The Book You're Not Reading

An Email About Dickens

2007-02-03T11:38:00.000-05:00

(In lieu of an actual post to break my 17-year silence, you get an email to my friend Steve, who had asked me to recommend some Dickens to him. This interruption in my post-less-ness should not be considered the dawning of a Brand New Year of Posting. I mean, yeah, I'd like it to be. However, I'd hate to promise more posting, more of the time, and then, you know, not.

I'm alive, well, and reading. How are you?)

I've been giving some thought to your Dickens request. (Calling it a "Dickens Request" may give it a sense of primacy that you never intended.) On one hand it would be nice if I recommended some Dickens, and you read them, and you liked them, and then I'd have someone to talk about Dickens with because, as it turns out, except for one drunk guy at the bar in Foong Lin (the Chinese restaurant in Bethesda near Zach's old apartment that we've eaten at a couple of times together), no one is reading Dickens -- and, actually, even that drunk guy at the bar probably doesn't read Dickens; he simply saw me with a copy of Nicholas Nickleby and made some comment about how no one reads Dickens any more and when I asked him what his favorite Dickens was he said, blearily, A Tale of Two Cities, which is fine enough for Dickens, sure, but it's also similar to hearing The Mona Lisa as the answer to the question, "What kind of art do you like?"

On the other hand, though, both you and Jamie are what's called a Tough Crowd. What has saved our relationship thus far is how much commonality we've brought to the relationship. I've had less luck introducing either of you to new things. (The sting of the mild rebuke of The Woman in White haunts me.) So, I recommend some Dickens, you read a bit of each, or a bit of one, because, really, if you don't like one why bother with the others, right? You read a bit, decide it's crap, and then there's this wide sea of Dickens we have between us.

Maybe some caveats that you already know. Dickens isn't Tolstoy or Eliot. Dickens has moments where he might rival either of those two; however, George and Lev both outshine Dickens probably more often than the vice or the versa. Dickens, read in context, will give you a better idea of what life was like at that time -- grudgery, day-to-day life -- and there are some funny moments and some frightening moments and some stirring moments. I won't lie to you: there are some, "Jesus fuck aren't we done with this yet?!?" moments, too. So my second caveat would be: it's not necessary to sit down and read the novels in a few sittings like a novel. They were serialized. There's a rhythm Dickens planned for in the installments that can give the impression of swells at sea. Sometimes swells at sea are exciting and captivating (I'm guessing; I'm terrified of the ocean). Other times they can be mildly nauseating. When I recommend the four novels I am going to recommend at the end of this email, and you pick one to read, and you make your way to the library, and you check it out -- assume you'll renew. Give yourself two months or so to read the novel. The nice thing about Dickens is that, because they're in installments, you aren't in danger of missing a key plot point. He's going to remind you of what you need to remember.

So. Here are four Dickens novels I'd recommend, in my own personal favorite order. You'll notice that A Tale of Two Cities isn't on this list.

Bleak House

Bleak House

Our Mutual Friend

The Mystery of Edwin Drood

Bleak House

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

The Forsythe Saga

Dombey & Son

Anna Karenina

Great Expectations

Oliver Twist

Barnaby Rudge

The Pickwick Papers

TPP

Bleak House

A Tale of Two Cities

Our Mutual Friend

Oliver Twist

Nicholas Nickleby

The Old Curiosity Shop

Barnaby Rudge

It's only fitting that a simple email suggesting Dickens titles should approach this almost Dickensian length. Again: Dickens is easy to dislike, I think, and to overindulge in -- so care should be taken. And if, after all this, you continue in your "meh"-ing of Dickens, it isn't my fault.

Reading: Positively Fifth Street

2006-09-25T17:17:00.000-04:00

Positively Fifth Street is positively awful. That's easy, and I feel like I'm writing for US Weekly now, or People -- but seriously, guys: it sucks.

Some caveats, before I get too far into this:

I am not much of a poker fan, or, really, gambling of any kind. Unless it's gambling with my health -- especially in the face of delicious, delicious amounts of cheese.
I am not a heterosexual male who needs to prove his manliness.
I am not a heterosexual female married to a heterosexual male whom I let squander away buckets of money on my gambling addiction.
I have never killed a man by feeding him a lethal dose of MDMA and tar heroin, and then asphyxiating him with a washed-up hooker.

My friend Navin recommended that our book group read James McManus's novel about poker for our October discussion. I've been burned by books like this in the past, most recently the execrable Devil in the White City. In fact, the books could pass as fraternal twins -- both in cover design and crappy writing. But it was Navin's turn to pick, and I figured it couldn't be any worse than The Bone People, and then I realized that I've got to stop setting myself up for challenges like that.

I bought the book yesterday, and wrote Navin an email last night:

Positively Fifth Street

art he had to pay for

Ed. note

Billy Collins, U.S. poet laureate

Michiko Kakutani

well, ever

Ira Glass, host of This American Life

Jimmy Kimmel

Sarah Silverman

Washington Post Book World

Post

Jonathan Yardley

Atonement

Michael Dirda

know my feelings about him

Out of the Blue

Ed. note

overrated English pop-band from the '70s and '80s

begs the question

might

Apocalypse Now

Ed. note

Navin wrote me back, kinder in his reply than I was in my opening salvo. "I'm actually surprised you got as far as p 78," he said. "Like I said, I was taking a risk here, picking a poker book for this group."

Not wanting to leave well enough alone, I decided that Navin still didn't get it. So, I embarked on another length salvo:

new movie about his life coming out

Black & White Ball

Answered Prayers

In Cold Blood

In Cold Blood

was

Positively Fifth Street

Ed. note

When We Were Kings

Ed. note

Ed. note:

For those who fell asleep/stopped reading/slipped into coma part way through, I'll just recap:

This was the worst book ever written in the history of words.

___________________________________

* "But now comes the flop. I can't look -- yet it turns out I can, even though I wish that I hadn't. It's a seven, a jack, and a nine, and the seven and nine are both diamonds. This gives Hasan twelve outs twice, since he has all twelve on both fourth street and fifth street: te nine other diamonds in the deck, the two other kings (the fourth having been counted among the diamonds), and the queen of hearts for a straight. John thumps the table with his fist, burns a card, turns over ... a jack. A red jack. But of hearts! Another thump, another burn -- Jesus Christ, get it over already [Ed. note: Seriously, McManus.]! When the last card turned up is the harmless six of spades, John calls out, 'Winner on Table 64!'" (66)

I can't tell you which of that was literal and which was metaphorical.

In which I did NOT pee myself

2006-09-24T11:13:00.001-04:00

Forty years go by with someone laying in your bed.
Forty years of things you say you wish you'd never said.
How hard would it have been to say some kinder words instead?
I wonder as I stare up at the sky turning red.

The thing to keep in mind is that I did not pee myself.

I, like millions of Americans, spend Sunday mornings in my underpants reading the paper and marveling again at how I'm supposed to be this so-called book-lover and yet I can rarely ever find anything worth reading in the Washington Post's "Book World." "Oh, what's that? Another book on the War on Terror? A memoir by or about an over-medicated mother and/or daughter? Struggling with abuse? And weight? Perfect. But first, is that another chick-litty book about how hard it is to find [shoes/a man/a man who likes your shoes/self-worth/self-worth in shoes that no man actually cares about]? Thank goodness that particular well shows no sign of drying up any time soon."

Time spent with the "Book World"? Seven minutes: "...aaaaand done."

In this story, I'm in my underpants, I'm up, and Zach finally stumbles bleary-eyed into the living room. Also like millions of Americans on a Sunday morning, we get into an argument.

I had taken my cereal bowl and my coffee cup into the kitchen, rinsed them out, and put them in the dishwasher. I came back to the living room to continue being irritated with Marilyn vos Savant, the smartest woman in the world who writes for Parade magazine. (The thing that I love about that last sentence is how freeing the lack of punctuation is. Do I mean she's the smartest woman in the world and she writes for Parade magazine? Or is she the smartest woman in the world to write for Parade magazine? The choice is yours, dear reader.)

I was about to sit down when Zach asked, "Could you put something else on?"

"Are these unsightly? Or are they too alluring?" I wiggled my eyebrows enticingly.

"Dude, you peed in them."

-scene-

But like I said, I hadn't peed in them. In taking my cereal bowl to the kitchen, and in the process of rinsing out the bowl and putting it in the dishwasher, I may have accidentally splashed some suspiciously pee-damp looking drops on the exact crotch of my underpants. But I did not – I repeat, NOT – pee in them.

I went to my bedroom, horrified, to find a pair of flannel pajama shorts to wear, to cover the offending dude-it's-totally-not-a pee stain.

I couldn't let this challenge to my adult continence pass. "This is just like with that woman in Trader Joes."

"I'm sorry?"

"This. This, you accusing me of wetting myself."

"Is like the woman...?"

"In Trader Joes. The one who gave me the stinkeye?"

The day before, Zach and I had made a last-minute stop at the Trader Joe's next door to pick up a jade plant to take to P. Lunnie's housewarming party. There were more people inside the Trader Joes than outside – in, like, the entire city of Rockville. Everyone was there, everyone was buying mini-quiches, and everyone was already in mile-long lines.

I, with my jade plant, had 4 minutes to make the purchase and get to the bus stop to catch the Ride-On that would take us to some unexplored part of Silver Spring to feel uncomfortable for an hour and a half around people neither Zach nor I knew very well.

A register was about to open up.

Seeing my chance to accept this gift from the universe, I started to make my to the check-out. That was right about the time when the tiny Filipino woman shoved her even tinier Filipino mom in front of me, blocking my way and holding the place in line for the tiny Filipino woman and her two packed-to-the-brim shopping carts.

I now had 3 minutes.

"Do you mind," I asked – I asked politely, by the way; not in the usual way the words "do you mind" generally leave my lips – and held up my sole purchase of a jade plant. "Do you mind if I go ahead of you? I just have this—" I shook the jade plant both for illustration and for emphasis "—to buy and I have cash."

She gave me the stinkeye.

She gave me the stinkeye like I was trying to get away with something. Like I was offering her a share in a Nigerian bank scheme and she knew better – angrily better. Like I was asking for something outrageous, and she had just reached the too-old-for-this-shit stage. She gave me the stinkeye like I was the unreasonable one.

I stepped in front of her mom, her two shopping carts, and her stinkeye. I made my purchase. I left the store.

"Did you see that?" I asked Zach as we hurried toward the bus stop.

"What?"

"The stinkeye. She gave me the stinkeye?"

"Who?"

"In there. In the store. The Filipino woman and her mom of check-out-line aggression."

"What happened?"

So I told him the story that I just told you, about the woman and her unreasonableness and how I thought it was pretty ridiculous, her being all stinkeyed about it, since all I wanted to do was buy my goddamned jade plant and get to the goddamned bus stop so we could go to this goddamned housewarming part so that we could give the goddamned jade plant to the hostess so we could get the hell home.

"Well, maybe she had to get home, too," Zach offered.

"Who?"

"The Filipino woman. Maybe she had had a long day, and maybe she was wanting to get out of that madhouse just as much as you were, and maybe she was irritated that she had been standing in line longer than you had, but you were wanting to get out before she did."

"But that line wasn't even open yet, so she couldn’t have been standing in that line longer."

"I mean in general. She was there before we got there, waiting."

"Okay, but— just whose side are you on, here?"

That's the thing about Zach. That’s the irritating thing about Zach that I both adore and despise. He’s on the side of "truth" – he’s calm and rational, where I am fraught and emotional. I want him to take my side, regardless. He wants me to understand that sometimes my side is unsupportable. In all honesty, I need Zach and his point-of-view at such moments because if left to my own devices, I can be a selfish monster.

However, that moment wasn't the moment.

Which is why the fight about whether I did, or did not (and remember: I DID NOT), pee myself took on such an emotional tint.

"I wish you would take my side more often," I explained, after the initial heat of embarrassment and anger had abated. "I wish you would trust me enough to know when I've been wronged by a Filipino woman in a Trader Joe's, and when I have or have not – and P.S.: I have not -- peed myself."

"I didn't mean for it to be shaming," Zach offered back, lamely (I thought; because hi: how else am I supposed to take a charge of peeing myself, especially when myself is about to turn 34?). "I just didn't want you getting pee on the couch."

"IT ISN'T PEE!!!"

It's a joke now, the argument. Two weeks of continence and hindsight allow both of us to say, periodically, "You'll find me in the bathroom, peeing outside of my underpants."

The need for trust is still there, though. My need for him to believe that I am a responsible adult, and that my life that appears messy at times is under the control of someone rational and reasonable. That, too, is why the argument happened, I think. There's the "real" Mike that I think exists – and then there's the real Mike that actually actually exists. My Mike is always right when he's always wronged. The Actual Mike, however can be petty and vindictive over imagined grievances. I'm ashamed of the Actual Mike; however, what I forget is, Zach is dating the Actual Mike. That other Mike only exists in my head.

Still, if nothing else: I don't pee myself. And that Filipino woman was totally in the wrong.

The Return

2006-09-24T11:13:00.000-04:00

All right then. Where were we?

Trenchant News Analysis II

2006-08-22T09:23:00.000-04:00

Coworker: dude, your boyfriend is already starting shit.

Mike Bevel: He's going through a phase.

Mike Bevel: We tried couples' counseling, and the therapist said this might happen.

Mike Bevel: It's called "boundary setting."

Mike Bevel: He needs to feel valued in the relationship.

Mike Bevel: My career is really taking off, now, what with the move from "coordinator" to "associate editor." And what's he got going for him?

Mike Bevel: I mean, I tell him I fell in love with the man, not the title.

Coworker: well, can the boundary at least be "Don't fire a nuclear missle at Israel?"

Mike Bevel: I can't say. He's on his own path.

Trenchant News Analysis I

2006-08-22T09:21:00.000-04:00

IM Conversation #1
Mike Bevel: I hope they don't want me to stop thinking that the Ramsey's did it just because they found they guy who, you know, actually did it.

Coworker: it's a weird story

Coworker: the whole thing

Coworker: some stuff doesn't add all the way up

Coworker: like, why would he go to such trouble to hide only to roll over so willingly, to the press no less, when caught?

Coworker: also, did you read about his alibi during the initial investigation?

Mike Bevel: I missed that since I was cowering from that dude's cold, dead eyes.

Mike Bevel: Was it the "I tried to kidnap her, and killed her instead" explanation?

Coworker: an ex-wife of his claimed that he was in Alabama with her at the time of the murder

Coworker: and apparently, that checked out enough that the cops bought it the first time around

Mike Bevel: Was the ex-wife a 6-year-old beauty queen? Because that fish don't swim otherwise.

IM Conversation #2
Mike Bevel: I know the Jon Benet thing was a tragedy. But that killer guy? Have you seen his skin?

Mike Bevel: Flawless!

How to Make a Surprising Cake

2006-07-22T10:56:00.000-04:00

You'll need to get Maya Angelou to shut the fuck up, because bitch wants to narrate everything, and remind her that it's a cake, not a quilt, and I haven't thought about that movie in years but man I mean really? The world spent $23 million to watch that and not to end hunger or homelessness or AIDS?

Anyway. You'll also need to tone down your potty mouth and your sanctimoniousness because you're making this Surprising Cake in honor of Zach's 34th birthday. The cake needs to be delicious, not bitter with the bile of the wrongs committed against the just.

Except you'll spend the first part of the day of the Surprising Cake biking to the library to pick up a copy of American Brutus because you and your friend Barb are planning a trip in August that traces John Wilkes Booth's escape route from Ford's Theatre in D.C. to Richard Garrett's farm near Bowling Green, Virginia.

The trip will be one of the cooler things you've ever done in August, not least because you'll be able to wax on and on about (a) the assassination; (b) its aftermath; and (c) how hot John Wilkes Booth is, without simultaneously alienating and boring your other friends Navin and Sarah, who listened to you and Barb derail the book group's discussion to sigh and squee. "...and John Wilkes Booth has to do with E.L. Doctorow's World's Fair how?"

The Surprising Cake you're making has a long history. The first Surprising Cake you made was back in 1998, for your ex-boyfriend Jeffrey's dad's 50th birthday. His name was Terry and he had a huge penis which he would accentuate by wearing tight jeans and never sitting cross-legged.

You will have spent all day on this first Surprising Cake, partly because during the crucial batter-mixing portion, a kitten that had heretofore gone unnoticed in the kitchen leaped from the floor to the counter to inside the bowl of batter. You will have wept when this happened. You will have then pulled yourself together, smoked two Marlboro Reds in quick succession, and then baked the fuck out of that cake, frosting it to pink perfection.

You will later find yourself open-mouthed in disbelief twice at this birthday. Once, when the Surprising Cake you spent a lot of time and effort creating, is demolished in an incredible food fight. No one present at the party will have had a chance to eat the cake. The other time your mouth will fall open in disbelief is when your boyfriend presents his dad with a cockring. Actually, you're lying -- you'll find yourself open-mouthed three times at this birthday. The third time is when Terry drops trou, puts the cock ring on, and zips everything back up.

The phrase "shelf of cock" would not be an inappropriate way to describe the effect.

The Surprising Cake won't make another appearance until July of 2002, when you attempt to bake a cake in Zach's studio apartment on a stove the size of the keyboard you're currently typing on. It's a triple layer monstrosity that you don't wait long enough to cool before you begin icing it. Which means that each layer has independent movement from any other layer and the cake is less a cake and more a kinetic sculpture of cake and frosting and frustration and despair. When Zach comes home and finds you covered in cake and batter and icing and tears -- you realize that you are in love with this man for the rest of your life because of how much he is in love with your cake.

Plus, he eats it. Plus, he doesn't buy his dad a cock ring, give you crabs on Halloween and then expect you to go to a Halloween party with the originator of the crabs, whom he's been sleeping with behind your back, because he thinks you need "more friends as a couple," or ask you not to come to his birthday party since you can't be an adult about unexpected polyamory. "We're still friends. It's just, you know how you can get."

When you make this Surprising Cake, for Zach's 34th birthday, you only spend 5 minutes thinking of all of this.

This Surprising Cake is a triple layer chocolate cake with Oreo-cream frosting and topped with yellow cake cupcakes frosted with vanilla buttercream and then topped with Dots and Hot Tamales and in the middle of making this Surprising Cake you realize that in some ways you're dating a 9-year-old and not a 34-year-old. And actually, you realize this earlier in the week when you're buying the ingredients and the woman behind you comments that she likes to serve more fruit at her own kid's birthday.

You'll bake the cakes in a 350-degree oven for 30 minutes. And this time, you'll cool them thoroughly for 2 hours.

However, what you won't realize is that in crushing up the Oreos for the frosting and adding them to the mixing bowl, you alter the creamy consistency of said frosting and it's not as spreadable as it was, say, 5 minutes ago. You think that maybe things'll soften up if you leave the bowl sitting on the counter and you take a nap because all of this baking? Is very tiring.

This doesn't work.

You'll then find that what started in your head as this voluptuously decadent chocolate cake with Oreo-cream frosting topped with cupcakes, artfully iced and perfectly presented, ends up looking like all other cakes you've ever made in your life, because you really only bake once a year, and that look is: a mess. Chunks are missing out of the side of the cake where the paste-like quality of the frosting has gouged out crevices. The cupcakes which are supposed to delightfully ring the top of the cake keep falling off because they're too top-heavy from the frosting and candy. There's no room to write the "Happy Birthday" message that you were planning. Feeling silly for buying tubes of frosting to write with, you use them to make a purple and pink ring around the cake because while you love your boyfriend, you also realize that your boyfriend sometimes has the aesthetic of a pre-pubescent girl.

And when said boyfriend comes home, he will, like he has for the past three birthday cakes, love it. And love you. And you'll feel like it's your very own birthday because of all the joy and warm feelings that wrap you up like a hug, and you can't stop clapping at Zach and his cake and that's the moment you want to live in forever.

The Boy, the Book

2006-07-01T10:47:00.000-04:00

I was going to write about the $231.00 electric bill, and how Zach and I were going to have to now raise bees for the wax to make candles because Jesus Fucking Christ are you kidding me? $231.00?

But I rode the bus yesterday and realized I had to write this letter instead.

There

there

not here

Book Club

2006-06-27T17:05:00.000-04:00

I'm starting one. At the Bethesda library (knock on wood). The rub? It won't start until January 2007.

I know.

See, here's the thing. I had this idea that it would be cool to run a "classics" book group that would take four 19th century authors -- for instance, Jane Austen, Wilkie Collins, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy -- and read their first (or, in the case of Collins, "firstish") book, a middle work, and then their last book (or, again, in the case of Collins, "lastish").

I picked those four authors partly because they're among my favorites, but also because they're a pretty good cross section of the literary influences on that century.

I've also created a blog to go with this new endeavor. You can find it here. There won't be a lot of posting or updating going on until the group starts meeting. Then, the site will carry synopses of the books we're reading as well as meeting reminders and recaps of the discussions themselves.

If it's a success, this idea, I'd like to try this same set-up with American authors -- some Edith Wharton, Henry James, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and ... I don't know. I don't know my own country's lit as well as some others.

I also want to try a year of Tolstoy, where we'd take 6 months to read War & Peace, 3 months to read Anna Karenina, and then finish out with Resurrection, The Kreutzer Sonata, and Hadji Murad. And heck, a year of Dickens would be kinda cool, too. I mean, cool in a completely geeked out way.

But really: what did you expect from a guy who calls himself a British Adventuress?

A Postscript

2006-06-26T16:04:00.000-04:00

While Clyde Roper is, and shall always be, dead to me -- Steve O'Shea is not. I enjoyed a lovely email exchange with Mr. O'Shea.

In the future, just know that Steve O'Shea is reponsible for all goodness and light in the world. He's the reason your skin's a little softer, your hair's a little shinier, and you always smell, just faintly, of baked goods.

He's that good.

The Internet is Weird

2006-06-25T10:07:00.000-04:00

So, once upon a time Clyde Roper was Dead to Me and I wrote about it here. In doing so, I also wrote the following about fellow cephalopod researcher Steve O'Shea:

Also, at the time, there was this cocky young upstart on the Giant Squid scene named Steve O'Shea who was trying to push Clyde out of the way with his fancy new science and his New Zealand accent and I wanted to show Clyde that when the revolution came, I had his back.
Some background that'll be helpful in a minute. I've never met Steve O'Shea, who sounds lovely and Irish even though he lives in New Zealand -- which doesn't mean he can't still be Irish but if you're like me and you hear, say, an O'Something, you've got a brogue running through your head and if you hear Steve O'Shea speak you won't necessarily hear one because again: New Zealand. Furthermore, he will not show you where he keeps his Lucky Charms.

I learned about Steve O'Shea sort of accidentally back in 2002 when I first wrote my fan letter to Clyde Roper, who is Dead to Me. While I'm not obsessed enough about giant squid to jump in a submersible and make fish noises to lure one close, I am fascinated by the idea that, for a long time, there were these giant creatures that we knew existed but had never seen alive. It tickled that Monster in the Closet part of me. So, while looking for Clyde Roper's email address, and looking for more information on Architeuthis (that's scientific for "giant squid"), I learned about this "cocky young upstart" -- and actually, there seemed to be more Google hits on Steve O'Shea than on Clyde Roper, who is now Dead to Me.

"They're trying to freeze Clyde out," I said; "They" being the nefarious and mysterious Giant Squid Cartel; and calling him Clyde without the surname because even though we hadn't yet met, and at the time he wasn't Dead to Me, I just knew he and I would be fast friends. 'Course, I had only seen Clyde Roper on one Discovery Channel special -- but I was immediately charmed by the man with the mutton chops who sounded like a mix of the guy who shilled for Pepperidge Farm brand cookies ("Pep'ridge fahm remembahs!") and Jen's grandmother on Dawson's Creek ("Oh, Jennifah").

But I digress.

In retrospect, of course, it's odd how fiercely protective I became of a man who would eventually be Dead to Me. If I knew then what I knew now-- but who has time for that kind of past-living, right? Anyway, I wrote the entry that I already linked to that details my encounter with Clyde Roper and in doing so I wrote a bit about Steve O'Shea, and because the Internet is huge and because the Internet is weird, Steve O'Shea commented on my LiveJournal post. Here.

I freaked out last night for about 20 minutes.

First off, I'm surprised when anyone I don't know finds my writing online. The Internet is so huge and I'm just some guy in Rockville with a shoddy modem (thanks, Comcast!) and a chair from which to write. But then sometimes weird things happen on the Internet, and sometimes you send Gregory Maguire an email which he treats as hate mail (all I said was, "Are you kidding me? A musical? Out of Wicked? I know you're gay; I'm gay; we're both gay -- but do you have to be that gay?" And he got all snotty with the reply: "I'm sure you can find any number of other things to do when Wicked is playing in a town near you.") and sometimes Steve O'Shea reads your LiveJournal and finds out that you've used both the words "cocky" and "upstart."

I'll send Steve an email. I'll apologize for the "cocky" and the "upstart" and the "new science" -- and explain that it was mostly in service of the joke. But I wanted to write about it here because (a) it was pretty awesome once I calmed down and realized that not only did Steve O'Shea read my journal, but he also said it was pretty funny. (My most attractive traits? Low self-esteem and a need for constant praise). 'Course, he did start that section off by saying, "What a strange post you made." Still: I'll take self-worth from anyone who wants to hint at it. And (b) maybe now Lior Ashkenazi might, you know, stop by. For a visit. Some time when Zach's not home.

I'm just saying.

Him/Her

2006-06-25T08:28:00.000-04:00

I don't know where this is going, or I kinda know where this is going. I guess what I don't know is what I'm trying to accomplish with it. It's not done. But here's the beginning of a dialogue I started writing yesterday.

Before we get to it, though, here's the thing: Almost everything I write starts out as a dialogue. I'm not especially skilled with the expository stuff, and I even feel bogged down by adding in the he said and the then she replied stuff. But I don't think of the things I write as plays, even though when you sit down and look at it -- like, when you finally get a chance to look at today's offering -- you'll say to yourself, "You know, Mike, this looks an awful lot like a play."

Maybe stories that are told completely in dialogue will instead be my thing. At least for now. Like, how Picasso went through his blue period, or John Ford and his westerns. Folks will one day see a piece of mine and be able to recognize it simply because it takes the following shape.

Or, it's early on a Sunday and I'm feeling a little too big for my britches.

Anyway, the piece:

Dear Modern Library Classics,

2006-06-21T09:16:00.000-04:00

I've never read [redacted]. In fact, there's a lot of Dickens that I never bothered to read. While browsing for a copy of Oliver Twist, I instead picked up your edition of [redacted]. I liked the cover. I liked the heft. I liked it for all the wrong reasons, really. Still, I bought it and I started it yesterday and it's fantastic and why did you guys think it would be okay to spoil the whole book in the second footnote?

Sorry. I meant to build up to indignation.

But yeah. I'm reading along, loving the book, and thought, "Hm. There doesn't appear to be any end notes." I'm not a Dickens scholar. I like a good endnote. I checked the back and saw that there were endnotes, just no notation of them in the text. "I guess I just wait until I feel confused," I thought, "and then I flip to the back and hope >crosses fingers< that my question will be answered."

I skimmed over the notes that I missed, and that's how I found out the [redacted] of [redacted] dies. In a footnote. The second footnote.

Why you gotta be that way, Modern Library Classics?

I was already a little annoyed that Jonathan Lethem was writing the introduction. It's not your fault he sucks; but you did choose him, and y'all'd done such a great job when you picked Mona Simpson to write the introduction to Anna Karenina (seriously: it's my favorite introductory essay ever, because Simpson seems to have actually read the book, and actually loved the book, and it's like a beautiful love letter from one reader to another). And then, I was a little annoyed that there weren't any notations for end notes. And then (and now I sound insufferable, don't I?), I'm told that [redacted] dies.

You could argue, of course, that Dickens tells us that [redacted] dies when he writes, "in which my little friend and I parted company," in the introduction. But if you're a first-time reader of [redacted], like I am, then it may not necessarily be clear who the "little friend" could mean. It could mean [redacted], sure, but the book's eleventy million pages long and who knows who Dickens may have befriended while writing?

I already treat all the Introductions of classic novels as Afterwards, since invariably they'll write something like-- (I was going to give an example of a spoiled novel, like reveal the plot of The Woman in White or East Lynne, but I've decided to be the better person in this correspondence just in case maybe you haven't read The Woman in White or East Lynne)-- they'll write something that spoils the whole book by revealing the ending or a key plot twist because people who write Introductions, apparently, are sort of bastards who want to show how well-read they are.

But that's not my point. My point is, I should not know in the second footnote that someone -- like, someone in the title of the novel -- dies. I don't know if you can make that a policy or something. But it sure would make reading a more comfortable experience.

Regards,

Michael Bevel
Book Lover
British Adventuress

Bombing

2006-06-14T10:13:00.000-04:00

There was a point last night, at the end of the first paragraph of "The Beginning of Everything," where I realized I had nine more pages to read aloud in front of a group of people clearly not interested in the short story form.

That moment lasted 19 years.

In trying to find other open mic venues at which to perform, I stumbled upon one that was happening yesterday at the Golden Flame Restaurant & Lounge in Silver Spring.

A mini-scene:

MIKE

WAITER

MIKE

WAITER

donde

idiot

MIKE

WAITER

MIKE

WAITER

MIKE

WAITER

As far as why I bombed like Nixon with the flop-sweats -- there are a lot of reasons. For one, I haven't really practiced reading this one aloud. In fact, I think Zach's the only one who has heard any of it. For another, it runs right around 12 minutes. Time being relative, turns out 12 minutes is actually two lifetimes when you're in the corner of a lounge reading a piece you haven't really practiced to a group of people who aren't responding at all.

I mean, at all.

It's not exactly a laugh-out-loud piece, "The Beginning of Everything." But there are some funny moments. The only part that got a chuckle? Cat poop. The stuff about the cats and the suppositories, that made them laugh. Well, chuckle. Actually, someone may have sneezed and I'm choosing to count that as a laugh because I am desperate for people to like me.

I wish there was a way to give you the entire experience. How I never looked up once from the paper. How the microphone made my voice sound completely other -- like David Sedaris with a headcold. And normally I get compliments on my speaking voice. But my throat felt tight the entire time, and I wasn't breathing, or rather, I did breathe, but never at the right time, and I couldn't stop feeling dizzy and my right knee literally began knocking in and out of joint and wow I mean Wow you know WOW.

Awful.

Oh, and the most awesome part of all? This exchange with a cute/geeky attorney while waiting to be called to go up to read:

MIKE

CUTE/GEEKY ATTORNEY

MIKE

CUTE/GEEKY ATTORNEY

MIKE

CUTE/GEEKY ATTORNEY

MIKE

know

read

CUTE/GEEKY ATTORNEY

MIKE

CUTE/GEEKY ATTORNEY

Ah, unintentional irony: I've found thy sting.

Watch Me Read

2006-06-11T17:46:00.000-04:00

In the Washington D.C. area? Wanna hear a live reading of "The Beginning of Everything"? I'll be reading at the Bethesda Writer's Center on Sunday, June 25. Or maybe you've got something you want to read out loud to an audience of mostly mentally ill poets? Sign-up's at 1:30PM, the reading itself starts at 2:00PM, and the Crazy Cat Lady will no doubt be there for the whole thing. Her Serial Killer Man Servant? Who can tell.

