My snow day

This poorly exposed photo documents the first 20 minutes or so of my Valentine's snow day. It was just enough shoveling for me to think "hey, a little shovelin's not so bad." Then I realized that for the first time in six years we wouldn't be able to just drive our monster station wagons over the snow drifts down the drive. I bet it took me and my $5 shovel (pictured) close to an hour and a half before we were done, with no breakfast in me even. And I finished right when morning cartoons were over, of course, so 2 year old Mr. B turned to me just as I slumped into a chair with a banana and said "Da-ad. I wanna play you. Duck Duck Firetruck!" And Duck Duck Firetruck is not a game you can play half way, either. But it was a swell day. All that snow.

Crash is not a good movie.

I never saw Crash when it came out because I like to think I have developed a good sense for what movies are good or bad simply from seeing some of their publicity. Yesterday was a snow day and today was a snow day, though, and sometimes watching "big" movies is a fun way to celebrate those kind of days.

But instead, it was bad, and here is the main reason: non-diegetic sound. That is, it relies on music and sounds that aren't generated from the action on the screen itself as a substitute for true emotion. The use of non-diegetic sound isn't necessarily why Crash is bad, but it was a big early clue for me that it would be. I mean, when there is a scene, and it it supposed to be an intense interpersonal exchange, and in the background you hear this thick, sludgy layer of synthesized soundtrack, it means that they are trying to manipulate you using something other than whatever dramatic interest and tension they have invested in the characters. It's a cop out, in other words. And they use this all the time in Crash.

Take away the music, and you'd have some pretty boring stuff going on, I think. Really, what is so devastating about the epiphanies experienced by the characters in this movie? Here's a short list:

Shop keeper guy: if you shoot someone's kid, you really should not have done that.

Locksmith: it is so great when your children are not shot by unstable immigrant entrepreneurs.

Matt Dillon, bad cop: women will not like you if you touch them inappropriately.

TV director's wife: even if a cop is a bigot, he might try to save you from a burning car.

Good cop kid: sometimes, when angry strangers reach for their pockets in a violent manner and it is late at night, they are not reaching for guns.

Sandra Bullock: you should not be shallow and materialistic.

TV director: people are bigoted against blacks, and that is partly because some black youths steal cars.

The other cop guy: I'm not sure what he learned.

Ludicris: maybe I don't always live up to my ideals about not stealing from other black people. I should really examine the way I live because I am ashamed of myself.

It's not just the obtuseness of the message that I dislike, but the ham-fisted way the movie uses bizarre coincidence after coincidence, cute children, and a melodramatic soundtrack to make it all come together. Ultimately, I think it was popular because by saying "You need to see Crash," people could tell themselves that they were enlightened on the subject of race. But could any movie about race in America really leave you feeling this good and this hopeful for the possibility that we can all be brought together? Is it that easy?

Wow, that's quite a rant.

Poetry Out Loud is on

For anyone reading this who plans to compete in Poetry Out Loud, you might be wondering if today's (and probably tomorrow's, I'm thinking) school closings will affect it. The answer is no; snow cannot stop poetry--poetry thrives in it, in fact.

So things will go as planned on Thursday. Try to show up at rm 711 around 3:00 so you can sign in and get a room assignment. Try to bring four copies of the poems you plan to recite. If you have questions, email me at my school address.

Advanced Bad Poetry

The class I'm taking now is actually called just "Advanced Poetry," but so far I have been writing mainly bad poetry at a highly advanced level. It's intense. The best thing about the class is that it puts you in this place where you find yourself driving your car in silence a lot, just trying to think in some kind of poetic language that might come in handy. It's a nice way to live, but perhaps not a safe way to drive.

The professor, George Kalamaras, is someone I wish I could have as like a poetry version of a life coach. Shouldn't there be such a thing? Shouldn't we all have a poetry life coach in our lives that we can touch base with, a person to call at 3AM when you can't write because you're too happy? I wonder how much that would cost.

The last class I had with a workshop in was a creative non-fiction class where your peers would be critiquing your 4,000 word essays, and it could be uncomfortable at times. But poetry is condensed language, and I'm finding that workshop in this current class provides me with condensed anxiety. Maybe anxiety isn't the right word, but it's not far off.

So far, of the five or six poems I've assembled, I think I like two. Of those two, only one probably deserves to be liked. I'm spending today trying to mess with a poem for Monday. It's okay. It starts out clunky, but that doesn't bother me yet.

Currency

There is a currency in this town

in a lack of information.

We dole it from card catalogs

rescued out of the old library

while it was being forgotten.

We traffic in this stuff,

where the weird neighbors live,

how garden hoses left under the snow

carry ice to your bathtub,

and who moved your great aunt

from the assisted living center

during the Alzheimer’s wedding.

She was just starting to like it there.

This week, the suicidal teen

gives his mom three hundred dollars

so she can buy a car he won’t worry about.

He asks only for the van in the drive.

Maybe he can get something for it

before she forgets and lets

his brother drive it into the river.

