Am I, like, 5 years late on "The National?" Probably.

Found out yesterday that the band I'm now obsessed with opened for REM in 2007 or 2008 or some year in which I SAW REM PLAY LIVE.  But I didn't see the opening band.

Q: Should one see opening bands?
A: I gave up on them after 1998.
Q: But you missed The National, en resultant.
A: C'est vrai.  C'est vrai, et c'est triste.


A: I'm old and old and lame.

But: The National are so so good.  We're all already doomed, so let's just accept it.  I love this song and like this video.

Closer to the Golden Dawn

I am still contemplating on the new Bowie album.  My first reaction was that it was in the same ballpark as Reality and Hours and..., which, to me, means not that great.  But it's growing on me.  The song told from the vantage of a soldier in Iraq ("I'd Rather Be High") is excellent; some of the others have the potential, maybe, to turn into minor favorites.  A lot of critics have talked about the album in terms of all the references it makes to songs and phases of Bowie's own past.  What it most reminds me of, so far, is actually late-era Dylan (Modern Times, e.g., or Time out of Mind).  It's an album by someone who has no difficulty turning out solid, enjoyable rock but who clearly, given the right circumstances, is capable of much, much more.  It's not reasonable to expect a man in his mid-sixties to subjugate himself to the emotional and artistic anguish it must take to make an album like Low or Station to Station; I can't hold Bowie accountable for not producing a masterpiece of modern music.  Still, I wished he'd pushed himself a little more.  The lyrics feature too many uninspired cliches and the rhymes are often equally unimaginative.  The musical ideas, such as there are, don't do much for me either.  It's the album of a man who doesn't have to push himself and doesn't want to push himself.  It inspires admiration, maybe, and gives a modicum of pleasure but it doesn't feel significant, in any way.

* * *

Not very anxious 
to bloom, 
my plum tree.
-Issa


* * *

I'll be in [Southern City] at the end of April.  The play--the long promised play--is finally being read (or walked-though, whatever you want to call it) by real actors.  It'll be very low-key, with a small (or non-existent) audience, but still: it's a deadline, and I'm excited.  I'm working eight or nine hours a day right now on good days; if it weren't for a flare-up of some my old, somewhat debilitating blood sugar/hypoglycemia issues (short version: I get dizzy and slow-witted after almost every meal, and my mood sometimes collapses for no discernable reason) I'd say this is the happiest I've been in LA in a long time.  My doctor's appointment is at the beginning of April; hopefully that will do something towards rectifying my health.  And then... it'll all be discotheques and yachts, and champagne-swilling on the Champs-Elyssee.

* * *

Doctor Faustus got progressively more tedious the farther I got into it.  Does anybody read Mann anymore?  Fifty years ago he ranked in the top echelon of 20th century writers.  Now, I can think of only person I've ever known who's recommended one of his books to me.

I started A Passage to India last week.  I had it around, I hadn't read it, I needed something new.  I'm also going back through the Aubrey-Maturin books for the...fifteenth time, I think?  Each time through each book I find something new to appreciate.  In 300 years will people consider the two greatest writers of the 20th century P.G. Wodehouse and Patrick O'Brian?  It wouldn't surprise me.

* * *

The wife got us tickets to John Logan's play Red, last Saturday.  It was being recorded for some audioseries, so there was no set, staging, props, nothing--just two actors speaking into a microphone, with a sound effects guy on the side.  It ended up being surprisingly captivating.  Alfred Molina, who pioneered the role, was playing Rothko.  That guy can do anything and make it worth watching.  (Watching the old guy makes all the sound effects off to the side in real time was really neat).  Play where people do nothing but argue about theories of art--those are ANCIANT plays.  Great stuff.   Good job, Wifey!

* * *

Climb Mt Fuji,

O snail,

but slowly, slowly.

-Issa

Status Update Wombat

Not much happening but I'm due to post and I'm sure my legion of loyal readers are breathless to hear what I'm up to.

Vegas:
was great, as per usual.  Sage, a restaurant in the Aria, remains one of the two best in the whole city (Le Cirque is the other).  Again it delivered a superlative meal.  I even loved the dessert (a pineapple themed...thing far too elaborate to describe here).  The card games were fine, and I won substantially playing 8/16 H/L Omaha.  A bad beat at hold'em the next day (I got all in as a 95% favorite and lost) took my winnings for the trip down some, but I still finished up.