...um...

2006-06-10T09:11:00.000-04:00

For those that pay attention to such things, I'm a Libran -- which is supposed to herald the fact that I like balance and order in my life. (If you're like me, and hold no truck with this astrology shit, it really just means I was born in late September, and I got to spend my birthdays surrounded by classmates who couldn't care less that I was the birthday boy that day.) My mom tells stories of watching me cry in the mornings after she had laid a whole outfit's-worth of clothes and I wouldn't know where to start. Or how I would cry when presented with a dinner with more than two things on my plate; again, because I wouldn't know where to start. Or how coloring books and crayons made me anxious; it was too exhausting trying to make sure all colors were used evenly and fairly. This might have been easier had I only had one of those slim, 8-color boxes. Mom, however, felt she had to overcompensate both for the divorce and the fact that I couldn't have a pony by buying the 64-color box with colors like "burnt sage" or "melba."

One year she got me the 96-color box, after she told me my dog Sunshine had to go live on a farm, and that was the worst year ever.

But crayons aren't the point here. Or not specifically the point. It's been something like 17 years since my last post -- which wasn't a post at all, really, it was a cut and paste of part of a story that I'd been working on. Nothing of substance. And, even though I don't believe in astrology, if it gives me a way out, I'll take it.

I'm not good at time management. If you're a former or current employer reading this then yes, I lied. I lied out my ass. I even lied out your ass: that's how much lying was going on. I don't multi-task. I don't time manage. And I also don't always work well as part of a team, appreciate a challenge, or honestly see myself going far in any profession. I'll stay at any given job as long as there are snacks and not too much is expected of me. Also: showing up on a regular basis? Might be considered "too much expected of me."

So, I'm not good at time management, and I've had some things going on. One of them being that story that I shared in dribs and drabs. For those of you who've read the two excerpts (a) thanks, as well as thanks for the notes and comments and plugs; (b) I've finally finished it, but I can't post the whole thing here, apparently, if I want it to get published elsewhere, so end-say e-may an email-ay (email-ay?) and I'll end-say ou-yay the ory-stay; (c) I've made a few changes, so the whole is different from its parts.

Writing the one story encouraged me to write some other stories, and I've been devoting a lot of time and thought to that. But apparently I can't write in a journal and write stories at the same time so well. And then, if you were to hand me a stick of gum in the middle of all that?

I also went through a 21st-century lit phase. The last 4.01 books I've read have all been written within the last 6 years -- which is something from a guy who pretty much only reads books with bustles and cads. I started off with Never Let Me Go, moved on to Oryx & Crake, barely finished White Teeth, actually finished When We Were Orphans, and finished by continuing my "I hate all Umberto Eco novels save The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum" by hating and not getting past page 30 of The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana -- a novel I knew was going to be trouble when I could never remember the title. I either called it The Naughty Lady of Shady Lane or The Beauty Queen of Leenane.

And finally, the biggest reason for not writing was I couldn't think of much to write. I was going to comment on a comment I received, where a man named Jim said of me: "Michael, you've gotta be the biggest idiot I've ever run into surfing the internet. Pompous, bitter, opinionated and downright moronic." I decided against it because I'm afraid someone will find someone even more of an idiot than I am on the internet -- and then yet another title will be stripped from me too soon.

We'll see what tomorrow brings, though.

Sneak Preview II

2006-05-28T10:09:00.000-04:00

Here's the next section of the story I've been working on. I've titled it "The Beginning of Everything." Feedback would be cool, if you've got some.

Reading: Oryx & Crake

2006-05-27T16:23:00.000-04:00

Sometime in 2002, someone must have bought Margaret Atwood a DVD player and a DVD. "This, this is surely the future," Ms. Atwood most likely muttered. She then wrote the pretty aggressively mediocre Oryx & Crake, where DVDs and CD-ROMs make several appearances.

Atwood wants to be a futurist in the way Tom Wolfe wanted to be an anthropologist of early-adult sexuality in I Am Charlotte Simmons. Both fail, because both are 200 years old and stopped being especially relevant when they saw the new century on the horizon. Wolfe tried to warn us, breathlessly, that freshmen in college were having sex -- in case you didn't know or weren't paying attention or were currently fellating a 19-year-old frat boy and couldn't be bother to stay au courant. Atwood wants us to know that she's got her fingers on the pulse of the new technology: DVDs, CD-ROMs, websites, and online pornography.

This would be fine for both of them, were they writing their respective novels in, say, 1985. However, it's 2006. DVDs slipped into the mainstream in 1999. And as far as poor Tom Wolfe: if you haven't had sex with a 19-year-old, it's because you haven't tried.

Oryx & Crake is another dystopian novel from Maggie Atwood, one that, according to the front cover blurb from The New Yorker, "does Orwell one better." It's insights like that that could push The New Yorker into the ranks of Atwood and Wolfe if it isn't careful (especially if it doesn't tell Anthony Lane that snarky comments are witty and fun when you're drunk, gay, and Truman Capote filling in for Oscar Wilde; however, maybe you could just review the fucking film and save the bon mots for the Dick Cavett show). The only way Atwood's novel does Orwell one better is in page length. Orwell ends his morality play at 336 pages. Atwood keeps chugging along for about 40 pages more.

It's the future, and it sucks. Lots of genetic modifications have created new animals like pigoons and rakunks and whatever, Mags. Also, it's a time of cynaicism because too many companies are too interested in too much profit, and they do a lot of questionable things. There's a guy we meet at the beginning who calls himself "Snowman" who is really this guy named Jimmy. Jimmy, as a teen, befriends some kid named Glenn, who later calls himself Crake. And then, eventually, they all tuck into a tidy love triangle with a former underaged Asian whore named Oryx.

There are moments that are interesting, especially when Atwood describes the rationale behind some of the genetic modifications, and how these efforts bite everyone in the ass when there's no true infrastructure to keep track of who's done what to whatever. But mostly it's a plodding novel that shows how out of touch Atwood is with the current state of technology.

For instance, back to the DVD/CD-ROM thing. Ostensibly, when the novel deals with Snowman as a boy named Jimmy, it isn't 2003 (when the novel is published) -- it's much later. In this far-flung future, though, DVDs are still the cutting edge rave, even though DVDs as we know them are in serious trouble from DVR technology. Likewise, Jimmy thinks of CD-ROMs as old-school ways of getting information; however, again: no. At the rate technology is expanding, it would be like a kid from today preferring to get his info from papyrus scrolls or the occasional stone tablet. And it's those moments of technological disconnect that pulls the reader (and by "the reader" I mean "me") out of the novel.

And y'all? I'm a technological retard. For serious. When I feel smarter than a sci-fi novel? And I don't really understand how to program my cell phone? Then yeah: you've got some problems, Maggie Atwood.

In comparing Oryx & Crake to Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go -- it's no contest. Ishiguro, who has said in different interviews that he had no real interest in getting the science "right" in his novel, is a better futurist than Atwood could ever be. And he does this primarily by not over-explaining the future at all. By leaving the vagaries of the technology to the reader, he can instead focus on the interpersonal dramas -- which, as Tolstoy said, are both all alike and completely different for each family.

To remember back when Atwood was relevant and good, I recommend the following:

Reading: Never Let Me Go

2006-05-25T11:04:00.000-04:00

I was going to love living in the villa.

I was going to wear a lot of casual linen separates in warm earth tones that never wrinkled, or wrinkled artfully, but mostly never wrinkled. I was going to teach knitting on the veranda, and have a torrid affair with a young Italian who spoke no English and never wore shirts. I was going to take up painting, appreciate opera, finish my novel, and pretend my days in America were all an uncomfortable dream.

I was truly going to love living in the villa. But for a while it looked like I wasn't going to get to. Because I wasn't liking Never Let Me Go.

Then, I read the last 10 pages.

I don't know that it's a great novel. It's not better than his first novel, A Pale View of Hills, or my personal favorite, The Unconsoled. And seriously, up until those last several pages -- I wasn't loving this book the way I was expecting to.

But man, those last pages.

Reading: I Am Legend

2006-05-21T11:53:00.000-04:00

Actually, I'm reading something like four books at the moment -- something I rarely do. I get too easily confused, and can't for the life of me figure out what the Podsnaps from Our Mutual Friend are doing in the Oblonsky's household.

In high school, I wrote a paper once about how the treacherous Arabella was a far more sympathetic character than Jude Fawley or Sue Bridehead. This would have been fine if we weren't supposed to be reading The Mayor of Casterbridge at the time. Too many books confuse me.

And yet, here I am, ankle deep in too many books. I'm at the exact middle of Our Mutual Friend, and have taken my own advice. Dickens and I are on a little bit of a break. It's not that the novel isn't good; it's that the novel is a little too much Dickens all at once. I've started not caring about the characters all that much, and that's a bad place to be with Dickens, since he's short on shortness, and I'll be with these folks for a while longer. In the hopes of absence making the heart grow fonder, I've jotted some notes down on my bookmark about where I am and what I've read and have set it aside for a book or two.

Next up is White Teeth by Zadie Smith. This is our June book for my book group, and it's great. However, my memory's like a sieve, and since we're not meeting until June 14 (PS: in the area? Want to talk books with a bunch of wicked smart people in the comfort of the Bethesda Barnes & Noble? You should totally come) I figured that I'd put it aside for a moment, next to Chuck, and save it for closer to the book group so that it's still fresh in my mind when I have to argue with Karen "Au contraire!" L.

Then Doppelganger over at 50 Books wrote about Kazuo Ishiguro's newest book, Never Let Me Go, and mentioned that "our chances of all retiring peaceably together in a villa in Florence are resting on" my liking the book. And since I love Doppelganger, villas, Florence, and the idea of retirement -- I figured I'd better give it a go. It's no The Unconsoled; but I keep reminding myself that The Unconsoled was no The Unconsoled when I first started reading it. It baffled me and bored me in frustrating ways until I realized what was happening, and then I spent the rest of the novel feeling uneasy and a little disoriented. It's now one of my favorite books.

And finally, because I'm in a weird spot right now with the Ishiguro, I found myself breaking -- yet again -- my "Mike Buys No New Books in 2006" rule by buying a new book in 2006: I Am Legend. If you're going to buy it -- and I think you should -- do so now, before the movie tie-in covers start showing up. They've cast Will Smith.

I love vampire novels. Really. I mean, yeah, I love the Victorians more, and my desktop at home is an image of this guy and my desktop at work is an image of this guy -- my secret love, though, is a good novel of the blood-subsisting undead.

Let's be clear up front, though: I don't like Anne Rice. I may have enjoyed Interview with a Vampire -- but that was back when I was in 7th or 8th grade. I find her too rococo and baroque; she's the unbearable lovechild of Charles Dickens and William Faulkner. There's also a woman out there writing vampire slayer novels with an urban kick and I've read the first chapter of one of her novels and again: no. That's not what I want. I want vampires. And I want it to be good.

Here's a list of the vampire novels I've read thus far. Or, at least the ones I remember reading because I've read a lot of them. They're in no order:

Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu
Dracula by Bram Stoker
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova (I'm not linking to it because it's awful)
The Journal of Abraham Van Helsing (again: not linking)

And now that I've listed them, I guess there haven't been too many. I've read three of the Anne Rice books -- but there is bitter enmity between Anne Rice and me, so I'm not listing her either. Still, I do love them -- and I'd like to read good ones.

Can anyone help a British Adventuress out? What are some good vampire novels you've read, or know about? I like I Am Legend for the most part. I think he ended it too soon, and I didn't really understand what happened at the end until I'd re-read it a couple times over. (There's a lot of confusion over a virus and who, exactly, is infected and who's undead.) So, I'd like something in the same vein (ha ha) as Legend. I don't want the vampires to be sexually ambiguous, or metaphors for queer identity. The vampires can be the heroes or they can be the antagonists, or they can be all the characters and there's infighting. I'm just looking for a good, solid, vampire novel. That shouldn't be too much to ask for.

Not Kissing

2006-05-20T19:59:00.000-04:00

I didn't kiss Zach this evening, on the corner by the Original Pancake House. I was walking to Barnes & Noble and he was going to the gym and we had just watched The Celluloid Closet and it was too public somehow and I didn't kiss him when we parted ways.

Zach and I have been together five years; well, five years this July. Through sickness and through health, through mini-meltdowns and through petty triumphs, he's my guy and I'm his and all it takes is something like a corner on a busy street to make us part like buddies. "Catch you later, friend." "You, too, pal." "We'll catch that game sometime." "Splendid."

D'oh!

What makes it keenly ironic is how much I was marveling over how far the gays have come. We're on the television, now, fixing up straight guys and hosting American Idol. We're in movies and we have our own magazines -- magazines that don't even come in plain brown envelopes; real magazines these are with those awful and ubiquitous subscription cards that come fluttering out like desperate confetti: "TIME'S RUNNING OUT!!!" "JUST THREE MORE ISSUES!!!" "Don't you like us any more?" We've come so far, and my mom made me a rainbow flag blanket, and sure we can't marry but even the Red Staters like their hair done well -- so it's not like they'll get rid of the gays all together.

And yet, I still sometimes don't feel safe kissing my boyfriend on a street corner before we head off to do our different things.

And it's not like I was even going for one of those inappropriate kisses. There was going to be no tongue. No open fondle and manic grind. A peck on the lips is all; something that says, "Hey, I'll miss you, but in a totally healthy way." A little more than a kiss-your-mother, but not so much where we'd need a fluffer standing by.

I feel guilty sometimes, complaining like this. Time was, no man could kiss any man who wasn't his dead father any time any place. Time was, it was you and Randy Quaid up on Brokeback Mountain, keeping secrets that become more impossible and more important to keep (because let's face it: cowboys never look like Jake Gyllenhaal or Heath Whatever -- cowboys do look like Randy Quaid, and it's him spittin' in his palm before stemming your rose in the real world of Wyoming and sheep and tents that sleep two). Time was, we lived lives of quiet desperation or furtive loathing -- unloved and untouched.

I'm just frustrated that I can't kiss my boyfriend on a street corner. And this frustration is, to use a phrase Susie Bright used in the documentary, like having fleas poured over me: the irritation is too much. We've progressed, but to where? We've made important strides, but where are those strides taking us? We live in a different world, they tell me, but so much of it still looks pretty familiar. We've come so far -- but we haven't mapped the country we're trying to get to.

And in that country, I'm sure, there's a street corner by an Original Pancake House and I'm on my way to Barnes & Noble and Zach is on his way to the gym and it's public and people can see us and some of them look and most of them don't and none of them care or if they do, they only care that on that street corner I stop, hold Zach's face, and give him a kiss.

T-[!@#$]-Mobile

2006-05-16T15:08:00.000-04:00

Like most patriotic Americans of non-Latino extraction, I spent Cinco de Mayo drinking nine margaritas, doing shots, and then taking pictures of necking Koreans on my way home on the Metro.

¡Viva la Revolucion! Seriously.

In the process, and after the photo shoot, I lost my phone. Only, not so much "lost" as much as "drunkenly left it on the seat beside me, laughing at my subterfuge" because I totally thought I was teh sneakness in snapping pictures of the unwitting kissing couple. Oh, and PS: they were the weirdest kissers ever. Play along:

Take your right hand, make it into a fist, and that's the guy. Now, tilt your head back and close your eyes. That's the girl. Now, place your fist-head against your lips (remember: head tilted back and eyes closed) and remain absolutely still. Then, remain absolutely still for, like, 8 minutes.

Anyway, I get home, realize that I don't have my phone when I try to show my Ansel Adams mad-skillz off to Zach, and call T-Mobile customer service. They turn the phone off. They tell me I have a month in which to find my phone or get a replacement, or terrible things will happen because I'm in breach of my contract or something. I'm drunk. I say, "Whatever." (It comes out, "Goddammit, do you even get how much I love you right now?") Zach makes me drink many glasses of water and I go to bed.

The next week, I go to the Metro site, I fill out a lost-and-found form, and am utterly unsurprised when I get an immediate message back saying that nothing has been reported that matched the description I gave. And I was embarrassed in leaving the description, because the screen that shows up when you flip open my phone? Zach, giving me the finger. And this might be funny and cool when you're, what, 19? But I'm 33 years old. I should never have to type the phrase "my boyfriend flipping me the bird." We're not even supposed to know what the bird is anymore.

I gave the report a week, though, in case someone turned it in later. I suppose I could have actually gone to the Metro Lost and Found -- but I have no idea where that is, and Metro isn't too free with sharing that information. Besides, lost-and-founds just depress me. "I bet you someone really loved that Confederate flag belt buckle." I entertained a slivered hope that maybe I'd be on the train that I was on when I lost the phone, and there it would be -- dim from the lost charge, but mine. And of course, that didn't happen.

So today, I call T-Mobile. The guy confirms that yes, my phone has been reported stolen. He then asks me to -- and I am not kidding -- take a look at the phone and tell him the make and model. "I'm sorry?" I said. "It's to identify the phone, and make sure you have the right phone for the account."

"Yeah, I get it. Do you think, though, that if I had the phone in my hand so's I could look at the make and model number, you and I would be having this conversation?"

"Well, sir, it's just-- ooh."

"You with me?"

"Yeah."

Yeah.

Then, before he'll transfer me to the Lost Phone department, he wants to talk about how my plan is working. "It's a great plan you've got," he said.

"I bet you say that to all the boys."

"No, our 700 minute Family Plan is very popular. With families."

"We've never even come close to using our 700 minutes."

"Oh."

"Yeah. It's not a great deal for us at all."

"Have you thought about calling more people on your phone?"

"I'm sorry?"

"You know, it just seems like you're not using your phone to its full advantage."

"Are you suggesting that it's not my phone plan that's failing me, but that I'm failing my phone plan?"

"I--"

"Just transfer me to Lost Phones."

So I'm transfered to Lost Phones. I have to wade through a morass of button pushing to get to the right department. Finally, I get to press 1 for lost or stolen phones. Then, I'm asked to have my police report handy. "That must be for the folks who have had their phones stolen," I think. Then I'm prompted to press 2 if I don't have a police report. And since it was my own drunken stupidity, and not, say, the nefariousness of the criminal underworld that caused my phone to go bye-bye -- I pressed 2.

I was given instructions on how to file a police report. I was offered those instructions in Español. I hit # repeatedly until I got a live person on the phone. He asked my name, and he was helpful right up until he asked for my police report number.

"I don't have one."

"Oh, well, Mike Bevel, I can give you some information on how to go about--"

"But my phone wasn't stolen."

"Oh, I know, Mike Bevel."

"So, why would I have to file a police report?"

"Because it's missing."

"But I don't know that we have to get the police involved."

"It's not a problem, Mike Bevel. You'll just need to call the non-emergency number for your local police, and then file a report. They'll give you a badge number or they'll give you the report number. Then you just ca--"

"Are you serious?"

"We take this very seriously, Mike Bevel."

"Please stop saying my name."

"I'm sorry Mi-- sir."

"So, rather than just sending me a new phone and honoring the insurance agreement I have where I pay you guys $5 a month, you want me to call the police, file a report because I lost something, get a badge or report number, and then call you back?"
"You can probably take care of all of this today."

I hung up. I called the police non-emergency number, and she told me to call the Metro police, and the Metro police were not available then, but if I wanted to go to one of the Metro stations, they'd call a Metro police officer to come and take my statement.

"You can't just--"

"No, sir."

"Because all I need is--"

"No, sir."

"Okay, then."

And that's where things are left.

Man, Knitting

2006-05-16T11:26:00.000-04:00

Guys, patriarchy sucks. No, seriously.

I forget, sometimes, about patriarchy because I'm kind of part of it. The gay thing keeps me from being an MVP in the club -- but because of a decided lack of fabulousness in my life, I'm not often pegged for queer right off the bat. I'm an unwitting beneficiary of a pretty crappy system.

That is, until I pull out my knitting.

I'm never been more aware of my gender than when I've been somewhere public and started working on my stockinette stitch. All of a sudden, I feel like I'm breaking every rule, only not in a cool way with Europe blaring The Final Countdown (which, PS, has the longest intro ever and just when you think the over-permed lead singer is about to belt out the opening lyrics he totally fakes out, purses his lips, and makes you wait a little longer. He'll definitely be part of my thesis) in the background. I feel exposed and a little unsafe -- which is another side-effect of patriarchy because hi: I'm just a guy with some yard and I feel unsafe? Try being a woman walking to her car at night, Mike, and then come talk to us all about this "unsafe" of which you speak.

But there it is. I feel my masculinity challenged when I'm sitting in public, knitting one and purling two. And it's not like I'm all that aware of my masculinity to begin with, especially after sitting in the living room last night with Stephen Sondheim's Finishing the Hat on auto-repeat. I have to do that kind of music listening alone and in secret, lest Zach hear it and fly into a Sondheim-induced rage. And maybe that's the trick: public vs. private in regards to "masculinity" and "femininity." For the most part, I'm very careful, even without really thinking about it, with my perceived masculinity. Zach and I aren't terribly demonstrative in public; I wouldn't ever blast Sunday in the Park with George loudly from a boom box at a bus stop. I was breaking my own self-regulated rule, thus breaking the much larger patriarchy-induced rule. And it made me anxious.

This means I have to knit more in public.

Gloria Steinam said she believed that an army of quiet, gray-haired women would quietly take over the world. I expect those quiet, gray-haired women are going to need things like hats and scarves. We'd best get started.

Reading: Our Mutual Friend

2006-05-14T09:57:00.000-04:00

I have been reading Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens for the last 27 years. You'll say I'm exaggerating, but seriously: every time I try to think back to a reading memory, it's me and 800+ pages of people who skim the Thames for dead bodies from which to pilfer.

Some misconceptions, first, to clear up about Little Chuckie Dickens:

He didn't get paid by the word. It's fun to gripe about in 11th grade English when you're wading your way through Great Expectations and you want to sound like you know something about literature -- but it's just not true. He wasn't paid by the word; he was paid by the installment. And fine: you say tomato, I say tomahto.
Dickens wasn't meant to be read in one sitting. He wrote serially. The best way to read Dickens is probably in the installments they were published as. One of the reasons Zach and I won't watch 24 is because we tried to catch up on season 1 via DVD and found it all too thrilling. First, there were no commercials; then, there was nothing stopping us from watching five episodes in a row. "I can't do this anymore," said Zach, shakily wiping the film of sweat that had appeared on his forehead. "He's gonna have to save the world without us." It's similar, though with less Kiefer, with Dickens. Each installment is an episode, so when you try to read the whole thing is a few sittings, you'll start to notice some of the weaknesses of serial writing. The writing and storytelling can seem baggy and unstructured -- and in some cases they are. Reading and enjoying Dickens means developing a sense of patience.
Dickens is both as great and as frustrating as everyone has told you. I'm not saying that settling down with Bleak House or Dombey and Son won't take you eleventy one years to finish, or that you won't find yourself reading anything other than Dickens in the middle just to give yourself a mini-reprieve (ask me anything about Honey Nut Cheerios -- anything). But give him a chance and he'll charm you, make you laugh out loud, make you fall in and out of love, frighten you, overwhelm you, and make you remember why you love reading. He's not fortified with 9 vitamins and iron, though. But that's not his fault.

This is the last conversation Zach and I had about Our Mutual Friend:

MIKE: I don't know. I think the little dwarf girl, Fanny Cleaver, who calls herself Jenny Wren, is up to no good.
ZACH: If I leave you, please know that it's your books that drove me away.
MIKE: She makes clothes and funeral shrouds for dolls.
ZACH: Tell the kids...tell them I love them. I'm off for a pack of cigarettes.
MIKE: Oh, she's also a hunchback.

Sneak Preview

2006-05-13T13:26:00.000-04:00

Here's the beginning of a short story I've been working on:

No one asks me where I was that day. Mostly because I live in Bethesda. Well, North Bethesda. Really, it’s Rockville; and it’s not even really the North Bethesda part of Rockville, it’s the Rockville part of Rockville. I don’t know why I tell people Bethesda.

I was home. I work. Of course I work. I wasn’t working that day, because I thought I deserved a break and the new girl we hired – she’s not really a girl, I guess; she’s in her late 20s and I’m in my mid 30s, but it’s not like we’re going to be best friends ever because, well, she’s my assistant and I guess she wants to keep those boundaries clear. Anyway Nancy has been there long enough that she could handle anything that came up, and it was just going to be the one day. I wanted to take this stolen vacation around the weekend, turn a Monday or a Friday into a three day weekend, but Mark didn’t want to take the time off because wow, I mean, his career? It’s really taking off. I guess.

Kirsten doesn’t work. She stays at home because she and Tyler have cats. They’re show cats or important cats, or they’re cats that can’t really be at home alone and she stays there and Tyler works and I think she even administers suppositories. Like, one of the side effects of being these kinds of cats is that they can’t poop right. I’m not really a cat person, but those cats make me a little sad. It’s like, forces beyond their control only wanted them to be pretty and not to be, you know, functional. And now they can’t poop when they want and there’re four of them, and none of them can poop when they want, so it’s not like they can get encouragement from a working cat. And then, they’re stuck home all day with Kirsten. She’s also awfully quick with those suppositories.

Kirsten called because her husband works in the Pentagon, and he had gone to work that day, and she said turn on the TV, and she sounded tinny and distant. She used to come over for coffee on the weekends, a girls’ coffee klatch, and we’d talk about our husbands but mostly she’d talk about the cats and I guess I may have said something unkind about the cats or I don’t know. I can’t hear about those cats every time. I’d like to talk about me for a change, you know? Mark says I need to give other people a chance.

I was going to go to one of those Paint Your Own Pottery places. I wanted to paint a pitcher, and I was going to paint it a color that wouldn’t necessarily match the kitchen because I think it adds drama. I was going to paint it red, maybe, glossy red, or some of it red. And then I’d get a salad from Cosi. I think it’s such a treat, painting your own pottery. But then the phone rang and it was Kirsten and Tyler had gone to work and she said turn on the TV so I did and we both wondered, but didn’t ask, if Tyler was going to be coming home. There was so much smoke.

Actually, I did ask. And Kirsten started crying. And I got really annoyed with Kirsten because she already takes up so many of our conversations with those goddamned cats that if she also gets to be a widow? I didn’t say that part aloud.

Mark works in Baltimore. He sells real estate in Baltimore. There was no danger of Mark not getting to come home, because he doesn’t even sell real estate in the sketchier parts of Baltimore. I would think sometimes, at work, what it would be like if Mark were killed in some kind of freak accident – like a drug deal gone sour, not that Mark would be the one with the drugs, but he’d be the unfortunate victim. Innocent victim. Then, you know, people would want to have lunch with me once I came back to work. And maybe they’d stop by for a bit of a chat. Everyone is so busy lately. I’m busy, too, but I don’t think anyone should ever be so busy they can’t stop and, you know, connect with another human being. If Mark were dead, people would wonder how I was.

The List

2006-05-09T08:40:00.000-04:00

You know how couples have that list, right? Of people you can sleep with because there's no chance in hell it will ever work out that you'll be alone in a room with Stanley Tucci, say, or Lior Ashkenazi.

MIKE: So, who's on your list?

ZACH: I don't know. These games are kinda, you know, gay.

MIKE: Whatever. Who would you sleep with.

ZACH: Alive or dead?

MIKE: Sure.

ZACH: Jake Gyllenhaal.

MIKE: Seriously?

ZACH: Yeah. He's hot.

MIKE: That's, like, the least imaginative answer ever.

ZACH: Did you start this game just so you could berate me for my choices?

MIKE: I bet even the Reverend Fred Phelps wants to sleep with Jake Gyllenhaal.

ZACH: So who's on your list?

MIKE: What?

ZACH: Your list? Who's on it?

MIKE: Oh. You know. People.

ZACH: Okay. Which people?

MIKE: [mumble]

ZACH: I didn't get that?

MIKE: The Pre[mumble] of Ir[mumble].

ZACH: The who?

MIKE: The Pres--

ZACH: The President of Iran?

MIKE: He's kinda ho--

ZACH: No. No, the President of Iran is not kinda hot. What the hell's wrong with you?

MIKE: I have a thing for angry Persian mayors-cum-wackjobs.

ZACH: At least my unattainable crush hasn't called for the total extermination of the Jews.

MIKE: Yet, my love. Yet.

Knit One, Purl Two

2006-05-01T10:05:00.000-04:00

So, I'm taking this beginning knitting class. This will be the second beginning knitting class I've taken, the first being the one I took with my old roommate, Bridget the Knitter. We were both supposed to be novices; this was supposed to be some fun roommate time, doing something crafty together. Instead, by the end of the first day, Bridget had already knitted 17 scarves and 6 weeks later, by the end of the class, she'd created an entire fall line of clothing.

I made a hat. Kind of.

Anyway, this class. It's all right. I'm taking it with my friend Talley from bookgroup, and it's Bridget the Knitter all over again. It took me the entire first class to (re)learn how to cast on (and PS? After taking the entire class to learn how to cast on, all it took was the walk home from G Street Fabrics to completely forget how to cast on). Talley, on the other hand, was answering questions from the other knitters, giving pointers and generally being supportive:

"That's a great stitch there."

"Oh, look how fast you're learning!"

"Who's my little knitter? Who's my little knitter?"

The class is taught by an older woman named Helen. She's very efficient, personable, and has the breath of death. I've learned to save my questions for desperately important things. Helen likes to get right down next to you, and she likes to exhale, and this combination is lethal.

Oh, Helen also makes weird gay jokes that are thisclose to being homophobic. But maybe she gets a pass because she's my mom's age and there's that generational homophobia that gets a pass for some reason that I don't really remember except I guess maybe because she's old and old people get to do whatever the fuck they want because when you're old, every day's a Make-a-Wish-Foundation day and you do what you want. Who's going to stop you? You're old.

The first day of class, she talked about some friend, and somehow the story was related to knitting or something -- but then she had to throw in the fact that the friend's husband recently came out as gay and left her for another man. She made this disgusted face and said, "And none of us even knew. That he was gay? None of us. Even. Knew." Which, okay, whatever -- and had that been the only thing offputting she'd done then you could call me reactionary and I'd totally have to cop to it. But then, later in the class, she told this really long and involved story about an $8,000 sewing machine, but she was going to get it for $3,000 because it was used, and she justified it by saying that it wasn't so much that she was spending $3,000 as she was saving $5,000 -- and then she said, in this faux-Asian accent, "Ah, it's my Chinese accounting." Complete with little bow. I looked around at the other people, to see if anyone else was outraged, but they were all busy ignoring Helen and counting stitches. I did give Helen a quizzical look; I wish I had done more.

So this past Sunday, we're starting on our project (a hat) and we're at a point where we can sort of have conversations without too much worry about dropped stitches, or purling when we should be knitting. So this very, very, very young girl named Holly (she's something like 19 or 20) was talking about how she wanted to be a fashion designer, but that the closest reputable schools are all in New York, and that she couldn't afford to live in the City itself, and she was afraid of living in one of the "slums" because she'd be kidnapped and no, I don't really know where she got that idea, either, since it's not like there's a lot of white woman slave-trading going on in the outer burroughs but whatever. Then Helen pipes up with, "Well, honey, the safest place for a woman to live in New York City is Greenwich Village, if you know what I mean."