Look at me, watching the football.

I'm a little surprised to be sitting on the couch watching the game tonight, but here I am, and it's pretty good fun--wow, what a cool run the guy named Wayne just had.

I grew up liking just college sports, IU basketbll mostly. I think rooting for big professional outfits made as much sense to me as rooting for companies like IBM or 5/3 Bank. I still feel that way; there just doesn't seem to be enough of a relationship between the players and "the people."

But that's different today. So many people have this game on their minds that it does feel like a significant shared experience. So significant, in fact, that I think schools are calling for 2 hr delays tomorrow just so that kids can stay up late to watch the game. At least that's my assumption--I can't think of any other reason for the mass delays.

So anyway, this is fun. I've learned a few things. For example, my ol' lady just told me she heard that the quarterbacks all have 2-way radios in their helmets. I never knew that.

UPDATE: The wife points out that schools are probably delayed so that little Timmy and Sally don't have to wait at the bus stop when it's 0 degrees. I'm not sure that two hours is going to make any discernible difference, but the appearance that matters.

I wonder how the hard core road cyclist I saw today is doing. It's true: I saw a guy zipping by the house in full winter gear. I wanted to run out there and pump my fists at him, but it was too cold. I've ridden road in the twenties and mountain biked in the teens, but this guy was crazy. He didn't even have a balaclava covering his face. I admire the guy because most of my favorite riders are the tough guy Spring Classics riders, these Belgians who ride in the snow in shorts and short sleeve jerseys.

How I spent my snow day.

So I didn't know school was canceled until I walked into the main office and asked whether or not today's faculty meeting was called off. The school secretary looked at me with this "Hill is such an idiot look" and said "there's no school."

Of course, I had noticed that the halls looked rather empty, but I guess I thought I was just an early riser and beat most folks to school or something. Oh well. It's fun to be at school when it's empty. I got some work done, left, and now I'm at the new library, which is practically like totally my new favorite place in the entire world.

Looking at the drawing above, I am sitting in a comfy chair outside the windows on the second floor, and have my laptop putting all the power of the interwebs at my disposal.. There are fewer people in real life than you see in the picture, though. I dunno. This place just kills me. The power of architecture to help define a city should not be underestimated.

Opening Day!

Main Atrium, ACPL

I'm going to go ahead and declare myself the first person to blog about the new library that opened here today. I also plan to have the first overdue library book there, too.

I should have grabbed a better picture than this, but it was tough with an armful of coats and the occasional kid. But anyway, it's a great place. I can't wait to get to know it. It has scale, coziness, and lets the light in, too. I really like what I've heard about something called the "silent reading room," because I'm all about silence, but I wasn't able to find it today.

Do you have favorite people?

Jim and Terry, Carmel (2002)

I can't believe Jim Merithew called me last night. When Jim calls, you don't even care that you were sleeping; you're just glad to know that he still thinks about you some times--I mean, seriously: he lives in California, with a job people want, in a flat that overlooks Lake Merritt and off to the Marin headlands. He has an M6, and the pictures he takes with it always make you laugh, and he smiles when he talks and you have a crush on his wife. In other words, this is a guy who has plenty of reasons to not remember his Midwestern friends, the ones who let him win all the stop-sign sprints during road rides, the ones he could talk about Traverse City with.

I just feel all lucky.

Snow!

Our garden Buddha looks pretty content with the snow that fell last night, and I am, too. I can't tell you what a nice thing it has been today just to have snow outside the windows and in the sole of my boots. And just when I'd started to think that this could be a snow free winter.

J Dilla changed my life.

Not really, but that's what it says on the shirt I want to get. And I'm almost feeling that way this morning after downloading some dude's J Dilla "tribute" that he put together and posted to the Animal Collective forum. It's 70 or so minutes of his work producing and a few tracks from his own albums and it's pretty awesome. I knew I liked the album Donuts he released just before he died, or right around there, but this just takes it to another level.

Maybe I like more hip hop than I realize. Could be. Some music, like opera or free form jazz you always kind of assume that you might grow to like when you're older, that you'll get it some day. It never occurred to me that this would happen for me with beats and rhymes.

This tribute has some pretty low language, but not a whole lot that I haven't been heard to say on the golf course. A little more disturbing is the way some of the lyrics treat women, but I deleted most of those songs from my playlist because that stuff truly takes away from the music. I'm such a champion for women everywhere.

But I'd love to be a dj producer like dilla. I mean look at that picture. Your life would be to hang in rooms full of lp's and instruments and electronica and you would get to fiddle around all day with your art. I think it's also the attitude you'd get to project--dj's never smile in their pictures, but they're not frowning, either--they just look deep, like their beats have connected to something sublime. But being an English teacher is really cool too. I too am connected to the sublime.

I just have to get this shirt now, though.