Wine
The last few weeks I've been really enjoying Hugh Johnson's exceptional World Atlas of Wine.  The world of wine is endless--even the world of French wine is near-to-endless--and the knowledge and experience it offers both fascinates and slightly nonplusses me.  We just ordered a new selection of Burgundies, with a few Northern Rhone and Italian reds thrown in for variety.  One nice bottle every week has become the new MO (the old--four not-nice bottles every week--is discontinued).

Doctor Faustus
Alex Ross recommended the Mann novel in his Five Books interview a while back and I've been slowly pushing through it ever since.  I won't attempt a thorough summary here, but it does cry out for a good translator (the one who did the Modern Library edition is appallingly bad).  Faustus conforms to almost every stereotype of German art you can think of; it's filled with abstruse, sometimes incoherently complex philosophical, theological, and historical speculations; its prose often seems designed to defeat, and not promote comprehension; and it cares about ideas to the expense of all else (pleasure, drama, character, development of scenes, etc).  For all that, it's still a great, great novel--though perhaps one to be admired more than loved.  I'm considering reading more Mann fiction after this, but we'll see.  I may need a break.

"We call the moment at which this ache first arises..."

Though I don't wholly share his views on the subjects, I thoroughly enjoyed Michael Chabon's recent essay in the NYRB on the films of Wes Anderson.  It opens as follows:  

The world is so big, so complicated, so replete with marvels and surprises that it takes years for most people to begin to notice that it is, also, irretrievably broken. We call this period of research “childhood.”

There follows a program of renewed inquiry, often involuntary, into the nature and effects of mortality, entropy, heartbreak, violence, failure, cowardice, duplicity, cruelty, and grief; the researcher learns their histories, and their bitter lessons, by heart. Along the way, he or she discovers that the world has been broken for as long as anyone can remember, and struggles to reconcile this fact with the ache of cosmic nostalgia that arises, from time to time, in the researcher’s heart: an intimation of vanished glory, of lost wholeness, a memory of the world unbroken. We call the moment at which this ache first arises “adolescence.” The feeling haunts people all their lives.

Everyone, sooner or later, gets a thorough schooling in brokenness. The question becomes: What to do with the pieces? Some people hunker down atop the local pile of ruins and make do, Bedouin tending their goats in the shade of shattered giants. Others set about breaking what remains of the world into bits ever smaller and more jagged, kicking through the rubble like kids running through piles of leaves. And some people, passing among the scattered pieces of that great overturned jigsaw puzzle, start to pick up a piece here, a piece there, with a vague yet irresistible notion that perhaps something might be done about putting the thing back together again.

On the Road Again

Today the wife and I are heading out for a weekend vacation to The Eternal City, The City of Lights, The Big Easy, The Big Apple, Las Vegas.  We got offered a bunch of free stuff to stay at the Wynn, so, there we will stay.  Among the freebies offered were tickets to "Le Reve", their (I think?) Cirque-du-Soleil esque in house show.  Report to follow, maybe.  We're also planning on revisiting Sage, one of the best restaurants in Vegas, and site of one of our top five meals ever.  Anyone who wants me to place some big money on the upcoming baseball/basketball/football season should send me a text.  Or, if you just want me to put 200$ on the roulette wheel--we can do that too.

Back on Monday.

Too Much Tuna

I've been thinking about this skit ever since I saw it. I think it may be the funniest thing I've seen in a year. Or is it? It seems to me to border on brilliant--I laugh just thinking about it--but I'm curious if anyone else will have that reaction.  Is it only my odd, odd sense of humor that this appeals to?

At the very minimum I predict my brother will like this.

Comedy Central

Church

Last Sunday, the Wife and I, for the first time since we were married, went to church.  We've been trying since we moved to LA to find some community, meet some people we could maybe cultivate as friends, and church seemed one place to start.  We didn't go solely for the social aspects--we both of us want to develop a shared spiritual life--but I'd say our main goal (well, my main goal) was to alleviate some of our loneliness.