Holly didn't. "You mean because it's a village?"

Kendra looked up, rolled her eyes (I love Kendra a lot), and said, "It's because Greenwich Village is gay. And you're a woman. And Helen thinks that means you'd be safe." Kendra has as little patience with Holly as I have. Holly's pretty; and Holly generally seems kind and nice; but the last think that girl read had a perfume insert -- and I'm using the word "read" in the most general way possible.

Helen nodded, pleased. "I mean, I don't think Mike here would be all that safe in Greenwich Village, would you Mike?"

I didn't say anything. There were a lot of things I could have said. "I can only dream about being cruised in the Village." "I prefer the bath houses of San Francisco to the faux-boho of New York." "Helen: I suck cock." Instead, I just felt mildly uncomfortable and wondered why, again, I was mistaken for heterosexual. I mean, for one thing, I'm a guy in a knitting class. That's gotta mean something, right?

On one hand, it is my fault. I don't present as gay as I should, I guess. I don't dress well. I steer fairly clear of hair styling products. I'm not a fan of any of the following: Madonna, Cher, Judy Garland, Liza Minelli, Bette Midler, Barbra Streisand, Kylie Minogue, et. al. On the other hand, though: shut up, Helen. I hate feeling like I'm the one out of line -- that coming out to you after you've made some stupid-assed homophobic joke is somehow bad manners on my part. Because it's not. But that's usually how I feel, though. I don't want to embarrass the other person at all, make them feel as uncomfortable as I'm feeling right at that moment.

What's that about, anyway? Why am I protecting those people?

So I'm trying to come up with a way to let Helen know, in a way that won't cause either of us too much embarrassment, that I'm gay. And that maybe she could not make so many gay jokes. And, while we're already working on her humor, maybe she could tone it down with the racist shit, too. Knitting and purling are hard enough without putting up with that bullshit.

Shameful Reading Secrets Revealed!

2006-04-28T10:01:00.000-04:00

Once upon a time on the much-beloved (well, most of the time much-beloved) Fametracker Forums, there was a thread called "Shameful Reading Secrets Revealed!" -- and it was filled with folks who broke my heart talking smack about Middlemarch and Thomas Hardy.

Damn, those were some good times.

I thought about the thread last night while talking to my friend Steve. I was telling Steve how I'm currently in a fight with the Shakespeare Theatre Company because they want me to renew my subscription, and yet they also want to put on yet another production of both Hamlet and Richard III -- two plays that they've already done in the last five years. Done, and done really really poorly, if'n you ask me, mostly because they cast this David Hyde Pierce-looking guy, Wallace Acton, as both Hamlet and Richard III. Wallace Acton has two styles of acting: (1) Over; and (2) with his hair.

In the last five years, here are some plays the Shakespeare Theatre Company hasn't put on:

And a subscription to the theatre's expensive, y'all. And I don't know that I want to plop down that kinda cash for plays I won't see. "I can't imagine you seeing another Richard," Steve said. "But you'll probably see the Hamlet if it gets good reviews, right?"

Wrong.

I. Hate. Hamlet. And that's my shameful reading secret. Only not so much with the shame, really. I'm bewildered, maybe, by all the other mofos out there who think this play is the reason the English language was invented. And for a long time, I just thought it was me and my poor reading skills that kept me from reaching the sort of intellectual climaxes everyone out there with an English degree and a healthy dose of pretension seem to reach -- complete with toe-curling and surreptitious licks of fingers afterwards.

Look, guys: it's a long, boring play about some Danish fop who's still going to college and he's what? Thirty? At some point, Ham, you're going to have to tinkle or get off the potty with this education thing. You're going to have to get the degree or drop out and pay off those student loans with some crappy job as a barrista so you and all the other over-educated potheads can make me feel beneath you while you pour my coffee. Or, better yet, maybe you could get one of those coveted positions at Kramerbooks & Afterwards, and you and the other asshats who look down their noses at me for buying Dickens rather than some post-modern novel that doesn't use the letter "i" because it's proving a point can have yourself a gay old time. Stupid Kramerbooks & Afterwards. You know, you can be above-it-all-hip and helpful at the same time. Really. Try it.

Anyway. That's it. That's your main character in this play. "To be, or not to be"? Look: that comes 7 hours into the play, and I just don't have time for that kind of whiny vacillating. If he ever gets it figured out, let me know. Until then, I'll be over here, reading other Shakespeare plays that get the job done better.

It's not that I don't get that life's an existential crapshoot, and there's lots out there to get all prozac-ed up about. But hi, Hamlet? You're young. You're very young. You're still-in-college young. And if you'd not gone all mad at the end and murdered everyone and yourself, you might have reached, like, 35 or something and you would have looked back at your angsty Wonder Years with a little bit of a rueful headshake. "Killing my stepdad/uncle? What was I thinking? I could barely pass gym."

For my reading time, I think, there are any number of Shakespeare plays that are more psychologically and spiritually interesting than Hamlet. For instance, King Lear packs a more satisfying punch. There's a moment in the play when Lear, impotent, old, confused, and almost alone shakes his fist and rages, "I would do such things!" Only he, the other characters, and the audience know that there are no other things he can do. He's limited by his own life and his circumstances and his two evil daughters. And yet that rage-filled fist-shake at the sky: we've all been there.

I'm also pretty partial to Macbeth, and what happens when love turns toxic, and ambition o'er reaches itself. The trick to the play is that it's not the witches at all who have anything to do with Macbeth's downfall: it's Macbeth himself. And that's what makes the play so terrifying. If it were witches, then it's just a story of extenuating evil. But when it's just Macbeth, alone, watching a forest of death creep towards the castle: that's where the wallop is; that we each carry the ability to ruin our own lives deep inside of us.

Hamlet, though? What do we learn? That late 20-something super-seniors can't be trusted with revenge? That dresses don't serve as floatation devices? That Freud should not be allowed within a quarter mile of literature? Folks: these are things we already knew. And we don't need some long-assed boring play about some bipolarized dude in a page-boy to refresh our memories. One can try plumbing the depths of the play all one wants, but at the end of the play all you've got is a dead kid from a fucked up family who's hard on a girlfriend and should have been one of those bisexual theater majors. You know the type, always going on about how it's not the sex of the person that they're attracted to; it's the energy? Nevermind the fact that they keep going back to the same well of the drunkenly confused phys ed majors. What do I know from energy?

I don't doubt that there are people out there who get something out of the play. I'm just not one of them.

Not so much Plague

2006-04-21T08:43:00.000-04:00

I have bronchitis. Acute bronchitis. I tried to make a joke about that with my doctor, how it's such a relief to have something cute for a change, and he said, "You really need to go home and rest now." Turns out "acute" means "short-term" rather than "severe." Severe bronchitis would be "chronic" -- and it's usually reserved for alcoholic smokers who live in smog-ridden L.A. Maybe next summer...

So I'm on some kind of antibiotic, Biaxin for you medical types in the audience. I know that antibiotics are theoretically evil and of the devil, and I am aiding and abetting the creation of super virii impervious to medications of any kind. But the differences in how I feel between today and yesterday are so markedly dramatic that I really don't care. When the Super Virii of the Future show up in 10 years to kick our collective asses, I'll stand in line rump first. For now: I don't feel like death.

Being gay and sick is different than being straight and sick. Once the nurse weighed me ("Really? Are you sure?" "That's a good scale there, Mr. Bevel." "Then I've lost some weight in the last 4 days." "If you say so." "Maybe the doctor doesn't have to treat this right away?") she asked for my symptoms, which fortunately I was able to display for her in person. "It only looks like I've just stepped out of the shower," I explained. She asked when the symptoms started and I said, "The day my partner and I were returning from Toronto." "Is this a homosexual partner or a heterosexual partner?" "We're gay." "Have you had an HIV test?"

Yeah.

And I mean, okay. I know. It's out there, it's a danger, and I'm in a risk group. But I'm not an active member of that risk group. Zach and I have been together almost 5 years; we're monogamous; and we've both been tested multiple times. It's a logical question to ask, I guess. I can't help wondering, though, if she'd have asked about an HIV test if Zach were my girlfriend rather than my boyfriend. Only, you know, with a different name.

A quick book wrap up:

I finished Wuthering Heights and I'm done. I don't need to read it ever again. It's just not that interesting of a book. We get it, it's bleak: can we go now? On the flight to Toronto (and more about that in a different entry; however, I will say: Canada? What the fuck did you do to Niagara Falls?) and back I read Albert Camus's The Plague, and I'll write an entry about that soon, too. I will say that it's not necessarily the best book choice when one is, you know, sick unto death the way I was. And I don't think I'll read any more Camus. I can't say that it's a bad book; I also don't know that it's good either.

And my current book? McTeague by Frank Norris. I'm cheating a bit, both in my "alphabetically we read" plan as well as my "Mike buys no new books." I found this for dirt cheap at a pretty groovy bookstore in Toronto called ABC Books on Yonge Street along with some other book, an early American writer (c. late-1700s), writing about a murderous sleepwalker.

A Poem

2006-04-21T08:40:00.000-04:00

There's a
HOT CHICK
in the mirror

She knows the COOLEST MOVES.
She makes her arm warmers from sweat socks.
Her pelvic thrusts are THE STUFF OF LEGEND.
Even her earrings have attitude.
I can't believe
THAT HOT CHICK IS ME
But I give her a thumbs-up
And she gives me a thumbs-up.
She gives me a SEXY SMILE
and I'm flattered.
But hey, I HAVE A BOYFRIEND.

Just do it.

[Dear God, I love Teen Vogue]

Today's Adventure: Toronto

2006-04-12T12:37:00.000-04:00

Zach and I leave for Toronto tomorrow because it's there and we have tickets and it's Passover and why not? ("Why not?" is one of the Four Questions.) There's a Niagara Falls trip on our itinerary, and some godawfully tall tower with a glass floor that will no doubt make me woozy and anxious. Other than that, I don't know what we'll do in Toronto; we've never been before. Hopefully it'll be better than our trip to Montreal.

Montreal was my fault. In fact, for the most part, you can be assured that anytime I mention a bad travel experience, it's my fault. It's not that Zach's blameless, it's just that I'm so much better at deconstructing a good time into a bad time.

Here's the thing: I don't travel well. It's all a delightful mélange of anxiety and nerves and irrational fears that I brew into a delightful cup of "Why the hell do you wait until now to get in some cuddle time with the cat?!?" I'm not good with renegotiating an itinerary; as soon as I have a plan in mind, by God, that's the plan that we're going to follow. Once on our way to the Metro -- the Metro, mind you; not even on the actual vacation itself -- I got entirely too worked up over a side-trip Zach wanted to make to a convenience store before we left to go to Amsterdam. I think through barely controlled tears of rage I shrieked something about Amsterdam not being a "goddamned Third World Country, you know, for your information, and if you needed to stop at 7-11 maybe you could have done that at any other point in the history of the entire world and not so much 5 minutes before the plane leaves."

What's helpful about these altercations is how I don't resort to hyperbole and sarcasm to get my point across. That's the sign of a healthy relationship.

The thing is, Zach has this sort of laissez-faire relationship with punctuality. I'm truly not trying to set up a I'm-better-than-he-is equation (though if you think I am, you've always been my favorite; just don't tell the others); I'm equally culpable in the opposite direction: to me, being on time means at least an hour early. So even before we leave to go on vacation, we're already at odds with each other. I want to be at the airport with enough time for bacteria to evolve limbs while Zach thinks that the airline somehow knows when we'll arrive and has adjusted its flight time accordingly. "No, Linda, we're not ready yet. Zach's only just now finished brushing Thor. We'll hold the plane another hour or two for them to get here."

Once we're at the airport, it's a new set of irritations. I feel that my presence at the correct gate is integral to our successful departure, flight, and landing. If I step away, even for a second, who knows what will happen? Like, what if they decide to change the gates on us and we're not there because now we're all Zach all of a sudden and we're going for a "walk" around the airport like it's a goddamned nature trail or something and we've got some bread crumbs to feed the squirrels. What happens then? Because there we are, waiting at the wrong gate like dumbasses, because we didn't hear the announcement that they've moved our gate to G11. And by "we" I mean an entirely fictional "me" and an entirely Zach "Zach" since I never leave the gate because of just such a scenario. I once rescued us from flying to Peoria, is all I'm saying.

I also have an oddly shaped suitcase that I really shouldn't use any more because I know it's oddly shaped and I'm always breaking FAA rules by storing it in the overhead compartment the wrong way because of on account of how oddly shaped it is. But that's not my fault. I like to be at the gate early and in line early so I can be sure that there's room for me to stow my oddly shaped luggage without drawing too much attention to myself and the bag, as well as leave enough time to sit down and pretend like I'm not the one thwarting other passengers. I can't do this if I'm trying to hunt down Zach, who's decided to go on walkabout.

And don't even get me started on the last-minute pee. Look: you don't drink anything at all before a flight. Like, 24-hours in advance you cut off all liquid so you're not a slave to your bladder and we're not there, last minute, waiting for you to remember that oh yeah: I have to pee. And I think you know who I mean by "you."

So anyway: hooray! Vacation! Which means that I'll be back online on Tuesday, April 18. Any thoughts on cool things to do in Toronto will be definitely appreciated.

In defense of cowardice

2006-04-11T09:01:00.000-04:00

That's what I was going to write about. Over the weekend, Zach and I and some coworkers of Zach's saw Sophie Scholl: The Last Days. This is the second film we've seen with these folks, the first being the documentary Why We Fight and here's the new rule: from now on, the only films we can see with Barbara and Don are animated films with magical unicorns voiced by Freddie Prinze Jr. where people -- and by "people" I mean multi-colored elves or fairies or shit like that -- learn the power of hugging and share a laugh or two when the cartoon skunk or badger or whatever upsets a cart of apples because enough already with the bleak films. God.

Here are films I can't see anymore because seriously, I'm done:

* Films about the Holocaust and Nazi Germany. Especially when they're set in 1943.

* Films about Palestinian suicide bombers.

* Documentaries about people dying and then they actually die on the actual screen.

* Films about female serial killer Aileen Wuornos.

* Films where a small English town learns to love again either through the ballet dancing of one little boy, stripping coal miners, brass-band-playing coal miners, naked English ladies, or kinky boot makers.

Sophie Scholl documents the last few days of Sophie, her brother, Hans, and their colleague Christoph Probst, memebers of The White Rose, as they are caught, tried, and convicted of crimes against Nazi Germany. Their crime? Publishing fliers that spoke out against the war, the tyranny of Germany, and against the systematic annihilation of the Jews.

They were all beheaded.

I was going to write about how I think that sometimes preserving the self is worth cowardice. That you can be much more effective alive than you can dead and martyred. I had a lot of reasons, and I thought they were all convincing and good, and I was going to share them all, and then I read this:

"The real damage is done by those millions who want to 'survive.' The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don't want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won't take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don't like to make waves -— or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honour, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It's the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you'll keep it under control. If you don't make any noise, the bogeyman won't find you. But it's all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn." -- Sophie Scholl

Unreliably Yours

2006-04-10T19:18:00.000-04:00

Let's try this again.

One of the claims of literary theorists concerning Wuthering Heights is that it has an unreliable narrator and that that's where all the fun is. Never mind Cathy goes kookoo and tears a pillow apart with her teeth. Never mind that her husband Edgar punches Heathcliff in the throat. Never mind that the book is incredibly exciting even to a modern audience -- no, the point of this crapfest of a book (for, friends and others, this book, while exciting, isn't really worth it. One of my favorite comments on the novel comes from Meredith: "I was rooting for the moor") is the unreliable narratorness of it.

I guess. But...no.

So, some background on the book: Wuthering Heights tells the story of Heathcliff and Cathy, their lives, their loves, their various DSM-IV diagnoses. However, the whole story is told by one narrator: a man named Lockwood, who is renting a house called Thrushcross Grange. Lockwood is gay and bitchy, and does things like forces the servants to stay up later than they want to to tell him stories. He can sleep his lazy ass in until whatever o'clock; the servants, though? Those pots aren't going to scrub themselves; and I don't think Lockwood has the hands for scouring.

Everything in the novel, then, comes from Lockwood. Lockwood is writing in his journal -- and he comes from the Mina Harker school of dictation, since he apparently can remember entire conversations that he's had and can write them down verbatim. The woman who's telling him the bulk of the story is Nelly Dean, she of the late-night girl-talk chat-fest with Lockwood. She also has an amazingly crystal clear memory, since most of the events she's relating to Lockwood occur about 20 years earlier.

So, here's the thing about Unreliable Narrators. The term is coined in a 1961 book by Wayne Booth called The Rhetoric of Fiction. Wikipedia has a list of novels that allegedly have unreliable narrators, and Wuthering Heights is listed among them. It also lists Henry James's The Turn of the Screw -- and that's another book that I don't think has an unreliable narrator. It's cooler, of course, to assume that the governess is mad; however, she's not. Those ghosts are real. And you're just going to have to deal with that.

Unreliable narrators make a lot of appearances in modern/contemporary fiction. Kazuo Ishiguro sort of specializes in unreliable narrators. That goddamned Life of Pi was all about the unreliable narrator. The authors, in these cases, give you reason to distrust the narrator. They'll give conflicting accounts, or there'll be a twist of some kind. A Pale View of Hills has a lovely and eerie and downright creepy moment of narrative shift. The author wants you to know that the narrator can't be relied on. That's part of the fun.

Wuthering Heights doesn't have an unreliable narrator. It has just the one narrator. And nothing appears out of line in what he's sharing. Except for the superhuman feats of memory and recall, that is. If you want to go the unreliable narrator route with Wuthering Heights, then how do you know when to stop? How do we know that Lockwood is giving us the correct version of what Nelly Dean said? How do we know that he hasn't editorialized? Even when Lockwood isn't directly related at all (e.g., the entire first 20 years of the story), he's still the only one writing it down. How does one decide when he's reliable and when he isn't? What I'm arguing here is that eventually you'll find yourself having to come to the conclusion that no part of Wuthering Heights happened at all, and that Lockwood, much like Nabakov's Kinbote made the whole thing up because he's a kookshow of epic proportions.

I was going to say that the Victorians had no truck with the unreliable narrator, but I'll have to back off that argument because I remembered Wilkie Collins and he pulls some unreliable narrator tricks with both The Woman in White and The Moonstone. But there, he lets us know he's doing it because he gives us honest, reliable narrators who counter what the dishonest or unreliable ones have to say.

What I will say is that one can have an unreliable narrator; however, one cannot have an unreliable author -- and a good author will let you know what the intent is.

And that's what I have to say about that.

Reading: Wuthering Heights (Unreliable Narrators)

2006-04-09T10:10:00.000-04:00

First off, there's something like twenty different characters named Cathy in this novel. There are also Hindens and Harentons and Earnshaws -- all of which sound a little bit alike enough to require a handy cheat-sheet while reading. If those seventeen poor seventeen Aurelianos had only found a way to hide out in Wuthering Heights, they might have stood a better chance. Or maybe not. I don't know when the rage for Latino gardeners started, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't in the late 1700s.

Wuthering Heights is a very irritating book. That's not to say it isn't good, or that it isn't worth your time reading it. But if you read books because you like meeting people you've never met before, you should know up front that there isn't a single worthwhile character in this novel.

Everyone sucks.

This is my second go-through, and I'm near the midpoint. The first time I read it, it was because so many posters at my much-beloved, but sadly no-more, Fametracker message boards were really up in arms about it. Some loved it passionately; others wanted to burn all copies of the book and salt the ground where they lay.

I think part of the problem is teenaged girls. They're usually the problem. In this case, it's the way they've over-romanticized the primary relationship of the novel, that between Heathcliff and Cathy. (A propos of nothing except how awesome YouTube.com is, I'm watching the video for Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart, where Bonnie Tyler is trapped in an evil sexy boys' school and she's trying to escape and I keep telling her to "Run, Bonnie! Run!" But the boys keep doing things like throwing doves at her or wearing swim goggles and then, out of nowhere -- NINJAS. And then there's some sort of kickboxing scene with barbarians? The hell? And then the Satan's Choir from that one Pat Benatar video shows up, the one where she's trapped in that room of shredded paper towels with her band, and there's that one guy who looks like the supposedly sexy younger brother from "Wings" but really, I never saw it, and then he did that awful TV version of The Shining and there was that ugly-assed kid, but in this video he's the drummer or something, only it really isn't that guy, it's just some guy who looks like him, and there aren't any drums in this shredded fabric filled room so he just sort of beats the air around him with his drum sticks and Pat Benatar claps along wearing the lime green gloves of a dead woman but then she ends up in a magic volcano with that creepy kids choir and by the way Pat Benatar? Gorgeous. But back to Bonnie Tyler. After they're unable to stop her with interpretive dance, the sexy evil boys' school boys try to attack Bonnie with their glowing bright eyes and then at the end, it turns out she's the sort-of lesbian school master of the boys' school, only when she's shaking everyone's hand, one of the glowing eyed boys is there, and this catches Bonnie by surprise. Verily I say unto you all, once upon a time there was the '80s. And they were fucking awesome.)

Heathcliff and Cathy have this unfair reputation of romantic love in the mushy, you're-my-soul-mate kinda way rather than in the true sense of romantic which is more along the lines of that frightened feeling one gets sometimes when listening to Beethoven, because the music is wild and unpredictable and a little scary sometimes in the way that Kate Bush makes me anxious. She's sing and it's beautiful, but you know that at any moment it's going to get kinda screachy.

If Heathcliff and Cathy aren't True Love Forever, what are they? I think that Emily Brontë's showing us what toxic, insular, incestuous love looks like. Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange seem to be the only two households in existence, and people marry and intermarry with the frequency of breathing. I want to believe that if Emily Brontë could only see the way stupid 15 year-old boys and girls have elevated her monsters Heathcliff and Cathy she'd wanna smacka bitch or something.

Dude, I'd totally wear a t-shirt that said "15-year-olds make Emily Brontë wanna smack a bitch." It's urban street cred with just a hint of post-grad doctoral thesis.

(Okay, but just now I saw the video for Love is a Battlefield and guys! Guys! Have you seen it? Like, back when you were 12 and it was 1983? Because if you haven't, or if you've forgotten, you totally have to treat yourself right now. It opens with Pat Benatar as a hooker and then she's on a bus and you don't know if she's going to somewhere or coming back from somewhere, but what you do know is that Pat is tired. And then she's a hooker and then she's on the bus and then it's hooker and bus and hooker and bus until we find out that Pat totally ran away from home in a fit of teenaged rage and singing though she's really what? 30? And as her dad tells her she can never come back, she waves up to her brother who might be disabled or he has cancer because he's never downstairs with the family in any of his scenes; he either stares forlornly out the window or reads the letters Pat sends home on his bed before contemplating his own life as a high-priced call girl. So anyway, after being jostled by two gay men on an escalator, Pat winds up at this danceteria run by a skeevy Latino. But don't feel too bad for Pat because she's totally making friends and apparently being a hooker means all you have to do is dance. So sometimes she does, but then this one time she totally doesn't have time for that nonsense and she lounges in these Stevie Nicks cast-offs because she didn't have time to pack her good hooker clothes before leaving home. Poor Pat. Anyway, while she's lounging and playing with her frayed fringe, the skeevy Latino -- because, as you know, all pimps are skeevy Latino because if the '80s taught us nothing they at least taught us that stereotypes are only bad if you're a cripple -- has an altercation with this other dancewhore, only you know it's the skeevy Latino's fault because Pat jumps up, all in his grill, and then she and the other hookers form a ring around the skeevy Latino and they start the Hooker Shimmy of Empowerment and Social Justice for Sex Workers. And it totally works; she's like Norma Rae for the string-top and teased hair set. The hookers dance around him, and then once they've taught him an Important Lesson, they all dance out of the dance place and into the street, where they all hug and congratulate themselves for overcoming adversity and achieving never-before-seen heights with mousse. From here, I don't know where the other girls go. Probably to business school or community college. I don't know that I was able to get across the true awesomeness of this video in mere words; you'll probably just need to watch the video.)

(And that's the problem with this entry. I keep wanting to write about Wuthering Heights and the fallacy of the unreliable narrator -- I don't think they exist as much as post-modern students of literature want them to; I think you can have an unreliable narrator, but you can't have an unreliable writer or the novel just doesn't work -- but I keep getting sidetracked because YouTube.com is the shit and whaddaya know, there's a ton of Kate Bush videos out there to watch. I'll try writing again later.)

Reading: Shirley (finally)

2006-04-02T09:21:00.000-04:00

Goddamn you Charlotte Brontë.

[For those not wanting to be spoiled at all about the last 200 or so stupidly plotted pages of this novel -- you'll want to find something else to read. You can always check out the archives, see if I've written something funny at all in, say, January of 2006.]

So I'll bring you up to speed. For a while, Caroline and Shirley were BFF, but both kind of worked up over the same guy, Robert Moore. Robert Moore owns a mill, is low on cash, and seems to be putting the smooth moves on Shirley (who, PS, is a wealthy heiress/landowner). Sure, when he runs into Caroline, he's all giving her the love-eye. But up to the point where Caroline gets sick (we'll get to that bit of plot mishigas in a minute), he's gunning real hard for Shirley.

In the span of a few pages, Caroline gets sick, Robert's long-lost brother shows up as the tutor of Shirley's uncle's family, and we find out the Shirley's governess is actually Caroline's mom.

Yeah.

I know.

It was at this point in the novel (around page 400 of a 600 page book) that I started getting a little worried about Charlotte and her novel. It had been really interesting up to that point. Brontë was writing clearly and frankly about the plight of women in the 19th century (which, frankly, weren't so great it turns out, what with the subjugation and the having no rights and the "why can't you just sit and knit a spell?" attitude of most of the men at that time). She was able to challenge and explore some of these assumptions through the character of Shirley, who was able to fluidly move between sexes without getting all silly like Virginia Woolf. But, for whatever reason, Brontë decided to shy away from the natural conclusion of where the story was going to take her and decided, last minute, to hire monkeys to throw wrenches at her novel. And while I'm as saddened by the plight of out of work monkeys as the next person -- I don't know that this is the kind of work we want them doing. Plus, when they're not stealing our jobs, they're stealing our women.

Stupid monkeys.

Let's take each plot element and examine it on its own. First, there's Caroline's illness. On it's own, I have no problem with it, and it makes sense. Caroline falls ill partly because of all the late night excitement she's been through (there's a scene where she and Shirley sneak through the woods with guns in the hope of being of service to Robert Moore as he protects his mill from a roving bad of hopped-up-on-anger Luddites); she also falls ill because her heart's broken. She sees the way Robert Moore and Shirley are togehter. She's also heard Robert Moore tell her that he has no interest in marrying her. I mean, Charlotte: We were there, too. We heard him say that to her. So it makes sense that she would take a little ill, and then that illness would be exacerbated by despondency.

Next, let's add the part where Shriley's governess (and now paid companion, since Shirley is of an age where she really doesn't need a governess any more) turns out to be Caroline's long-lost mom. Why? I don't know. Part of what happens is, when Caroline learns that Mrs. Pryor is her mother, she stops being ill and starts getting better. Then, she spends the rest of her scenes with Mrs. Pryor saying things like, "Read me a story, now." Or, "I hate the way you dress; you should change it. Now." Or, "Isn't it great we've found each other? Comb my hair: NOW." Prior to Caroline's illness, Caroline and Mrs. Pryor were on a walk and Mrs. Pryor told Caroline that she was planning on leaving Caroline a small income once Mrs. Pryor you know, died. Not that she was planning on dying any time soon; she was just saying, "When that time comes, I want you to have my fortune." I was really intrigued by this development; I also thought this was Charlotte's way of preparing us for the fact that yeah, Robert Moore is going to choose Shirley. And while my heart went out to Caroline, and I was sad for her, I was okay with that development.

Having Mrs. Pryor turn out to be Caroline's mom, though, weakens that plot piece for me. It's not one woman taking care of another woman simply because she's a woman. It's a mother taking care of her daughter which isn't as interesting. And part of my irritation is totally my own fault; that's not that novel Brontë wrote, so it's silly of me to get worked up about how I'd rather the novel were. My response to that, though, is that I feel like Brontë was heading in one direction with this -- and then the whole illness/"Look, my mom!" thing sort of rushed into the room wearing a lampshade on its head and we all had to pay attention to that.

The third part is Louis. Louis is Robert's brother. Up until around page 400, we hadn't really heard about Robert's brother. He wasn't that important. No one seemed to be pining away for him. In none of the preceding 399 pages had Brontë set up any reason for him to show up (and, now that I think of it, likewise for the Mrs. Pryor-as-Caroline's-mom business, either). Except, Brontë needs him to show up because she wants to have a happy ending for both of her female characters -- so she needs two brothers to do that. Shirley will end the novel married to Louis (who, apparently, has been pining for her ever since he was her tutor -- a fact that she keeps secret from both Caroline and the reader for too long. And Caroline tries to call her on that, only she does it sort of half-assedly since she's too busy bossing her new mom around and at several points throughout the novel after that, I wanted to offer Mrs. Pryor a safe house to get away from the abuses of out-of-control Caroline) and Caroline gets Robert. Even though Robert has already proposed to Shirley. (Brontë gets herself out of that jamb by having Shirley say no because she feels Robert's only asking her because she's loaded -- but that's something that Brontë never shows us as readers. Every time we've seen Robert and Shirley together, he wasn't all macking on her wallet; he truly seemed interested in and in love with Shirley.)

Anyway. I don't feel the novel earned its ending at all. And I think that Brontë sort of realized that she wasn't happy with the direction her novel was taking. But rather than redo everything, she just thought, "I'll do this," with no thought as to how it all fits together.

I'm glad to be done. And, that craptastic ending not withstanding, I'm glad to have read it. Brontë's insight into the position of women at the time is very enlightening and illuminating. It's heartening to realize that people did no better, even if they weren't able to affect any change. The novel still holds its place as #2 on my list of favorite Brontë novels. We'll see if The Professor knocks it down at all.

Reading: Shirley (the homestretch)

2006-04-01T16:51:00.000-05:00

After 350+ pages, Charlotte Brontë decided to throw up her hands and go silly. Long lost mothers? (Who weren't really lost in the first place, or at least not missed.) Forgotten brothers? Mysterious illnesses? RABIES?!?

I have about 100 pages, and then I can bid a fond farewell to this particular bit of silliness. I don't know that this knocks the novel out of it's #2-on-Mike's-Brotë-list. I still think Shirley is a better book than Jane Eyre -- but that's because I don't cotton much to older, meek, oh-what-the-hell-why-not-St.-John Jane. I like young, sassy, I'll-escape-hell-by-not-dying Jane.

Up next on my list is another Charlotte Brontë, The Professor. Maybe. I really need to think long and hard about this alphabetically-we-read set-up I've got going on. I mean, guys, I have a lot of Dickens I haven't read yet. I may take a break and read a biography of George Eliot I picked up so my friend Steve and I can finish arguing about stupid George Lewes. I blame George Lewes for Romola, one of the worst books Eliot ever wrote, and one of the most unnecessary books you'll ever read about Savonarola. (Though I have to admit that I have the tiniest bit of a crush on Savonarola. I think it's his nose. Also, his monomania.)

