another random town I haven't heard of). Apartments in Berlin do NOT have appliances provided in the kitchen. It's all the little details that suck you in. It's also as close as I'll probably ever get to owning a villa in the South of France (three recent shows have been set there). Or, for that matter, in Uruguay. Strangely compelling.

A Real Problem

Report: Most College Males Admit To Regularly Getting Stoked

A Post On The Last Decade That Changes Tone Abruptly Round About Halfway In

Both my jackass friends have seen fit to reflect on their experience with live, love, and Jeff Beck during the last decade. Being something of a jackass myself, I decided to follow suit.

I started the decade living in the same city I live in now—Los Angeles. Technically I lived, then, in a small suburb on the Northeastern edge of Los Angeles called Sierra Madre. I was there because I’d won admission into a TV Writing “Workshop” run by Warner Brothers. It was, in fact, a glorified audition, one which awarded paid writing spots to top performers at the end of the ten-week class.

I loved living in Sierra Madre; I loved the town; I loved my life. I woke up every day and went to the same coffee shop, where I ate the same breakfast (two lemon poppyseed muffins, eight cups coffee) read the same paper, and came back at the same time every day to write (10:30). Afternoons I read the same book (In Search of Lost Time), played pick-up at the same court, and spent the late afternoon watching the same TV show (NYPD Blue). I was lonely, but happy.

About halfway into the class I found out that I had been accepted into MFA programs in both fiction writing and poetry. (I had applied the previous fall). I had several choices. I could move back to St. Louis where I had been living, attend the fiction program at Wash U and try to patch things up with my then-girlfriend; I could stay in LA, where I was doing well in the TV writing workshop and try to make a lot of money writing crap that no one would want to watch; or I could go to Iowa and attend the poetry program at the Writers’ Workshop.

So much depends upon a red wheelbarrow…. I went to Iowa. I don’t know why. It was probably a mistake. I went from a sunny and friendly place, writing something I didn’t care about but could do well—to a dark and unfriendly place (the Workshop, not Iowa) writing something I cared too much about but didn’t seem to do very well. I made one very close friend, read a lot of contemporary poetry, and thought about art. This is not a good place for those (unquestionably profound) reflections, but suffice it to say that I ultimately decided that writing poetry seemed to me to be a dead-end. I have likened it before to learning how to inscribe parts of the Bible onto grains of rice; undoubtedly it’s difficult—but what does it achieve? What does it matter?

I was in Iowa on 9/11. I remember sitting in a bar that night and listening to one of the fiction writers declare with grave certainty that the US would soon reinstate the draft (“they would have to.”) Iowa in toto—extremist, frightened, and wrong. None of us could understand it, and it was all so far away. (Random note: the news source that best captured 9/11 for me turned out to be The Onion. I still remember the article about a Midwestern housewife who, having given blood and baked a cake, worried that she had no other way to help her country.)

This is stating to get long. Let’s speed it on its way. 2002: Left Iowa, went to Boston. Taught my most fulfilling class ever (poetry writing for adults). Hung out with the Harvard Classics Department. Great guys—terrible poker players. Sort of learned Latin. Wrote a lot of mediocre poetry. Turned thirty, had a party (thanks, J!), watched Mirror, Rublev, Passion of Joan of Arc. Left New England never to return (we hope).

Back in Texas, guns-a blazing, tutoring business going good. Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita. Played at poker. Reconnected with some friends of yore. Tried to learn to cook. Half-wrote a half-screenplay. Built a web site. Watched the movies I was told to watch. Quoted Master Shake, perhaps too much. Read many things I don't recall. Happy, but in need of song, I set my sail upon the seas of online love. Shipwrecked all at once.

Learned a girl I’d met some years ago was suddenly free. Concocting surreal fantasies of blimp and ficus tree, emailed. Amazed to get reply as funny and bizarre as one I’d sent. Felt stirring, faint yet powerful, deep in the cockles, a there where stirring had not previously been felt. Bought a shirt and had a date. Learned she didn’t eat cheese. Convinced her that a polished rock was actually an after-dinner treat. Had second date. Had tenth. Cockles now a place of swift and steady storm.

Met her family. Got an easel. Watched Tarkovsky once a month at least. Painted now but not in oils. Bought a book on how to buy a diamond ring. Bought a diamond ring. Bought a life-sized teddy bear. Felt the future suddenly change.

Found a chapel, found a planner, found a cake. Well, she found the cake, but I expressed support, checking in from time to time on plans I didn’t fully understand. Many colored folders on her desk. Listened to Sly and the Family Stone. Felt I might not be as funky as I was back then. Wore an eye patch (not for fun). Made sure wedding invitation featured talking box of Fries.

At the chapel, playing rummy in the back, received a rabbit-headed cane. At the service the minister wished not happiness for us, but joy. I understood. The wedding: everybody came, everybody danced. Many vodka shots to those who needed them. (And who did not?)

Went to Austin, went to Cuzco, ate a guinea pig, came home. All the nights when I thought Sal Paradise was right. Moved to Brentwood, bought a sofa, watched The Wire. Did not want a dog. Went to Vegas, hated Vegas, went again. Won and lost enough to almost live upon. Continued not to want a dog. Acquired a dog. Learned how marriage worked. Learned to care for something small and strange. Gave it names to pass the time. Sang to it at night. Began to find a need to go to total strangers and explain the ways my dog was best. Realized I’d lost my hold.

Got a realtor. Got a mortgage. Got a job (sort of). Joined a gym. Found I’d put on weight. Found I’d lost some hair. Found my writing hadn’t gotten me to any place of note. Felt despair encroach. Resisted it, as best I could.

Saw the 10s begin back here, in Valley Glen, in house with wife and dog. Like other friends, I also spent 2000 in Houston, at the same party as my friends. All that’s over now. No more colored alcohol; no more smoke machine (or was that from a different year?) Now it’s time for kids, for work, for middle age. Wisdom just another word for sorrow, in the end. But joy comes also, pushing up through time’s thick sediment, a plume of smoke illumined by the light of those surrounding it, transporting us outside of time as often as we need, almost.