Before you can go to church you have to chose a church, and in a city where you're a relative stranger, this is not as simple a task as it sounds. What we ended up doing was exactly what you'd expect we'd do--we used Google.  (Yelp, also, maybe, for all I know--the wife was in charge of this part of the mission) We came up with a list of top candidate and, on Sunday, we started at the top of the list--at a Methodist church in North Hollywood.  Why Methodist?  In part, because my wife was raised Methodist.  Also, the church we got married in was Methodist, and both liked that a lot during the time we were there.

On Saturday night we went to bed early, and on Sunday I got up, showered, and for the first time since I've lived in Los Angeles, put on a pair of slacks and a formal jacket.  If I'd been in Houston I would have worn a tie, but I assumed that California church would be much more informal than the churches of my childhood, and I didn't want to stand out.  I was right too--even with no tie (just a jacket) I was more dressed up than at least half the men in the church.

The church we chose was built at the turn of the century--making it ancient for the San Fernando Valley--and had the comfortable, homey vibe that comes with things that have been around long enough to find their place in the world.  Outside the doors, a friendly older lady manned the information table.  Immediately recognizing us for first-time visitors, she welcomed us, thanked us for coming, and encouraged us to stay after, for fellowship (i.e. coffee and conversation).  Then we went inside.

The church was relatively small (in size and congregation).  The interior was done in a style I think of as "Mid-Century Califonria Mission" (not what it's actually called, I'm sure). Lots of natural wood and brick, with lantern-y carriage light/chadeliers hanging from the rafters.  At max, I'd guess it could 500 people; attendance at our service probably numbered around 100.  

The minister ("Reverend Joey") wore no stole or specialy priestly vestament--just a jacket and tie.  He opened the service by standing up and talking to us racism (It was Martin Luther King's birthday).  Using an incident from Cornell West's Race Matters as a starting point, he described his own personal failure in combatting racism at the church.  Years ago a parishoner made a racist comment to Reverend Joey and he merely stopped talking to the man, instead of confronting him.  That incident still bothered him--he accused himself of cowardice--and his reflections on his own personal failings were very moving.  He was a decent man, Reverend Joey.

After that, we sang hymns.  That would have gone better, I think, had the church been more crowded.  As it was, the singing had a tentative, bedraggled quality.  Amidst the hymns, there were the usual church goings-on: The Lord's Prayer, call-and-response between the minister and congregation, and a pickaxe-throwing competition with all invited to strip down to their shorts and compete in a sawdust ring they'd made in the middle of the church.  (No no.  It was really daggers they used--not axes).

A slight oddity (to me): about halfway through the service, a member of the congregation got up at the front with an acoustic guitar and performed "(Pride) In the Name of Love."  He sang it very well, but it did still seem to make the church feel a little like a college coffee shop.  They also had a moment where all the kids from Sunday School were brought to the front of the church to be taught about equality.  Their teacher (Muffet) had brought in several bags of Oreos to serve as symbols for an extended parable about human similarity.  The gist: Oreos now come in a million varieities (they make one now with three cookies and two layers of cream!) all of which look different on the outside.  But, they're still all Oreos.  (I.e., the same.)  The same is true of humans.  We all look different from without, but inside, we're all made up of sugar, cornstarch, and hydrogenated chocolate.  (Wait, no).

Muffet's thesis raised, to me, some interesting ontological questions, (e.g.: the sameness of human beings is determined by our joint awareness of what consitutes a person, whereas the sameness of Oreos is decided by executives at the cookie compnay, who could, at least in theory, put out a piece of carrot between two pieces of celery and call it an Oreo) but with all the squirming eight-year olds on the altar holding Oreos, they weren't susceptible to deeper exploration.

Then we sang some more.  There was a reading from the Bible (from the book of John--the wedding feast at Cana), done poorly and quickly (by a man in short sleeves!)  That one reading ended up being our only encounter with The Bible.  In fact, odd as it sounds, the service actually featured very little talk of God.  Most of it, as I've said, involved singing--the only book we were ever called on to use was a hymnbook.  To be fair, the Methodist hymnal also contains many of the church's prayers.  Still, I didn't even see a Bible in our pews, although the wife assured me one was there.  The point for most of the people there, seemed to be not so much to cultivate a sense of spirituality, to grow in faith, but to cultivate a sense of decency and to grow in friendship.