Reluctantly Hallmark

2006-04-01T08:26:00.000-05:00

My second or third week at [redacted] I got saddled with birthdays. "I don't want birthday cards that we all have to sign because those are lame," The Ballsy Career Gal said. "Maybe just send a company-wide email that says happy birthday or something. You'll figure it out; you're creative."

I didn't want to be birthday-creative. I didn't want to be the birthday guy. But I also didn't want to be the new guy who said "no" too often. So my plan was to write the email, have it be too creative, and then have The Ballsy Career Gal or someone else say, "You know, Hallmark's not bad."

Of course, they didn't. They loved the birthday emails. They're now this huge thing, and the meaner or more out there I am, the better they go over. Well, except for one. One birthday boy didn't like the fact that I compared his birth with the coming of the anti-Christ. However, I don't like that guy in the first place and if anyone deserves an Omen reference, it's him.

Anyway, here's my most recent birthday email I did, this time for the Aging Rockstar in the office:

_____________________
As a child, I watched Alice Cooper sing "Welcome to My Nightmare" on The Muppet Show and had nightmares of my own for weeks following. Being a rockstar never seemed like a viable career alternative after that. Rockstars were always biting the heads off of rats or sleeping with Joni Mitchell or drowning in pools of vomit or not kicking Tiny Tim's ass all the livelong day like I feel they really should have been. I mean, come on rockstars. There's harmless freakshow and then there's this. Anyway: rockstars scared me. Especially if you were Prince and I was 13 and you were crawling naked across the floor after slithering out of a bathtub and I wasn't sure what the camera man's intentions were but I was pretty sure that 60 Minutes did a special about what happened to kids in situations like this, and it always involved crying in court.

[redacted] is a different breed of rockstar. If [redacted] swung an electric guitar on stage, it would be an electric Nerf guitar, and it would bounce harmlessly off the drummer's head and then they'd smile some funny smile and make Isaac-from-the-Love-Boat fingers at each other. [redacted] would probably challenge you to a skip-off – and then let you win. [redacted] wouldn't trash a hotel room; he would carefully refold the towels and probably leave a little "Have a Great Day!" note for the housekeeping staff and even if they didn't speak English or couldn't read or were learning disabled and this is the only job they could get because the dyslexia wasn't caught in time only maybe that one teacher had an inkling but the wage we pay to educators in this country is measured in what? Pennies? Anyway, even people who don't take to reading would know that the note said "Have a Great Day!" because [redacted] would hang around and make sure that they got it and that they understood what it said because [redacted] is Very Careful.

[redacted] is what's going to make Rock 'n' Roll great again. And he'll do it not by dating an endless string of supermodels named Tawny or Lace or Chardonnay because they're trashy and besides those girls don't really date so much as they find themselves waking up in strange apartments wondering how they got there and who's going to do their hair that morning. Sometimes these supermodels are force-fed mind altering drugs and there they are, several years later married to Billy Joel and thinking it's a good idea when really he's just a drunk with a piano and the world's got enough of those that we don’t really need to encourage Billy Joel any more than we have to, right? "Shut it, Piano Man." And don't even get me started on Rick "Zombie King" Ocasek.

So today, on [redacted]'s birthday, don't bother singing him the Happy Birthday Song – and not just because I've told you again and again not to because that song is like nails on a chalkboard especially when it's sung at a Benihana because the thing I don't want to happen there is for one of those Japanese guys behind the hot metal grill to try and hit all the right notes instead of watching where that samauri sword of a chopping knife is going to end up because on my list of places to be stabbed, in the Benihana isn’t one of them. But back to [redacted] and the Birthday Song: don't sing it, because [redacted] should sing his own song for us. Because he's our rockstar. And the kid's all right.

Reading: Shirley -- "Men of England!"

2006-03-30T21:06:00.000-05:00

"Men of England! look at your poor girls, many of them fading round you, dropping off in consumption or decline; or, what is worse, degenerating to sour old maids, - envious, backbiting, wretched, because life is a desert to them: or, what is worst of all, reduced to strive, by scarce modest coquetry and debasing artifice, to gain that position and consideration by marriage which to celibacy is denied. Fathers! cannot you alter these things? Perhaps not all at once; but consider the matter well when it is brought before you, receive it as a theme worthy of thought: do not dismiss it with an idle jest or an unmanly insult. You would wish to be proud of your daughters and not to blush for them - then seek for them an interest and an occupation which shall raise them above the flirt, the manoeuvrer, the mischief-making tale-bearer. Keep your girls' minds narrow and fettered - they will still be a plague and a care, sometimes a disgrace to you: cultivate them - give them scope and work - they will be your gayest companions in health; your tenderest nurses in sickness; your most faithful prop in age."

I Discover That I Have a Doppleganger

2006-03-29T16:15:00.000-05:00

There are two other offices on the same floor as [redacted]. One of them houses Quick Turn Luke (who I haven't seen in a while and who apparently has been replaced by The Evil Professor and Unfortunately Shaped Fat Guy). I also sometimes run into Nicotine Girl and her Maybe Gay Guy Friend.

Nicotine Girl (duh) smokes. A lot. Like, every time I head to the restroom, she and Maybe Gay Guy Friend are waiting at the elevator so she can get her fix. From what I can tell, Maybe Gay Guy Friend doesn't smoke. And now that I think about it, I bet that when they tell the story, she's all, "And then there's the guy on the floor I work on who's, like, always peeing. I think he has a bladder infection." But I totally don't. I just drink lots of water. So whatever, I see them a lot, and there's this weird...vibe between Maybe Gay Guy Friend and me. There's also this they're-totally-talking-about-me-in-the-elevator-on-the-way-down feeling, too. So: hello schizophrenia. But back to the vibe. I don't know if it's flirty or malicious, which is troubling since those are two emotions one would hopefully be able to differentiate; all I know is, there is one.

For a while, I had a Vandyke-ish thing going on with my facial hair, only without the moustache part; so I guess what I really had was an Amish Vandyke, only my pants all have zippers. But we're losing focus here. A couple of weeks ago, in an awkward grooming accident, I found myself sans Vandyke. It's not that I looked great with the Vandyke; however, I look considerably younger and my face more roundish without it.

Today, as I'm coming back from lunch with my friend Nancy and our boss The Ballsy Career Gal, I pass Nicotine Girl and Maybe Gay Guy Friend -- and he's got my facial hair. Which he didn't have before. And what makes the whole thing even weirder is that he and I had run into each other once in the men's room shortly after my facial hair disappeared, and I saw him do the tiniest of double takes.

And now? He's me -- from the past.

So how do I proceed? I mean, I can't necessarily say, "Hey, nice chin pubes," because we never had that relationship before he went all hirsute. But I also feel like there needs to be some acknowledgment of our dopplegangeresque role-reversal. Maybe I'll grow back only the left side of my facial hair, and I'll see what he does with that.

Yeah. That sounds like just the plan...

In which I am an ass, often

2006-03-29T11:24:00.000-05:00

It was in the middle of feeling self-righteously angry with Zach that I realized that actually, no, I was the one in the wrong. But I had already committed to the moment -- committed to the moment for the last half hour or so, from the moment I got home from a zoo lecture to when Zach came home from dinner -- and feelings were already hurt and pretty awful things had already been said ("Go ahead and say what you have to say; I'm as angry with you as I can be." -- M. Bevel) and I didn't know what to do.

"I don't get why you're so upset that I didn't stay for the rest of something I wasn't enjoying in the first place."

Yesterday, Clyde Roper, who is Dead to Me, spoke to the invertebrate volunteers at the National Zoo about cephalopods -- octopuses, squids, cuttles. And before we even get to that, I should probably share the quick story about how I had ugly thoughts about a blind woman for Christ's sake. I'm standing on the up-escalator at the Cleveland Park metro, reading Shirley and totally You-Go-Girl!-ing Caroline in my head, when this blind woman comes marching up the escalator with her seeing eye dog in tow. The rules of any and all escalator are (a) Stand to the right; and (b) Walk to the Left. However, because Helen Keller has her pet with her, she's taking up the whole escalator on her quest to reach the top. Which means that now I, too, have to start walking up the escalator. And I now can't read, and I'm at a good part in my book, and I have to climb the escalator which okay, yeah, that's probably good for me but I don't want to be coerced into fitness by the disabled. So I'm clomping up the escalator, muttering things like, "Where the hell does a blind woman have to get in such a hurry?" and "Can't she see I'm reading here?"

Now, Clyde Roper is Dead to Me because maybe three years ago I sent him a fan email. In '99, I think, the Discovery Channel had a program on called "Search for the Giant Squid" that featured Clyde and I made everyone in my house wear a squid hat I made out of brown paper and we ate calamari and watched as the Giant Squid pulled an Al Capone's Vault on us and didn't show. So, the email I sent was sort of a, "Sorry that didn't pan out, but hey, it's 2002 and I think you're fantastic." Also, at the time, there was this cocky young upstart on the Giant Squid scene named Steve O'Shea who was trying to push Clyde out of the way with his fancy new science and his New Zealand accent and I wanted to show Clyde that when the revolution came, I had his back.
Anyway.

I send this email and I don't hear from him and I think, "Well, he was looking pretty old; maybe he died." Only, 'course, he hadn't because there he was, last night, speaking to us. During dinner, before the meeting, I told a fellow volunteer, Sharon, that Roper was Dead to Me and she laughed that sort of protective I'll-pretend-that's-funny-because-it's-actually-weird laugh. Later, though, after the discussion when I was saying goodbye to my friends Suzanne and Scott, Sharon comes up and says, "Mike, you'd better get down there. He's giving out his email address." And I am incensed. "So he can what," I asked her, "not answer them?" She laughed that protective laugh again. I marched down to Clyde.

As I approach, I overhear him say that he's been in correspondence with a "young man from Ohio." "Oh, so now he's everybody's pen pal," I thought. This other, painfully geeky teenaged girl is monopolizing Clyde, telling him that if he gets an email from "starkitty2000@[redacted].com" he'll know it's from her. I toy with the idea of submitting her email to porn websites and sites for Russian Brides because I'm In a Mood, but think better of it. At the first sign of a break in the conversation (Geeky Girl stopped to fish something out of her braces), I stepped up and said, "Clyde Roper? I sent you an email 3 years ago and you never wrote me back." He hemmed and hawed about how he was sorry and he had probably been out of the country and it's tough to keep up with and I stand there, like I'm somehow owed an answer. "Clyde Roper," I said, as I made my departure: "You're Dead to Me." He promised he would respond to the next email I sent.

I had invited Zach to come to the lecture because it was open to the general public because apparently to stay an emeritus at the Smithsonian you have to have so many "I gave a boring talk here" hours under your belt. Zach agreed, which is rare for Zach, and he stayed for an hour, which is par for Zach, and then he left because honestly: the talk was not so much. It's not like I'm some sort of Jacques Cousteau figure in a knitted cap with mournful flute music in the background while I talk about the "bosom of the ocean" and "the sea, in all her majesty." Truth is, I'm a little terrified of the ocean and whales in particular and yeah, go ahead, yuck it up because what could be funnier than someone's legitimate phobia, asshole? Anyway, I'm no marine biologist, but I know a bit from octopuses and I didn't learn anything last night that I didn't already know. And Clyde Roper's supposed to be some sort of Cephalopod Super Genius. So Zach leaves, says he's going to grab a bite to eat, and I'm left alone at this lecture that's not all that great listening to the two teenaged boys behind me make fun of Clyde Roper's New England accent which: hee. But also: knock it off because it stopped being funny 20 minutes into the lecture.

I choose not to meet Zach at the restaurant after the meeting because I'm In a Mood. I make passive-aggressive "I wish you'd stay, but go if you have to, you will anyway" noises when he left; I called him at the restaurant and asked if I should just wait for him at the subway station. I fumed on the way home and worked myself into a Towering Inferno of (Misplaced) Anger and Rage. By the time Zach came home, I had made the entire evening his fault, from the blind woman to the Geeky Girl to Clyde Roper Who is Dead to Me. When Zach started a load of laundry, I pounced.

It was one of those stupid arguments that wasn't at all about what I was riled up about (his leaving the lecture) and was instead about things I had let bottle up inside me (royally fucked up childhood with reprecussions that just don't seem to stop). And when I realized that -- in the middle of being self-righteously pissed like I mentioned up top -- I felt even worse. Here I was, saying awful things to and about the man that I am most certainly madly in love with.

And then I started crying.

And then I cried some more.

And then I got snotty -- not like sassy snotty but gross snotty, the kind that when you were a kid you'd never really wipe so there'd be this clear veneer of snot-crust on your upper lip.

I wasn't entirely mad at Zach. I was mildly irritated. Who I was really hurt by was me -- my own mind ganging up and kicking my own ass. I have this thing where I feel like I'm required to stay in uncomfortable situations because it's polite. Zach, who is healthier in this regard, figures that you give it a college try and then you count your losses on the way out. "I don't think it's healthy that you'd want to stay at a lecture or an event that you hated." And he's right. But rather than dealing with it as a Mike-quirk, I turned it into a Zach-shortcoming. Because I'm Just and Fair. I always feel that my own needs and wants have to come secondary to whoever else might be in the room. It's this really gross way I have of "caring" for other people that's completely toxic and not helpful.

This was a whole lot of personal to lob onto an unsuspecting public (all 12 of you). I think my hope is that by writing it down I'll better recognize it in the future and nip it in the bud before I'm sitting all Glenn Close-like from that one scene in Fatal Attraction where she's vacant and numb on the floor of her kick-ass loft while flicking the lamp next to her on and off as she goes over all the recipes for rabbit stew she has in her repertoire.
Clyde Roper, though, is still Dead to Me.

Still reading: Shirley

2006-03-29T09:57:00.000-05:00

Once upon a time there was Sara Moulton and she was afraid of mixers and I loved her. She was calm and soothing, and said reassuring things like, "I'm sure you'll do this better in your own home." There was a brittleness about Sara that was also appealing, like in the episode where they brought in some of her "friends" to liven up the show, though clearly these were people who had only just met each other and Sara in the green room minutes before taping. Sara looks uncomfortable around people. She reminds me of me sometimes.

Today I watched a 12-year-old named Dave Lieberman vibrate his way through 17 different dishes he needed to make in 30 minutes. Dave, who probably hasn't even finished puberty yet, lives in a loft in Manhattan with a huge kitchen and what looks like southern lighting. Because the universe is fair that way. He bounces like he has to pee and has difficulty enunciating words and sentences. He also styles his hair with that weird yeti-peak the gays are so fond of -- though I have no idea if Young Goodman Dave is a homersassy or not. I mean, yeah: girlfriend's Clay Aiken gay; but, like all male Food Network stars, he's oddly sexless (see also: Brown, Alton; Flay, Bobby; Chiarello, Michael and speaking of which, if they force Michael Chiarello to host one. more. poker party where he serves delicately cut finger sandwiches and couscous...). Dave Liberman's pretty, don't get me wrong, especially if NAMBLA's your bag (and really: why not?) and you're pretty good with the Sony Playstation ("We hear the talk, the innuendo/but we're busy upstairs playing his Nintendo." -- Andrea Martin. It's just odd, if not entirely impossible, to imagine Dave Lieberman in any sort of sexual situation. For one thing, the boy has ADHD and would probably grow bored before the sex itself could even start. "Hey! Is that string?"

I watch cooking shows to be soothed. To watch impossible things happen in places called "kitchens." One of my favorite quotes about cooking comes from Rita Rudner: "I read cookbooks like science fiction. I get to the end and think, 'Well, that's never going to happen.'" Anymore, though, the shows are too frantic. With only 30 minutes and 300 ingredients, it's always a race to the end and I'm tense with worry over if the chef is going to make it or not. Gone, it seems, are the days where a chef would walk you through one dish, or maybe a dish and a dessert. Instead, it's some culinary Longest Mile to test the endurance of both the viewer and the personality.

The whole reason you're even reading my thoughts on the Food Network is because I've had this entry in my queue for about a week now, and I just don't have the interest in finishing it. But I did spend some time writing and figured why the heck not?

But anyway. Shirley.

I love this book. A lot. And I feel I owe my girl Shirley an apology for calling her a whore. Shirley? I spoke rashly and in anger. I mean, I think it's a little squicky to be all up in Robert Moore's grill after Caroline told you how much she loves him -- but ultimately it's Robert Moore who's the whore in this book.

Robert Moore is that guy, you know? That guy who you and your friend Shirley both like, and it's kinda weird that you both like him but you have this feeling in your heart that he really likes you a little more and you guys hang out on weekends at the mall and stuff checking out the t-shirts at Hot Topic and sharing a cookie from Mrs. Fields that you paid for (though, really, Robert Moore always seems to get more bites out of the Lemon Cooler cookie than anyone else). And sometimes you think, "Totally. He's totally into me and he's the sweetest guy ever because look how kind he is to Shirley; but when we were sharing a milkshake at a booth in Johnny Rockets -- a milkshake that I had to pay for because Robert was drawing anarchy signs all over his duct-tape-covered wallet and he left it on top of his Dungeon Master's manual in his mom's basement -- he totally touched my foot under the table and then when that song with that Amy chick from that angsty band -- you know, the girl who dresses like a tired ballerina with a habit of secret cutting? When that song came on he so gave me a look and yeah, his breath is kinda stinky 'cause he smokes Kools he steals from his mom's purse (if only the guys at the comic book shop hadn't totally railroaded him out of a job, he'd be able to buy his own cigarettes) but still: we're totally doing it once we ditch Shirley." But then sometimes you think, "No. He did not just touch her earlobe while looking at Shirley's dragon-holding-a-hematite-ball earrings -- earrings I bought her back when we were going to be Best. Friends. Forever. So what, forever's just an ass-slap away? Because I totally saw that."

Robert Moore is divisive, playing Shirley and Caroline against each other, giving false hopes to both while totally being more into his textile mill than is healthy. To update the novel to modern times, turn the mill into a Chevy Impala and turn Robert Moore into this guy named Josh I once had a crush on but who totally shined me on and you'd have it. Thanks for opening up that wound again, Charlotte.

What makes Shirley such a fascinating character is her fluid gender identity. Once upon a time, Shirley was a man's name and yeah, I know. You'll just have to deal. Anyway, Shirley uses that to her advantage often, slipping casually into the "man's" role when necessary and even identifying and being identified as such. She's in a unique position in the novel; she owns the property that Robert Moore's textile mill sits on and I'm pretty sure it's unentailed, which means Shirley gets to do with it what she pleases. And since she's unmarried, she gets to call all the shots. Shirley is refreshingly bold for a female character from the mid-19th century; this allows us to wallow a bit longer with Caroline, the other female lead. I'm sure more than one college-level thesis has been written on the homoerotic subtext between Shirley and Caroline (which: meh. I mean, I guess if you've got to write a paper you've got to write a paper but I'm sort of over Queer Theory and think it and Camille Paglia need to take a long nap).

Shirley also has some pretty progressive theology going on -- not just for the time, but for any time. When Caroline and Shirley are told that women are lesser than men because of Adam's primacy over Eve (I wanted "primogenitacy" or "-icy" or whatever to be a word), Caroline responds by saying that she's not interested in believing that since she's not sure the translation can be trusted. She even uses the popular "time and place" argument, suggesting that Paul's admonishment to women in the church was directed to a specific church at a specific time in a specific place rather than something applicable through all time. I have a feeling that it would be pretty cool to sit and talk to Caroline about theology while Shirley did things like chopped wood, gave us spending money, and killed bugs.

In "Mike Writes a Book" news -- I haven't been. I wrote what I thought was a first chapter, was told that it was more like a middle chapter, and haven't done much of anything with it since. I'll need to tinkle or get off the potty soon, since we're meeting again this Tuesday.

Reading: Shirley (a dialogue)

2006-03-25T18:03:00.000-05:00

Mike: FINALLY.

Zach: What?

Mike: We have achieved Shirley.

Zach: Finally. What's she like?

Mike: So far? Kinda bitchy.

Of course, I've changed my mind a little bit about her now -- and the novel itself. But seriously: 168 pages before the titular character makes an appearance. Mostly, I'm just relieved that she exists.

Mr Helstone and Caroline pay a visit to Shirley, who is apparently Mr Moore's landlord now. She's spritely and energetic, sure. But then, she also spends something like 10 minutes talking about Caroline to Caroline's uncle -- while Caroline is sitting right there. And it's not necessarily kind things either, like how great she looks in a bustle or how hard she's rocking the petticoats. No, Shirley talks to Mr Helstone about how ill Caroline looks. Guys? Caroline's depressed, not deaf.

Caroline's depressed because Mr Moore has made it clear that Caroline won't be changing her last name to Moore any time soon. However, it's looking now like Shirley might be macking on Mr Moore herself. For instance, just now? Shirley received a secret note from Mr Moore. While Caroline was in the room.

That's all I'm saying.

The arrival of Shirley and the novel's concentration on the relationships between Caroline and Mr Moore (and Caroline and Shirley and Shirley and Mr Moore and Shirley and Mr Helstone and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice and Shirley)has really given a narrative jolt to the story. I feel a deeper sense of engagement with the text than I did when it was just a lot of whining about mill frames and economic ruin. Also, Charlotte Brontë does a fantastic job of selling repressed unrequited love.

I have to get back to the novel now. Shirley and Mr Moore have just been espied by Caroline as they take a secret walk in the woods in the garden at night. Hi, Shirley: You're a whore.

Reading: Shirley (con't some more)

2006-03-24T10:21:00.000-05:00

One hundred and fifty pages. Still no sign of Shirley.

The novel has been slow going. Some of that is the novel's fault. It hasn't gripped me in the way both Jane Eyre and Villette (the best book Brontë ever wrote, and yeah, I will challenge you to a thumb war over that one) did. The writing is very good; she's a clear and skilled writer (which I'm sure she's relieved to hear: "Thank god a gay college drop out with periodic acne and the wardrobe of an evacuee thinks I'm a good writer. Now I can stay dead in peace.") unlike, say, Mary Elizabeth Braddon who overwrites and overtells her stories when not belaboring them with plot twists even Helen Keller would see coming from 10 miles off in the fog.

Some of it's my fault, though. I'm still working on this book thing, and the first chapter I wrote, well it turns out that's actually not the first chapter and I'm writing the book too much like a short story and Navin said during our writing group, "Dude, you have, like, 6 flashbacks running in here -- this isn't Memento." So now I have to write a new chapter 1 to replace the old chapter 1, and the figure out how much from what I've already written is going to stay and how much of it needs to be shown the door.

But back to Brontë.

So, what you've got is, you've got your Robert Moore who's just French enough to piss everyone off in the novel even though he's not a true, full-blooded Frenchman. He has grand ambitions of a fully mechanized textile mill; unfortunately, these grand ambitions come at a time when England is suffering some pretty dramatic economic upheavals. Napoleon has been naughty, and the English levy sanctions against the French which really only serve to shoot themselves in the foot. The French are all, "Whatevs, bitches: we're going to Russia."

Caroline Helstone, niece of the sort of frightening and French-intolerant Mr. Helstone, has herself a little bit of a kissing-cousins crush on Robert Moore, only he's told her no. Told her no, of course, while giving her mixed signals which means every three or so pages I mutter, "Shut up, Robert Moore." Rob, turns out, is not in a position to marry; he's too busy trying to keep disgruntled Luddites from breaking apart his textile mill so, okay, I can see how that is important; but maybe you could dial it back to 11 with the Caroline flirting so she's not so confused about things and can make her Jew-baskets. That's right: Jew-baskets. Because the 1800s were a kinder, gentler time for anti-Semitism.

As I've said before, the novel reads a lot like Middlemarch. In the past Charlotte Brontë novels I've read, the narrative focuses on a main protagonist. In Shirley, the narrative is instead looking more at a community, and how they're weathering these early days of change. One of the reasons for Brontë to do this might be because there's still no sign of Shirley. Like, she meant to write all about Shirley, but Shirley kept calling in sick or something.

There's a scene I just read where Char is giving us a glimpse into the Yorke family, where she sort of telescopes the lives of some of the children. It's a very affective (effective?) moment in the novel, especially when Brontë reveals that one of these characters dies young:

"Mr. Yorke, if a magic mirror were now held before you, and if therein were shown you your two daughters as they will be twenty years from this night, what would you think? The magic mirror is here: you shall learn their destinies - and first that of your little life, Jessy.

Do you know this place? No, you never saw it; but you recognise the nature of these trees, this foliage - the cypress, the willow, the yew. Stone crosses like these are not unfamiliar to you, nor are these dim garlands of everlasting flowers. Here is the place - green sod and a gray marble headstone. Jessy sleeps below. She lived through an April day; much loved was she, much loving. She often, in her brief life, shed tears, she had frequent sorrows; she smiled between, gladdening whatever saw her. Her death was tranquil and happy in Rose's guardian arms, for Rose had been her stay and defence through many trials. The dying and the watching English girls were at that hour alone in a foreign country, and the soil of that country gave Jessy a grave."

Reading: Shirley (con't)

2006-03-22T10:19:00.000-05:00

Apparently Shirley is Shirley's best kept secret. One hundred pages in and still no sign of her.

Scenes from a Relationship: Passover

2006-03-21T16:39:00.000-05:00

Zach: I don't think I can go to the Unitarian Passover Seder.

Mike: Because?

Zach: There's going to be singing.

Mike: At a seder?

Zach: "Terry Winkler's Littlest Choir."

Mike: That's certainly answers why this night is different from all the other nights.

Reading: Shirley

2006-03-21T09:58:00.000-05:00

Zach giggles every time he sees the title. "Shirley," he'll say. "How absurd." One of the guys at work tried to make an Airplane! joke (which is right up there with Monty Python as far as my humor tolerance goes and just a reminder: I hate Monty Python). And the novel is 600 tiny-fonted pages long.

I'm not sure why I'm continuing to read it.

Shirley comes pretty soon after Jane Eyre, but rather than focusing on the life of one character, Brontë is anticipating George Eliot's Middlemarch. The time is at the beginning of the 19th century, and there's some mishigas between the French and the English (Napoleon's being naughty and the English figure that hurting themselves economically will teach those dirty Frenchies a lesson). This also coincides with England's industrial revolution, so skilled laborers are finding themselves replaced by machines and floundering in an economy that's no where near prepared to deal with this level of unemployment.

That's the first four or so chapters. Like I said, the book's written in a microscopic font size, and clocks in at a dense 600 pages -- and I haven't even met the titular Shirley yet. Part of the problem is that I just read those two Mary Elizabeth Braddons in pretty quick succession -- and they were both fairly action-packed sensation novels (well, "action packed" for a Victorian novel). This is something slower-paced, and it's a bit of a mental redirect. I'm a hundred pages in, and no one has been poisoned, accused of being someone dead, come back as a man named Raymond, or married to her own brother. However, nothing much else has happened, either. Some frames were destroyed that would have helped a character build his textile mill. There's quite a bit of general unrest and unease. But that's pretty much all I've got.

There was this, though:

"You held out your hand for an egg, and fate put into it a scorpion. Show no consternation; close your fingers firmly upon the gift; let it sting through your palm. Never mind; in time, after your hand and arm have swelled and quivered long with torture, the squeezed scorpion will die, and you will have learned the great lesson how to endure without a sob. For the whole remnant of your life, if you survive the test - some, it is said, die under it - you will be stronger, wiser, less sensitive. This you are not aware of, perhaps, at the time, and so cannot borrow courage of that hope. Nature, however, as has been intimated, is an excellent friend in such cases, sealing the lips, interdicting utterance, commanding a placid dissimulation - a dissimulation often wearing an easy and gay mien at first, settling down to sorrow and paleness in time, then passing away, and leaving a convenient stoicism, not the less fortifying because it is half-bitter."

V for Vendetta

2006-03-21T09:57:00.000-05:00

It's the best movie ever made. If you live in the Washington DC Metropolitan area, and you're looking to see it, but you have no one to go with because all of your friends have been burned by Natalie Portman too many times before (see also: Brothers, Wachowski): call me. Or, if you don't have my phone number, email me. I will see it with you. I'll see it with you twice, sneaking from one theater to another. I will go every day this week. And next week.

My first time out was with the delightful Uncle Cliffy at the Chinatown Regal Theatre and even the weird, out of place clapping at not particularly key moments insisted upon by that one woman a couple rows down from us didn't pull me out of the movie at all. I had sent Uncle Cliffy an email earlier that day saying, "I should get this out in the open now: I'm a movie chatterer." But the movie had me so completely rapt-ed up that it never even really occurred to me to say anything at all to my movie date. Well, except towards the end, when Natalie Portman shows up in an ill-advised skirt/blouse combo. Just because you're living in a distopian future doesn't mean you have to clothe yourself in bad ideas from the past.

Anyway.

I won't say anything at all about the plot; I will say that the movie is the most beautiful love letter to readers ever. There are blatant shout-outs to The Count of Monte Cristo. There are also hints of The Phantom of the Opera, The Secret Agent, 1984 -- as well as a generous smattering of Shakespeare and Goethe's Faust.

I truly can't remember the last time I was this worked up about a movie. So, let's go. You and I. Now.

Jury Duty: The Whole Story

2006-03-15T15:16:00.000-05:00

One of the first things you'll do as a potential juror (after taking the Metro and after not finding any coffee and after waiting in the security line behind this woman with not one, not two, but three switchblades and a mace gun and after the security guy makes you turn on your CD walkman and then makes a face at you because apparently your Will Taylor and Strings Attached CD isn't hardcore enough) is watch a video about jury duty hosted by your old friends Ed Bradley and Diane Sawyer. Ed Bradley will tell you about the days where they used to drown people for justice. Diane Sawyer has a lot of hair.

Then you'll wait.

And wait.

And while you're already waiting, you might as well try waiting because once you've got that down? You'll wait some more.

Before you wait, though, you get to watch the parade of folks who are trying to get out of duty. These are Very Important People in suits and women with children who need changing and the two meth addicts who, for some reason, chose today to follow the rules. To get out of jury duty you have to stand in a line and explain to the permanently irritable woman why you need out of jury duty. And she will ask you why you waited a month to realize that you need out of jury duty. "Were you waiting to see if Europe was going to go somewhere?" she asked this one woman who had made inconvenient vacation plans. "Ma'am, you've had a month. I'll see what I can do, but maybe you'd best spend lunch at the library looking at picture books of the countries you're probably going to miss seeing. NEXT!" But the best of all was this Korean man who tried to explain that he didn't understand English well enough to be a juror.

I had no intention of missing jury duty. Besides at least one guilt-free day away from the office (the Permanently Irritable Woman told the tiniest Latino ever that, "If your employer even thinks about firing you for jury duty he'll have to deal with me and I am not a pleasant woman to deal with when you break the rules. NEXT!"), I was a little excited about participating in this process and watching our legal system in action. While I have no intention of serving my country in the military, I do take every opportunity to vote and figured this, too, counted as helping to make my country run.