David Skalicky at the Kachmann

Here's David watching Mee Kyung Shim emote about his photography at the Kachmann opening on Saturday. Mee did a good job expressing what most of us were feeling. I think I'd seen most of David's images online, but it was nice to be around them in person for once. Individually, they all look like pieces of stories, and when they are assembled on a gallery wall, your mind tries to fit them into some kind of narrative arc, and the places this exercise takes you can be jarring. But in an invigorating way. There is some tenderness in these, too. Together, they could be scenes from some slightly ominous Midwestern bildungsroman, innocence and experience.

Many of his images remind me of the "untitled film still" series from Cindy Sherman, a good thing:Untitled #96, Cindy Sherman

I love knowing that these stories happened around here. It makes your local landscape feel a little more fertile knowing that people like David can use a life in Indiana to come up with things that surprise you.

Early album of the year prediction.

I know that I let some of my enthusiasms get the better of me sometimes, but I'm going to go ahead and predict that Panda Bear's album coming out in March, Person Pitch, will be my #1 for 2007. How do I know? From hearing the first track, streamed at the Paw Tracks site. It's got this high choral chant in the background that reminds me of the soundtrack of Akira in the climactic scenes, when Akira is breaking lots of stuff, and in the foreground is Panda singing this kind of Beach Boys melody. Plus, the song has clapping in it, like many of my favorite songs.* I just keep hitting play over and over. Panda Bear, if you don't already know, is one of the main fellers from Animal Collective. [link]

* That reminds me of this great bit by the old radio team Bob & Ray where they ask this kid what kind of music he likes and he says "Oh, whip songs mainly. Songs with whips in them." You kind of have to hear it, probably.

A funny You Tube

Stop motion will never die. It starts off fun, and gets better as it goes. Music is kind of cool, too [link]

2006 Favorite Book Learnin'

I don't know if I can rank these, but these were the most enjoyable reads for me in 2006, in alphabetical order by author or title or maybe not in any order.

The Road, Cormac McCarthy
I finished this a couple of months ago now but I can't stop thinking about it. C read it over the holidays and had dreams about it in which she was hiding by the side of the road from cannibals and running through trees, starving. The clarity of his prose (that phrase is such a book review cliche, but it's all I can think of) continues to be just to the bone. His next novel, if it continues this pattern, will have to be written entirely in sentence fragments .

Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen
Finally, I read Jane Austen. I had no problem reading chick books when I was 11--girls were always telling me that I couldn't read Are you there God? It's me, Margaret and similar stuff--but this backward part of me always assumed I wouldn't relate to Austen. I outgrew that sentiment a long time ago, but never got around to her. At last, I got the prodding I needed when this novel was on the list for a course I am teaching this year, and thank goodness; this is just one of the wittiest books I've ever read. It's got me tempted to go on a year of Brit Lit, re-reading Anthony Powell, Kingsley Amis and Henry Green, especially. But where will I get the time? I will sleep less. Yes. That is my new year's resolution: to sleep less.

The Sounds of Poetry, Robert Pinsky
Sometimes I think I read as many books about reading poetry as I read poetry. It's just hard to escape the feeling, when you're reading poetry, that you'd be catching onto something if you only knew a little bit more about conventions, traditions, contexts. This is the most helpful book I've ever seen on how to understand, yes, the "sounds" of a poem. It's so clear, so to the point. Can be read in an afternoon.

The Heart of the Matter, Graham Greene
I think it's a rule that I have to one book of his on this list every year.

The Road from Coorain, Jill Ker Conway
Another book that I read for a class this year, a memoir that writes beautifully about some uglier parts of Australia, something that always attracts me because I too live in a place where you have to look hard to see beauty (but it's there, I think).

Saturday, Ian McCewan
Man, lots of Brits on this list, it seems. Boot said it best.

Up in Michigan, there was no snow.

But there was also no television, and no internet, and that made it pretty great too. The wife is swearing off television for the new year and there's something about new year's that fills me with optimism and the thought that I can do the same. I just spent ten days without it, at least, and it was a positive thing. I might miss The Office a little, and I like 30 Rock some too, but not that much.

I love this picture. C took it while driving back to the lake place late one night. It reminds me of the poster for David Lynch's Lost Highway. Man, I hope I get to see Inland Empire this year.

Online, with new monitor.

Sitting down with my new 19" flat screen that I got for Christmas, one of the first stops I made was to the Times home page where I watched Saddam being walked to the gallows. Imagine my horror when I found myself watching the man's confused, terrified expression and feeling sympathy for the doomed sadist. Amazing, truly amazing. I mean, I know exactly how blood soaked his coat tails were--if anyone was a candidate for court ordered hanging, it was Saddam.

But watching that video is still emotional. Even with him, a state-sanctioned killing for something other than self-defense is still murder. It's depraved. I mean, either human life is sacred or it isn't, and just because a person has lived as though life is anything but sacred, I don't see how that gives us the right to abandon our principles. And I don't think it is "soft on crime" to think that--it's more a question of having higher, nobler expectations for man.

I'm sure my opinion would be different if I had more of a direct human connection to the suffering Saddam caused in his life, but this is how I felt watching the video. I'm rather relieved the Times site didn't show the actual hanging itself, and I hope I resist the urge to find it on Youtube.