I don't know why the absence of God bothered me; I'm probably an agnostic, most of the time.  I suppose looking back I wanted someone there to challenge me, to make reexamine my faith (or lack thereof).  At minimum, I wanted some kind of intellectual takeaway--to be made to think about something.  If Rev Joey had spoken, during the sermon, about his interpretation of the water turned to wine (and he could have; the man clearly knew his theology) that would have been something.  Instead he delievered an uninspiring discussion of God's plan for us in our lives and how we find signs of that plan.  (We don't, was the core answer: we just trust it's there).

We didn't stay for the after-service fellowship.  At that point, we'd exhausted our courage for trying new things.  Having to talk to a lot of people we didn't know seemed more than we could handle. 

Which is not to say that the experience wasn't, on the whole, pleasant.  It was.  The question is, should 'pleasant' be what one seeks in a church?  I don't know.  I was made, in my youth, to attend a conservative Episcopal church.  In a million years never would a minister there have spoke about Cornell West.  Never--ever--would someone at that old church be allowed to come up to the altar and sing--even with a piano.  An acoustic guitarist would have been refused entry at the door.  Nor would any of their Priests allow themselves to be addressed as "Joey."  It'd be Joe, or more likely, Joseph.  And, as I've noted, the Episcopal priests dress up--they have stoles and vestaments and chasubles and albs and perukes and diadems, and all sorts of complicated accoutrements.  Also, those priests, during service, talk about The Bible--quite a bit.

On the other hand, I never liked my old Episcopal church.  I never went willingly, and even now, when I'm made to go back, I find it fairly objectionable.  (The last time I was there, for my grandmother's funeral, the sermon infuriated me so deeply I still haven't forgiven the priest).  The Texan church, though thriving and lavish, and very well-attended, seems, to me cold, intolerant--even somewhat bigoted.  I LIKED that this new California church tried to make us reflect on racism.  It was appropriate, given the occasion.  I liked that the congregation was not all white.  I liked that some of couples there were gay.  To people from the South, it all may sound a bit too...California-y, but to me the congregation felt like a honest picture of America--what it is, not what it was.  So, though the part of me that was raised in a wealthy conservative enclave of the South dislikes seeing anyone at a church not wearing a suit and tie, another part of me appreciates that maybe not everyone who goes to church owns a suit and tie.  And anyway, isn't it more important that people go to church, than that they wear the correct outfits?

So it's not the exterior informality I think that bothered me about this new Methodist place, but rather its excessive desire to be liked.  My biggest problem was, it wasn't difficult.  It could have challenged us more--challenged our faith or, at least, challenged our minds.  I didn't leave knowing anything more than when I came in, and that's a problem.  The bigger problem, though, is that in trying to hard to be accessible, this new church became forgettable.

It's the same fate that popular entertainment suffers when it tries too hard to be accessible.  Trying to be liked makes you cautious, and that makes you boring.  (The worst music ever is not 12-tone atonal, or rude aggressive punk, it's elevator Muzak--music that, in trying to offend nobody, offends everybody).  You don't want to risk alienating people.  You don't want to challenge them, to put out ideas they might find difficult or unpleasant.

But Christianity, faith, is challenging--at least, it should be.  This, of course, is one of Kierkegaard's great insights--that faith is difficult.  It's odd, it's inexplicable, and above all else, it isn't comfortable.  God shouldn't be some benevolent Dickensian uncle, ready with sweetmeat and a fond pat on the back.  He isn't Dumbledore--at least he shouldn't be.

At least, he shouldn't be for me.

I don't know.  I'm going off topic here, a bit, and I'm certainly not ready to go into a wide-scaling of my own religious sentiments.  For now, the plan to try out a few more churches, and see how they compare.  For our next attempt, we might seek out one with a bit more pomp about it.  Ideally it'll be one where women wear long, formal gowns; where the priests speak only in Aramaic; and where the service features a mix Gregorian chants, memorized recitations from the Septuagint, and ritual flagellation.   It should be good.