I've never served on a jury before. I think I received a summons once when I lived in Portland, and if I did, then I'm positive that I didn't show up for it which makes me a Bad Citizen and you should take the previous paragraph where I mention "participating in this process" and "watching our legal system in action" and "I do take every opportunity to vote" with a grain of salt or, maybe, rather: a salt lick. Most of my insight into the "legal machine" as it were is like most everyone else's -- from television. And, because television has fucked us rawly in the ass again: it's nothing like that. First off, no Dylan McDermott (or is it Dermot Mulroney? I just call them Dermot McDermott, but most importantly: yes and please); secondly, no witness stand histrionics where someone leaps up and say, "Yeah, okay, I did it! It was me, not Johnny!"; and thirdly: motherfuck it was long.

We were on that jury for 19 years. Some of us died on that jury. (Or at least, some of us smelled like we died on that jury, and here's what I want to say about that: Hi, juror 12A? Nevermind. I don't even have words. But you, sir, are disgusting.) I mean, sure: at first we were all about being on the jury and we took copious notes but then by the second day we were pretty much just yadda-yadda-yadda-ing our way through most of the defense's case.

The case itself? A civil trial between a woman on a bicycle and a very, very old German guy. What was frustrating is that both sides spent an inordinate amount of time going over medical things like her ankle and her shoulder and when we all finally made it to the deliberation room, it only took us 8 minutes to reach a verdict because the first question on the juror's worksheet was, "Was the defendant negligent?" And since no, turns out, he wasn't (she was coming the wrong way and on the wrong side of the street, and he really did all he was capable of as a driver) -- we could have finished this puppy up on Monday. After we had reached our verdict, we hung out for another 10 minutes because we didn't want to look like premature adjudicators or anything. I learned a lot about one of my juror's love for Oprah. "And her production company? Harpo? That's O-p-r-a-h backwards and it's also the name of her husband in The Color Purple. But not really, because that was only a movie."

Surely this woman is Wisdom. And she is Good. And she is on a jury.

That's the issue, I guess, that I have with the jury system. And while yeah, it's funny, hearing stories about stupid girls loving Oprah -- these are the same people who get to decide everything from civil trials to important, life-or-death criminal proceedings. And because of network television and all those court procedurals, these are people who think it's going to be as easy as that. That the evidence will be incredibly cut and dry because of DNA and all of that. Or because of some dramatic courtroom finish. Honestly, the smelly guy (Juror 12A) said, "I really thought she would admit that her case was kinda flimsy after the defense poked all those holes." Like it works that way.

And finally, some last words on Juror 12A:

So, there's Juror 2 -- he's the first person and also the foreman. Then there's me (Juror 7), Juror 9, and then some other jurors I don't remember. And then, right behind me, is Juror 12A. And, as has been said a number of times, Juror 12A smelled like parboiled ass. Soaked in urine. Doused in beer. I'm not the only one who notices this, by the way. Juror 9 next to me -- the one who loves Oprah ("She's just so, you know. She's. I don't even know how to say how great she is because she's just so, you know, great." Exact. Fucking. Quote.) -- she keeps sniffing periodically. Sniffing and looking my way. So I try to show that I smell it too, and that it's not me. I end up sniffing so much that Juror 2 offers me a Kleenex. Finally, after the lunch break I took Juror 9 aside and said, "Dude, it's totally not me." And she said, "Thank God." And then we both spent the remainder of the trail perched precariously on the edge of our seats. We were the most attentive jurors ever. Or at least, that's how we looked.

Jury Duty, Day 2

2006-03-14T07:00:00.000-05:00

I probably can't say much of anything about the trial yet, except to mention that it's a civil case rather than a criminal case; that we're supposed to be done today, but we could be there through tomorrow; that one of my fellow jurors smells like a urine-soaked brewery; and that if it were possible, the council for the defense would make sweet, sweet love to everyone one of us to ensure a "Not Guilty" verdict for his client.

In the meantime, I finished The Trail of the Serpent and...meh. But better "meh" than Lady Audley's Secret. This one is just as ridiculously filled with improbably circumstances (for one of Jabez-disguised-as-Raymond's fiendish plots to succeed, he needs a mimic. It just so happens, the World's Greatest Mimic happens to be in Paris at the nearby opera house. This mimic also just happens to be the same size and shape as the person Jabez-disguised-as-Raymond wants the mimic to mimic), and there are long stretches of the novel that totally feel like padding to increase the word-count (towards the end there were a couple two-three paragraphs that I skimmed more than read because out of nowhere, what Braddon thought the plot needed was a lot of exposition in the middle of an action sequence) -- but this story is much more engaging while reading it. Lady Audley's Secret, on the other hand, is only interest when the novel's done, and you approach it from a 21st-century perspective.

Up next on the docket is either Shirley or The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Following my "Alphabetically We Read" plan, Brontë should be next. However, April's book for my Bethesda Book Group is McCullers. I read the first chapter of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter last night and didn't think much of it. (So, I thought, they're mutes. I get it. They're silent, yet their silence means so much. Can we go now?) Since I have until the second week of April to read The Heart..., maybe I'll just put it off and read Shirley -- mostly because the title makes Zach giggle every time he sees it. ">snerk<, Shirley," he'll say. "How improbable."

Jury Duty

2006-03-13T06:47:00.000-05:00

I had hoped that scrawling Pick Me! Pick Me! on the jury form I received several months back would keep them from, you know picking me. But I've been summoned.

I've never served on a jury before. My dad served on one at the same time Charles Manson was on trial. When I was older, he'd tell stories of walking by Squeaky Frome and Co., sitting outside the courthouse, swastikas carved in their foreheads. My mom carries a pistol around in her purse all the time ("Really?" Zach had asked once. "Even when I was there? Your mom was packing heat?"), so I imagine if she ever got called to serve she'd either (a) have problems at the metal detector; or (b) find herself in the position of having to serve swift justice on someone she felt got away too easily.

And don't think she wouldn't. She's firm, but fair.

Anyway, I'm taking The Trail of the Serpent to finish (they've busted Daredevil Dick out of the asylum; he wears wigs now) and a notebook to make sure I get any lunacy down on paper.

(Truth be told, I'm a little excited.)

Scenes from a Relationship: The Trail of the Serpent Edition

2006-03-12T16:44:00.000-05:00

Mike: Great.

Zach: Hm?

Mike: Well, it looks like the illegitimate child of Jabez North (now disguised as Raymond) is going to serve as some kind of nurses aide to Daredevil Dick, who thinks he's Napoleon or is at least acting like he thinks he's Napoleon, in the asylum he's been sent to after being unfairly found guilty of the murder of his wealthy uncle. We all know that it was actually Jabez North before he disguised himself as Raymond who murdered Dick's uncle -- only now, Jabez North disguised as Raymond has tricked Valerie into poisoning her secret husband, the opera singer. But I'm pretty sure that Valerie's husband isn't really dead, he's being kept hidden in the psychic/chemist's flat.

Zach: ...I--

Mike: I mean, the kid's only 8 years old now. What kind of help can he be? Sure, he's been raised by the mute police detective and the tomboyish Kuppins -- but does that mean he's ready for this kind of assignment? And will the mute marry Kuppins? Because that would be weird.

Zach: Do you talk to other people like this? Or is it just me?

Open Mic Night

2006-03-11T09:05:00.000-05:00

Crazy Cat Lady? Briefly mentioned in the Barnes & Goebbels story?

So, I'm telling the "Barnes & Goebbels" story (which is an awesome story to tell; I mean, I enjoyed putting it in writing, but it's got that straw-up-the-nose quality that just makes it more awesome told. Remind me to tell it to you if I ever see you) at work and my boss Patrick is almost crying and I get to the part about how the book group had had some previous experience, what with the woman and her bag of stuffed kitties ("You're not exaggerating, right?" Zach had asked me later. "You know, sometimes you...embellish") and a co-worker, Anne, comes out of her office and says, "Stuffed kitties? Oh my god, I know that woman!"

Turns out, Crazy Cat Lady had infiltrated Anne's Toastmasters group. Where one of her kitties tried to give a speech. "She was a little disruptive," Anne said.

But we're not done with Crazy Cat Lady. Oh, no.

In an effort to get more comfortable with my writing, I decided to try reading something at the Bethesda Writer's Center's Open Mic Night last night. While I do okay speaking in front of fairly large crowds at the Invertebrate Exhibit, I'm not as confident reading in front of other people. Especially my own stuff in front of other people. What if I don't look up enough? What if I look up too much and lose my place? What if I speed-read like I normally do when reading aloud?

Anyway, we'll get to how I did in a second. The main point of this is that, while sitting with my friends Anne from work, Debra from book group, and Radio Bill (Anne's boyfriend), guess who walks in? With a bag full of stuffed kitties? It was awesome.

Turns out, Crazy Cat Lady is a regular at the Bethesda Writer's Center's Open Mic Night. When we came back from the intermission (I read during the first part of the evening), it was Crazy Cat Lady's turn. And...it was...she...

Let me break it down for you:

So, the room is set up with about five or so rows of chairs, 8 chairs to a row. There's also a couch and a table with some wine. Crazy Cat Lady sprawls out on the couch and has her serial killer-looking manservant (who spoke not a word, but went straight to his work) bring her several glasses of wine throughout the evening. The cats don't really make an appearance this evening, but you can totally see several tails sticking out of the bag.

Crazy Cat Lady has some sort of upper respiratory infection, so she coughs. A lot. And then hocks up loogies that she lady-likely makes a big display of swallowing. It's never clear throughout the night if Crazy Cat Lady really knows where she is, or why people keep standing up to go to the podium to read. Mostly, she just sits, drinks her wine, and gestures to her serial killer manservant.

During the intermission, Crazy Cat Lady mingles with the others, who ask her how she's doing ("Fine, though I've got this tickle in my throat") and what has she been up to ("I was supposed to go visit a Buddhist temple, but I couldn't find anyone to watch my kitties"). So meanwhile, while this is going on, these two women, a white woman and a black woman, are having an argument about Ntozake Shange. "I love her books," the black woman said. "They're plays," the white woman countered; "and her best is For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf." "Not Enuf," the black woman says. "I'm sorry?" "It's For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Not Enuf," the black woman tries to correct. "No, no, no: you're wrong." "But I've read the book," the black woman says. "It's not a book," the white woman gruffs; "it's a play." "But I read it in a book," the black woman says, complete with neck action; "and that book was called For Colored Women Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Not Enuf. 'When the Rainbow is Enuf'? That doesn't make any sense."

I'd had to pee ever since I had gone up to read, so I had to leave those two ladies to their Shange Roundtable. In the bathroom, the MC of the evening, a tall Amish-looking man (who, as I was to learn later in the evening, translates Czech poetry), says to me -- while I'm peeing -- "Your piece was very good. I think I probably wouldn't have liked it as much on the page as I did you reading it." Which: whatever. I'm holding my penis in front of a man who looks like he'd be more comfortable at a barn raising and he's critiquing my writing and all I want to do is pee, you know? Maybe we could do this mini-workshop somewhere without a urinal cake?

So, intermission is over, I can't tell if the white woman or the black woman (who loudly announced after her reading that she has a book soon to come out. Just as soon as she could find a publisher) have come to any sort of truce or agreement about the "Enuf/not Enuf" summit, and then I hear the MC call out Crazy Cat Lady's name. And I realize that this evening could not possibly get any better, unless it was to reveal that Crazy Cat Lady and Barnes & Goebbels guy were going to sing duets made popular by pop superstars like Barbra Streisand, Diana Ross, Kenny Rogers, and Lionel Richie.

"Oh, dear," Crazy Cat Lady says. She reaches into her bag of stuffed kitties and pulls out a manila folder stuffed with many pages of crazy. She takes a gulp of wine, and then says, "I don't normally read the tabloids--" and already I'm wondering why she feels the need to lie to us "--but I'm pretty fascinated by the Biblical prophecies of Nostradamus. But I'll start with Isaac Newton." And she just sort of...spoke. For, like, 10 minutes (we were told we had a 6 minute time limit) on the Bible, Nostradamus, Isaac Newton, beheadings, church politics of the 1500, the current political situation in Iraq, and none of it made any sense.

I mean, duh, right? But I've got to tell you: I kept hoping that she'd be brilliant. That her extemporaneous crazy talk would actually be filled with insightful things from her past life as a college professor before drink and frontal lobe insanity turned her to shopping bags full of stuffed kitties. But nay nay my friends. That was not to be. She just spoke and spoke and spoke. And then she said, "Thank you." And she was done.

I leaned over to the guy sitting next to me and asked, "Is she here a lot?" He nodded. "Is she always like that?" He leaned closer to me: "Sometimes she's less coherent."

Anyway -- I did fine. I did better than I thought I would -- but I could have done much better. I looked up once or twice during a section I didn't know as well, so I had to sort of make stuff up to get me back to the right sentence. I read "Haircuts and Therapy," a piece I took down awhile back, along with some others, because the hope is they can live happily in a book of essays. It was a very odd experience, reading something I had written and hearing people genuinely laugh. It's also an incredibly energizing experience. I only read the one piece, but I wanted to stand up there and read all the pieces I had brought. And maybe if I had shown up with my own bag of nuttiness, they might have let me.

______________________________
PS: The second weirdest performance of the evening was this woman who read her one-act, 6-character "playlet" to us. She tried to read all 6 characters. It really didn't work. The play itself, too, was incomprehensible: something about weather patterns and periodically she would stop and chortle, like this: "Ho! Ho! Ho!" Which may have been part of the play, but going by the rest of evening -- I'm really not sure.

Barnes & Goebbels

2006-03-09T17:07:00.000-05:00

"I was very close friends with Andy Warhol."

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

So last night, my book group met to discuss John Steinbeck's East of Eden (because it doesn't count as shameless fawning if we wait a year before following in Oprah's footsteps) at the Barnes & Noble in Bethesda. We meet there the 2nd Wednesday of each month and while we sometimes have a tough time staying on topic (for instance, last night I had a lot to share about Katie Holmes's "pregnancy" and Sarah Jessica Parker's gay husband) -- it's a great group of people. Especially once we said goodbye to Creepy Lionel and Very Important Stephanie.

Anyway, we're in our Circle of Sharing, and we're finishing up our "How've you been since last month?" conversations, and there's this guy in a fedora, a trench-like jacket, and a suitcase on wheels. Because why not? He gets the attention of our facilitator, Ben, and asks, "Is this a fiction book group?" And my spidey senses are already tingling because I don't trust people with suitcases on wheels. So Ben says, "Yeah." And the guy's all, "What do you do?" And Ben explains that we meet once a month to discuss a book. Then the guys asks, "But then what do you do?" Like we've missed some important step. And it was then that I realized we were in for some bad news from this guy.

It was also then that my friend Annemarie meowed.

Once upon a time, a woman with a basket full of stuffed cats joined our book group for the evening. Throughout the discussion, she would periodically meow for one of the cats in the bag and then would ask, in a very concerned voice, if we truly liked her kitties. Annemarie's meow, she said later, was an early warning system we all failed to heed.

Poor, socially inappropriate Ben then invites Crazy Suitcase Guy to join us. Several of us in the group gave short, terse headshakes that Ben either missed or completely ignored. "I don't know if I should," CSG says; "you see, I'm a published author. Maybe I would be too critical for this group." I can hear my friend Debra's eyes roll from across the circle.

Ben continues to (Goddammit, Ben, why? Why did you continue to?) encourage the guy to sit in with us, and he joins our circle. Oh, and he's picked up this honking huge book of Andy Warhol's photography.

"What, you want something to read if our discussion bores you?" Debra asks. A word or two about my friend Debra: she gets into fights with cabbies. She's also on the threshold of that time in one's life where one has more liberty to "let it all hang out." She's fearless in sometimes uncomfortable ways. And because I had already pegged this guy as looneytunes from way back (even without the help of Annemarie's meow) -- I didn't see this going anywhere good.

"I just feel the need for some protection from Andy Warhol," CSG says. We all kind of chuckle, thinking he's trying to make a joke. Nay nay, my friends. "You know, I was very close friends with Andy Warhol."

Yeah. I know.

"So what book are we discussing this evening?" he asked, holding Andy Warhol firmly on his crazy lap.

"East of Eden," Ben said.

"Ah, Steinbeck," CSG mused.

"Did you know him?" I asked? I shouldn't have asked. It was provocative to ask. Really, I couldn't help myself, though.

"No," CSG says, in that dismissive tone like all of a sudden I'm the crazy one. "Why would I?" He then launches into this whole birth narrative, and how he was 4 years old when Steinbeck died, so how could he possibly even know who Steinbeck is. I mean, yeah, he knows of him because CSG is a Very Important Published Author -- but it's not like he and John were BFF. Not like CSG and Andy Warhol. "I was very close friends with Andy Warhol," CSG repeated.

"Yeah, right," Debra muttered audibly. Debra mutters everything audibly. Once we went to see The Life Aquatic and she almost got in a fistfight with a guy in a cowboy hat. "Are you kidding me? You can't wear that in here!" Later, when Debra realized how much she hated the film, she said, "Maybe I could ask that guy to put his hat back on."

Anyway, Debra's muttered "Yeah, right" sets the guy off. "Why did she say that?" he wants to know. "Why would she say that?" Debra, no longer wanting to be in this guy's line of site (she was sitting right across from him), gets up and says, "Oh, Mike: here's that thing." And I say, loudly, "This is what she meant by, 'Yeah, right'" as I wave what appears to be a dry cleaning ticket because I hope that our little one-act will defuse the situation because CSG is really worked up about this.

So meanwhile, during our dumb show, CSG guy turns to this guy Tom and says, "She can say 'yeah, right' all she wants, but have you seen this!" And he flings open the Warhol book and shoves it onto Tom's lap. The picture? Isaac Asimov. The reason?

Yeah. I got nothing, too.

So things settle down a little. Debra returns to her seat, I feel like our clever ruse worked, and we're about to get back to discussing the book when CSG takes his cell phone from his wheeled suitcase and begins talking into it.

Loudly.

In German.

No one actually heard the phone ring. I didn't see him dial any numbers. And later, a quick check of all of our cell phones proved that reception on the bottom floor of the Bethesda Barnes & Noble is pretty much bupkes. He's chatting away in German (or "German" as Noah later suggested) and Ben taps him on the knee and gestures away from our circle, communicating to CSG that he should take his cell phone conversation away from the discussion. CSG makes a dismissive kinda-agreeing gesture with his hand, like, "I know, I know" -- but remains seated and talking very animatedly into the phone. Ben tries a second and third time, with no success. Finally, CSG shuts the phone and Ben says, "Next time, please take your cell phone conversation away from the group so that we can continue our discussion."

"But you weren't discussing anything," he said. "You were all laughing at me for knowing Andy Warhol." And then he went on and on about how he was going to tell Barnes & Noble about how we were using their space to be exclusionary and the crazy's really almost at eyeball level now and Debra tries to explain that actually, no, Barnes & Noble hosts us here, and that it's a Barnes & Noble book group and then the guy erupts in an orgasmic fountain of incoherent rage and yells:

"BARNES AND NOBLE? MORE LIKE BARNES & GOEBBELS!"

Yeah.

Yeah.

I KNOW.

He then begins to yell at us, telling us that we're all anti-Semites (roughly half the group is Jewish or Jew-friendly) and that he's very important and that he has to take these very important phone calls and we don't understand and that if we think we can just invade Iraq we'd better rethink that because a whole lot of vengence is going to rain down on us and actually, no, No, NO: He won't leave because we're Jew-haters and on and on and on and I'm actually pissed that I didn't have some kind of voice recorder at the ready because it was operatic in it's diagnoticness.

This guy? Definitely receiving services somewhere at some time.

Finally, he grabs his suitcase on wheels and storms away from us, clumping his suitcase up the escalator stairs and out of the store.

When it stopped being fucking terrifying, the whole thing was really about 17 different kinds of awesome. Seriously.

"What set him off, do you think?" Tom asked.

"Well, asking him to wear that yellow star was a big mistake," I said.

"The next time someone new tries to join us," Annemarie said, "and I meow? Listen to me next time!"

I gotta say, though: Barnes & Goebbels? That was kinda perfect.

READING: Lady Audley's Secret

2006-03-07T08:24:00.000-05:00

For those who would like to remain unspoiled concerning the intricacies of Lady Audley's Secret, you should probably save this entry for another day.

After the first two chapters, I turned to Zach and said, "I totally know what her secret is." It's like Braddon wasn't even trying. A couple more chapters after that, though, and I was back to being not so sure about her secret. "What's the look for?" Zach asked me. "Well, it's this secret."

Lady Audley's Secret isn't a good book. I purchased it, and another book by Braddon, The Trail of the Serpent, because of how much I loved Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White, The Moonstone, and No Name. Braddon rode the wave of Collins's popularity to literary and financial success. But she's just not in his league. (Truth be told, though, Collins himself is sometimes not in his own league. The man wrote something like eleventy million novels and not all of them are winners.)

Lady Audley's Secret is a "sensation novel" -- and they were totally the rage in the 1860s. Usually crazily and intricately plotted, in a sensation novel someone was going to end up in an asylum against her (usually her more so than his) will. There was usually a murder or two, and captivating villains, and late night crazyfast carriage rides through the moors or something. Elements of the supernatural might be found, but they weren't really the focus of the story. The sensation novel helped give rise to both the mystery novel and the thriller.

A bit more history, and then back to the book. When Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White appeared in 1860 (and PS: Collins and Dickens were totally BFF, often comparing notes on how to keep one's mistress happy), London went fucking nuts over it. There were Woman in White tea cozies and wall hangings. One could find Woman in White soaps and perfumes. Entire lines of clothing were based on what the women in the novel were wearing. The Woman in White was turned into a stage play several times over and pretty much gripped most of the English-speaking world during it's tenure. I love the idea of people wandering around, smelling of Laura Fairlie as they wear poor Anne Catherick's tattered white dress all over the damn place. It's a thought that brings me comfort.

Back to Lady Audley and her (not very interesting) secret.

So, turns out, Lady Audley isn't really who she says she is. Once upon a time Lady Audley had been a woman named Lucy Graham. And Lucy Graham had one time been a woman named Helen Talboys. And Helen Talboys? Started out life as Helen Maldon.

Helen Maldon marries a guy named George Talboys. She marries him because she's kinda not so much with the provincial life, and she'd like to get out of her father's home, and she'd like to have a fairly comfortable life. And while on one hand, sure: not so much with the romance there, Lucy -- the thing is, she's living in 1860. Romance is like a unicorn almost unless you're lucky enough to get a bit in a Jane Austen novel. Marriage -- for women, anyway -- was mostly about financial security. It was tough for property to be passed on to daughters (though that was starting to change) and if you wanted a comfortable life, you had to find a man who could make that happen.

Helen Maldon thinks George Talboys will be that man.

And he is, for a bit. And then the money runs out, and things aren't as fun as they had been, and Helen, pretty rightly I think, starts asking George what his plans are to rectify this cash flow situation. George's plan, then, is to abandon Helen, go to Australia, strike it big, and then come back for her. Only he doesn't tell Helen this; instead, one night, he tells her father that he's going out for a smoke -- and that's the last anyone ever sees of him.

Men: pulling the same shit since always.

Helen, once she gets over the hurt of being abandoned (with a baby; I forgot to mention the baby), realizes that the disappearance of her husband means she's got a second chance. She leaves her baby with her father and her old life at the door, assuming the name "Lucy Graham" and striking out for greener pastures. Those greener pastures end up being the wealthy grounds of Lord Audley's estate. She bewitches him as the governess of a doctor's family, and he asks for, and receives, Lucy Graham's hand in marriage. Lady Audley née Lucy Graham née Helen Talboys née Helen Maldon finally finds the life she wants to have, with the level of financial security and excess she's been looking for.

And for a time, Helen-Helen-Lucy-Lady is happy. She's won.

On one hand, yeah, I'm not thrilled with her choices. But from a 21st-century reader's perspective, I can see why she did what she did -- and knowing what I know about women's suffrage and the options out there for women in general in the 1800s: Go on with your bad self, I want to tell her. It's not like she left her baby on the moors somewhere. And, as far as Helen-Helen-Lucy-Lady knows, George isn't coming back. Why sit stewing in a bad situation?

When the novel opens, George is on a steamer back from Australia. He's made good on his idea of raking in the dough and wants to rejoin the family he left behind. Left behind, I might add, with no news of himself at all for several years. Like, not even a "G'day, mate! Wish you were here!" postcard. George expects that Lucy'll be waiting for him with open arms and his beautiful son. He says as much to one of the passengers on the boat. And because Mary Elizabeth Braddon is skilled with the subtle foreshadowing, George says something like, "If I find that anything has happened to my wife or son, I shall fall upon the ground dead."

Best get to falling, George.

George gets into town and runs into his friend Robert Audley -- of the same Audleys whom Helen-Helen-Lucy-Lady has married into. Robert is the nephew of Lord Audley, and he and George were friends from way back. And actually, the way that Braddon writes them, they seemed more like friends (wink-wink-nudge-nudge) from way back more than just, you know, school chums. 'Course, that's not what her stated intent is; she just needs there to be a connection between George and Robert so that Robert can investigate George's second disappearance. But guys, seriously: they're fucking homos humping the butt sex like there's no tomorrow. Trust me on this.

While hanging out with Robert, George discovers that his wife has died. The woman he abandoned and then thought, "I bet she's still hanging out for me several years later." The woman to whom he lied earlier, saying, "Back in a minute, hon. Just going out for a smoke." George falls into a funk, and Robert Audley prances around like he's wearing a Mary Poppins frock as he tries to two-spoons-of-sugar George out of his depression.

I have no sympathy for George. I get why he left, and I agree that he had to. But I don't think slinking off into the night to make one's fortune is the way one should handle that situation. I don't know that Helen-Helen-Lucy-Lady would have acted any differently if he had told her he was heading out to Australia for a spell -- but if he had left a note or something, I'd have more respect for him now. Now, I just can't stop laughing at him, especially after his "I'll die over any bad news!" drama queening on the boat. Yet again: George lied.

Robert takes George to Audley Court for a change of scenery. There, a secret is revealed and again George goes missing. This throws Robert Audley into a funk, as he mopes about thinking over how much he misses his friend. During all of this, his cousin Alicia practically throws herself at him repeatedly to get him to notice and fall in love with her. However, Rob's totally Brokeback over the missing George, so he never notices her. (Again, that Brokeback stuff: totally subtext. But not really.)

Robert then deerstalkers his way around London and the surrounding areas, trying to learn Lady Audley's secret as well as the whereabouts of George. When all is finally revealed, it's pretty disappointing. Plus, Braddon wants us to feel one way -- but the fact that I am a 21st-century reader makes that difficult.

Helen-Helen-Lucy-Lady is responsible for George's second disappearance. She bonks him on the head with a pipe and sends him down a well. And yeah, I know: illegal. Whatever. She's moved on with her life after being abandoned by her husband (because again, he didn't leave a note so what the hell's she supposed to think?) and now, said husband shows up all, "I'm totally going to tell on you." For a woman in the 1800s? This could be lethal. All a woman has is her reputation, and George Talboys is threatening to ruin that for Helen-Helen-Lucy-Lady. Fair? Not so much. So while I don't necessarily want to encourage a lot of pipe/well problem solving, I totally dig why she did it.

Braddon wants Helen-Helen-Lucy-Lady to be evil, though. She's the villain, and her evil must be stopped. But I just can't find my way to seeing Helen-Helen-Lucy-Lady to be all that rotten. She's deeply uninteresting, since all she wants to do is wear furs and shop; but she's not a monster. There's a scene after one of the big reveals where Helen-Helen-Lucy-Lady cries out that she's a "MAD WOMAN!" (and yeah, totally in all caps like that; it's kinda awesome), and Robert & Co. totally want to believe that. A psychiatric doctor stops by for a quick diagnosis, though, and he says, "She's not mad. None of the things she did look like madness. They look like self-preservation." And that psychiatrist wasn't given nearly enough book time because he's totally on the money with that. She's not mad -- she just knows that as soon as her secret is revealed she's ruined in a complete and total way.

Plus, bitch loves her furs -- and won't get to wear them if she's jailed or committed.

The novel doesn't hold up as well to the passage of time as my personal sensation novel hero Wilkie Collins's do. Not just in the way society thinks about and treats women, but also just in the technical aspects of writing, too. The novel is filled with pretty gaping plot holes, and she relies too much on Dickensian instances of coincidence. She'll spend inordinate amounts of time on certain pieces of evidence, only to not have them play out at all by the end of the novel. Plus George? Never stays missing. Ultimately, these just aren't characters at all that seem worth a full-length novel. Except maybe Lady Audley -- but she needs to find a better writer.

The Oscars

2006-03-07T05:41:00.000-05:00

I made it until 11:00 and then I couldn't take it any more. Seriously, I don't care about the technical Oscars given earlier in the week in Beverly Hills. I mean, great: they got an Oscar, and how proud we are of all of them. That doesn't mean I want them on the actual telecast. If they want on the actual telecast, they can do it the usual way: play a retarded man or an ugly woman who kills people. Or June Carter Cash.

I love Jon Stewart the way I love all the Jews: all at once and much too completely. However, maybe the Oscars isn't the best venue for this guy. Actors aren't very bright, especially if you're an actor named Keira Knightley and you let someone from the Helen Keller school of cosmetology apply your mascara. Subtle and really funny cracks aren't going to register. What will register? Ben Stiller dressed like some kind of freakshow gimp pretending to be invisible. And for the pants-wetting finale? Billy Crystal getting shot in the neck with a tranq dart. Actors need broad humor to know that they should laugh much like they need easy causes like AIDS and the environment to know that they have to care.

Also, I thought we had come to an agreement about the Debbie Allen situation, right? And I seem to remember all of us agreeing that no, actually, NO: there will be no more dance sequences at the Oscars. Not to beat a dead horse, but I still can't take Rob Lowe seriously. So there I am, not really enjoying the Oscars because they were either (a) boring or (b) painful (Oh, Lauren Bacall: bless your heart) and out of nowhere there's a burning car on stage and a lot of interpretive slo-mo dance. I didn't want to have to resort to the Geneva Convention about this, but I'm also not above putting Ms. Allen to death if it turns out she is somehow involved.

Also, what are we going to do about Meryl Streep? Take some time; we don't want to rush in to anything. But something needs to happen sooner rather than later. Either she needs to go or Robert Altman. I'll leave that up to committee.

Funny

2006-03-06T10:23:00.000-05:00

I'm funny. Just now, I said something, and my boyfriend totally laughed. I don't say this to be arrogant, or to, as the kids say, throw down so that now those of you out there who disagree can bring it. In fact, I don't really like people to tell me that they're funny at all. The new gal at work said to me, after pronouncing the word situation as sitchyation, "You know, I have a pretty dark and dry sense of humor." But the thing is, if you really do have that kind of humor, I'm pretty sure you lose all dry and dark street cred by drawing attention to it.

Last week, I received an email from a guy in my writing group. "Your writing is quite entertaining," he said, "and I'm looking forwarded to meeting with you." I joined this group back a couple weeks ago because I feel I'm at a place with two of the projects that I'm working on where it wouldn't hurt to have a little structure and critiquing. This group I found was just starting out, and I figured it would be best to get in on the ground floor, you know?