Anxiety of Influence, cont.

I don't recall thinking of William Christenberry when I took this:But the resemblance is there. Except his is much cooler, of course: I know next to nothing about Christenberry, though I suppose I could take the time to read the introduction to his latest monograph, but his pictures are enough. He's one of the people who, when I saw their photographs for the first time, made me think "Oh, so that's what I've been trying to do." I felt the same way when I first saw Harry Callahan, The Americans, and Anne Geddes. Just kidding about that last one.

Just made a connection . . .

Something about this picture from Halloween looked familiar when I first saw it. I think I just put it together:Diane Arbus is not my favorite, but you can't always choose your influences, I suppose.

Sunday morning

Looking at this picture of today's breakfast, I realized how satisfyingly empty my Sunday mornings can be. Waffles, heavily sweetened coffee, and the worst sections of the Sunday new york times, represented here by the Style section, featuring Dita Von Teese no less. It's the most worthless section, but for some reason, this is inevitably my sunday times roster:

1. Style section, especially the Bob Morris column and "A Night Out With" and usually a few wedding announcements. Always look to see what the brides do, then the men. Trying to think of a way to turn it into an orange-juice drinking game.
2. Arts & Leisure, skipping past the theater stuff to get to "Playlist." Today's was a little obscure for me so I browsed and skipped it until later.
3. Skim the Book Review to see if any authors I like are featured. (The Architecture of Happiness is reviewed today, so that was nice)
4. The Magazine, in this order: letters, Deborah Solomon interview, Ethicist, and then I peter out half the time. Today, though, is the year in ideas issue, which makes for some great reading.
5. Week in Review
6. Front Page, section A.

Now that I look at it this way, it's clear that my priorities are a little on the frivolous side.

My delivery person actually delivered me (a) the entire paper, and (b) the correct day's issue, so things look up. Now back to the ideas article; it always makes me feel like all the world's problems will be solved in the first few months of the next year.

Monkeysquirrel Awards 2006, Music Edition, Part II

5. Grizzly Bear--Yellow House

I picked this up just because so many people on the Animal Collective message boards seem to like it, so I'm far from being an early adopter. It's kind of a little less-morose Iron & Wine maybe, and maybe a little part of the whole freak folk scene that the NYT wrote about a couple of months ago.


4. Cat Power--The Greatest

I wasn't in with Cat Power from the very beginning, but I have been crazy about her ever since What Would the Community Think?, and, I dunno, she's just incredible. The music keeps getting better, and keeps changing, unlike what some friends were saying about Pernice Bros. the other day. Moon Pix may still be my favorite, but not by much. One thing that has to be impressive about Chan is that there has been so little, if any, backlash against her--usually, when you have some alternative-like act achieve some popular success you will have a small school of folks making a name for themselves by dissing 'em, but it's just not happening with her that I can tell.

I think my wife might be the only person who doesn't like her, but it's for personal reasons that trace back the humiliating show we saw at Second Story in Bloomington a while back. She was sitting behind us during the opening act and when it was her turn she starts whining "I don't wanna go!!!" Very sad set, but somehow it charmed me; I probably thought it was cool to see an artistic breakdown in person. I've always wanted to have some kind of artistic meltdown, but don't have any art, no way to express my tortured soul.

3. Boards of Canada--Music Has the Right to Children

I know it's an old record, but this is a list of my favorites for 2006, and I didn't hear it until this year. It was one of those "where have you been all my life?" moments and a "this is the kind of music I would make" moment all put together. It's so good that I think my favorite moment, the moment that I remember most vividly, from the Belle & Sebastian show I saw this summer with C, Joseph, and Kimberle was when "ROYGBIV" was played from the cd before any band had even taken the stage. It was loud, the front of the stage was packed with the tallest crowd I had ever seen a show with (my natural advantage as a tall person eliminated!), and everyone up there just stopped their pre-show milling about and talking to listen and bob their heads to the song.

2. Fiery Furnaces--Bitter Tea

This one took me awhile, and I admit that there are a couple of tracks that I have to skip every time I listen, but part of that is because I can't wait to get to the really great songs. The album first clicked for me on a drive from the Petoskey area of northern Michigan over to the Leelenau peninsula, which is a fairly pretty drive, so that may have helped.

This is their most melodic record, which should make it the most appealing to the general public, but I don't get the feeling that it broke them out at all. One problem may have been their releasing the wackier Rehearsing My Choir before this one--people might have heard that one and assumed they'd lost it.

1. The Liars--Drum's Not Dead

I don't even know what to say. I want my music to come in album sized chunks--forget this new age of "the playlist" (one more bad trend the iPod is starting)--and this album is one great chunk of awesome. What a gift for description I have. It feels like something new, that's all. It's actually reminding me of when Loveless came out, seriously. I know, it's too soon to say that; I'm still in the honeymoon phase with this record. I should settle down, but really. This was #1 for me this year by a long margin.