"Seems to me Wittgenstein has made rather a bad blunder here..."

While shuffling around on YouTube over the holidays I happily stumbled across this, a one-hour guided retrospective of what John Cleese considers to be the funniest films, skits, and actors, of his lifetime ("John Cleese's Comedy Heroes" it's called).  It lead me to consider and reconsider all sorts of stuff, but the show of note here is called "Beyond the Fringe."  It's a four-person...play...in essence ('revue' says Wikipedia), that ran for a few years in the late 60s.  Its four stars have since gone on to be big names, but at the time Alan Bennett, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, and Jonathan Miller were just slightly insolent young Oxbridge grads.

"Beyond the Fringe" never existed beyond a stage show; as a result, their greatness is not that easily accessible.  Most of what they have to offer on YouTube is grainy and of poor quality (which makes sense--it's all bootleg videos from live theatrical performances in 1969).  The skit I post below is not their funniest, but it is the one that's stayed with me most since I saw it.  It reminds me, very fondly, of my brother.  I hope you all can bear with its difficult sound and video quality, and give it a go.

Must-Read Obit

An exceptional, must-read obituary from The Telegraph.  Maybe the best thing, pound for pound, you'll read all year.  Unbelievable.  I can't do justice to how impressive it is.  A single solitary incident from this man's life would make most people proud forever.

How many prisons did the man escape from??

Perhaps my favorite part is how--as an aside!!-- it's related that he became the UK hang-gliding champion for, like, 8 years, during the 60s.  The mentioning of it is so casual.  The war was over, he didn't have much else to do, so he went ahead and decided to master hang-gliding.  And that is maybe the TENTH MOST AMAZING THING the man did.

Un-fricking-believable.

A sample (takes place during WWII, obviously):

...In the darkness Deane-Drummond fell into a slit trench on top of a German soldier. He and his comrades were taken prisoner and moved to a house on the outskirts of Arnhem, a temporary PoW “cage” holding about 500 all ranks and guarded by an under-strength company. Deane-Drummond found a wall cupboard about four feet wide and 12 inches deep with a flush-fitting concealed door. He unscrewed the lock, turned it back to front, pasted over the outside keyhole and locked himself in. For the next 13 days and nights, he remained there.

The room beyond his door was used by the Germans as an interrogation centre. He had only a one-pound tin of lard, half a small loaf of bread and his water bottle to keep him going. A gap in a corner of the floor surrounded by pipes served as a makeshift urinal.

On the 14th night, the Germans left the room empty and held a party upstairs. Deane-Drummond slipped out of his cupboard, climbed out of a window, dropped into the shrubbery, dodged the guards outside and got away.

A Dutch family concealed him in a shed next to their house. When the Germans searched it, Deane-Drummond, hidden under a pile of sacks, remained undiscovered.

He was passed from one “safe house” to another. On one occasion Baroness Ella van Heemstra, the mother of Audrey Hepburn, arrived with a bottle of champagne.

On Making A Piece of Furniture

There are, let's say, fifteen screws.  They all need to be fully screwed in; only then will the piece of furniture be finished.  To turn one screw one-half a rotation takes about four hours.

The temptation is to want to take a single screw and turn it in all the way.   The more unscrewed something is, the more painful is to look at it.  It's messy, it's ugly, and it reflects badly on you, the maker of the furniture.  But as long as some of the screws are more than, say, halfway unscrewed turning one in all the way is a fool's errand.  When one is too tight, the other screws can't go in.  That means the screw you've done in all the way will have to be unscrewed.  That's time lost (not to mention that it hurts to wreck what has already seemingly been well-done).

You have to come to believe that, insofar as it's possible, your great, abiding goal must be to be maintain as low "a delta" as possible.  (Delta: the gap in height between the most and least 'screwed-in' of your various screws.  So, if your most 'finished' screw is 80% in, and your least 'finished' screw is in 20%, your delta is 60.)

What this all seems to call for is a process by which the 'maker' goes from the first screw to the second, from the second screw to the third, and turns them each, in turn, one half a rotation.

However, that doesn't necessarily work.

Why not?