You totally didn't know, did you. And those of you who did know, knew better and didn't bother to tell me. Anyway, the first meeting of this group was long on introductions and short on any real talk of writing -- unless you count the one old guy who went through the entire list of publications who rejected him. "Then, back in 19-and-25 I received a very pleasant rejection notice from a little magazine just starting up called The New Yorker..." There were over 15 of us cramped into a corner of Panera on a Saturday, and there was already one South American gentleman who had issues with the personal boundaries. While standing in line to get tea, I was tempted just to embrace him and get it over with. "Are you happy now, Descamisado?"

I figured I would give the group one more chance. See if things settled down now that we had finally agreed on a schedule of meeting (the first Wednesday and the third third Saturday) and a venue (not Panera) and we'd all already introduced ourselves. "Finally, we'll get down to writing," I thought.

Wrong.

We met for the second time last Wednesday. This time there were around 12 of us in the back room of a coffee shop and while the venue was a little better, hi: we still introduced ourselves. Again. And here's the thing about introductions: they don't need to be any longer than 2 minutes top. And even two minutes is pushing it. You give your name, maybe where you live (though not really necessary), and in the case of this writing group, maybe a couple words about what you're working on and what you hope to accomplish. I don't want to hear about what your wife thinks about your writing. I don't want to hear about all the places that have rejected you ("And then, in 19-aught-12, I was rejected a third time...") and I especially don't want to hear another joke about the "Great American Novel." You're not going to write it. I'm not going to write it. Novels don't work that way. One of the great things about novels is that they appeal to different people differently. Anyway, Tom Wolfe already wrote it. Back to the point: nothing in your introduction to the group should take more than 5 minutes. I mean, what is it about old people, huh? I didn't realize how little patience I had for long-assed stories about the good old days -- and don't get me wrong: I love grandparents as much as the next youngster. But still: you're near death -- let's keep this brief.

So, the guy who wrote me an email? Works for a "prestigious" television crime show. I knew this, because the email I received from him was from his work. But even if he hadn't sent me a work email, I would have learned soon enough about which "prestigious" television crime show he worked for because he repeated that particular bit of personal information again. And again. And hey, whaddaya know: again.

I'm totally being a little hypocritical here. I mean, if I had a chance to work as a writer for a show or a magazine I truly loved, I'd drop it into as many conversations as possible. "Oh, this? It's a shirt I purchased for my little writing job at this out-of-the-way magazine. I doubt you've heard of it. The New Yorker?" Or, "You know, at The New Yorker, we have a little saying. And I know this because I work there." Or, "Ugh, if I've told Roz once, I've told her a thousand times..." That doesn't mean that I wouldn't be a full-on asshat, though, for doing it. Which I would be. Because that shit's whack. I'm glad you have a job. I'm glad you love your job. I don't need to hear you name-drop every five minutes about how great it is, because (a) it's on Fox; and (b) you're show is peripherally responsible for the existence of C.O.P.S.. That's not really something to be proud of, no matter how many criminals you've helped put away.

Anyway, Prestigious Television Crime Show guy's sitting to my right at the table. And even though he sent me an email, I don't introduce myself to him as, "Hey, remember me? I'm the guy you thought was funny after reading my blog." I don't like to draw attention to myself like that. Another reason, though, is that PTCS guy is totally working the room like he's the last comic standing in the Catskills. He's the kind of guy who feels like every sentence needs a punchline, and it doesn't matter if that punchline is funny or not. He's the kind of guy who makes it impossible for anyone else in the room to be funny, because this guy's totally aggressively funny. Only he forgot the funny part; he's aggressively unfunny.

So, the meeting's going on, everyone is re-introducing themselves, and PTCS guy can't quit it with the Shakespearean asides and the drum-roll-cymbal-crash punchlines. After one guy shared that he'd received more than his fair share of rejection notices, PTCS guy pops in with, "I hear with 6 you get egg roll!" Another time, he complimented himself by throwing in his own, "Thanks, ladies and germs: I'm here all week!" And it was then that I realized what hell would be like. Hell would be this guy, a microphone, a 5 drink minimum and no restroom in sight.

Oh, but it gets better.

There's this other guy, some government bureaucrat or something, sitting across the way who decides that somewhere in his head the synth solo from "The Final Countdown" has started playing, and he and PTCS guy are totally going to have a Funny Bone Smack Down. Whatever minute traces of funny that might have been left in the room are totally sucked up by this guy and then squandered. I realize at this point that my carefully chosen seat in the corner is a liability. I can't escape without drawing attention to myself. I beging to chew furiously on the inside of my cheek, cursing God and wishing for death. Not mine. PTCS guy's and the other guy's.

A nebbishy guy at the other end of the table mentions that he'd like some feedback on his online blog. "No one really reads it," he says. "I'd like to know if it's worth reading or not." PTCS guy asks, "Hey, are you that British Adventuress guy?" And, as you all know, no: he wasn't that British Adventuress guy. I'm that British Adventuress guy. I raise my hand and cop to the fact, and PTCS guy says, "Really? You?" And before I can work up a proper outrage, he goes on to say to the group, "If you guys read his site, you'd never believe that this guy here writes that stuff."

Yeah. I was dissed as suspectly funny. By a guy who was a seltzer bottle and a "Take my wife. Please!" away from a boot up the ass.

Here's the thing about funny: it's not a competition. It's not a full-contact sport. Funny is just a nice way to hang out with other people. I like it when everyone gets to contribute, and no one is grandstanding, and everyone gets a chance at a zinger or a punchline. I love it when funny builds on itself until what started as a simple crack about Gnostics in the 1st century becomes instead this epic story about a quest for conditioner because fine, whatever, you're the Messiah but dude, have you seen your hair lately? It's awesome.

PTCS guy couldn't allow that. Someone somewhere told him once that he was pretty funny, and PTCS figured he'd better milk that cow for all she's worth. He strikes me as the kind of guy who's worried people will forget that he's funny unless he cracks wise something like twice in any given 30-second period. "I have nothing else, really, to offer except for these awful puns and 'wry' observations," I think he's thinking. And sadly: he's right. Only, he's not even getting the funny part right.

I haven't even gotten around to the guy who shared this painful anecdote about his cousin who wrote a book. He's all, "So I said to him, 'At least you've written one more book than I have.'" And no one laughed, so he added, "Because I haven't written one yet." And still no one laughed. "And he's written, you know, one."

And still. No one. Laughed.

And don't even get me started about how he was outraged about Tupperwear.

I wanted to like this writing group. Really. However, I don't know that I can bear another meeting. I can't introduce myself again. I simply can't. And I can't vote any more on days to meet and times, and in what order we should submit stuff, and who should read it when. I just want to write stuff and read other people's stuff. But if I have to deal with PTCS guy again, it might kill me.

Make Room for Sissies

2006-03-01T13:21:00.000-05:00

I was never really a robust child. Sure, now my metabolism has delivered a hefty and poignant "fuck you" -- but once upon a time I was just a little wisp of a thing. A sissy, if you will.

I was called sissy for a lot of reasons. I liked to read. I liked having my hair brushed. I enjoyed dressing my teddy bear (named Teddy) in doll dresses letting him act out his favorite scenes from Gone with the Wind, which just happened to be my favorite scenes, too. I didn't care much for sports. I didn't like to be loud. And when my mom would take my brother and me out to the county dump to shoot her .22 pistol at the rats, I'd cry quietly in the back of the pickup truck and wish that I had a unicorn to ride swiftly away on.

Yeah.

As an adult, I'm not quite the sissy I was as a boy. For one thing, there are a lot of hard lessons out there for sissies to learn. The things that I valued: good books, nice discussions, tea -- these were things no one else valued, and this wasn't kept a secret from me at all. I was taunted, tormented, and bullied into the fairly "straight-acting" gay guy I am today. Sometimes, though, I still miss the tea parties.

I mention all this because we're going to switch from my cloying, sepia-toned memories to a work anecdote. We have this publication that [redacted] is putting out, and in both the publication and the marketing material that we'll use to try to drum up subscribers, there's a pull-quote of someone saying, "There's no room for sissies in this industry," or something like that. And it made me mad and sad, this idea that there's no room for sissies. And I realized that no one else was going to make room for sissies; it was going to have to be me.

"This is a little offensive," I told the writer. "I know you didn't necessarily write it, you're just quoting someone else, but still. (As I'm writing this, during lunch, Bronski Beat's playing on my radio. Neat.)

"Which part?"

"That 'sissies' part."

He giggled.

"You don't see it, really, do you?"

He giggled some more. "Say it again," he said.

"Great. Could you put an adult on the phone? Is your dad home?"

"Sorry. So, what you're saying is, you think the word 'sissy' is offensive."

"Yeah. I mean, it's not the c-word. Or the n-word. Or the f-word--"

"'Fuck'?"

"No. 'Faggot'. Besides, it's misleading. You think sissies aren't tough? Have you been a sissy? You think it's all Easy Street and unicorns being less masculine than your cohorts? The strongest people in the world, I think, are sissies and women who forgo epidurals."

He sat thoughtfully for a few moments. I pushed on. "The thing is, it makes me very uncomfortable to be involved or associated with a publication that's going to resort to that kind of elementary-school name calling. If it has to stay in the publication, that's one thing; it's a quote, someone stupidly said it. But I don't think we should use that quote in the marketing material. It looks like we're both valuing that statement and condoning it. And if we're doing either, I'm not sure there's room for me here."

"You feel that strongly about it?"

"Yeah. And I'm disappointed that you don't."

"No, no. I hear you. I just, you know: it's just a word. I don't think I thought about it from your angle before. You know, 'political correctness' and stuff."

"It's not about political correctness. It's about not using names. It's, like, basic kindergarten."

And I won. The quote's coming off the marketing material, and there's a chance that they may take the "sissy" part of the quote out, too. I don't know that I struck a huge blow for sissies everywhere -- but it felt really good, in the way telling someone "You know, that Pollack joke? So not funny and so not appropriate. Stop being an ass" feels good.

One small step for Michael Bevel: British Adventuress.
One giant tea party for Sissykind. BYOU.

READING: Lost Illusions (and why I hate the French)

2006-02-26T19:39:00.000-05:00

Fuck you, Balzac. You broke me. On page 250, after the eleventy millionth time Lucien cried, I gave up. I just couldn't find it in me to trudge ahead 500 more pages. I wasn't getting anything out of it. I wasn't looking forward to reading. Many times, I contemplated death. Not mine: Lucien's. But since there's another book after Lost Illusions (A Harlot High and Low) -- the only way that would happen is if I took time out to write some fanfic which: not so much.

So yeah. I'm done with Balzac. Unless someone writes in with a compelling reason to pick him up again, Balzac's dead to me. 'Course, he's dead to everyone else. Which means Balzac's fucked me again. Goddammit.

I was going to blame French literature in general. I kicked off this year of reading with Stendahl's The Red and the Black and hated almost every page of it. Two hundred and fifty pages of Balzac didn't endear the French to me much, either. Both novels were pretty similar: unlikable heroes struggle with unlikable secondary characters towards some sort of unsatisfying finish. Throw in a lot of irony and sardonicism (which is totally a word, so don't even bother looking it up in the dictionary) (no, really: stop) and you've got yourself (I'll come to your home and take that dictionary away) a French classic.

Just when I was getting ready to write off an entire country and its literature, though, I remembered how much I love Alexandre Dumas and his Musketeer novels, as well as The Count of Monte Cristo. Dumas, unlike Stendahl or Balzac, isn't necessarily trying to comment on French society. Mostly, he's just writing kick-ass adventure stories. (Though The Count of Monte Cristo is a little deeper than that. I mean, yeah, it's a lot of fun and there are cross-dressing lesbians in it -- but I think Dumas is saying some pretty profound and interesting things about the nature of regret and revenge.) Stendahl and Balzac want to be the conscience of their times -- and that, for this reader anyway, leads to some pretty uninteresting reading.

I'm also a fan of Victor Hugo. Both The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and Les Miserables are pretty fantastic reads -- though I gotta tell you, the musical of Les Miserables? Made me motion sick, what with that damn spinning stage. And again: he's not commenting so much on the irony of the society so much as he's telling some powerful human stories with interesting characters whom you actually end up caring about. Lucien, from Lost Illusions, cries to much to really care about.

My favorite French book of all time, though, and maybe one of my Top 10 Books, is Madame Bovary. Emma Bovary frustrates me and breaks my heart. She's also a hand mirror for me, sometimes, as she famously was for Flaubert himself. ("Madame Bovary c'est moi.") Emma Bovary finds herself in the unfortunate position of tragically discovering that life really isn't at all like a novel -- and things don't end well for women who don't grasp that in time. The way Flaubert ends Emma's life is a bold move at a time when realism wasn't quite so hip with the kids. It's jarring, fitting, and upsetting all at the same time.

So, clearly, it's not the French so much as it's these two particular Frenchies that have me staging beret burnings in the courtyard of the apartment building (though burning them indoors might actually help combat that old-person smell). The downside is, it's a book I bought that I couldn't finish. The upside is, I've got two free spots on my bookshelf.

Up next, Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Based on the cover alone, it's gotta be better than Lost Illusions, right?

Right?

READING: Lost Illusions

2006-02-21T11:04:00.000-05:00

One day you'll have a boyfriend who will make a mixed CD and that mixed CD will contain Wilson Phillips's "Hold On" and you will realize that you enjoy that song now unironically -- and that, actually, you have always enjoyed that song unironically but only pretended the irony to be mistaken for hip. Being 33 means never having to say you're sorry about Wilson Phillips.

And it feels great.

So, I've been reading Balzac's Lost Illusions for almost a week and let's go ahead and get something out of the way right now: if you're always going to giggle like a 10-year-old everytime you read Balzac's name, this journal is going to be a real rough time for you. So, let's try to get those giggles out now:

Balzac sounds like ball sack. Yeah. I know. You're a comedy genius.

I haven't been very fair about the Balzac (come on now...). I feel like I'm angry with him all the time for not being John Galsworthy, and for Lost Illusions not being The Forsyte Saga. Maybe Lost Illusions is my rebound book, and I should have taken more time to think about all the great times Soames, Irene, Old Jolyon, June, and I had. We were so right for one another in so many ways.

Lost Illusions is about two guys who read poetry to each other, but because it's France, and because it's the early 19th century, they can't homo their way down the Champs-Elysées. For one thing, they're not in Paris. Also, Lucien and David aren't really the Jack and Ennis of their times; Balzac doesn't really see the inherent gayosity of these two cats, and has given them women to fall in love with: Lucien with the beautiful and married Mme de Bargeton and David with Lucien's sister Eve.

But dig this scene:

"When he came to the line, 'If theirs be not happiness, is there such on earth?' he kissed the book, and the two friends were both moved to tears, for both were in love with Chénier, to idolatry."

I've got two words for those guys: Gay. And wad.

This novel is suffering from the same problems that The Red and the Black and The Princess Casamassima have, at least for me. Stories about poor boys blundering their way through high society are a tough tale to sell. We're usually meant to root for the hero in these cases, but why? Why do I want him to be in high society when high society, at least the way presented in these novels, is filled with gaseous airbags who poison intellect more than enrich it? On the other hand, sometimes the whole thing is supposed to be "satirically ironic" -- but a whole novel of that? Grates.

This novel is of the satirically ironic school. Lucien is a poet, or wants to be, and Mme de Bargeton loves him or at least loves the idea of being the lover of a great poet. French society, though, is so busy being witty and French that they don't seem to have time for true talent. And I'm taking Balzac's word that Lucien is talented because I'm not much for the poetry, and I skip over the long passages of poetry that the novel throws in like it's J.R.R. Tolkien with the elf songs all of a sudden.

Here are some other things that are bugging me about Lost Illusions:

1) Hi, Balzac? Here's the thing about chapters. They're useful. They help break up the reading. Chapters should be, really, no more than 10 or 12 pages. You can fudge that up to 20 if you have to -- but let's not get ridiculous. Your first chapter, though, is 150 pages. That's, like, 15 chapters right there. And it's the only chapter in Part 1: Two Poets.

Do you see how that's, like, 17 different kinds of irritating?

Why even bother calling it Chapter 1 if there isn't a Chapter 2 following? You could just have called the whole thing Part 1: Two Poets and left it at that. I'd still have been a little annoyed with you, but now you're up to two dings just on technical things alone. We haven't even gotten to the writing yet.

2) The writing. Meh. The novel only really caught my interest around page 90, when Lucien shows up for his first society poetry reading and it flops like Nixon on television. And it picks up because everyone in society has their bitch on, and it's directed directly at Lucien.

3) I peeked ahead. Part 2: A Provincial Celebrity in Paris has more than one chapter, but you're still piling on the pages. One hundred and thirteen pages now? Are you kidding me?

*sigh*

To wrap up this entry, let's have a quick talk about classic literature. It's primarily what I read, unless prompted by one of my two book groups to pick up something written in the last 50 years. Having said that, I don't necessarily believe that any classic is a good classic. For instance, The Red and the Black and The Princess Casamassima are two "classics" that I'm pretty not so much about. In fact, Henry James in general is usually a tough sell for me (which is going to suck when I get to the J's in my bookshelf), as is Dostoevsky. I've also been nursing a dislike for Elizabeth Gaskell that may or may not be deserved. I've only tried a couple pages of Mary Barton, but they left me cold with her over-flowered prose. She's on this year's reading list, too, though. So we'll see. I like the classics I like usually because the writing is better, the plots are interesting, and the insights are universal rather than navel-gazingly blog-like (and I include myself in the list of navel-gazers).

I'll give Balzac 50 more pages. If this story isn't chugging along better, then I'm moving on to Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. I'm hoping that Lady Audley's secret is better writing. It's about time.

Shameful Reading (and straws that are too long)

2006-02-18T09:33:00.000-05:00

Uncle Cliffy, who dispenses words of wisdom from his cabin in the woods, asked me to list "five guilty pleasures -- books you love but would be embarrassd to admit to or read in public." This oughta be good, I thought to myself. I love making an ass of myself in front of friends and people I don't really know.

True story:

[This is the first time I've ever written this story down, and there's a chance that it won't work out as well in print as it does when I tell it, because the telling involves some acting on my part that I feel deepens and enrichens ("enrichens"?) the experience. If, by the end of this anecdote you don't feel like you got your funny's worth -- let me know. I'll make it a point to meet you one day and I'll re-tell the story, complete with visual aids. If, however, the cruelty of the universe should manifest itself in our never meeting, I'll also include stage directions. It's not exactly the same, but it will have to do.]

So I'm living in Portland, Oregon, on Schuyler Street near the Lloyd Center. The Lloyd Center doesn't really figure, I'm just setting the scene -- and if any Portlanders read this they'll know where I'm talking about and they'll feel a special connection with this story. This is called "audience manipulation." Anyway, I'm living on Schuyler, it's a Friday morning, and I'm running late for work. So late, in fact, that I've got a terminal case of bedhead [at this point in the audio/visual version of the story, I hold some fingers up behind my head to represent said bedhead], only I'm not popular enough to pull off bedhead and look sexy. Bedhead on me looks regrettable. I don't remember exactly what I'd done the night before; even that day, I'm not sure I could have told you what happened the night before. I do think it involved shot after delicious shot of vodka. There may even have been some late-night weeping over this guy, Dan, I worked with who I loved but who showed no signs of loving me back. Probably because of my bedhead. [In early tellings of this story, I'd pull out a picture I had of Dan, stolen from his desk one late night at work. I no longer have the picture; but also? It never really helped. "Wait, you cried over that?" was usually the question that accompanied the unveiling of the image of my only true love. And it's not so much that Dan was unattractive; it's that Dan looked 40. And we were both in our early 20s. He had some trouble with the posture, and he shuffled when he walked. "You're jonesin' for Punky Brewster's dad," my friend Misty the Stripper helpfully offered.]

Anyway.

Normally, I'd start my mornings with a pot of coffee before heading out to my bus stop, only I was late and out of coffee so that wasn't going to happen. No problem, I thought, I'll just pick up some Texaco coffee and pray for a swift death. Yeah. That didn't work either, since the Texaco was also out of coffee that morning and I really didn't have the time to fuck around, yelling at the Texaco staff for ruining this, my worst of mornings. Instead, I grabbed a fountain sodie with one of those obnoxiously long straws, and sort of drag-limped my way to the bus stop on the corner in time to catch my bus. [You're asking yourself right now, "Sodie?" And yeah: sodie. Because here: Once upon a time, Barq's Rootbeer had some radio spots that were brilliant, all about how much "bite" Barq's had. My personal favorite involved a mother/daughter team trying to get the daughter ready for some formal event that required some big-ass hair. "I want my hahr higher, Mama!" "Try this, darlin'." "A sodie, Mama?" "A sodie, Sugarbaby." And then the commercial guy broke in and talked about Barq's great flavor and crisp finish which, I guess, okay, but then the gals come back for this brilliant finish: "How's my hahr now, Mama?" "It's standing tall like a blonde marine!" And: fin. And that's why I'll forever use the word "sodie." Live it, learn it, love it.]

Back to the straw for a minute. I'm not kidding for its obnoxicityness -- you'd need a step ladder or something to climb up to drink from it. I guess the idea was, no one drinks from the standard 12- or 16-oz. cups anymore; everyone was moving to their own personal barrel-sized cups, and they needed straws to match. Only I wasn't drinking from the barrel-sized cups. I'd gone for medium because I'm demure. [At this point in the telling, I've pantomimed climbing a stepladder, and then made some "I can't quite reach the straw" faces with my mouth. Comedy. Gold.] So I've got my bed head. I've got my normal-sized sodie with my pole-vault of a straw. And I'm getting on my bus.

I make my way unsteadily to the back of the bus where I find the last seat and I just kind of collapse in a pile of tired and backpack and hangover. It's at this point that it occurs to me that while I have vague memories of being naked in the shower, I don't recall washing anything with soap. I do remember almost washing my hair with toothpaste; but I also remember catching myself before that happened and actually brushing my teeth. However, I think I get a fail-grade on the rest of that particular shower experience. And what leads me to believe that is when I reach up to rub my eye sleepily, I feel a huge chunk of what I thought at first was rock salt, but instead turned out to be sleep. I may have sobbed a little, quietly, as I realized how unfit for human consumption I was, right at that moment, in the midst of all that humanity.

Now, sitting across from me on the bus that morning was the World's Most Beautiful Man. He had teeth that shone like 1,000 suns and hair that fell perfectly into place when he ran his fingers through it. His skin had that clueless-about-acne quality, like his pores thought that the word "pimple" was a cute euphemism for something they didn't understand. "A puppy?" his pores would ask, "doing something cute?" And then his pores would giggle or something. His clothes looked recently laundered and freshly pressed. My clothes? Only barely passed the sniff test, and that was after spraying my pants with lemon pledge. He also knew enough to mix patterns and fabrics into interesting and fashionable combinations. I'm still waiting for Garanimals for adults. To wrap this paragraph up: he was a God. I still smelled vaguely of booze and furniture polish.

Go get 'em, tiger.

The World's Most Beautiful Man looked up in time to catch me staring both blankly and openly at him. Rather than make a disgusted look, or change seats, he smiled at me. And not one of those pity smiles, you know? Not, "Gee, guy: sorry times are tough for you." Or, "I may have a couple quarters if you need 'em to pick up a hot meal at the shelter." Or, "It smells like someone has a drinking problem." This was one of those nice, open, and dare I say it, a touch flirty smiles. "It's nice to see you," that smile said. "I'd like to see you again, and then I'd like to marry you and you'll never have to work again because yeah, I'm on the bus, but that's only an eccentricity that I have because I'm insanely wealthy -- but that's as far as my insanity goes, so you don't have to worry about anything, it's not like I collect Franklin Mint dolls that I sit at the dinner table for meals and shit. And once I marry you, you'll never have to work again." I may have embellished a bit on the smile. But he did smile. And there was no pity or awkwardness in it.

The smile caught me off guard. I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do with the smile. Granted, I was so hungover at this point that the person next to me could have been on fire, and I'm not sure I would have necessarily known what to do. Clearly, I could have smiled back. That would have been the simplest thing to do. Instead, though, I panicked a little. Instead of trying to smile, I decided to take a drink from my sodie. And that wasn't the best idea.

Remember how that straw was three yards long? Imagine two of those yards going right up my nose. Yeah: not just a little bit. We're talking full-on nasal penetration. You could see the outdent of the indent that straw was making. Horrified, I looked up to see that The World's Most Beautiful Man was staring right at me, witness to my straw faux pas. Again, I was caught off guard. Do something! I remember screaming in my own head. Yougottafixthis yougottafixthis yougottafixthis. And so I did. I pulled the straw from my nose and started drinking from it, all, "What? What's the problem here? There's no problem here. Haven't you seen anyone drink from a straw before? I mean, dude, it's a straw. Also: impolite to stare."

He got off at the very next bus stop. I died inside and wished I was home and that I didn't have an electric stove.*

And that's the straw story, friends and neighbors. One of about eleventy million where I appear like a douche or an ass. And since I love telling these stories, I really don't have a lot of shame. Which means that I'm not really going to be able to answer Uncle Cliffy's question satisfactorily.

That's not the only reason, though. Last night at dinner, I asked Zach if he could think of any books I've read that I should be embarrassed about. I'd come up with Jurassic Park and If Life is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits? by Erma Bombeck. But even those I'm not so ashamed of. They show an alarming lack of taste, sure; but it's not like I'd scurry with them all troll-like to some dark corner.

"Where you should be ashamed," Zach said, "is in your appallingly appalling bad taste in movies. But books, you're always reading that 'good for you' shit written by someone in a bustle and a corset."

So, sorry, Uncle Cliffy. I wanted to debase myself better. I'll try harder next time.

______________________________

* So there's a postscript to the straw story. The next week, on a Wednesday I think, I'm back at my bus stop and this time I've got my game together. Clothes, though stridently unstylish, were freshly laundered. I'd spent a full 15 minutes in the shower lathering like it was nobody's business. (Which it wasn't. A man's lather is his own personal castle.) I wasn't late. I'd been able to have my coffee at home before walking leisurely to the corner.

So I get on the bus, make my way to the back, sit down, pull out my book to read, look up, and guess who it is sitting across from me?

Yeah. I know.

"So what," he asks me, "no soda?"

I got out at the very next stop and waited for another bus.

In which our intrepid adventuress succumbs to a meme, and backpedaling ensues

2006-02-18T09:29:00.000-05:00

I've sort of held my nose at the thought of memes. First off, I'm never sure how it's pronounced. Then, there's the fact that I don't know that I really get what they are. They're viral, that I get. And they're usually uninteresting. I don't care which Care Bear you are, or the reason why you prefer Burger King to Wendy's, or any of the other really insipidly awful questions that get asked in those things. Mostly, though, when I've come across the word outside of an internet setting, it's in some fancy-pants grad school paper, and the person is trying to sound like he's worth all the money he's spent on his education.

And yet, here I am, about to participate in a meme. Because I'm a hypocrite. And I have no moral code other than, if someone cool asks me to do something, I'll do it.

That someone cool is Doppleganger: a woman who represents all that's right with the world, coupled with the silkiest elbows known to humankind. I think the world of Doppleganger; she's a reader among readers. And since the meme she tagged me with is book related, I don't feel like a total sell-out. I mean, I am a total sell-out; I just don't feel it.

So, here are the questions:

1) Name five of your favourite books.
2) What was the last book you bought?
3) What was the last book you read?
4) List five books that have been particularly meaningful to you (in no particular order).
5) Name three books you've been dying to read but just haven't gotten around to it?
6) Tag five people and have them fill this quiz out on their own.

And here are my answers:

1) Name five of your favourite books.

First off, this is how it must be: Are you from Britain? Canada? Somewhere European? Then that "u" in "favourite" is fine. Are you from Ohio? Denver? Never been out of the United States? Than that "u" in "favourite" is pretentious. It's also pretentious in the words "colour" and "neighbour." Also, it's g-r-a-y. Not g-r-e-y. Unless, again, you have a European exception. In this case, since Doppleganger is Canadian, all she does linguistically with her extra u's is fine and good and natural and the way God intended. The rest of you, though? Totally on notice.

Moving on.

My five favorite books, in no particular order:

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy -- First off, yeah: it makes me sound like a pretentious, over-read asshat. I get that. But that's not my fault. The book, because it's Russian and eleventy-million pages long, has received this bad rep as some kind of behemoth that cannot be tackled.

They're wrong.

You can totally read and finish this book.

War and Peace will break your heart and kick your ass and make you gasp and make you cry. It's one of those flannel-and-couch-time books where you'll sit down to read and 3 hours will fly by. You'll accidentally learn things about Napoleon and Russia. You'll see why Tolstoy kicks Dostoevsky's ass every. single. time. But only read the Constance Garnett translation. The Maude sucks.

Villette by Charlotte Brontë -- Lucy Snowe knows what loneliness is all about. By the time you get to the end of this book, you will too.

Once upon a time, Fametracker had some message boards that almost became my entire reason for visiting the Internet. Someone in one of the reading threads mentioned Villette, and how odd it was, and how they couldn't reconcile the end with the beginning. Since I'd only read Charlotte's Jane Eyre at that point, I figured I'd give Villette a try and see if I could figure out the answer to that beginning/ending question. And I hated it. "Fuck you, Charlotte Brontë," I remember muttering. "I'm too old for this shit."

I don't know why, after muttering obscenities at Charlotte, I found myself picking the novel back up and reading it again. And maybe I was having a low blood-sugar day the day I flung the book aside all "never again!"-ly because that second (and third, and fourth) time through I absolutely loved it. I don't have a clear reason why it's on this Top 5 list over other books. All I know is that if I think about scenarios where I never get to read Villette again, I get real sad in my reading places.

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen -- I am madly in love with Mary Crawford. I also think that, out of all the Austen, this is the one that gives the reader the most to do. There are characters, like Fanny Price, that make the reading uncomfortable sometimes. And yet, there you are, rooting for her a little, and feeling a little hit in the stomach every time she's taken advantage of again and again. I think of Mansfield Park as a companion piece with Villette; and if my world of delicious ever comes true and I'm in a position to teach students about books, I'd probably assign them together. Lucy Snowe and Fanny Price are mirror girls.

The Annotated Alice by Lewis Carroll -- This was, and has continued to be, my favorite kids' book. I read it for the first time when I was 10-years-old, and I remember laughing until I (literally) peed in my pants a little at the scene where Alice is imagining walking arm in arm with her cat Dinah, and Alice asks her, "Now, Dinah, tell me the truth: did you ever eat a bat?"

Lewis Carroll wrote for children, but not in the way an adult would write to please a child. I think he'd find that too condescending and intentional. And I think that's why the book still works for me now, and why I'll always champion it over the Harry Potters and Lemony Snicketts of the world. They just don't hold a candle as far as I am concerned.

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins -- On dark and stormy nights, when I want to feel delicious chills down my back, and when I really want to root for a hero (especially if that hero is a woman hiding on a roof in a silk dressing gown in the rain), and when I want my villains both seductive and evil -- this is the book I return to again and again. I've lost count of how many times I've read it.

2) What was the last book you bought?