*Conspicuous in their absence from this list awards:

3. Gulag Orkestar--Beirut. Quite a fun record and what's his name has this amazing voice, but there are only 3 songs at most that I keep coming back to.

2. Joanna Newsom--YS. I don't get it yet, though everyone else in the music world seems to. I thought her last one was super, so it's not like I don't get harp music played by women who look and dress like cute little elves. Maybe I'm not trying hard enough.

1. Yo La Tengo--I am not afraid of you . . . . How could Yo La Tengo not be on this list? Probably because this album sounds too much like a playlist for me, jumping around in style and up and down in quality. What I like is records like Painful and President Yo La Tengo, these records where you would turn it on and just be in one mental place for an hour or whatever. First time I heard President YLT was with my friend Christian and we were outside on his patio on a cold December night because his gf didn't like loud music and didn't want him smoking inside but the record was so awesome that I didn't even care when I discovered later that my car had been towed. Well, that's probably not true, but I like to remember it that way. I wish they could make records like that again.

Winter Light

Personally, I think it's worth the cold to live in that low winter light for a few months--it feels like you're standing on the edge of the earth all day or something. In the winter, the sun is this low punt, tumbling at you, right at you, all day long.

Winter Light is also the name of one of my favorite Bergman films. As a kid, I used to imagine making a movie where nothing really happened, where it was all silence and and light and people not talking, and then I grew up and found out the Bergman had already done it.

This winter light in the picture up top is at the St. Joseph Tree Farm, the best of both Christmas tree worlds. You can wander the fields looking for a cutter, and then you can go back and pick out a tree they have cut for you already and plop it into your (or your friends') truck. Pure, sweet anticipation is what days like this are for me. That's the truck of our pals Mike and Michelle there, with Michelle in one of her frequent poses as she explains something interesting to her hubby.

And here's Mike with B.

Monkeysquirrel Awards 2006, Music Edition, Part I

It's December 1 as I start this, the date that marks the end of my musical year. I sat down to do my musical accounting for the past year, and here is how it broke down for me. Not a bad year, better than 2005, I think, which is funny because it's rather poppy in places, which usually means they have a short shelf life for me. However, I think I will still be listening to of lot of this list a year from now. Here are the first five of my favorites for this past year.

10. Peter, Bjorn, and John--Writer's Block
This is one of the poppy ones, but it has a quirky Scandinavian sensibility, and I'm getting this feeling now that there are all kinds of Swedish and other Nordic kinds of bands out there that are really good. Is "Nordic" the same thing as "Scandinavian"? I always lose track of what all countries are up there. Anyway, it feels like a new musical frontier for me or something. I think the Concretes are one of these bands that I would like if I heard them, for example. I have a sense for these things. And I have an even better sense for what bands I like when I actually hear their music. This is one of those, kind of rousing introvert-anthem kinds of things.

9. Rose Melberg--Cast Away the Clouds
I feel like such a wimp for liking Rose, but I can't help it. I mean, this is the most fey kind of "I'm so sad" girly singer songwriter stuff . . . but it feels so right. It helps that she plays most of her songs with chords I can figure out. She writes these songs with melodies that sound so obvious that you can't figure out why you haven't ever thought of them yourself even though you never think about writing music though you always think it would be nice to be able to say that you have written a song--but how do you know if it is any good? You don't. You're filled with doubt. Maybe it's your parents' fault. Maybe they should have encouraged you more, but it's too late for that; you're of the age when you are supposed to be able to encourage yourself, and you do, but it's for little things like getting out of bed and flossing and not wasting time on the internets.

8. Belle and Sebastian--The Life Pursuit
Any year they produce, the album pretty much has to go on the list somewheres. Liking this album so much bothers me a little though because even though it's so good, great even, and restores a faith in B&B that had started to wane, it at the same time is not the same Belle that put out those first two records or so. They're too confident and slick and capable to make that record now, which is a little sad. But still, what an awesome bunch of songs this is.

7. J Dilla--Donuts
This is the only record of it's kind that I've ever even heard, though I think it's its own little genre: samples with beats. So, I really should try to find more discs like this out there because it just rocks, if that's the right term. Too bad he died. Cancer, I think.



6. Bonnie "Prince" Billy--The Letting Go
Like Belle, this had to be on here somewhere, but what's surprising is that it's not in the top five. This might be his nicest set of songs since I See a Darkness . . . have I told you I met Will Oldham . . Twice!! Yeah, I probably I have. I always tell that story (those two stories!!). Will always finds some great obscure (to me) chick back up singer on all his records, and the woman on this one is one of my favorites. She has an ancient, ballad-like sound to her voice. It's wonderful.

Flying stories

One place it is nice not to "wear" your iPod is the airport because you just miss out on too many little stories. On the way out of town on Wednesday, I'm waiting in the tiny cafe of our tiny airport and watching the cafe employees hold silent, lip reading conversations with the bar employees through the window that separated them (the bar is on the other side of the security checkpoint). They are obviously pretty good at communicating this way because after one mute, excited exchange a cafe worker turned to her colleagues and said out loud "Sinbad is coming! He's on the next plane!"