The final three screws (THE END) can never be more screwed in than any other screw.  They must always lag the others.  More importantly--the final screws are frequently IMPOSSIBLE TO TURN.  No matter how much you work at them they will not penetrate any deeper into the wood.

When this happens--when the end won't coalesce (and in a sense the entire problem of MAKING the furniture is a problem of the final three screws)--there is no neccessary obvious solution.  Maybe the END screws need to come out all the way, and be put somewhere else?  Maybe if some of the 'earlier' beginning screws are worked on more, are pushed in deeper, the END screws will start to penetrate.  On the other hand, working too much on 'beginning' screws will increase your overall DELTA.  And that is not to the good.

Sometimes the ugliness of the entire thing becomes so overwhelming, so deleterious to your own confidence in your ability to make a piece of furniture that, purely in order to maintain your own sanity you decide to take one screw and work it in as far and as deep as it can possibly go.  Although this...surrender does mess up the delta, it also can renew your confidence.  So maybe it's not so bad?

Also--there is no 100%.  No screw is ever actually 'in' all the way--it will never stop turning in its hole.   The challenge, then, is to determine whether or not, when it turns in its hole, it's helping to knit the wood together, or splintering it from the inside.  And that can't be known--only guessed at.

Vodka is useful, sometimes, during all of this.

It's Time to Post Again

Sorry for not posting very much. All I do is write on the play right now (which really--really--is nearing completion). Every time I consider writing on the blog I tell myself the work should go into the play. It devours all my time, energy, joy, and hope.  I love and revile it.  Writing is terrible.  Don't do it.

Other than that...let's see. I started Martin Chuzzlewit. The Kindle makes ordering massive amounts of never-to-be-read literature simple and cheap.   I now have the Complete Dickens, the Complete Austen, the Complete Shakespeare, the Complete Chekhov, the Complete Buckminster Fuller... whoever.  Anyone who has some 'complete' omnibus edition available for a buck--I've got 'em.  I hadn't read Martin Chuzzlewit yet so I started just to see what I thought of it, and I got swept in.  Its most famous character, Pecksniff, occupies the first thirty pages almost all to himself.  That makes the book seem way better than I now fear it's going to turn out.  Its energy has begun to abate now that Pecksniff has receded and its eponymous hero has arrived in the United States, but I've given myself permission to skim (never skim, being one of my usual reading commandments) some of the many, many gratuitous set pieces Dickens rams in to expose (YAWN) the venality, greed, and hypocrisy of ...uhm...all Americans.  (He didn't much like us, did Dickens.  The weasel.)

We saw Looper last week.  Worth a view (and I hate all movies)--entertaining, well acted, well (enough) written.  A good afternoon out.  Like any time travel movie, it all falls apart as soon as you think about it closely, but at least that doesn't happen until you leave the theater.

I had been intending to post about the election but really, at this point, it's all been said. My friend Dez had a good post on his blog, which said pretty much all I think about it too.  I watched the election returns on Fox News, that night; that was big fun.  It got me intrigued by what I'll call the far right, and as a result, in the last few weeks I've started listening to AM Talk radio.  At first it was to savor the despair of all the right-wing provocateurs.  Now I'm just ensnared.  Don't get me wrong--the shows are terrible.  Bizarre conspiracy theories linking Petraeus's resignation, the attack on our embassy and Benghazi, and, I don't know, the need to go back to a gold standard; ominous forecastings about what Obama "really" plans to do to America (apparently Medicare is about to be extended to ALL CITIZENS, everywhere!) and lots of lots of good, old-fashioned ranting.  Now that it's Christmas they've started in on the 'War On Christmas" meme, which never fails to entertain.  A nudist commune in the hills of Berkeley asks to have a giant Santa Claus taken down from a state park, and suddenly CHRISTIANITY ITSELF IS UNDER ATTACK.  It's compelling stuff.

I'm going to post soon about my football predictions from the start of the season, and put down some picks for the playoffs.

I'll also say, right now, as a prediction for next season: if RGIII doesn't get hurt between now and next December, the Redskins will make the playoffs next year.  If they can draft some defensive linemen and maybe a cornerback or two, they might make the NFC Championship.  That guy is _for real_.  Also, seems like a really decent person.  The kind of guy I like to root for.