I haven't. We're almost three months into Mike Buys No More Books in 2006, and it's hard I've gotta tell you. I have to think of books as dirty whores when I pass by book stores. I almost broke my rule and purchased this edition of The Forsyte Saga -- a book I already owned just because I like that cover a whole let better than the edition I was reading.

Hence, my resolution to not buy any more books this year until I'd read a good chunk of the books I've already bought and not read.

My final book purchases of 2005, though, were beautiful hardbound editions of both Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of OZ.

3) What was the last book you read?

The Forsyte Saga. And you should, too. It's everything I love in a novel. In fact, if I had to do my Top 5 over again, I'd try to squeeze in The Forsyte Saga.

4) List 5 books that have been particularly meaningful to you.

Hm. This almost seems a repeat of question 1, no? Or maybe this is where I can throw in things like The Forsyte Saga and other books that didn't make the list?

Maia by Richard Adams -- I was in the 6th grade, and I loved any book that was huge. I also wanted to be any profession that had a long name, like "archeologist" or "entomologist" or "sanitation engineer." So, I've checked out Maia from the adult section of the library because I had read, loved, and cried my eyes out over Watership Down and figured that every book by Richard Adams would have talking rabbits.

This one didn't.

The only scene that stands out is when Maia's stepfather makes her reach in his pocket for a piece of sweetmeat, and then the whole thing goes horribly literal and there's some icky rape stuff that happens. I stopped reading it, but continued to carry it around with me because it was hella thick and I wanted people to think I was smart. And apparently it worked, because not long after I began lugging Maia about with me I was moved from the regular reading class to the advanced reading class. "Must be because this book is so thick," I remember thinking. And advanced reading was so much better than regular reading because there weren't many of us in the class, and we got to read cool things like "Jabberwocky" and The Little Prince, and the reading teacher was young and crazy and told us this story once about how a black man had proposed to her in a park -- she told this story because she had tried to act it out for us in a game of charades we were playing, only none of us ever guessed, "Oh! It's that time a black man proposed to you in a park, but you had to say no!" Miss Onjuka? If you ever read this: What the fuck?

Later, as an adult, I realized that it wasn't the fact that I carried around Maia that got me into advanced reading. It was the aptitude test we'd taken the month prior. This might explain why I never advanced very far in math or science.

Mommie Dearest by Christina Crawford -- This book was meaningful because I read it when I was 13. I haven't written much of anything at all here about my mom. There's a reason for that. This book helped me realize, though, that no matter how bad I had it, there was another boy out there named Michael who got strapped to his bed every night. Things could always be worse.

Everything you always wanted to know about sex* -- (*but were afraid to ask) by David Reuben, M.D. -- This book taught me, at a very young age, that male homosexuals had sex in department store and gas station restrooms, and that they'd do this by touching each other's shoes with their shoes. I've never been able to pee comfortably in a gas station or a department store restroom since.

The Happy Hooker: My Own Story by Xaviera Hollander -- My mom owned a second-hand store, and books like this were all over the place. This book taught me that we could never have a German Shepherd or a pool -- especially at the same time. I really can't say much more.

5) Name three books you've been dying to read but just haven't gotten around to it?

Doppleganger's answer to this was much better. I'd love for there to be a set of Lost Novels by Jane Austen. I'd also not mind it at all if there were some more sagas involving the Forsytes. But I'll treat this one seriously.

1) A good vampire novel.

2) Clarissa: Or, The History of a Young Lady, because of the glowing review Doppleganger gave it once upon a time.

3) Something like Focault's Pendulum and The Club Dumas that isn't the goddamned Da Vinci Code.

6) Tag five people and have them fill this quiz out on their own.

This isn't a command. I'd totally understand if they didn't. But here's who I'd like to see answer this:

uncle cliffy
amanda mary
desideratum
jenfu
josephnotjoe

Scenes from a Relationship: The music edition

2006-02-17T08:27:00.000-05:00

Mike: [singing]She'll tease you, and she'll something,
And something something something
She's precocious, and she knows just
what it takes to something something.
[louder now, more assured]
All the boys thinks she's a spy; she's got: Bette Davis Eyes."

Zach: How many songs would you say you know all the lyrics to?

Volleyball

2006-02-15T21:41:00.000-05:00

"Don't aim where your eyes are staring, faggot." It was 6th period gym class and I was in 7th grade. I had also just hit Ike Kaler in the ass with a volleyball during a poorly delivered serve. It wasn't the first time I had been called out as faggot. The first time I was called faggot was in 4th grade and I wasn't. "Stop stepping on my toe, fucking faggot." That was Becky Poe, and we were learning square dancing, only I wasn't picking up on it so well.

I wasn't even attracted to Ike Kaler. Ike Kaler had a troubling chin and squinty eyes. He was one of those natural athletes, though. Maybe I was attracted to him. If I was, though, it was one of those dark secret crushes because there was no way I could even think about liking another guy -- especially in gym class. Especially in the gym shower*.

Like a lot of young homosexuals, I wasn't so much with the gym class. I was trying so hard to be someone I wasn't -- namely heterosexual -- that I couldn't be comfortable enough with my body to let my inner athlete shine. And heck, maybe I didn't even have an inner athlete. All I knew was that gym filled me with a loathing and a longing, and that I didn't want to do anything to draw any attention to myself whatsoever.

Which is why hitting Ike Kaler's ass was so mortifying.

It's not often that gym teachers in small towns like Klamath Falls, Oregon, do the right thing. They're in Klamath Falls, for christsakes: it't not like they've proven themselves as wise decision makers -- and I haven't even gotten to the "teaches gym" part yet. And yet my gym teacher, Mr. Roberts...

He was an odd man. He walked with a limp; some 'Nam injury, he said. He smelled of Winstons and Vic's Vap-o-Rub. His voice combined sand paper, glass, and an ill-performed tracheotomy into this oddly soothing dulcet tone. Only he never said dulcet things. "What are you, gimps? I've seen retards -- no offense, Pete" -- Peter was a retard -- "move quicker than you!" Then there was the time he screamed cocksuckers! for no reason in particular, and we had an assembly shortly afterwards about constructive ways to work through anger.

Mr. Roberts pulled me aside. "Bevel," he said. "We've got some work to do." He left everyone in the larger gym and took me to the small gym. "We're gonna teach you how to serve," he said. "And then those cocksuckers'll shut up." And then, for the next 20 minutes, it was just me and Mr. Roberts. I let my guard down. For one of the first times in my life, I had a male adult's attention; I wanted to make him proud. "Swear a little," he advised. "Under your breath. You can do this. No reason you can't." "Dammit," I said. "Yeah. That's a good one. Try goddammit." "Dammit." "Okay," he said. "You just work with that." And I kept serving. "Those guys, you know they don't know what they're saying, right? Those words they call you -- they don't know what they mean." I kept serving. "You can do this. You just needed a chance to know it."

And I kept serving.

It didn't last, my newfound confidence. I didn't leave the small gym a changed guy, more secure in what bits of masculinity I'd engendered. What I did leave with, though, was a newfound respect for the word "cocksucker." And the memory of a man's man who didn't think of me as a sissy.

Fuckin' keep fighting the good fight, Mr. Roberts. Wherever you are.

______________________________

* Dear Straight Guys,

I've looked at you. In the shower.

Peeping Tomingly,

Michael Bevel
British Adventuress

READING: The Forsyte Saga (fin)

2006-02-15T16:32:00.000-05:00

That's a bit of a lie. I've still got 50 pages to go -- but it's all resolution from here and I seriously doubt, unless Galsworthy secretly invites goddamn Henry freakin' James to finish the novel for him, that I'll change my opinion to "Suck a fuck that was awful." And actually, even if Henry James did find a way to wriggle in there, I probably wouldn't hate it. The novels are worth it for the two short pieces, "Indian Summer of a Forsyte" and "Awakening," that connect them.

Here is a lovely moment from "Awakening" (and to put this and the following passage in perspective, Jon is about 9):

------------------------------
"Bella!"

"Yes, Master Jon."

"Do let's have tea under the oak tree when they come; I know they'd like it best."

"You mean you'd like it best."

Little Jon considered.

"No, they would, to please me."
------------------------------

And another:

------------------------------
"What exactly is beauty?"

"What exactly is--Oh! Jon, that's a poser."

"Can I see it, for instance?" His mother got up, and sat beside him. "You do, every day. The sky is beautiful, the stars, and moonlit nights, and then the birds, the flowers, the trees--they're all beautiful. Look out of the window--there's beauty for you, Jon."

"Oh! yes, that's the view. Is that all?"

"All? no. The sea is wonderfully beautiful, and the waves, with their foam flying back."

"Did you rise from it every day, Mum?"

His mother smiled. "Well, we bathed."

Little Jon suddenly reached out and caught her neck in his hands.

"I know," he said mysteriously, "you're it, really, and all the rest is make-believe."
------------------------------

I know you're it, really, and all the rest is make-believe. That sentence totally took my breath away, and I had to put the book down and bite my lip a little.

After spending a full month with these characters, I am both ready and a little loathe to leave them behind. So many wonderful people have died beautiful deaths. I've gossipped with June and Fleur. I've attended engagements, weddings, sick beds, and funerals. I've watched Soames make mistake after mistake, and, unless something happens in these next 50 pages, I haven't seen him learn anything at all -- and yet I'm still hesitant to call him an entirely bad man. I've watched the waning of the Victorian era and the dawning of the '20s. If any book deserves the mantle of saga, it's this one.

Up next, I think, will be Balzac's Lost Illusions and A Harlot High and Low. I figured the best way to attack my bookshelves would be alphabetically. This means I may die when I get to Dickens. There's a lot of Dickens I own that I haven't read.

Pray for me.

23 Reasons Why I Love Zach (in no particular order)

2006-02-15T16:30:00.000-05:00

1) I love that, while the rest of America watched the Super Bowl, Zach wept openly at Puppy Bowl, complete with the Kitty Half-Time Show.

2) I love that he sometimes will hide my socks in places like the medicine cabinet. Or on the bathroom door handle. Or stuffed into my pillow where I put my head, thankyouverymuch.

3) I love that when the Eurythmics song "Regrets" is on, he'll shake his finger admonishingly and chant "that's right that's right that's right that's right" along with Annie Lennox.

4) I love that he knows where things like countries are. Because I don't.

5) I love that when I'm trudging along with everyone else on the Metro trying to get home, that I get to go home to Zach. At the end of a craptastic day, this means a lot.

6) I love that Zach uses too little water when making spaghetti, and then overcompensates for his pasta-shortcomings by claiming I use too much water. (I totally don't.)

7) I love that Zach gave me a second chance after I totally stood him up on our first date.

8) I love our first date.

9) I love that when I've gone too far with my backseat driving, all it takes is the soothing voice of a papersack puppet to make things all okay again.

10) I love that Zach was there when mom decided we needed to kill the dog for Christmas.

11) I love that Zach believes in me, even when he doesn't always believe me.

12) I love that Zach thinks I know the answer to everything. I love it even more when it looks like I do.

13) I love how angry Zach got after a documentary about Fidel Castro where over-privileged white kids with Urban Outfitter backpacks and cell phones kept shouting, "¡Viva Fidel!" and "¡Viva la revolucion!"

14) I love that Zach let me drive without a license on my 29th birthday.

15) I love that Zach tears up at the mention of otters.

16) I love that Zach and I can never watch The Color Purple together because the movie still means too much to him.

17) I love Zach's horrified obsession with anesthesia. We watched a program on Discovery Health about people who woke up during surgery and he was so totally paralyzed with fear that I had to be the one to turn the channel.

18) I love that Zach won't eat Mexican fare and that he calls it "peasant food."

19) I love that Zach thinks he wears a 32 inseam.

20) I love that Zach loves board games as much as I do -- including Scrabble, Boggle, Trivial Pursuit, and Risk. Oh, and Uno.

21) I also love that Zach thinks that since I let him get away with P-R-I-Z-M once, he can go ahead and make up any number of additional words.

22) I love that he lets me sing loudly in the car.

23) I love that I didn't run out of reasons.

READING: East of Eden

2006-02-11T07:35:00.000-05:00

I'm still reading The Forsyte Saga. It's just, I've now got to re-read East of Eden for one of my bookgroups.

I first read East of Eden maybe three or four years ago. The only other Steinbeck I'd read had been The Grapes of Wrath which, okay, not really my bag what with the relentless and, eventually, monotonous bleakness. "Can't someone give the Joad family a hug?" I kept thinking while reading it. "Or a puppy? But not a puppy that they'd have to worry about feeding, nor a puppy they'll have to kill to eat." Eventually, though, I just kept thinking, "Can't someone give the Joad family a bath?" I don't think one good thing happened to that family. Not one. And the end? With Rose of Sharon breast-feeding a hobo? Are you kidding me?

So, I picked up East of Eden and I'm pretty sure that first time I loved it. It was large and grand and sweeping, and not in the middle of the Dust Bowl. Steinbeck wasn't winning any points with me as a writer; there were never any sentences where I stopped and thought, "Now that is writing." But the story/saga engaged me, and come chapter 8, when the treacherous Cathy Ames is introduced, I was hooked. She was just so incredibly and unapologetically evil that I figured I had to like her or she'd do something awful to me with knitting needles. Towards the end of the book, Cathy stopped being as awesomely evil and sort of became this caricature of evil; the kind of person who hisses and shrinks from the light of the sun. But by that point, I didn't care as much; I just wanted to be done with the novel and I wanted to find out what was going to happen to the Trask family.

And now it's March's book for my book group and I picked it up a couple nights ago to start it because that mofo's long, and I'm still neck-deep in Forsytes.

In the 3+ years since I last read it, I guess I'd forgotten a lot. Like, Cathy Ames isn't introduced immediately and there's a lot about the Salinas Valley that I don't know is terribly necessary. We get it John: it's a valley. Between two mountains. Can we get to Cathy now? But no, we can't, we've got to wade through all this stupid backstory about the Hamiltons and the Trasks, and every five minutes I'm checking my watch and thinking, "You know what this page needs? Cathy Ames."

Steinbeck is a little more misogynistic than I remember, too. Twenty pages in, I stopped and took stock. In that time, we'd been introduced to four pretty wretched and not entirely redeeming women: Liza Hamilton, too religious to be any fun and a total teetotaler who never smiles; a "Negro girl" who gives Cyrus Trask the clap; the first Mrs. Trask, who gets the clap from Cyrus and then commits suicide; and Alice, the second Mrs. Trask, who has consumption and never smiles and has to be married to Cyrus Trask. At another point, Steinbeck writes of one character, "[He] was glad...the way a woman is glad of a fat diamond, and he depended on his brother in the way that same woman depends on the diamond's glitter and the self-security tied up in its worth." But I have to tell you, none of the women in this novel that Steinbeck has introduced us to up to the point where he writes that sentence (page 21) seem at all like woman who would give a plug nickel for a fat diamond of any kind.

Right now, I'm on chapter 8 -- the chapter where finally we get some Cathy Ames action, and again I'm noticing some clumsiness on Steinbeck's part that I didn't pick up on my first rush through the novel. Chapter 8 opens with Steinbeck musing, "If a twisted gene or a malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?" This is his way of saying, "And now: Cathy!" Which, heh, yeah. That's Cathy all right: she's got a malformed soul. But thinking about the implications, I don't know that I agree with Steinbeck here. First off, it's a pretty tragic misunderstanding of biology and genetics. More importantly, though, I think it's a misunderstanding of monsters.

Cathy Ames is a monster, according to Steinbeck; heck, according to anyone after a quick perusal of her laundry list of accomplishments: she murders her parents, drives a school teacher to suicide, tries to abort her babies with knitting needles, and then becomes this crazy pimp/madam in a bad wig. But if we pretend for a moment that Steinbeck's biological algebra is correct, that twisted genes or malformed eggs can influence a soul -- does she have any control over that? Is it her fault that she's evil? If the answer is no, then what use is the word "evil" in this context? If she's genetically predestined to be wicked -- and wicked, in this case, is supposed to be pejorative -- well, it can't be. Because she has no control over it. But Steinbeck wants her to be both evil, and for it also to be her fault, even though he's spent all this time trying to say that Cathy is born this way.

I think that it's now better apparent, to me at any rate, that Steinbeck is too married to his source material: the Bible. East of Eden is the land of Nod, where Cain finds a wife after he murders Abel. The novel is a retelling, of sorts, of the Eden/Fall of Man story. Steinbeck, though, wants it too many ways (and some of them illegal). He wants to examine evil and the fall of man; but then he wants this predeterminism crap that just don't hunt.

READING: The Forsyte Saga (still...)

2006-02-08T10:40:00.000-05:00

I was stuck at page 327 for about a week. I was afraid that if I turned the page, Old Jolyon would die and then I would start crying. A lot.

After Irene, Old Jolyon may be my favorite character so far in the Saga. He starts out a wounded father whose son, Young Jolyon (who has a son also named Jolyon because why not?), has disgraced the family by leaving his first wife and daughter to live with another woman. One of the side plots of the first novel in The Forsyte Saga (The Man of Property) is Old Jolyon's reconciliation with his son. By the end of the novel, and in the novella Indian Summer of a Forsyte, Old Jolyon is the only Forsyte to extend any kind of olive branch to Irene.

Things, they did not go so well for my girlfriend Irene.

This happens to me a lot in books, my over-involvement. When I was reading The Count of Monte Cristo, I yelped out loud at a particularly gruesome and gripping scene (there's a guy, hiding under the stairs, who ends up covered in someone else's blood by the end of the scene). I was on the Metro when I discovered that someone who wasn't Marian had signed her secret journal in Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White. I gasped, alarming the man sitting next to me. "Fosco!" I hissed under my breath, once I had regained my composure. The gentleman decided he'd rather stand. And most recently, I yelped when a character in George Gissing's The Netherworld had acid thrown on her face, ruining her acting career. The bus driver slowed the bus down and asked if I was all right.

I'm also a vocal reader. When Zach and I first started dating, I was reading The Unconsoled, and every two or three pages I would mutter, "This book is so weird." Other times I would say, "But why is he giving a eulogy in his pajamas?" At first, Zach would think these were actual questions that I expected an answer to. By the time I got to East of Eden, Zach would turn a deaf ear to my constant outbursts of, "Ooh, that Cathy!"

"I don't know how you can sit there, so calm, when Cathy is pregnant with kids she doesn't want and a set of knitting needles!"

"Huh?"

"KNITTING NEEDLES!"

"..."

Back to The Forsyte Saga, I finally gave in and kept reading. Old Jolyon dies at the end of Indian Summer of a Forsyte, sitting in the shade of large tree and waiting for the beautiful Irene to arrive for luncheon. "Shhhh," Zach said. "It's gonna be fine. All you have to do is flip back a couple of pages and he'll be fine."

Heaven-Haven

2006-02-07T10:54:00.000-05:00

Heaven-Haven
A nun takes the veil

     I have desired to go
        Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail
     And a few lilies blow.

     And I have asked to be
        Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
     And out of the swing of the sea.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1918

There are many things to love about Gerard Manley Hopkins. That he looks like Adrien Brody is only one of them. (Only let me interrupt here for a second: Adrien? Hi, it's Mike. You're thisclose to losing my love forever. It was bad enough when you "starred" in that godawful Diet Coke commercial, but need I remind you that the thing I love the most about you is your nebbishy Jewiness? And that nebbishy Jews don't dance with artificially sweetened diet drinks in disco clothes? And nebbishy Jews certainly don't star in movies with Ben "Coke-n-Bloat" Affleck and Diane "Watch Me Masturbate on a Train While Thinking About a Stinky French Guy" Lane. Capiche?)

I'm not so much often with the poetry. I don't seek it out the way I seek out novels; but I like what I like. And I really like my man Manley Hopkins. I love his surprising cadences and unexpected rhythms. It's pretty rare that I feel energized after reading poetry; Gerard Manley Hopkins, however, is like a jolt of ice water in my veins. Only that would probably kill me, now that I think about it. Or is it air bubbles? Something like that, with either water or air bubbles, happened in an episode of Quincy that pretty deeply affected me as a child. Oh Jack Klugman: so surprising; so versatile; so astonishingly not dead yet. He's totally going on my dead pool list.

Hopkins lived from 1844 until he died at the age of 45 in 1889. ("Lived until he died." Nice one, Mike.) He was ordained a Jesuit in 1877, and burned all of his early verse as being too "worldly." (Kinda like Tolstoy after his crazy-go-nuts religious conversion post Anna Karenina.) "I am a eunuch," he wrote to Robert Bridges; "but it is for the kingdom of Heaven's sake." Which I find a little hot, in the same way that the Vicomte de Valmont found Madame de Tourvel a little hot (only not when she's played by Michelle Pffeeiffeffer). There's something corruptingly sexy about moral certitude, especially when it can be so easily broken.

Let's just close that door into Mike's psyche, shall we?

The other thing that I love about Gerry is this anecdote from my on-its-last-legs 1973 edition of The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry (which starts with Walt Whitman and ends with James Tate -- and apparently at some point I liked James Tate's poem "Stray Animals" and here's what I'd like to say to the Mike from the Past who clearly loved this poem: What were you, high? That poem's awful):

"[Hopkins] had also read another poem by Yeats, 'The Two Titans,' and while he thought it absurd to set two titans down on a rock in the sea with no indication of how they got there, he could see, and say, that the poem had many fine lines and vivid images. W.B. Yeats...wrote later that he had not cared much for the Jesuit priest, who seemed a querulous, sensitive scholar, alien to a young man with Whitman in his pocket. But actually, Hopkins carried Whiteman in his pocket too."

In 10th grade, I was in Mr. Dow's Advanced English class with such intellectual illuminaries as Frank Burkholder, Ian Woods, and John Horn. We had to work in groups or individually (the "individually" part was added after the fact since no one wanted to work with me, and Mr. Dow didn't want me to feel pariahically left out) on reading and presenting a poem to the class. I don't remember the name of the poem I picked -- it was something modern about Orpheus and Eurydice and dancing trees were involved. Anyway. I picked it because I had been obsessed with Greek and Roman mythology as a child. (I tried loving Norse mythology, but it gave me too many nightmares about wolves and dragons and the end of the world.) I loved those stories, and read them again and again. My favorites: Arachne and Athena, and Theseus and the Minotaur, and Orpheus and Eurydice. Only I had never read them aloud before; no one in my family new from Greek anything, let alone how to pronounce the exotic looking names. So when I read my poem aloud, and when I pronounced Eurydice as "Your-e-dice" -- Frank, Ian, and John snickered derisively and corrected me in that bored way the over-educated and insecure have of correcting everyone. There were several other words I ended up not knowing how to pronounce in the course of that poem. They were sure to catch those, too.

I bring up that story because Greek myths were the Walt Whitman in my pocket that no one assumed I had. I think it was assumed that, because we were poor, literature was beyond my ken. Literature, actually, is what saved me I think. I don't know that I could have survived that long childhood of Klamath Falls heartbreak and monotony if I didn't have books. In poverty-ridden Oregon, the fact that any of us could read without moving our lips made us suspect and outsider. We should have been there for each other.

But I digress.

I picked this poem to look at and write about because I am interested in the message. Knowing that Hopkins becomes a Jesuit, and that this poem is about a nun taking the veil -- what's he saying?

The novice seems to be thinking that cloistered life is going to be somehow safer than what she knew before. She wants quiet and peace and "no storms come." But is that true? I think that a contemplative life would be filled with its own storms. That yearning of the flesh for flesh; that questioning of the soul about God. Quiet isn't necessarily peaceful, and I'm worried that she believes that this is going to be the case. "Oh, honey," I want to say to her.

The other question this poem prompts me to ask is, how appropriate is it for this person to want to absent herself from the world? If we pretend for a moment that Jesus existed and said some of the things he's supposed to have said in the Christian bible -- he's pretty clear: "Feed my sheep," he tells Simon Peter. Jesus doesn't say, "Lock yourself up in a community of women and then pretend to marry me. Do you have any idea how many wives that would be?" I've never been interested in Jesus as a supernatural mythical figure who raises the dead and redeems the world (from what again? Original sin? And where are y'all getting that from?). I am interested in Jesus as a radical figure for social justice, and I think he would be appalled with the idea of those early communities of men and women who vowed chastity and only experienced their own suffering without doing anything in the world to lessen the sufferings of others. I think Jesus would have been fine kicking it Hebrew and quoting Micah: "What does the LORD require of you but to do justice and love kindness?"

The poem is short, and Hopkins doesn't affirm her choice or condemn it. He merely reports. That's the strength of this poem, I think; that the reader grapples with these issues with no help from the class. And I wonder if Hopkins himself struggled with these same doubts. His poetry may have been his attempts to influence beyond the walls of his cloistered heart.

FYI

2006-02-07T10:53:00.000-05:00

I've taken down several entries. The plan is to take them, expand them, put them in some semblance of an order, and then see what I can get for them. I've also got three essays that I'm working on that I haven't posted here at all.

Hence my absence.

I'm not a disciplined writer. In fact, it was a lot easier when I didn't think of myself as a writer at all. "I'm a reader," I'd tell people. "I don't enjoy writing all that much." And that's partly true. These entries that I dash out sitting (shh) at work or in Zach's ugly but really comfy barcalounger (and P.S.: Are you kidding me with that family? And that living room? And is the daughter missing her freakin legs? And what the hell are they watching?) (And another thing: why couldn't they just have passed the pizza down to the Sassy Black Neighbor™?) are pretty easy and don't take all that much effort. But actual writing? Like, where there's supposed to be a point and some thought? How does anyone do that?

"So you wanna be the next David Sedaris?" I get that a lot when I tell people I write essays. I'm pretty sure that the David Sedaris we have now is just fine. I'd like to be the first me, I say. "Yeah. That David Sedaris is really funny." Which he is. Mostly. I've gotta say, the last two books didn't wow me as much as pretty much all of Naked and most of Barrel Fever did.

Anyway.

To wrap up this, the most boring entry of all, two things:

(1) For those who asked for books, they're shipping out this week. As I ship your book, I'll send you an email. That way you can begin waiting anxiously by the mailbox daily.

(2) I have two non-sucky entries that I'm putting the finishing touches on. Look for one, if not both, tomorrow. At least I hope they're non-sucky.

Aaron

2006-02-01T09:55:00.000-05:00

I share my bus ride to work most mornings with a retarded guy named Aaron. Aaron rocks. Aaron looks like Art Garfunkel* and uses lip balm like a condiment. Aaron understands the rules about my morning routine; he reads his sports page and I read a chapter of whatever book I'm reading before we start talking and catching each other up on our days. Aaron goes to the mall a lot with his girlfriend Barbara, and last Saturday he went to Hooters for lunch. I made a face.

"What, you don't like the Hooters?"

"Well, it's a little--"

"Dirty?"

"Yeah. In both senses."

"Sexist?"

"Definitely."

"I like the wings," he said.

We joke sometimes about how many people Aaron has working for him. He has a counselor who visits him and his roommate in their apartment. He has a couple of job coaches. He has a social worker. "Do you ever make them carry you around on pillows?"

"No!"

"You should look into that."

"Off with their heads!"

"That's the spirit."

On the bus this morning, after Aaron scanned the sports page and told me he was rooting for the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Super Bowl**, he said, "That stupid idiot kept talking last night." Aaron lives in a houseshare situation in the building Zach and I used to live in. There's a woman in his program there who talks to coats, and an aggressive 'tard who tried to take $10 from me once in the elevator before wishing me a hearty "Shabbat Shalom!" There's also the Ladies' Man 'tard who spends all his free time flirting with the front desk concierges and dressing like Thurston Howell III when he hangs out by the pool during the summer. There were too many options for me to know which stupid idiot Aaron was talking about.

"The President. He's an idiot. A stupid idiot." And then Aaron sort of chanted "stupid idiot" for a while before telling me how excited he was about the speech class he was starting on Saturday. "My girlfriend's gonna meet me there and then we'll go to the mall."

Regardless of your politics -- and I'm a dyed in the wool liberal democrat (with socialist leanings and a song in my heart for the intellectual days of communism) -- being called an "idiot, stupid idiot" by a retarded man who eats lip balm, that's gotta carry an extra sting, right?

______________________________
* Poor Art Garfunkel's kid.

** So, I'm not a sporty guy. I don't know the differences between the Super Bowl and the Splendid Bowl (P.S.: What's a "bowl" in this context?) and any other kind of "-bowl." So, I go to www.superbowl.com thinking that there would be something on the site that would tell me who the two teams were so I could tell you who Aaron picked because, not being a sporty guy, the team he mentioned didn't make an impression and I forgot before I got a chance to write this down. Does www.superbowl.com tell you anywhere on the front page who's playing whom? Not in any way that this homo could figure out. There were two helmets, I'm assuming of the opposing teams -- but again: hi. I just thought somewhere in big letters it would say SUPERBOWL [insert Roman numeral here]: _______________ vs. _______________.

Why Free Verse is Bad for Poetry

2006-01-31T13:19:00.000-05:00

(Special thanks to guiser1.

Over the weekend, at a discussion group Zach and I go to, we were trying to decide what it means to be a pacifist. Most people said, "Well, I'm a pacifist -- but there are instances where violence is necessary." The consensus -- which I disagree with -- was that pacifists weren't violent unless they had to be.

Which, to me, is a lot like saying "I'm a vegetarian until I crave a burger."

When pacifism is watered down like that, pacifism is then no different from the concept of "good guy." Why even have the word "pacifist" if it's not going to mean someone who never resorts to violence? I also don't know that being a pacifist automatically makes you a good guy. I think that pacifism comes with its own set of philosophical problems.

Free verse is the poetic equivalent of a meat eating vegetarian who's also an ass-kicking pacifist. Free verse is this sort of catch-all category -- "I can't be bothered with rhythm or meter or stuff: I just want to use the Enter key a lot."

Free verse, I don't think, is poetry.

guiser1 tried to explain it to me like this: "Free verse is poetry that is based on the irregular rhythmic CADENCE or the recurrence, with variations, of phrases, images, and syntactical patterns rather than the conventional use of METER. RHYME may or may not be present in free verse, but when it is, it is used with great freedom. In conventional VERSE the unit is the FOOT, or the line; in free verse the units are larger, sometimes being paragraphs or strophes. If the free verse unit is the line, as it is in Whitman, the line is determined by qualities of RHYTHM and thought rather than FEET or syllabic count." But that dog don't hunt with me. Poetry that is based on irregular rhythmic CADENCE is really just...writing? Right? I mean, it's an essay or it's creative fiction with irregular spacing and the misguided belief that commas have no rules.

I think the question a poet needs to ask is: why does this need to be a poem? What does it convey in this form that it couldn't convey in a short essay or graffiti scrawl? Poets need to say to themselves, "Yes, I like my vulva; but does the world need to share my love?" And to that I would say: no. I'm sure your vulva is as lovely as a vulva can be. I, however, think it should remain a dark secret love. If it doesn't need to be a poem, then it doesn't need to be a poem. That doesn't mean you shouldn't jot it down. It just means you don't have to space it funny, or make up your own words. Essays are perfectly fine. Short little bon mots actually make you seem clever. Journal entries where it looks like you took a pair of scissors to it and pasted them haphazardly -- that's not poetry: that's arts-n-crafts.