Over the next five minutes, I sat at a wobbly table sipping bitter coffee, half watching for Sinbad, half watching the airport employees gather at the arrival gate to watch for Sinbad. The next plane was small and only a few people trickled through and a few minutes after the trickle stopped a bar worker came back to the window and mouthed a message to us all that even I could read: "He's not on the plane. He missed the flight." The cafe workers went back to their counter; I returned to my old Whatzup! newspaper, and I think we were all wondering if he had really missed the plane or if he just decided he did not want to come to our town. To heck with you, Sinbad.

Even more riveting was the tragic tale I heard on the flight home. I'm crammed into the back seat of a tiny regional jet and this dude in front of me is returning from Iraq. Up until they made everyone turn off their phones, I got to listen to him grill someone about some kind of infidelity: "Just tell me . . . what did you know and when did you know it? [pause] No, F*** that, just tell me. I need to know." I could tell he was a talker and I wanted to read, so I was just praying he'd find someone else to talk to, and he did, but the story was so awful that I had to put my book down for awhile. Long story short is that he was in Iraq, his wife got killed when a semi drove through her car, and then he found out that she had been cheating on him with some other soldier for quite awhile. I couldn't tell how recent all this was, but the emotion of it all was still pretty much on his mind, so it probably didn't happen that long ago. "If you could kill her twice, I'd be driving the truck," he said. Turns out that the other soldier is going to be spending 1 1/2 years in "the brig" because they prosecute adultery in the Marine Corps.

So, anyway, flying can be interesting.

Best of Best of

It's almost December, which means that it is time to look back and evaluate your year in consumption of pop culture. It will be a couple of weeks before I'm ready to venture my own, but it's never too early to start looking at the lists of others to get ideas. Here is a great page where some guy organizes all of the "best of" lists he can find. Games, music, books, cars--if it's on a list, he compiles it.

It gets silly, but stilly, it's hard to look away. Like I said, it's early days yet, so there is not much there yet, but he had over 700 lists on their last year, he says, so it will fill up quickly.

Mannequins on Skateboards

My favorite Youtube of the week.

tvuplayer?

Please nobody tell me that this player is full of spyware or some other kind of nefarious-ware. I just grabbed it tonight and it's pretty slick (for someone who doesn't have cable). Right now, it's enabling me to see just how mediocre, or maybe even bad, IU is going to be in basketball this year. How convenient.

Thank you, Wikipedia

As someone doing their best to eke out a life without the benefit of (a) cable, or (b) a game system, I am at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to keeping up with the zeitgeist. I've been catching up lately, though, with the benefit of Wikipedia and also these other funny sites that I won't link to. But anyway one of the funnier pop culture references I've learned about recently is this meme: "I'm in UR base killing ur d00dz." Apparently, the phrase was originally coined in some online game where one guy was pwning some other guy who asks where are you? And he responds "I am in ur base, killing ur d00dz." That cracked me up, reading that. Dunno why. It's just . . funny. What's also somewhat funny is how I don't game but avidly read all the articles about gaming technology on Slate or in the NYT and laugh at gamer jokes. Poseur gamer.

And I just can't stop listening to this new Liars record. It's completely killing my d00dz right now. It's got some Velvet Underground & Nico going on in there and almost some Animal Collective too. I always avoided them because their name made me think they were just another Strokes-like something, but they're not.

Half Nelson is so good.

For a movie about a crack-addicted teacher falling apart while trying to keep a favorite student from falling under the influence of a suave crack dealer, Half Nelson is remarkably cheery and satisfying all the way through. Having taught in some similar classrooms, I don't think the portrayal of the school scenes is entirely true to life--I mean, he has what, like 12 students in his class? C'mon. Plus, they sit there and listen to him as he rambles on abstractly about history non stop. But still, all the kids act pretty naturally and, well, I don't know how to put it into words yet; it's just a great film.

At points, I wonder if it isn't almost romanticizing the bottomed-out life the teacher is living. He's a crack head, but he's a tortured artist, sleeping on a bare mattress with his little drawings scattered about and it almost comes across as a viable, hip, lifestyle. He wears cool sunglasses. You almost think that if his cat didn't die (not really a spoiler), he might have been able to keep things together. But again, despite this reservation, one of the best movies of the year for me.
The soundtrack is spiffy, too. I'd always wondered about Broken Social Scene, and now I know they're worth looking into.

Antoinope

Kind of a bummer, this one, because I was so ready for it to be good. Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation are so good, such great mood pieces, that I had high hopes. In part, I blame A.O. Scott, who wrote a positive review in the NYT. I should have waited to see in Anthony Lane had any opinions on it.

Sofia Coppola's known of course for how well she uses happenin' sound tracks in her movies, and she goes out of her way to live up to that promise here; for the first time, it's even sold as a double album, in fact.