Modern poetry, much like modern writing, has eschewed the universal for the deeply and troublingly personal. It's navel-gazing at its most irritating. And before you all start taking messages for me from the kettle -- hi: it's a blog. When I write a free-verse ode to my fat thighs or my vulva, we'll talk. Contemporary novels and poems are too locked up in the authors own personal lexicon and mythology.

'Course, who am I, right? Maybe you know something about the modern poetry that I don't. If you think you've got a pretty good defense of modern poetry then I'd like to hear it. The best and worst answers will get an entry of their own. Until then, I leave you with Gerard Manley Hopkins -- who will kick your ass because he has "Manly" in his name:

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

-- "Spring and Fall, to a Young Child"

Monty Python

2006-01-31T11:57:00.000-05:00

I don't find Monty Python funny. At all. Not the parrot sketch. Not the ministry of funny walks. Not the cross-dressing or the bobby hats or the two guys who can't decide if they're having an argument or a contradiction. Or the Spanish Inquisition. I also don't find anything worth laughing about in The Holy Grail, Life of Brian, or The Meaning of Life. At this very moment, Zach is watching a movie about an Italian man who starves his girlfriend, and that movie is funnier than Monty Python. And the girl dies in the end.

Not even the Knights who say "Ni!"

Monty Python, to me, is funny only to people who don't have their own sense of humor or who don't believe in their own kind of funny enough to trust it. So instead, they haul out hour after hour of Monty Python quotes, complete with their own awful ideas of what an English accent might be, and they attack. Some think of themselves as jazz musicians, running specialized riffs on their favorite skits. Others are traditionalists. All of them are deeply and aggressively unfunny people.

I'm harsh only because I am fair and just. I will concede that 11-year-old boys who find Monty Python funny are forgiven, much like unbaptized babies were when Catholics still believed in the groovy idea of Limbo. Eleven-year-olds have atrocious taste in pretty much everything; but that's because they're eleven, and bad taste is nature's means of inhibiting reproduction. When those 11-year-old boys become, say, 31-year-old boys and they're still hauling out the Lumberjack song? There's a reason Johnson & Johnson invented hand lotion.

My distaste of Monty Python and Monty Python-related "humor" is linked, I think, to my fear of public performances by strangers. Many's the time I've been at a party or a birthday or a get-together and everything is going as well as can be expected for me in a roomful of people. I'm not much for crowds, especially when those crowds consist of a lot of strangers. And then, when one of those strangers pulls out a guitar, or a harmonica, or some sheet music? Instant nightmare, just add sing-along. There they are, singing or strumming or humming or harmonica-ing their little hearts out for all they're worth -- and it's usually awful. And everyone else starts clapping, and I don't want to draw attention to myself so I start clapping, only my heart's not in it and actually, truth be told, my blood pressure is now elevated as I begin scanning the rooms for nearest exits. Of course, I'm never near the exits. I'm usually near the chips or the snack items.

I'm also afraid that a public sing-along will ensue. My friend Lissa (with two esses) once dragged me to a party where I knew no one but her, and where we all sat in a circle and were called upon to contribute a blues ditty to some song one of the guys-with-guitar had started. I feigned choking on a bit of cheese cube and excused myself when my turn came around. Fortunately, that worked. I was willing to commit to a full grand mal.

It's the same thing with the Monty Python-ing: someone will say something about "strange women lying in ponds" and then someone else will get really excited because now personality is no longer a requirement for attention and they'll follow with "'elp! 'elp! I'm being repressed!" and then I've got an Anacin headache behind my right eye. These quote wars will go on for hours, complete with props sometimes and the bad accents I mentioned. These quote wars will go on for hours until finally I can't take it anymore and either I leave or start making my way to a Texas bell tower.

"You know, Mike: for a guy who says he hates Monty Python, you seem to know a lot of their routines." Yeah. You know why? Because as soon as I out myself as a Monty Python hater, everybody feels like it's their job to convert me. "Wait," they’ll say, "you mean you don't like Confuse-a-Cat?" No. "The Chemist sketch?" No. "The Man Who Speaks in Anagrams?" No. No. A thousand times: NO. But of course, I'm not believed. I can't be right, they think. “But, you’re so funny,” they’ll say. “How can you be funny and not find Monty Python funny?” “Like this,” I usually answer. And sometimes, I’ll weep openly. So then they'll launch into their versions of their favorite sketches and there I am, trapped as surely as if they had a keyboard and a song. The thing is: you're not going to make me laugh. The guys who do it professionally can't even get me to crack a smile. It's probably for the best if you just assume I'm irrevocably broken and you go back to polishing your 16-sided die while humming "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life."

I hate you.

Crazy Mike's Wacky Book Giveaway Extravaganza!!!

2006-01-29T13:42:00.000-05:00

This is the first in a no doubt ongoing series of posts. As I've mentioned before, I buy books. I buy books the way other people buy paper towels or napkins. I'll buy the same book six or even seven times. What this ends up meaning is that I have many copies of things I didn't even really like the first time. Like Absalom, Absalom!.

When asked to explain myself, I can only smile sheepishly and mumble something about covers. And yeah, you can't judge a book by it's cover, but a cover can make all the difference in how much time I want to spend with a book. So if I see a cover I like better than the cover I'm currently reading, I'll buy the same book again just to make sure I've got something prettier.

For example, this? Or this? It's clearly the second one, right?

I kind of love the new Penguin Classics editions, with the sexy black covers. They don't hold up so well to reading, though; the covers get scratched easily and they crease with a quick glance. The Penguin Classics right before these new guys (here's an example) are my preferred covers for reading. They've got an all-purpose prettiness; not too flashy, but easy on the eyes. Sort of like Sandy Bullock.

Oxford World Classics, though? I mean, Jesus. It's like they're not even trying. Not only do they have easily creasable covers, they're not very supple books at all. It's the reading equivalent of wearing burlap. Naked. After a bad sunburn. Two sizes too small.

What follows is an initial list of books that I currently am trying to part with. Here's the drill: you want it, just ask. If you're the first, it's yours. Try not to be a greedy gus about it; don't write to me all Veruca Salt-y with the "Now!" and the "All!" and the "More!" And keep checking back. As I unpack more books, there are bound to be more. I'll try to link to an image of the book that I have, so you know what you're getting into. Also: some of the books have my scribbles in the margins. I don't promise that said scribbles are at all illuminating; in fact, I'm pretty sure a lot of them might be embarrassing.

~~Mansfield Park~~ (this one's calling Stuckinnv daddy)
I forgot to mention above the Luntzes of the book cover world: the new Modern Library covers. The art tends to be pretty nice. They hold up well to repeated readings. And the Modern Library Anna Karenina (more on that one below) has one of the best essays on the novel I've ever read by Mona Simpson. Why aren't they my favorites? I don't particularly like the color. That goldeny brown? Not so much. Anyway, this is a Modern Library Mansfield Park. As far as I'm concerned, and as I've written before (and will no doubt write again), this is Austen at her best. It's a dense novel with a troubling heroine, and has a lot to say about damage and loneliness, moral rectitude and the fluidity of ethics. Plus, it has Mary Crawford -- and Mary Crawford kicks about 17 different kinds of ass.

Jane Eyre
Another Modern Library edition, the cover image is nicely creepy if a little acontextual ("How do you spell acontextual?" "Uh, a-c-o-n-t-e-x-t-u-a-l." "Yeah, I know that George Thampy." "Was he that annoying Indian kid with the lispy speech impediment?" "Who loved Christ?" "Yeah." "Yeah." "I hated that kid." "So anyway, is acontextual hyphenated?" "No." "Are you sure?" "Yeah." "Because Word doesn't recognize it the way you're spelling it." "Who you gonna believe, Word or George Thampy?" "'Study hawd. Obey your pawwents. And love Jeethuth.'"): I don't think the girl on the cover is what Jane is supposed to look like. Jane Eyre is good; it's not, though, better than Villette in my opinion. And personally, I like the young, lively, locked-in-the-red-room Jane more than I like the "Reader, I married him" Jane. And there's a character named St. John, only it's pronounced "Sin-jin." In case you didn't know that before. I don't want you to be embarrassed that way I was embarrassed.

Wuthering Heights
This is a very weird book. And it's really misunderstood. Lots of girls who wear too much eyeliner and tattered fishnets while listening to gothy music think of this as some kind of timelessly romantic love story.

It isn't.

Wuthering Heights is scary and claustrophobic and not supposed to be romantic at all. Heathcliff? Not a good man. Cathy? Not a good woman. These are bad people, and they're not supposed to be seen as good. Why it gets taught that way again and again is beyond me. They're awful, frustrating, narcissistic and deeply damaged people. I think that's what Emily's trying to get across here.

~~In Cold Blood~~ (Shula is always busy, yet always has time to take a little Capote off my hands)
I can't read this novel again. It's good; it's better, even, then it has any right to be. But it's harrowing and awful and I can't go through reading it one more time. I have two copies of this -- and I may end up giving away both. One of my favorite things about this book is Mom "Mrs." Clutter (who isn't around for very long, but totally steals every scene she's in). At one point, a young girl is trapped with her in the livng room while Mom Clutter goes on about how she loves tiny things. Another line I'm fond of is the way one of Nancy Clutter's teachers described her: "Nancy Clutter is always busy, yet always has time. And that's the sign of a true lady."

~~Don Quixote~~ (this one goes out to Tadiera)
It's long. I mean, it's reeeeeal fucking long. And it's frustratingly episodic, rather than a smoothly flowing narrative. However, there are many scenes that made me laugh out loud, and the ending broke my heart for about a week. It's worth reading; it just may not be worth reading all in one sitting.

~~The Woman in White~~ (Springbarb will help Marian foil Fosco)
This is one of the best books you will ever read. And it is definitely one of my Top 5 Books of All Time. It has everything: murder, madness, poison, a fat man named Fosco and a midget named Pesca. The love story isn't very interesting, nor are the lovers. But Marian Halcombe is the friggin bomb, man, and Count Fosco is one sexy fat mutherfuckin' foul guy. The only drawback is that this is one of those Oxford World Classic editions. Sorry.

Heart of Darkness
This isn't the exact edition you'll get; I couldn't find that, thanks Amazon. Stupid search engine. Anyway: yeah. I don't get the hype around this book. My favorite Conrad is The Secret Agent (which you should totally read). But it's famous, and there's the Apocalypse Now connection which is a good time for a lot of people. If you take it and read it, write me and tell me what you thought. Especially if you liked it.

~~The Brothers Karamazov~~ (Jules won't have to endure any awkward silences when she runs into Laura Bush!)
There's a married couple, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, who have been translating a lot of the classic Russian writers of the 19th and early 20th centuries. They're really good when they translate Dostoevsky; they're the only way I can read him. However, they're not so good for Tolstoy (and more on that when we get to Anna Karenina). This is a Volokhonsky/Pevear translation. Also? It's one of Laura Bush's favorite books. My friend Steve and I think that Dostoevsky, who was a Christian, is writing against himself in the "Grand Inquisitor" chapter. Dostoevsky wants us to reach the end of that and say, "Well clearly: God." Instead, you reach the end and think, "No."

~~The Vicomte de Bragelonne~~ (Shula will nurse this novel's many swordfighting wounds)
This isn't exactly what your copy will look like; it is, though, still an Oxford World Classic. The Vicomte de Bragelonne is part of the Three Musketeers series. They're silly and fun with the sword fighting and the "one for all and all for one!"-ing, and it's interesting to spend that much time with these guys. It's not my favorite Dumas. For that, you'll need to read The Count of Monte Cristo or La Reine Margot.

Absalom, Absalom!
I really don't think much of Faulkner. The Sound and the Fury is pretty exceptional; however, even a broken clock is right twice a day. I haven't been able to finish Absalom, Absalom! (which I used to confuse with O Calcutta!), so I'm only getting rid of one of my copies. If, when I get to it in my reading pile, it turns out that I still can't make it through, then you'll be seeing it on a list like this again.

~~The Mayor of Casterbridge~~ (since it's going to live with Stuckinnv, this one won't be left on a country road)
I love Thomas Hardy. I would never want to be a character in a Thomas Hardy novel; you're bound for madness, some sort of awful sexual encounter, and death; but still, I do enjoy sitting down with The Mayor of Casterbridge or The Return of the Native, or Tess of the Durbervilles (and no: she isn't raped; and yes: I'll give you a smackdown if you think you can argue otherwise). My favorite Hardy of all time, though, is Jude the Obscure. The Mayor of Casterbridge was my first introduction to Thomas "Hap" Hardy through my high school English teacher (and secret crush) Mr. Bruce Kielsmeier. I hated the book then, much like I hated all assigned books then. Bruce, if you ever read this, I've mended my ways about both Hardy and Austen. Also: call me.

~~The House of Mirth~~ (this one's gonna make hats for Desideratum)
Edith Wharton is an amazing writer. I don't know if there is anyone writing today who can match her. Lily Bart will captivate you, frustrate you, and ultimately break your heart. The movie version, with Gillian Anderson, isn't bad either.

~~Anna Karenina~~ (Anna's got a new lover in Stuckinnv)
This is an almost perfect book. (The ending? Wellll...) (And not that train ending, that's not what I'm talking about). However, I'm not a fan of this translation. It's one by that husband and wife team I mentioned above; however, I don't think it does a better job than the Constance Garnett translation and in some places, I think it's actually inferior to the Garnett. It's not as bad as the Garnett/Maude rumble in the Bronx I wrote about earlier; it's just, I don't see the need to have this edition when I like the Garnett translation more.

If you get a chance, though, and you've already read Anna Karenina, do yourself a favor and read the Mona Simpson essay in this edition. I don't think much of Mona Simpson as a fiction writer, but she really gets this novel, and her love of it is palpable in this essay.

Entitlement

2006-01-27T16:58:00.000-05:00

One of the guys here at [redacted], a guy I'll call The Beckoner, recently pulled an all-nighter. I call him The Beckoner because he has this habit, this I'm-high-powered way of beckoning you into his office. Try this with me. You'll be The Beckoner. I'll be me. As you're reading this, pretend to type on your keyboard.

MIKE: *knocks*

Now, without looking away from your screen (or your fingers, if you're one of those kinds of typers), raise your hand and beckon me in. Don't make eye contact. Don't look away from the screen at all. I'm clearly not as important as you, and you clearly don't have to treat me as such.

Yeah. I know. Plus? The Beckoner just turned 25.

My second or third day at [redacted], after being beckoned by The Beckoner, I said to him, "Hi, I know I'm new, and we don't know each other very well, but I don't know that you know how condescending and offensive that is."

"What?"

"That beckon thing you do. That I-don't-really-have-time-for-you wave you've patented there. It's demeaning. You look like someone who's young and ambitious; someone who wants to go far in business. I'll let you in on a little secret: you shouldn't treat your support staff like crap. You're not better than we are. You're actually not even more important than we are. In fact? We can break you. We'll misfile important documents. We'll forget to send that important package. We'll hang up on your clients and you'll look like an ass. So don't. When I knock, when someone else knocks, when the UPS guy knocks: look up. Make eye contact. Treat us like we exist."

And yeah. I said all of that. Word for fuckin word.

He took it well. Better than I expected (and I expected to get fired after that, but I couldn't stop). He still beckons sometimes, but not all the time. And sometimes? I forget to give him messages.

Anyway: the all-nighter.

The morning after the all-nighter, I come in and see that The Beckoner is still in the same Disco Stu outfit he had worn the day before: some sort of obnoxious purplish red shiny shirt and pin stripe pants. Again: I know. He's all scruffy, but not in a sexy way, more in a skeevy Chippendale dancer with some sort of wasting disease and a heroin habit kind of way. The other principals at [redacted] are really proud of The Beckoner. It's like he banged a stripper on the conference room table without a condom and not only didn't pick up some nasty social disease, but also didn't have to pay her. They're high-fiving him, slapping his back. He thinks he's done something important and noteworthy. My boss comes by my office and says, "Take extra special care of [The Beckoner] today. He done good."

First off: ew. "Take extra special care"? Are you kidding me? Secondly, I see no earthly reason to reward that kind of behavior. He stayed all night to put the finishing touches on a deal that will make rich, morally questionable men even richer and, yes Virginia, even more morally questionable.

Here's the deal: unless you're curing AIDS, cancer, or world hunger -- there's no need to ever pull an all-nighter in the business world. No job is worth losing sleep and risking your health. No job pays you enough to sacrifice yourself in that way.

Especially this job.

The Beckoner hung around long enough in the morning to make sure people a little higher up on the chain of command saw him in his sweated-through finest. He buzzed me in to his office later, and beckoned me in sans eye contact when I knocked. He wanted me to get him a cab home. He needed to go get some sleep. He wanted me to know that he had pulled an all-nighter.

This is why I don't feel bad booking him in to middle seats on his upcoming cross-country flights. I also requested low-sodium vegetarian meals. And he's got a layover in St. Louis.

I warned him.

Alice's Right Foot, Esq.

2006-01-27T15:31:00.000-05:00

Someone had a little trouble with her molt, and so now someone's hobbling around on five legs instead of her standard-issue six. Otherwise, she seems to be fine, as are the rest of the gals.

I know that absolutely no one but me is interested in the day-to-day struggles of Australian Walking Sticks.

Exotic Pets

2006-01-26T13:08:00.000-05:00

There's little in the world sadder than a grown man with an exotic pet in public. An African gray parrot, say, or an iguana, or maybe a handful of ferrets. Especially when said sad guy hangs out somewhere in public with his exotic pet. Like, in front of the EatZis near my apartment.

There's this guy who, during the warmer months, would sit in front of the EatZis with his parrot, and then give everyone the stinkeye when they approached him about the parrot. But the thing is, he'd also give the stinkeye if you didn't fawn over his bird. That man irritates me. If your way of garnering attention from other people is to sit outside with your chinchilla, as if that were normal, as if everyone these days is walking around with a chinchilla or a box turtle or a hedgehog -- you've got some serious likeability issues. Having these exotic pets, and then parading them in public in your very own Kook Parade? I mean, come on.

So all that was to say that Tuesday, I became what I hate most. I was a man with an exotic pet in public.

Four, actually. My friend Scott who volunteers with me at the National Zoo's Invertebrate House brought me four Australian Walking Sticks in a little plastic critter carrier. Which means I had to ride home on the Metro with a clear box full of bugs in my lap.

I'm shy. Maybe a little reserved. At least in public. I like to be in control of any social situations I might find myself in. This is very difficult to accomplish when one is holding a clear box full of bugs on the Metro. I think because on some level I broke a societal rule by showing up in public with insects on purpose, society broke the rules right back and waved good-bye to my person space as they crowded around me, oohing and ahhing and ewwing as they all tried to peer inside. The longer I stood on the Metro with my case full of exotic pets, the more slaps in the face I received from karma. The questions got less and less about the bugs and more and more about me personally:

"What are those?"
"Where do they come from?"
"Are you going to take them for a walk when you get home?"
"I think I just saw one poo."
"You gonna teach 'em tricks?"
"Can you eat 'em?"
"If you were my husband, there's no way I'd let you in the house with those!"
"Your wife is going to have a fit."
"Hey, buddy, you'd better be ready to sleep on the couch!"
"How long you been married?"

Other people, people who want to share, but find they have no outlet, that's probably why they hang out with their exotic pets in public. It's their socially inappropriate way of saying, "Hey, I'm up for anything. I'm holding a snake! In public! And I'm wearing cords!"

Heaven forbid I ever become one of those people on purpose. But I am now the owner of some somewhat exotic pets.

So the Australian Walking Sticks are phasmids -- a fancy way of saying that they like to look like things they are. Like leaves or sticks or bark. The other cool things about my gals (Molly, Alice, Tamara, and Grace Jones) is that they reproduce parthenogenically. Basically, they never have to have sex with a male ever to make more of themselves. This is good news for militant lesbians; however, cloning like that can have problems. Any genetic issues the mom has are passed directly on to all the eggs, since the eggs are exact copies of the mom. Guys may not always be useful, but we're good for randoming up the genes, and that's a nifty way to keep things somewhat chlorinated in the gene pool.

Once I learn how to take pictures of things other than the inside of my pocket with my cell phone, I'll see if I can't post some pictures of my new brood. And, if I work things out right, in a year or so I'll have enough to TAKE OVER THE WORLD!!!

Or at least freak Zach the fuck out.

READING: The Forsyte Saga (cont.) (again)

2006-01-23T16:19:00.000-05:00

Oh, Irene.

Loud Water Woman & Tongue Suck Girl

2006-01-22T19:09:00.000-05:00

So, uh, writing's hard.

This stuff, that I do here, this is easy. But when I have to pay attention to things like plot and character and stuff? Wow. How do those guys do that? For instance, you know what I suck at? Describing people. What they look like and stuff. "He was tall, yet clean." That's about as good as I can get. "He had hair. It was brown." Or, "He was real, real, real good looking."

Yeah: I'm totally going to be famous.

I've been working on this book thing, and I have this goal in mind that I'll have a complete rough draft by the end of February. And I love how I picked the underachiever month, the one that can't even see it's way to being a full 30 days long. But there you have it: my goal. By February 28 I should have a finished book that needs to be edited. And then edited some more. And then, I'll no doubt cry, abandon the whole thing, come back to it like an abused spouse, cry some more, and finally either the book will be done or I will. I'm crossing my fingers that it's going to be the book.

I decided to try writing at the library today. For those not in the know, the Bethesda library is lovely, and has this quiet room in the back that's all glass-walled like the future. And quiet. Or supposed to be. Because it's the Quiet Room; I mean, it even say so on the door: No cell phones, no beverages, and no Fritos. Only I think the Fritos are supposed to stand in for all food. So there's this whisp of a blonde gal sitting two stations in front of me, and she has brought the loudest water ever. Every time she drinks from it, she squeezes the sides so it makes these gadawful popping sounds like rifle shots and I jump. I've tried eye contact. I've tried giving her the stink-eye. And I've made several exasperated-type noises, but to no avail. I think I will make this woman a character in my book and then have something dreadful happen to her. But she's already living with a pretty dredful dye job; what more, really, could I do to her?

Anyway, take that, Loud Water Woman.

There's a young Asian Mathlete in here with me (and that's totally not stereotyping; he's got graph paper, 2 calculators, and a calculas textbook the size of my head), and we've both been trying to get the attention of this other young woman who is making loud sucking sounds on some kind of hard candy. Or her tongue. The Nigerian man sitting directly across from me and to the right has joined the Mathlete and me in our Tell-Tale hate. I mean, can she not hear that? Does she think it's a soothing, gentle sound, this sucking noise she's making? 'Cause it's really, really not. It's actually really Really IRRITATING!

If I end up not being able to finish my novel, it's totally going to be because of Loud Water Woman and the Tongue Suck Girl.

An Internet Plea to Make Me Pretty

2006-01-22T11:29:00.000-05:00

Maybe someone out there, someone smart in the ways of the Internet (like a young Sandy Bullock, say, or Angie Jolie) could give me a tutorial on how to purchase a domain name and all the things one would need to go with that.

I've got one in mind; I just don't know who to buy from -- and what all I need to make sure I have when I do finally purchase it. There's probably a really boring web-hosting conversation that could be had; and if someone is crafty in the ways of design: I'd like to have that conversation too.

So, come on Internet: make me pretty.

Are you kidding me?

2006-01-20T12:09:00.000-05:00

Right now, as in at this very moment, there's a guy in one of the stalls of the men's room with a phone book and a dictionary.

A phone book.

And a dictionary.

I'll pee tomorrow.

READING: The Forsyte Saga

2006-01-18T21:07:00.000-05:00

Meet the Forsytes. [insert Soap theme here...]

No, seriously: that's what you'll spend the first chapter doing when you start reading The Forsyte Saga. And you totally should. Go on. Click the link. Order the book. And then tell me all about ordering the book since I'm on a moratorium from book buying for this year. And probably the rest of my life.

I own four copies of War & Peace. Four. And three of them are the exact same edition I just linked to. The other one is a substandard edition, that looks like this. If you're going to pick up a copy of War & Peace -- well, first, drop me an email and I'll give you one of mine. But if you don't want me having your address, or if you can't wait, or if by the time you get to me I've given my two extra ones away, make sure you get the Constance Garnett translation rather than the Aylmer Maude translation.

"Dude, whatever. It's a long book. Why do I even care who translated it?"

Good question. I recommend the Garnett over the Maude for one scene: Count Rostov and Marya Dmitryevna dance something called a Daniel Cooper. I'll let Tolstoy/Garnett take it from there:

______________________________
The count danced well and knew that he did, but his partner could not dance at all, and did not care about dancing well. Her portly figure stood erect, with her mighty arms hanging by her side (she had handed her reticule to the countess). It was only her stern, but comely face that danced. What was expressed by the whole round person of the count, was expressed by Marya Dmitryevna in her more and more beaming countenance and puckered nose. While the count, with greater and greater expenditure of energy, enchanted the spectators by the unexpectedness of the nimble pirouettes and capers of his supple legs, Marya Dmitryevna with the slightest effort in the movement of her shoulders or curving of her arms, when they turned or marked the time with their feet, produced no less impression from the contrast, which everyone appreciated, with her portliness and her habitual severity of demeanour. The dance grew more and more animated. The vis-à-vis could not obtain one moment’s attention, and did not attempt to do so. All attention was absorbed by the count and Marya Dmitryevna. Natasha pulled at the sleeve or gown of every one present, urging them to look at papa, though they never took their eyes off the dancers. In the pauses in the dance the count drew a deep breath, waved his hands and shouted to the musician to play faster. More and more quickly, more and more nimbly the count pirouetted, turning now on his toes and now on his heels, round Marya Dmitryevna. At last, twisting his lady round to her place, he executed the last steps, kicking his supple legs up behind him, and bowing his perspiring head and smiling face, with a round sweep of his right arm, amidst a thunder of applause and laughter, in which Natasha’s laugh was loudest. Both partners stood still, breathing heavily, and mopping their faces with their batiste handkerchiefs.

"That’s how they used to dance in our day, ma chère," said the count.

"Bravo, Daniel Cooper!" said Marya Dmitryevna, tucking up her sleeves and drawing a deep, prolonged breath.
______________________________

Did you see what he did there? Everything about that passage is amazing and marvelous and should make you run out and get that copy of War & Peace along with The Forsyte Saga. Notice how towards the end of that passage, as the action of the dancing gets faster, the clauses get shorter? Can you feel Natasha's excitement at watching her father dance, that 12-year-old's pride when it's still okay to love your parents and your dad is dancing, do you see that? Dancing? Aren't you looking? And when it's over, I love that Natasha's laughter is heard above it all -- because it totally would. I love that Count Rostov's legs are described as "supple." I love that Marya Dmitryevna (who is called "The Old Dragon") doesn't dance so much as pulse in place. But what I love the most -- what sends a chill up my spine and what, I shit you not, makes me tear up every. single. time is that final exchange between the Count and the Old Dragon. Rostov is no longer Rostov -- he's the dance itself; he's Daniel Cooper.

In short, Count Rostov? Has totally brought it.

The Maude version? Meh. Natasha leads the applause -- but isn't heard above it. Maude says that Marya Dmitryevna "did not want to dance well" rather than the more lyrically carefree "did not care about dancing well." And at the end, Marya Dmitryevna simply says, "That was a Daniel Cooper!" Rostov isn't Daniel Cooper for Maude. And finally, Maude shows Marya Dmitryevna "tucking her sleeves and puffing heavily." Which I think robs Marya Dmitryevna -- and the scene -- of the dignity and kick-assedness that the Garnett translation bestows.

And that, oh my best beloveds, is why I think if you're going to read War & Peace, you have to read the Garnett. She cares about the characters more. Aylmer Maude blows.

So anyway. The Forsytes.

June Forsyte is engaged to marry a guy none of the Forsytes like so much. He wears a questionable hat that poor Aunt Hester mistook for a cat, which she tries to shoo from her chair. "She was disturbed when it did not move." When the novel opens, it is at a dinner in "honor" of June and this guy, Phillip Bosinney, of the questionable cat hat. Bosinney, being a Bosinney and not a Forsyte, is measured and found entirely too lacking:

"Like an artist for ever seeking to discover the significant trifle which embodies the whole character of a scene, or place, or person, so those unconscious artists--the Forsytes had fastened by intuition on this hat; it was their significant trifle, the detail in which was embedded the meaning of the whole matter; for each had asked himself: 'Come, now, should I have paid that visit in that hat?' and each had answered 'No!' and some, with more imagination than others, had added: 'It would never have come into my head!'"

And the Forsytes just get bitchier and funnier from there. The novel takes place towards the end of the Victorian era -- at a time when the 1800s are making their goodbyes, air-kissing, and promising to do lunch, real soon. They're wealthy, the Forsytes -- but they're nouveau riche and kinda on the tacky side, having made their money in industry. Money that's made by doing nothing -- by simply being given it -- has always meant more than money one had to soil one's hands to get. But at this point in time, there are fewer and fewer trust-funders and more and more folks who come from families where dad went to a job for the money. Here's another great scene that illustrates that point nicely:

"'What was her father?'

'Heron was his name, a Professor, so they tell me.'

Roger shook his head.

'There's no money in that,' he said.

'They say her mother's father was cement.'

Roger's face brightened.

'But he went bankrupt,' went on Nicholas.

'Ah!' exclaimed Roger."

Anyway. I'm only 60 pages in; it could start sucking. I really hope it doesn't, though, both because the last book sucked so much and because it's so good right now. There's trouble brewing in one marriage, and a father-son reconciliation in the works that could prove tricky for another character later on. Besides, I think a book can never suck if it has a line like this one in it:

"Timothy alone held apart, for though he ate saddle of mutton heartily, he was, he said, afraid of it."

PS: I have a crazy scheme in the works. I'll say more about it later, when there's something more to say about it than the fact that it's a crazy scheme. I'm mentioning it mostly because it means now one of you will soon say, "Hey, about that crazy scheme..." which means I'll have to keep up with it.

Keep me honest, my pets.

Review: Memoirs of a Geisha

2006-01-14T21:47:00.000-05:00

Guys: like, she remembers a lot. And there's a geisha named Pumpkin.

It's beautiful to look at, this film; and that went a long way towards me not hating it necessarily. But mostly it's just really ridiculous, and for a long movie, the ending came much too fast without really resolving anything. She's a geisha, she's not, she's a geisha again, she gets caught having sex with some guy, and then she ends up with Ken Watanabe, who seems to be Japan's version of Mr. Big. Only maybe she didn't. It was tough to tell.

There's a huge dance number involving the world's craziest platform shoes and either snow or cherry blossoms. That's not important. What is important is that that scene was a chair, a bucket of water, and a welder's mask away from being truly awesome.

Now, the geisha named Pumpkin is awesome, but only when she's dressed like a 1940's tart, and I think maybe she isn't really a geisha. Like, she was going to be one, but then something happened. What? I don't know; the movie was difficult to follow, mostly because I kept replaying the dance scene with the platform shoes over in my head. How was she able to breathe with all that stuff flying in the air? And I didn't see a lot of dancing so much as she seemed to be artfully falling a lot. It's probably those shoes.

Dudes, I totally need a better movie. Like, soon.