Normally, I think of a movie's sound track as almost irrelevant because too much reliance on non-diegetic sound is a cheat, if you ask me. It's manipulative, or something. There are exceptions. The Leonard Cohen in McCabe and Mrs. Miller. The Simon and Garfunkel in The Graduate. But consider Desperate Housewives as an example. It's just a smutty soap opera, as thinly written as anything shown during the day time. But people who wouldn't allow themselves to watch a daytime soap flock to this one in part because, I think, of it's kind of dippy background music. Listen to it: it's light, almost circus music, and is used as something of an ironic comment on the loopy shenanigans going on on screen. "What a silly show this is" is the message: "we can't possibly take this show seriously; we're making fun of it, in fact." It's this ironic distancing that allows people to think that they're still superior to the soap opera they've become hooked on; it's how they rationalize watching something that is as worthless as it is (not that I never watch worthless tv of course; I'm not saying, that is, that I'm "better" than people who do watch the show).

Coppola's first two feature films are different in how they use music, though. In those movies, the incredible sound tracks really feel like a marriage with the tone and emotions behind the acting and the movies as a whole. But in Marie Antoinette, the music instead feels like a substitute for those things. Take away the sound track and there's nothing there. It's basically an expensive, rote, march through her tragic (?) life--a period piece Behind the Music. The fact that the sound track is a double album just underscores how much the movie is dependent upon hipster music for it to have any worth at all.

When I re-read this, I realize that I'm coming across harsher than I probably mean to. "Nothing there" is overstating it, probably. But still.

And another thing: I am getting grumpy as a movie-goer these days. A couple is talking through the first five minutes so I have to let them know how irritating they are and then move over a couple of seats. Then, there's this lady in front of me who's checking her phone through the entire film. It's not making any noise, but the screen on those things is so bright that it shines right in my eye--it's totally distracting. If there weren't a woman in between us, I would have leaned forward and chewed her out. There's actually a part of me that enjoys yelling at people for being rude at movies, I think. It's like a road rage where you can actually do something about it, maybe. Or maybe I just have issues.

New Acres Quarterly column

I have a new guest column published in this fall's Acres newsletter. It's kind of silly homage to an artist named Andy Goldsworthy, who's this amazing guy who goes out an manipulates nature into these beautiful oddball sculptures and then watches them get destroyed. That's a terrible description of his work, I know, but you have to see the stuff to appreciate it. If you're at all curious, have a look. It's here; just go to the Back Page column.

Forum addiction

I am more of a lurker when it comes to the bulletin boards I follow, but I threw my hat into the ring by starting a thread (called "The Father's Signals"--spoilers) at the forum run by the Cormac McCarthy Society a few days ago, and it has been a real trip, an emotional rollercoaster, even.

It starts with an idea that you have that you think is novel. You scan prior posts to make sure no one else has come up with it. Convinced your idea has some novelty and insight, you craft your post as economically as possible to make sure that people will (a) read it, and (b) understand it. Then, you post it and sit back and hope people post.

That was a fun stretch of time there, the waiting. I soon realized that what I really wanted to have happen was for people to say "great point; I agree completely." At first, in other words, I wasn't interested in having a dialogue at all. It's funny how angry I found myself getting when people would start taking "my" thread in directions I didn't intend. You know, when they start saying things like "that reminds me of something else I was thinking about . . .." I hate that.

They started to come in, the replies, and there were actually a few "I agrees" in there, but what really got me were the "no ways." That irked me. That got me writing follow ups and started the arguments in my head as I tried to craft the perfect responses that both met them head on but did so in as short a post as possible.

The thread's up to 43 replies now. I need it to die so I can start thinking about other things.

The Road

That new Cormac McCarthy just about killed me. Man. I don't even know what to say. Talk about your tragic heroes.

Tough Grader

The Arts section in today's Times has an article about this guy, Piero Scaruffi, one of those smart kind of people who has made his money in software somehow, lives in California, and now spends his time doing whatever he wants. And what he wants to do, it seems, is write harsh reviews of my favorite music.

When getting feel for new music, I usually triangulate the reviews I read on AMG, Pitchfork, and some third place. I might have to start adding his site now, scaruffi.com, which is loaded with the kinds of short, mean, and smart music assessments that I hate to love/ love to hate.

He's like a less obtuse Greil Marcus in his ability to explain a group or an album by pulling out references that seem from left field but make perfect sense in context. I don't agree with all of his rankings, but for some reason, the people who rank things low, who are stingy with high scores, come across as more credible. At first I was upset that Cat Power's The Greatest only earned a 5/10 from him, but then I couldn't disagree much with his actual review, and I also noticed that none of his reviews from 2006 have received more than a 7 (if memory serves).

Some of the things he likes are a little odd, like the Beirut album, which is fun, but not better than lots of other stuff he has ranked lower.

I think what got me the most was his harsh review of the newest Belle & Sebastian, which I love, but, again, I could not disagree with his written assessment. Fun site.

Late night read

This one is going to keep me up late, I can tell. I'm only about a third of the way into McCarthy's new one, but it's just the gosh, dang bleakest read of his yet. Words with two syllables stand out in start contrast from the forests of single syllable fragments of sentences that you find on most pages. It's totally creeping me out, really. In Blood Meridian and Outer Dark at least there is some kind of energizing quality to the nihilism, but here it's just draining. In a good way, of course.

First Snow

I think one way that I know that I live at the ideal latitude for my temperment is that I always seem to be ready--emotionally and philosophically--when it is time for the next season to arrive. In May, I'm tired of the mud and those too-happy spring flowers and ready for summer perennials to start growin. Then, by September I'm worn out by heat and relentless lawn mowing and I welcome coats and knit hats. By November, I'm dreaming about snow. I don't even do much in the snow except cross country ski when I can--I just like it.

So, we got our first snow today. I think that's what it was, anyway. I the spring they'd have called it sleet, but I'm ready enough for winter that I'm calling it snow, and it made me happy.

Somehow that makes me remember how, on our honeymoon up in Jasper, Alberta, this old guy was driving C and me to the drop off point where we were going to start hiking and I asked him how he handled the long Canadian Rockies winters and he, this guy who must have been about 70, said "Every year, I love it more." That guy was cool.

End of the Festival Season, I Think

Went to the Renaissance Fair and Metea Park for the first time yesterday and boy is that a different kind of crowd. I get the feeling that for a fair number of the people there it's the only sunlight they get all year because they spend the rest of their time playing Dungeons & Dragons or WoW. It's fun to visit that freaky little world, though. I mean, hey, I bought D&D when it first came out back when it was a slim, light blue 40 page rule book. It was just a phase for me, though. You could tell they were all going to great trouble to try to "act the part" but couldn't go much further than sprinkling old old timey phrases like "Good day to you" and "Huzzah!" into their conversations. They were still charming, though.

I'm not convinced the people who were part of this event were into the Renaissance period so much as the medieval one, the one with the most violent looking weapons. That was probably my favorite part to see: this group of enthusiasts with ad-hoc chain mail and swords padded with duct tape and socks going after each other in short, intense bouts of hand to hand combat. Before each one, the emcee would remind us all that "back in the 14th century, this is exactly what you would see on the battlefield," and then the guys would start flailing until one scored a hit in some vital area. The loser would make a grimace and then enact a romanticized slow-motion fall to the ground.

Even more dramatic were the two jousters who drove their horses here from Texas. Check out the guy's flowing locks--there was some real ego dueling going on between him and his adversary. They were great horsemen (I think so, at least--I really don't know anything about it) and performed a few really neat feats of skill before engaging in an actual joust: no padded, balsa-wood lances, no helmets; just their hair to protect them. After that, they dismounted and starting swinging real swords at each other (The local padded-sword team had to be eating their hearts out at this) and that was cool too. Then B had a good enough sun burn that we decided to go home.

Of everything, my favorite event was the Punch and Judy Show. The origin of slapstick, it was, Punch and Judy. The puppeteer was funny, too, making repeated self-deprecating jokes pointing out what a bad puppeteer he was (though I thought he was pretty funny). He would break out of character to say things like "Hey folks, I know it's a terrible accent, but I'm doing the best I can" or to admonish the kids "no, when you see the alligator behind Punch, yell 'There he is!'" Still, I laughed pretty hard--at the play, not him--and was glad I got to see it. The picture of J shows that she did too.

Doctor Wins

For about a week, I've been hoping that I could make it through tonight without watching Lost. For a few weeks, of course, when I saw an ad or some teaser about the new season, a part of me, just like in everyone, probably, would say "Oh, Lost? I wonder what's going to happen," and I would get excited.

But I don't want to get into it. It's just an addiction with no real payoff, isn't it? I mean, they raise your curiosity with a small twist and it kills you not to know, for example, what is in the damn hatch. Then, when you find out what is in the hatch, you don't really care anymore because (a) it's just a tv show, and (b) they have thrown some new plot twist at you that has you again anticipating next week's show.

That's the problem for mel with serial dramas; you're rarely enjoying the moment, but instead anticipating the next one.
Still, I knew there was good chance that if I saw tonight's episode, I would fall into that narrative trap and have effectively forked over my Wednesday nights for the winter.

But something else happened. Instead, I had a dvd of the new Doctor Who series, a nerdy series, but one that takes me back to the old Tom Baker days that I used to watch with my old grandma. She was my BBC friend. We'd stay up late on Friday nights and watch all the BBC
lineup they had, and she had no idea what was going on, but she thought it was all funny, and it was great to be there with her. So I put this new Doctor Who dvd in, a show I hadn't watched since I was old enough to get my driver's license and have "better" things to do with my Friday nights. I watched the show, and it was okay, but more importantly, I started it, unthinkingly, before Lost came on, and didn't even realize it until The Doctor was done saving people in space an hour later.

So I made it through Lost premiere night without getting hooked is what I'm saying, and that's a small victory. Richard Brautigan says that you have to keep track of the small victories, so I do.